Fifteen Percent Concentrated Power Of Will

This post is about the ending of the series, and by that I mean mostly the very end, the one that comes after King basically says, “You can stop here if you want to just imagine what happens next, and by the way that’s probably a good idea.” (It's a little complicated but there's at least two clearly marked "you can stop here" points. One is before the end, one is the actual end.) So, this entire post is hugely spoilery and not interesting if you haven't read everything there is to read. [Except for The Wind Through the Keyhole, which is a prequel that I haven't read yet either.]

If you just want to know how I felt about the conclusion or are trying to decide how far you want to go without getting spoiled, I liked both endings, and they work together in the sense that the second continues the story farther without contradicting the first. The second is darker, but there’s room for interpretation and I didn’t find it grimdark or invalidating anything that went before. However, other readers might disagree and I have the vague impression (vague because I was trying not to be spoiled) that the majority of readers did not like the ending.

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I want to write more about these books at my leisure, but for anyone who is wondering if I was still reading or what, I finished the sequence, and I'm really glad I did. It's weird and flawed and probably would have been better if King hadn't taken it in some of the directions he did, but I agree overall with Swantower's assessment: it really is his masterwork, not in the sense of "best book" (though I think it's among his best books, taken as a whole and certainly individually for some of them) but his key work, his most ambitious, possibly his most personal, and apparently what he thought of as his most important.

All my favorites of his books are flawed and weird and go on too long and have parts I don't like, and none but Firestarter have endings that I 100% love. This is all true of Dark Tower, but I liked the endings (yes, I read both) a lot more than I expected to. I especially want to talk about the second ending because it's such a fascinating example of a lot of spoilery writing/storytelling things, but I'll do so in another post; please don't spoil it here.

(At the end of Wizard In Glass, I thought I knew what the ending would be, or at least I knew how I'd write it. Then events went in a different direction, and the ending we got felt at least somewhat inevitable based on everything that went before. I might write my imagined ending as an AU fic spinning off from that point.)

As I mentioned before, I really like King's narrative voice even when I don't like the book otherwise, and in the books of his that I love, it's because I like the story, his voice is at its best, and I love the characters. Once I got past the first book, I loved the voice (his use of language and dialogue and made-up words is really impressive here, if sometimes uneven), loved a lot of the story and found it compelling even when I didn't like some of the places he took it, and I loved the main characters. I'm really glad I read it, there are parts I'm sure I'll re-read many times, and this was a good time for me to find something immersive.

An abused wife, Rose, flees her psychopath husband, Norman, who unfortunately for her is a cop, and starts a new life. Because this is a Stephen King novel, her husband comes after her… and she finds an odd painting in a pawn shop that calls to her, depicting a woman in a chiton in front of a temple, and which slowly reveals magical properties, both of a helpful and a dangerous nature.

The opening scenes of Rose’s marriage, and then her flight, are an astonishing piece of writing, horrifying and gripping and completely psychologically believable. So, warning for horrific violence against women (and also against men, eventually, as Norman starts taking out people standing between him and her.) Sure, most domestic abusers are not also serial/spree killers, but I regret to say that absolutely none of the horrifying violence he does to her within their marriage is stuff that doesn’t happen in real life.

This is an odd book, of parts that don’t quite mesh together and aren’t all equally well-done.

Rose herself is a wonderful character, and I loved all the parts that are just her fleeing, learning to be her own person, and exploring the magic of the painting. Unlike most thrillers with abused women, she actually goes to a women’s shelter. That part is also very well done and there are a number of great characters there. The one part of Rose’s story that didn’t quite work for me is her romance. On the one hand, I did like that finds love with a non-abusive guy. My problem is that he’s too idealized and doesn’t feel as real as a lot of other characters in the book – he feels like Rose’s wish-fulfillment reward rather than a real person.

