This is a decidedly odd book. It is dedicated to Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Ellen Kushner, all of whom may be said to have inspired it. Kushner’s contribution was through introducing Stevermer to something called “the Letter Game”:

I don’t know who invented the Letter Game (which I have heard called Persona Letters, or even Ghost Letters) but Ellen Kushner introduced it to me. I believe it originated as an acting exercise, one character writing a letter “in persona” to another.

The game has no rules, except that the players must never reveal their idea of the plot to one another. It helps to imply in the first letter why the two characters must write to each other and not meet in person.

Stevermer and Wrede set out to play such a game, writing letters back and forth in a light-hearted way, when they found it beginning to take over their lives. The story, set in an odd version of Regency England (hence Austen and Heyer) in which wizards and magicians are an established part of the social order, became so detailed that they eventually realized they had a novel on their hands. At that point they went back, cleaned things up, added plot devices here and there in the early letters so they’d be ready to hand when wanted, and like that. The result is both delightful and charming.

The novel takes the form of the correspondence between two young woman, Kate and Cecily, who are first cousins. Kate is in London with her awful Aunt Charlotte for her “coming out”; Cecily is dying to join her, but won’t be allowed to come out until the next year at least. There’s a mystery–who is the terrible old woman who tried to poison Kate at a meeting of the Royal College of Wizards?–and (naturally), a pair of mysterious young (single) gentlemen. Plus, there are a number of references and phrases (neck cloths, and the knotting thereof; the role of Beau Brummel as the arbiter of taste in dress; the notion of giving someone a “set down”) which I first saw in the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman novels I reviewed a month or so ago, which I’d not noticed at all in Pride and Prejudice; I am forced to conclude that they are staples of the Regency Romance.

Anyway, it was good fun, I enjoyed it considerably; and as it happens there are two sequels. But more of them, anon.

This is the latest of Pratchett’s Discworld books, and also the latest in his young adult series about junior witch Tiffany Aching. In this, the latest adventure, Tiffany is unwise enough to dance with the Wintersmith, the (not particularly anthropomorphic) personification of the Disc’s season of winter. She’s a pretty young girl, and he’s your basic age-old anthropomorphic personification who’s never danced with a real girl before, and he’s rather smitten. Before you know it, it’s snowing….well, read it and see. Plus, there’s a fair amount of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg to be had as well. (Of course, there always was a lot of Nanny Ogg to be had, and….ahem.) And, of course, there are the Nac Mac Feegle, who steal the show whenever possible.

Oh, and a cheese named Hector.

All in all, it’s not a bad outing; I read it to Jane over the course of a week, with much laughter and merriment. And if Tiffany’s larger story doesn’t advance much in the course of the present volume, neverthelesssome telling foundations are laid for the next one.

In short, well worth your time, if you’re a Discworld fan; and not the place to start, if you’re not. And if you’re not, why aren’t you?

Most of the books I review I’ve bought myself. But sometimes publishers send me books for review unasked; other times they query whether I might like to review a book first. More often than not, I say no; there’s no point in their sending me a book I’m more than likely not going to enjoy. In this case, though, it seemed a good bet. Harry Shearer can be quite a funny guy, in a broad sort of way, as witness This is Spinal Tap. This, his first novel, is about a New York town that’s hit the skids after all the factories close. To try and revive things, the townsfolk decide to sell themselves as the remains of an Indian tribe and get into the Indian casino business.

It’s an idea that has possibilities. According to the back cover, Carl Hiaasen likes the book. So does Andrei Codrescu and Jamie Lee Curtis. (Jamie Lee Curtis?) So does Kirkus Reviews. Apparently it’s delightfully wicked satire, it leaves no sacred ox ungored, it’s droll and funny and wonderful. (Curtis says it will leave you “shaking your head in wonder and worry.”)

Now, I’m no stranger to funny. P.G. Wodehouse is funny. Terry Pratchett is funny. Lois McMaster Bujold is sometimes extremely funny. Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams are funny. Even Carl Hiaasen is funny, though his books are so full of sex, sleaze, and tacky people (I sure didn’t invite them) that I have trouble enjoying them.

Given all that, all I can say is that I personally found Shearer’s book–well, let’s be honest, the first 83 pages–to be tiresome, dreary, unfunny, and occasionally simply disgusting. At that point I put it down and I honestly haven’t been able to make myself pick it up again.

It isn’t simply that it’s satire; I rather enjoyed Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Most of Pratchett’s output is satire. But Shearer’s book simply didn’t work for me, and there are a couple of images I now have in my head because of it that I sincerely wish I could get rid of. (I won’t inflict them on you.)

I dunno. Your mileage may vary. Me, I’d rather read Pratchett and Wodehouse.

Bujold is one of our favorite authors. She’s one of the few we regularly buy in hardcover; she’s also one of the few we regularly read aloud. When a new Bujold comes out, Jane and I expect to devote our evenings (after the kids go to bed) to reading the new book. It usually takes a week or so, although we slammed through a A Civil Campaign in a weekend; the kids were much younger, then, so we could devote more time to it. But I could hardly talk when I was done.

So when Bujold’s latest, the first book in a new series, came out, we were thrilled. A few days later, we were less so; it just didn’t work well aloud, and we ended up reading the last half separately.

Be warned; this book is much different than Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels, or even than the more recent Chalion series. What it is, is an out-and-out fantasy romance. There’s an interesting setting, and some neat monsters, but mostly it’s about one of those wrong-side-of-the-tracks star-crossed-lovers sort of relationships. And make no mistake–the emphasis is squarely on the relationship, and on each of the principle’s thoughts and feelings. That’s one reason why it didn’t read aloud well–there was so much introspection that the story dragged terribly. I can’t fault Bujold for that, as it proved to move along nicely when read silently. (The other problem with reading it aloud had to do with the nature of the text. Her prose usually reads aloud beautifully, but with this book my tongue kept tripping. Odd, that.)

Anyway, a little more about the story. In this world there are two kinds of folk: the Farmers who are fairly settled villagers, farmers, and townsfolk, the kind you’ve met in a hundred stories, though these seem to have more of an American than a European flavor, and the Lakewalkers, semi-nomadic tribesman who spend their lives “patrolling” for vicious creatures of death the Farmers call “blight bogles” and the Lakewalkers call “malices”. Dag, a Lakewalker, rescues Fawn, a young Farmer woman, from a malice’s minions and later from the malice itself; though in a nice twist it’s Fawn who slays the malice with the “sharing knife” of the title. The deed links the two in a manner I can’t describe without spoiling the story; suffice it to say that the two are thrown together and ultimately (of course!) fall in love.

This is not entirely a good thing, as the difference between the Farmers and the Lakewalkers goes far beyond culture. As the first book of The Sharing Knife ends, all seems well but it’s clear that Dag and Fawn will have a hard time being accepted in either her world or his.

As I say, it read OK silently, and had some quite good bits in it; but it wasn’t what I was hoping for. Oh, well.