I just got a piece of spam with the following text appended; the spammers get better and better at defeating the spam filters:

Was not the door closed? asked the Princess
Yes, your Highness; I am sure it was; for when I opened it Dorothy’s white kitten crept out and ran up the stairs
The rails were lined with officers and men straining their eyes for the first sight of their beloved VATERLAND after a long foreign cruise, and a ringing cheer, as from a thousand throats, came faintly to Rob’s ear
Hearing this, Dorothy and the Wizard exchanged startled glances, for they remembered how often Eureka had longed to eat a piglet Again the scene changed, and within a dingy, underground room, hemmed in by walls of stone, and dimly lighted by a flickering lamp, a body of wild-eyed, desperate men were plighting an oath to murder the Emperor and overthrow his government

It appears to be a selection of lines from public-domain e-texts. There’s an Oz book in their, obviously; anyone recognize the other bits?

Deb reviewed this not long
ago, so I don’t intend to say much about the setup.

In the books prior to this one, Marsh had begun to introduce Inspector Alleyn
very late in the story; in one case, his role didn’t amount to much more
than a cameo. She reverses the trend here, introducing Alleyn right at
the beginning, but with a twist: the murder is about a year old, and
the trail is consequently muddled.

The murder took place on a remote New Zealand sheep
station. Alleyn arrives there as the book opens, and spends the first
half of the book listening to the four primary suspects as each one tells
his or her story in detail while the others heckle. We gain a lot of
information about what happened once upon a time, but there’s next to no
action in the present. Part of the fun of a mystery novel is following
the sleuth around as he chases down blind alleys, and Alleyn remains
firmly planted in a chair for far too long.

Bottom line: Marsh gets points for invention, but loses them again for
tedium.

This is the second book in Brust’s “Vlad Taltos” series. Having
introduced the major characters (Vlad; his wife Cawti; his lieutenant,
Kragar; Dragonlords Morrolan e’Drien and Aliera e’Kieron; and Sethra
Lavode) in the previous book, Brust now proceeds to tell us how Vlad
first came to be a mob boss for House Jhereg, and about some of his early
challenges.

As the book opens, Vlad is informed that the Jhereg boss from the
neighboring territory has just opened a gambling den in Vlad’s area.
Vlad brings his crew to shut it down, and so begins a war that will
quite literally rock the Empire. Vlad even gets killed at one point–
by a pair of elite assassins known as the “Sword and Dagger of the
Jhereg”, it’s quite an honor really–and after Sethra Lavode and Aliera
revivify him he’s inclined take it as such. Especially since the Dagger
of the Jhereg is a pretty little Easterner named Cawti.

Aliera and company are more interested in Cawti’s partner Norathar–and
it begins to seem that there’s more going on in Vlad’s little war than
internal Jhereg politics.

A word about the names of these books. The Dragaeran Empire is made up
of two kinds of people: humans like Vlad, and Dragaerans, like Morrolan
and company. But there are in fact seventeen distinct Dragaeran
races–the Seventeen Houses of the Empire. Each house has its own
distinct characteristics and traits, and is named after an animal that
typifies those traits. Sixteen of the houses are considered “noble”; the
seventeenth, the House of the Teckla, is the largest and constitutes the
peasantry. There is little crossbreeding between the houses; half-breeds,
having no proper house of their own, are ostracized. The few such that
there are can join the Teckla, swearing allegiance to some noble, or they
can buy their way into the Jhereg. Even Easterners can buy their way
into the Jhereg, which is how Vlad’s father got in. That is, in fact,
how House Jhereg got started–as an accumulation of outcasts from all of
the other houses.

For what it’s worth, a jhereg is a winged lizard, rather like a small
dragon. Jheregs are about the house of hawks or falcons, and like them
are scavengers.

Now, the yendi is a kind of snake, and members of House Yendi are known
for cold, calculating, and devious. It is axiomatic that a Yendi’s
schemes are too subtle for anyone but a Yendi to comprehend. And if I
didn’t mention a single Yendi in the above plot summary, it just goes to
show that the book is aptly titled.

As Christians, Jane and I are a tad ambivalent about the whole Santa Claus thing. It’s not that we’re afraid that our kids will confuse Santa Claus with Jesus Christ–not in the short run, anyway. It’s just that we don’t want our kids to class Jesus Christ with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy in the long run.