There are a lot of sections from Norman’s POV. They are really unpleasant to read, for obvious reasons, and I ended up skimming them and reading just enough to keep track of what he was doing. Those could and should have been edited down to the absolute minimum. I often don’t mind King’s lack of editing – like, I was perfectly happy to read abou Rose decorating her apartment – but only when I like the characters, and there is absolutely nothing likable about Norman. He’s also not that interesting compared to other King villians. Like, Annie Wilkes is also hard to read, but she’s a great character with interesting motivations. Norman is just a horrible, vicious sociopath.

Then there’s the world of the painting. I don’t want to spoil it (though you can in comments) but it went in some directions I expected and some I didn’t. It’s a thing of power that is never really explained, but makes sense on its own terms, some drawn from our world’s myths, some original. It’s darker than I expected; helpful to Rose, in general, but a dangerous thing and not one that she controls. A lot of it has the same “wellspring of myth” sense that I got from parts of The Dark Tower and is explicit in Lisey’s Story. It feels both dreamlike and real, nightmarish but also a source of power that can be used for good, if you’re clever and well-meaning and determined and wise.

Those, of course, are the qualities of a fairy-tale heroine on a quest. Rose Madder has some interesting fairy-tale references as well as mythic ones; the gap between the prologue and the first chapter could be read as an incredibly dark take on “Sleeping Beauty,” in which the heroine rescues herself by means of a single drop of blood, though it comes from something much worse than the prick of a thorn. There’s a lot of red and roses in the story: Rose herself, roses, the painting called (or signed?) Rose Madder, the color “red madder,” the chiton, blood, pomegranate seeds. For a book that in some ways feels like two or even three books stuck together, the themes (as opposed to the plot and tone) are extremely coherent.

I liked it a lot but it’s an odd book and I’m sure not for everyone. King himself said somewhere that he didn’t think it succeeded, but the parts that work really work; it does feel like he was pushing at his limits as a writer, so maybe he felt like he was over-ambitious and failed. If nothing else, I bet he learned a lot from writing it. As I mentioned, I skimmed Norman’s POV as much as possible and would skip it entirely on a re-read. Lisey’s Story, in contrast, benefits from completely omitting the villain’s POV.

Rose Madder

Before this becomes all Stephen King, all the time, I thought I'd do some quick write-ups of nonfiction I read a while back. All of these are survival stories of plane crashes. I am putting them in order of quality, from best to worst.

Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival, by Laurence Gonzales. A meticulously researched and very readable account of the plane crash in a corn field fictionalized in Peter Weir's haunting movie Fearless. Gonzales (author of the fantastic Deep Survival) tells a gripping story of tragedy and heroism, of chance and courage and survival. I ended up skipping the chapter which gets into overly technical details of the exact cause of the mechanical failure that caused the crash, but otherwise it's a very well-done book about a tragedy that could have been so much worse.

About a third of the passengers died; if not for the quick thinking of the pilots (including one flying as a passenger who got recruited to help out), probably everyone would have; if not for their decision to try to land in a cornfield at great risk to their lives, probably people would have been killed on the ground. There are also a number of individual rescues, plus a fascinating account of the emergency response on the ground.

The book has a haunting quality, not just because of the deaths but because of the strangeness of the incident; many passengers found themselves lost in a cornfield, with the plane invisible, as if they'd been transported to another world. And like all large-scale incidents, some questions will never be answered. One man remembers a woman with perfect clarity, but no woman matching that description was on the flight. This is the crash where a man climbed back into the burning, smoke-filled plane to save a baby, whom he miraculously found unhurt in a luggage compartment. I knew that part, but there's a heartbreaking sequel that I didn't know: the baby girl committed suicide at the age of fifteen. No one knows why, or if the crash had anything to do with it.

Highly recommended, if you like that kind of thing and you're not feeling emotionally fragile.

81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska's Frozen Wilderness, by Brian Murphy is the story of Leon Crane, a WWII test pilot who was the sole survivor of a crash in Alaska, and made his way back to safety in 81 days despite virtually no supplies or wilderness training, through a combination of grit, intelligence, and some incredibly good luck involving where he crashed - even ten miles in any other direction might have led him to miss something without which he would have been very unlikely to survive.

