This is one of several books I read before Christmas that got put aside and
forgotten for a time. Mysteries are the type of book I read but don’t retain
well which means if they aren’t reviewed quickly, they get passed over for
more recent fare. This one, however, stuck.

It takes place in a small village in England. Years before the neighboring
village had been evacuated and abandoned because a dam had been built, after
much local political wrangling, and the village was on the site of the
reservoir below it. Just before the villagers leave, little girls begin
disappearing. The bodies are never found and the snatchings stop when the
village is drowned. The police, including a young Dalziel, never catch the
kidnapper though the main suspect is thought to be a slightly touched boy
from the village who also disappears after the village is flooded. Then,
after years of relative calm, the snatchings begin again. And an older,
wiser Dalziel and his partner, Pascoe, are brought in to try to figure out
who and why.

There were several things that interested me about the book. One was the
mystery within the mystery. In order to figure out the modern crimes,
Dalziel must recreate and solve the old crime. The major characters from the
previous crime scenes have either died or grown up or moved away and he is
working against time and lack of evidence to figure out the mystery. Not to
mention that the crime scenes have been under water for years.

The other is the use of diary entries by a young women from the village
interspersed into the narrative action. Her story becomes a secondary plot
line that weaves it’s way into the main criminal investigation. And in the
end, how she figures in the whole situation was a complete surprise to me. I
didn’t see it coming, at all.

It’s always a delight to find a new author who writes mysteries with the
emphasis on the detection and the puzzle and not on the gory details of the
crime. This is one of the latest ones Hill has written and I am doubly
delighted to have more to look forward to. I gather there is a long history
of cooperation and partnership between the two detectives, Dalziel and
Pascoe, that has developed as the books were published. Hopefully, they are
all still in print.

I didn’t really want to read this book, except that I wanted to read
Hogfather, and I needed to refresh my memory.

But first, some history. Way back when, in the fourth Discworld book,
Death took an apprentice named Mort, who eventually married Death’s
adopted daughter, Isabelle. (Trust me, it all made sense at the time.)

In this book, we meet Mort and Isabelle’s only daughter Susan. Susan’s a
strange child, as befits Death’s granddaughter. She has little patience
for fools (they suffer her, rather than vice versa), and she has a
tends to be hard to see when she wants to be left alone. And when Death
takes a holiday, as he is occasionally wont to do, it’s Susan who must
pick up the slack. Susan plays a major role in Hogfather,
which is why I needed to re-read this one first.

But that’s another review. So what’s this one about?

Death, and Rock-and-Roll. You can be the greatest musician in the world,
one that they’ll talk about forever, but there’s a price–you have to
live fast, and die young….

So why didn’t I want to read it again at the moment?

The wonder of the Discworld is that it’s a whole world; Pratchett can
satirize anything he likes, and make it work on the Discworld. But
Rock-and-Roll just doesn’t seem to fit quite right, just as Hollywood
didn’t seem to fit quite right in the earlier Discworld book
Moving Pictures. Also, there’s a bunch of foolishness with
the faculty of Unseen University that seems to be neither here nor there
so far as the plot is concerned. It’s filler.

But hey, I enjoyed the book anyway.

As Ian Hamet told us last month, he’s embarked on an incredible adventure: he’s moved to Shanghai. If you want to know why he’s done such a thing, just go to his blog and start scrolling.

I still think he’s Looney Tunes–but then, I like Looney Tunes. The question is, is he Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck?

This, finally, is the ninth and latest volume in the story of Vlad
Taltos, and it’s a doozy. During the previous books we’ve occasionally
heard about a mysterious race called the Jenoine who seem to have had
something to do with the creation of the Dragaeran Empire. Apparently
they are really bad news–in fact, Morrolan and Aliera have gone missing,
and Sethra Lavode believes they’ve been captured by the Jenoine. Vlad,
she thinks, might be able to find them.