At the same time, Santa Claus is a Christmas tradition of long standing. I got to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas, and I always got a present or two marked “From: Santa”, and I’m sure Jane did also. If my mom was at all ambivalent about the whole thing she didn’t show it; the only concession to logic was her admission that the folks in Santa Claus suits that I saw ringing bells and sitting in department stores were “Santa’s helpers.” That made sense to me; after all, Santa was at the North Pole making toys, he didn’t have time to race all over town ringing bells.

So for the last few years we’ve been walking a careful line. On the one hand, we’ve not gone out of our way to tell the kids about Santa Claus and the chimney; on the other hand, we’ve not tried to tell our kids that Santa isn’t real, either. We’ve let them come to their own conclusions.

Some people teach their kids about God this way.

Last night, we visited a neighborhood in Torrance that’s famous for its display of Christmas lights. It was spectacular. And in front of one house was, yea verily, a real live Santa Claus sitting on a big red throne. He was doing the whole Santa thing. Kids would tell him their special desires, their parents would snap a picture, and then he’d give them a little candy cane.

David, who is six, likes to work all the angles. He’d recently announced that he didn’t believe in Santa Claus; still, he was up there with the other kids, and was happy to rattle off his entire Christmas list.

James, on the other hand, streetlights shining down on his reddish-blond hair and his blue eyes and his freckles, walked up to Santa Claus and said, in his most serious voice, “You’re fake.”

I should add that there was nothing accusatory about James’ delivery; he was simply pointing out a fact that the man might have overlooked and would probably want to know.

The man recovered well; after a few speechless moments, he allowed as how he was one of Santa’s helpers. James was not particularly impressed by this, and didn’t tell the guy what he wanted for Christmas, but he accepted a candy cane anyway.

When I get caught up in a project, as I have been for some time, I
naturally gravitate toward old favorites–books that I know I’ll enjoy,
and that I know I won’t have to work at getting into because they are
already familiar. If I then get sick, as I did this week, the
acceleration of gravity doubles or triples. Which explains why I’ve
re-read Brust’s entire “Vlad Taltos” series since Tuesday–nine books,
all that currently exist, though ultimately the series is expected to run to
exactly double that.

And though–as I’m caught up in a project, and as I’m still getting over
being sick–it would be easy to tie all nine books up in a short bundle
of prose and say, “Go read them,” I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m
going to attempt to handle each book individually, and convey a little of
the flavor of each one.

Jhereg is the first of the series as they were originally
published (though not the first chronologically; as with the Narnia
books, I find it best to follow the publication order rather than the
internal chronology).

Jhereg introduces us to one Vlad Taltos: mobster; assassin;
gourmet chef; master swordsman (in the Eastern style); witch. Vlad lives
in Adrilankha, the capital city of the Dragaeran Empire, where he’s a minor
but successful mob boss. In addition to managing his territory, he’s
also security consultant to Lord Morrolan of the House of the Dragon.
And a minor disaster has arisen which brings these two worlds into
conflict.

In the Dragaeran Empire, organized crime is the province of the House of
the Jhereg. And it seems that a highly placed member of the house has
absconded with most of the house funds–and taken refuge with Lord
Morrolan, who has offered him 17 days of sanctuary. For business
reasons, the thief has to be killed ASAP, but Morrolan has sworn an oath
that the lives of his guests are sacred. Guess who gets the job of
performing the hit?

Vlad’s a witty (if unreliable) narrator, and Dragaera is an interesting
blend of hardboiled detective fiction with the traditional
sword-and-sorcery milieu, with perhaps a dash of Monty Python thrown in.
I confess, Jhereg took me a while to get into the first time I
read it, partially because Vlad doesn’t explain much at first, and
partially because the book is set in the middle of Vlad’s story, just before his
life is about to take an abrupt left turn. On the other hand, the book
introduces not only Vlad but also many of the other continuing
characters: Morrolan, witch and wizard both, who has been known to
sacrifice entire villages to his goddess, and who also maintains a
twenty-four-hour-a-day cocktail party; his fiery cousin Aliera,
Dragon-Heir to the throne, who’s inclined to kill first and ask questions
later–literally; Sethra Lavode, the undead Enchantress of Dzur Mountain;
Cawti, Vlad’s wife; Kragar, his lieutenant; and, of course, Loiosh,
Vlad’s sarcastic familiar.

This is quite simply one of my favorite books; in my view it should
belong on any list of the 100 best fantasy novels of the 20th century.

It’s a peculiar tale set in China circa 600 AD, and it begins in a
straightforward way. A plague has been visited upon the children of a
small village of silk-growers. Number Ten Ox, the strongest young man in
the village, is sent to Peking with his mother’s savings, there to hire a
wise man to come and save the children.