This is biography, not memoir, and is somewhat hampered by Crane's reluctance to talk about what happened, apparently not due to trauma but to a combination of natural reticence, humility, and the sense that it was a profound experience which could not be put into words, or which words might spoil. So a lot of the story is reconstructed from second-hand accounts, yet gets into enough detail of what Crane might have been thinking and so forth that I would consider it creative nonfiction rather than strict nonfiction, as the next two books are.

If you like survival stories, you will like this. Despite some hiccups, it's generally well-written, clear, vivid, and engrossing. I would say it's good but not great.

My trade paperback omits dialogue marks apparently at random for the first few chapters; I assume this is an error, because if it's a writing choice it's inexplicable and distracting. Hopefully it is an error and your version will not have it.

Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds: The Tragedy & Triumph of ASA Flight 529, by Gary M. Pomerantz. This is similar to Gonzales' book, but tells the story of a different crash. It's good but not as good; it also has a lot of descriptions of horrific, month-long deaths by burns that I found hard to read. It's also haunting in other ways: the stewardess who saved many people's lives got PTSD and never really recovered; she had to stop flying, and while she finally did get on a plane many years later, as a passenger, she never managed to appreciate the lives she saved, but only blamed herself for the people she couldn't save.

As you can tell, I am fascinated by plane crashes. They seem to cause more and more severe PTSD in survivors than other types of accidents, perhaps because everyone but the pilots feel out of control and because survival is primarily about where you were sitting, not what you did. People don't seem to do well with terrible incidents that rub in how much chance is a factor. The freakish, unusual nature also seems to not help. (PTSD from car crashes occurs, but not that frequently. I think it's because drivers have some sense of control, and car crashes are relatively normal and common, unlike plane crashes.)

The Light of the Moon: Life, Death and the Birth of Advanced Trauma Life Support. A memoir by a man whose father, a doctor, crashed his small plane in a rural area at night with his entire family in it. His wife was killed, but his children survived with severe injuries. He was not happy with their treatment at the hospital they were initially transported to, and discovered that there were no nationwide guidelines for treating mass trauma victims. So he created and implemented them, nationwide, no doubt saving thousands and thousands of lives.

The author was a boy and unconscious after the crash, so he apparently interviewed his father to get an account of it. That part is very good. The rest of the book… Well, he's clearly not a pro author. There's endless accounts of the search for the plane which are sometimes interesting and sometimes incredibly tedious. His account of his own research as an adult into what happened is generally awful - he literally has pages and pages detailing how he googled stuff.

The parts I was really curious about - his and his family's recovery, and how his father managed to implement medical protocols nationwide - are mainly skipped over. He says that his nine-year-old brother lost ALL his memory of everything that happened before the crash. If he means his entire life, WOW do I want to hear about that and how he coped - he would have never remembered his mother, for instance. But since the author says nothing more about it, I assume it was a poorly worded sentence and he means that his brother had some degree of anteretrograde amnesia - maybe days, maybe even months - but not his whole life.

Interesting story, not told too well. Bad or flawed memoirs typically have this issue of too much filler and a failure to distinguish between what the author and reader is interested in.

I attempted to google this and got SO CONFUSED.

If there is a romantic couple whose parents are cousins, what familial relationship does the couple have to each other?

ETA: Let me see if I can make this more clear.

Alice Callahan and Beatrice Callahan are cousins. Alice has a daughter, Martha Callahan. Beatrice has a son, Mr. Callahan. (He's a loser and bails on his family before the story begins, he doesn't have a first name. I'll call him Bob for simplicity.)

Bob and Martha get married. What's their familial relationship? (If this is incest, help me figure out some way that both of them have parents with the same surname that isn't incest. In the US, cousin marriage is not considered incest.)