I don’t want to say too much about this one, as I don’t want to spoil it;
suffice it to say that the Issola of the title is Lady Teldra, Morrolan’s
hostess, and that we finally find out what she’s really like.

Theoretically there should be nine more of these books, one for each of
the remaining houses of the Dragaeran Empire. I’m looking forward to
them, because I have absolutely no idea where Vlad goes from here.

Andrea Harris has a wonderful review of The Return of the King in which she hits all of the things I disliked–and, even-handedly, also hits all of things that I did like but had forgotten about. Many spoilers, so be warned.

In this, the eighth book of the tale of Vlad Taltos, Brust once more
steps back from the main narrative to fill in some of Vlad’s history.
Ever since Jhereg we’ve been hearing bits and pieces about the
Battle at the Wall of Barrett’s Tomb. We’ve also been told that Dragons
are natural military commanders, though it’s not always been clear who
the enemies are supposed to be. In this book we find out about both of
these things.

Barrett e’Lanya, a great and respected Dragonlord, dies suddenly,
leaving behind a large collection of weapons. Our old friend Morrolan
e’Drien is given the honor of safeguarding Barrett’s estate, but another
Dragonlord conspires to steal one of the weapons. This touches
Morrolan’s honor, of course, and the only thing that will do is a
carefully planned and fought war–held away from settled lands, of course, so
as not to be too destructive. Vlad comes along for the ride, mostly
because Morrolan’s opponent insults him grievously and he wants revenge.
And thus, he finds out first hand what it’s like to fight in a Dragon
army. Just what he always wanted.

This is a fun book, having more of the happy-go-lucky flavor of
Jhereg and Yendi, and yet it serves a serious
purpose–it’s providing background we need for the following volume,
Issola, which will continue with Vlad’s main narrative. To
wit: where do Great Weapons like Morrolan’s Blackwand and Aliera’s
Pathfinder come from? And what’s with the golden chain, Spellbreaker,
that Vlad’s been carrying around for the whole series?

You won’t find these things out from me, of course.

Mitford stories are always great fun. I always feel just happy after
finishing one and I’ve looked forward to a quiet afternoon to read this book
for a time.

This time around, it’s October and Father Tim has come across a dilapidated
old plaster nativity scene that the antiques store owner has brought back
from England with him. He’s bored with retirement and his book of essays is
not going well. The crèche reminds him of his childhood Christmases and, on
the spur of the moment, he decides to buy it and fix it up for Cynthia as a
Christmas gift. The book is the story of how he goes about it, how the
townsfolk help and hinder him and how he keeps the secret from Cynthia.

It’s a good story though perhaps not as tight as some others she has
written. It could have been either a well-written short story with some of
the extras cut out or a more developed novel with a bit more tension and
detail but on the whole I enjoyed it. It’s always fun to go back to Mitford,
visit some of the old haunts and find out what everyone is doing lately. She
does hint of the next book and where that one may take place too.

Most uncharacteristically, I didn’t post anything about the meaning of
Christmas this year. As it happens, I was too busy celebrating; and by
New Year’s, I’d moved on to other things. Still, better late than never.

At Christmas we celebrate the birth–that is, the Incarnation–of our
lord Jesus Christ, whom we believe to be both fully God and fully Man.
This is rather a shocking statement. The Creator of the entire universe,
of all that we can see and more that (through distance or simple
inability) we can’t, a being of a higher kind of reality than ours,
suffered Himself to be born as an infant.

Christianity is not the first religion to claim that that the Godhead has
become incarnate as a human being, of course–but the Christian claims
are unusual for a number of reasons.

The first point is that we know when and where, historically, Christ was born;
his birth is a matter of fact rather than remote legend, and even those
who dispute his divinity do not dispute his place in history.

The second (and to me more interesting) point is that Christ behaved most
peculiarly for an incarnate deity–he never used his divine powers for
his own benefit, but only for others. He healed many people; he fed the
five-thousand; he turned water into wine, but reluctantly, and only
because it was his mother who asked; he walked on the water, but only as
a sign to his disciples; and finally, he rose from the dead that we might
live.