Ox soon finds the Street of Eyes in Peking, where the wise men live;
every door is adorned with the sign of a wide blinking eye. The wise men
see all, and they see quickly that Ox’s mother’s savings isn’t worth
their time. He is nearly despairing when he sees one last house, a shack
adorned with the sign of an eye that’s only half open. “Some things I,
but some I don’t,” the sign seems to say.

Ox enters the shack, and finds a wizened old man snoring amid squalor and
the smell of sour wine. On the wall is a diploma that declares that 78
years before, one Li Kao won first place in the Imperial chin-shih
examinations. He is quite taken aback.

I turned from the picture of the rose and gazed with wide eyes at the
ancient gentleman on the mattress. Could this be the great Li Kao, whose
brain had caused the Empire to bow at his feet? Who had been elevated to
the highest rank of mandarin, and whose mighty head was now being used as
a pillow for drunken flies? I stood there, rooted in wonder, while the
wrinkles began to heave like the waves of a gray and storm-tossed sea.
Two red-rimmed eyes appeared, and a long spotted tongue slide out and
painfully licked parched lips.

“Wine!” he wheezed.

I searched for an unbroken jar, but there wasn’t one. “Venerable sir,
I fear that all the wine is gone,” I said politely.

His eys creaked toward a shabby purse that lay in a puddle. “Money!”
he wheezed.

I picked up the purse and opened it. “Venerable sir, I fear that all
the money is gone too,” I said.

His eyeballs rolled up toward the top of his head, and I decided to
change the subject.

“Have I the honor of addressing the great Li Kao, foremost among the
scholars of China? I have a problem to place before such a man, but all
that I can afford to pay is five thousand copper cash,” I said sadly.

A hand like a claw slid from the sleeve of his robe. “Give!” he
wheezed.

I placed the string of coins in his hand, and his fingers closed
around it, taking possession. Then the fingers opened.

“Take this five thousand copper cash,” he said, enunciating with a
painful effort, “and return as soon as possible with all the wine you can
buy.”

After this inauspicious beginning things improve for truly this is the
great Li Kao, foremost among the scholars of China, and truly he is a
brilliant man–and also an incorrigible reprobate and con-man. It will
take all of Ox’s strength, and all of Li Kao’s wits, to save the children
of Ox’s village, for there is more going on than meets the eye. What
follows is a delightful romp through Chinese myth and legend. The story
is bawdy (but never obscene), funny, and moving by turns, and though
Hughart wrote two further books about Ox and Li Kao he never quite
reached the same height.

OK, so I broke down and bought all the books in the series after finishing
the two I had on the shelf. The bookstore owner just chuckled, the swab,
when he saw what I had in my hand. Apparently O’Brian fans come into his
store with an addicted gloss to their eyes needing the next fix in the
series. And, boy, can I see why. I thought I’d slowly drift thru the series,
maybe one a month, and take my time. But no, I am actually finding myself
staying up a night to finish one so I can go on to the next. And the
suspense with the whole Diane/Stephen thing is killing me.

Will has reviewed the books three or four times in the last few years and I
suggest you go and read his thoughts.

I can only add that if you are new to the series, muscle your way thru the
first book (Master and Commander) just to get the characters down and then
proceed on. Skip liberally if you need to but still retain the sense of
storyline. O’Brian gets over the need to explain ever jib, spar and sail on
a ship and moves the action along much better after he gets the series
going. Maturin also develops depth as the series progresses and so far as I
can tell, becomes almost more interesting than Jack Aubrey. He certainly is
a good foil to the heavily muscular naval setting in the books.

…but I’ve been sicker ‘n a dog for the last couple of days, on top of everything else I’ve got going on, and I’ve had no energy for writing. I do have a stack of books to review, though, and I hope to get to them over the next few days.

There are hundreds of thousands of distilled man-years of programming
wisdom in this book. Some of it was already familiar to me from hard-won
experience; some of it was new to me; some of it made me see aspects of
my current project in a new light. It’s the sort of book that puts words
to things I know perfectly well but have never verbalized.

If you’re a programmer, get a copy of this; it’s a fun read, and I
guarantee you’ll learn something you didn’t know before.

…the author’s intentions really do matter. Here’s an article on the
spiritual underpinnings of The Lord of the Rings, underpinnings of which Peter Jackson and his cast are apparently in denial.