I'm only halfway through this memoir of a world-record cold-water swimmer, which I am greatly enjoying, but I had to share a few excerpts.

Memoirs by athletes who are famous in non-famous sports are often very interesting: they're not about being famous and meeting other famous people and (often) getting addicted to drugs/fame/sex, they're about what it actually feels like to do their sport. (Also, they're way more likely to be written by the athlete rather than a ghost writer.)

The best ones are usually by people whose sports involve a lot of endurance and are at least somewhat solo (rather than team sports; you're competing as much against yourself as against others.) I am very interested in physicality, people's relationships to their bodies, the mind-body connection, and pushing the limits of the mind and body, so I like that sort of thing. Especially when interesting locales are involved. People who get seriously into things like rock climbing, long-distance swimming, mountaineering, etc, tend to have mindsets that would not be out of place in a Zen temple.

Cox discovered an aptitude for cold-water, long-distance swimming as a child; she was rather hilariously inept at all other sports, and had a three-year battle with a PE teacher who hated her and kept refusing to excuse her from volleyball to do stuff like train to set the world record swimming the English Channel at age fourteen. Cox was completely self-motivated; her family supported but did not push her.

At this point she is looking for new frontiers. This is all swimming in oceans, not pools. While stymied in her hope of swimming from Alaska to the Soviet Union by 1) everyone telling her that the water is so cold that she would die in ten minutes, 2) her only landing point being a Soviet SPY BASE which they understandably did not want to let an American on to, she joins a study on cold water swimming led by Dr. William McCafferty and Dr. Barbara Drinkwater (seriously), partly to pass the time and partly in the hope that she'll learn something that will enable her to swim in water that normally kills people.

Dr. Drinkwater explains that men have less body fat, and so tend to sink. Women have more, and so tend to float. But… "You're different. You have neutral buoyancy. That means your body density is exactly the same as seawater. Your proportion of fat to muscle is perfectly balanced so you don't float or sink in the water; you're at one with the water. We've never seen anything like this before."

Cox is fascinated by this finding, which meshes with both her abilities and her sense that she is, in fact, one with sea water. But they want to see how she reacts in a natural environment, not in a lab, so Dr. McCafferty and his wife walk their dog on the beach while she does her daily workout in the ocean.

Before and after these workouts, I'd hide behind a bush and take my core temperature using a rectal thermometer, the only way to get an accurate reading after an immersion in cold water. I always made a point of telling Dr. McCafferty my temperature just as joggers were passing; they'd give him quizzical looks, since it appeared to them that he was talking to the bushes.

Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer

This short graphic novel, which can be downloaded here or ordered as a paper review copy from the website, is subtitled “Struggling for Family Acceptance in Iran: the story of two gay men.”

It is that rare thing, a work of propaganda which is also a work of art. The entire genre of protest music contains many wonderful songs so it’s not rare there, but I can’t think of too many examples of written propaganda which are also good art. This is. Since I already agree with its message, I was expecting a “preaching to the choir” effect and enjoy the art more than the story. I loved both. It’s extremely well-written, easily gliding from lyrical metaphors to wisecracks to satisfying story moments. It makes its point, but it does so much more than that, too.

Yousuf and Farhad, which was commissioned by Outright, was created to promote the idea that there is nothing wrong with being gay and that gay people should be accepted both politically and personally, to raise awareness of the persecution and prejudice against LGBTQ people in Iran, and to support Iranian LGBTQ people. It’s also a lovely graphic novel which is sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and always moving. The art is expressive, and even the most minor characters feel like real people with their own stories. Actually, the supporting characters seem more like real people, while the heroes are more types, but that’s probably deliberately done to create an everyman effect and aid in reader identification.

