Maledicte by Lane Robins

I don't quite know what to think about Maledicte. On the one hand, it has lots of court intrigue and balls and that sort of thing like Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword, one of my favorite books. But on the other hand, something about it just left me unsatisfied.

A shady lord steals his bastard son Janus from the slums because he needs an heir. Miranda, the son's lover/friend/partner in crime swears revenge and seeks out Black-Winged Ani, the goddess of love and vengeance. She dresses as a boy, changes her name to Maledicte, and become the ward of another lord who has his reasons to hurt the shady lord.

Maledicte, as interesting as the idea of him was, did not really do anything for me. His solution for, like, 90% of his problems is to kill the cause of them. There isn't really any motivation for what he does, except for the broad category of “revenge.” This may be because he's being ridden by a goddess of vengeance, or maybe because Robins is trying to make a point of the destructive power of revenge. Either way, Maledicte never really became a real person to me.

I've been using the pronoun “he” because that's consistently what Robins uses. It's made clear that Maledicte is much more comfortable performing as male instead of female. This was probably my favorite aspect of the book. We need more genderqueer characters who don't always fit into convenient labels because people often don't.

Actually, what this book reminded me of most was the movie There Will Be Blood. Like Daniel Plainview, Janus and Maledicte leave a trail of destruction in their wake . But, like the movie, I never saw any reason that they were using to justify their actions. It mostly seemed they did it because they could. And that leaves me a little uneasy with the way things ended in the book. I would recommend this book (I still found it very gripping), just maybe with some reservations.  

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

I swear, I have read books that are not by Ann Patchett. Sometimes I just read books in binges. This is the end of my Ann Patchett binge.

Anyway, The Magician's Assistant is about Sabine, assistant to her gay magician husband Parsifal, who has just died. And, yes, that relationship sounds somewhat ridiculous, but it is actually very sweet. They got married because Parsifal's lover (There has got to be a better word for that! Partner? Not much better.) had just died of AIDS and Parsifal had just been diagnosed. Parsifal and Sabine truly loved each other, just without a sexual component, so it was a marriage of companionship between two people who wanted to find comfort in each other.

So Parsifal has just died and Sabine finds out from the will that he left money to his mother and sisters in Nebraska. Who he had previously told her were dead. And from Connecticut. (Parsifal is obviously not his real name. But he had a fake real name, in addition to his actual real name, which is Guy Fetters.) So then his family flies out to Sabine's house in California and she later flies back to them in Nebraska, where she learns about Parsifal's past.

Part of The Magician's Assistant is about how people you know and love can have huge secrets they never tell you and part of it is how Sabine connects with people who are very different from her on the surface. Again, the situation is all about personal connections for Patchett and not as much about drama, although there is plenty of family secrets to be had. It's also about family. Sabine, Parsifal, and Parsifal's lover were a family and now Sabine adds on to that with the Fetters.

It's a lovely book, although I think Bel Canto was just a leetle bit better. And also, this book contains what is the most touching description of shopping at Wal-Mart that I have ever seen.  

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I had to read Ann Patchett's The Patron Saint of Liars for school and I loved it so much, I immediately went to the library and got as many books of hers that I could find. And I have to say, I think Bel Canto is actually my favorite.

So, various fancy diplomats and businessman are attending the birthday party of a Japanese businessman that is being held at the house of the Vice-President of an unspecified South American country. Then terrorists storm in and try to capture the president of said country, except that he is at home watching his soaps. So then they just take everyone at the party hostage for what turns out to be about three months.

And where some books would have the confined hostages start sharing personal secrets and the worst of human nature coming out, Bel Canto just has people being awkward and then making friends and playing chess and practicing opera and having sex with fellow hostages and, sometimes, captors. It is all very polite and genteel. I don't know if that's very realistic, but then again I have never been a hostage in an unspecified South American country.

I don't make it sound very exciting but it's full of funny little moments and revelations and sweet characters moments and then it ENDS HORRIBLY. I don't want to give any spoilers but if it starts with terrorist taking hostages, then you know it's not going to end well. So there's that.

And Ann Patchett is such a good writer that she makes everything really quiet and subtle but imbued with lots of meaning. I wish I could describe it better. But it's a beautiful book and sometimes I like to read books that aren't all in your face with INTENSITY.

Hello!

Hi, I'm Aubrey.

So I've finally taken the plunge and created a book blog. Will anyone read it? Will I eventually start posting entries very rarely? The answer to both is "maybe."

About me: I'm an English major at a small liberal arts school in the Midwest and am trying to get into grad school to get a Master's in Library Science. I spend far too much time reading and swanning about on other book blogs. My first ever book post should go up in the next few days.