Contrast this with what he could have done, and didn’t. When he was
hungry in the desert, he didn’t turn the stones into bread. When he was
arrested in the Garden of Gethsemene, he didn’t blast the soldiers where
they stood, or call upon a host of angels to drive them away. When he
was hanging on the cross, he remained there until he died.

Some will object, “Yes, but that just shows that Christ was merely human;
if he were divine, he’d have done something about it. Those other
miracles never happened, but were inserted into the record by overzealous
believers.”

That’s a fair point, and yet I don’t believe it holds water. One of the
glories of the Bible is that the heroes of the Bible are not
whitewashed–all of their faults are on display. This applies to both
the Old and New Testaments, to Moses, David, and Solomon as to Peter and
Paul. If the Gospels are read objectively, it’s clear that their authors
weren’t trying to whitewash anyone or to sensationalize any event; if
they were, they’d have done a much better job of it. Even then it was
clear that Christ was unusual, and far from suppressing the fact the
Gospel accounts emphasize it.

Christ limited himself in this way because he was called to be “a man
like us in all things but sin.” Christ was sent to redeem us, and to
show us the way to heaven–to show us how Man, unstained by sin, could
walk with God and so come to life eternal. And to that end, Christ had
to be a man–in short, he had to play fair, to show that the thing could
be done without resort to divine power.

The rest of us, alas, are not unstained by sin, and so are unable to walk
with God on our own strength–we need Christ’s aid. But that’s a story
for another holiday.

A little over an hour ago, the first of two NASA/JPL Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft bounced to a successful landing on the surface of Mars; you can find the relevant links at the JPL web site.

Three cheers for the MER development and flight teams; as a fellow JPLer I know how hard they worked to make this happen. I’d also like to congratulate the Deep Space Mission System operators who set up the communications channel that let us confirm that Spirit is alive and well–they don’t get a lot of news coverage, but they are under just as much pressure as everyone else involved.

One successfully down; one to go.

The seventh book in Brust’s “Vlad Taltos” series has yet another twist on
the “unreliable narrator” idea. With the exception of Athyra
Vlad’s been narrating them, and there are tantalizing hints in one or two
of the books about his having to tell his story to a metal box. It’s not at
all clear just who the metal box belongs to, or why Vlad’s agreed to talk
to it; in particular, I don’t know whether the box is just a conceit to
explain how Brust got the story to begin with, or whether there’s
something deeper going on. (There are hints in Brust’s “Khaavren” books
that their “author”, Sir Paarfi of Roundwood, has had some kind of
dealings with Mr. Brust.)

But Orca does something completely different.
Orca picks up some time after Athyra; Vlad is
seeking help for a Teckla boy who was injured saving his life, and
he’s called upon his old friend Kiera the Thief to help him. And here’s
the trick: most of the book is narrated not by Vlad, but by Kiera. And
even the sections that Vlad narrates are apparently based on Kiera’s
remembrance of how he narrated them to her. Moreover, some
third-person interludes make it clear that she’s not relating the tale to
some old metal box, but rather to Vlad’s estranged wife, Cawti–although
apparently we the reader (whoever we are in the grand scheme of things)
are privy to certain bits of information Kiera’s not passing along to
Cawti.

That’s right–we’re hearing about Vlad’s experiences through not one but two levels of unreliable narration.

The plot in this particular volume is fairly pedestrian. A wisewoman
might be able to help Vlad’s young Teckla; in return, she wants to keep
her house, which has recently been foreclosed on. Vlad and Kiera
investigate, and find their way into a financial scandal that could rock
the Empire. Ho. Hum. But it’s a good read nevertheless, not least
because it’s the first time we get to see Vlad and Kiera interact for any
length of time, and because (as in Athyra) we get to see Vlad
through the eyes of another.

Oh, and there are Important Revelations. More than that I shall not say.