It’s short and sweet, so I don’t want to give too much away. Yousuf and Farhad are two men in love in a place where their love is forbidden; they face prejudice, persecution, and despair, but also find comfort, support, and aid, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

On a literary level, it continues a very old tradition in Persian literature of linking Earthly love to Divine love with its comparisons of the beloved to holy places and things, and the love between the men with the love of God for his creations. The names of the heroes are taken from two of the most famous Persian works of literature, the heterosexual love stories of Farhad and Shirin and Yousef and Zuleikha. It obviously implies that gay love is equal to and as important as straight love and, more subtly, suggests that LGTQ people and the stories of their love should be as respected in Iran specifically, by tying them in to culturally important stories. (I’m using “Iran” to mean the modern country and “Persian” for its ancient literature; that seems to be the most common usage, but please correct me if it’s not the preferred one.)

This is a story which is radical given the current political context, but it does not appeal to radicalism. Instead, it says that there is nothing inherently radical or counterculture about same-sex love and it does not conflict with traditional values or with Islam, and it is homophobia which is a break from tradition and with Islam. I hope it gets through to the people for whom this would be a convincing argument or the only one they would accept.

I obviously read the English version, but it’s also available in Farsi. Contain people being homophobic and (decode at rot13com to see the spoilers) n aba-tencuvp fhvpvqr nggrzcg.

If you want to know if there’s a happy ending, gurl ner unccl naq gbtrgure ng gur raq.

If you would like to read more of Solani’s work, his graphic novel Zahra's Paradise was hugely acclaimed. Based on the subject matter— a young protestor who vanishes— it also looks hugely heartbreaking.

Jessica Stern of Outright wanted me to give a hard copy to the person who edited the latest Outright benefit anthology. (It's quite beautiful in paper and I wish it was more available that way.) So please email me with your address. ;)

I’m sure you all know that most therapists don’t usually do that much dream exploration any more, despite its prominence in Freud and hence pop culture depictions of therapy.

I do a lot of work with trauma-based nightmares, but those are quite different from non-trauma-related dreams. The dreams are not generally subtle, so the work is more to get rid of them than to explore what they mean; it’s obvious what they mean. In those cases, the client was traumatized and is re-experiencing it in nightmares which don't contain any deeper meaning, and from which no insight can be gleaned because the insight (client was traumatized in a specific event) is already known.

However, I do sometimes have clients tell me a dream that either isn’t obviously trauma-related, or might be but also seems to have some deeper meaning, and ask me what it means.

I might say something like, "I can't tell you what your dream means. Dreams are totally individual - you're the only one who can know what it means. What do you think it’s about? Were there any parts that felt especially meaningful, or that reminded you of anything in your life or your past?"

If they don’t have any ideas, I’ll try asking about cultural ideas about dreams. I’d phrase it as something like, “In your culture, do people have ways of interpreting dreams? Is there someone in your family or someone you know who knows a lot about dreams?”

Generally, if their culture does have ideas about dreams, they will know some specific person who could interpret their dream. In that case, if the client says that yes, there is someone they know who knows about dreams and they'd believe their interpretation, I'll ask how they'd feel about asking that person. If they go for it, I’ll check in next session about what Grandma or Auntie had to say, and how the client felt about it.

But if there wasn't anything like that, or the client didn’t believe in it, or if they asked Grandma but found her explanation unsatisfying or insufficient, and they’re still really curious about the meaning of the dream, I tell them that there’s another way of exploring dreams.

"It involves art,” I’ll say, “but it’s not literally drawing anything from your dream. Though you can do that too, if you want to."

If the client doesn't already do art, I’d say, "Anyone can do this. You don't have to be good at drawing, or even know how to draw or paint at all. It's not about making good art, it’s just a way of exploring your dream in a way that you can’t do by just talking about it. It won’t necessarily tell you what your dream means, but it might give you some ideas or insight. It's easier to do than to explain."

This method is based on something I learned in a class and I now am not sure what it's called or what the exact source is; it’s Jungian, though. Possibly Robert Johnson.

This is the sort of thing that a client will either really get into, or not want to do at all. It takes the entire session, so make sure they want to do it before you start. It’s usually something you’ll tell them about and ask if they want to try it in one session, and then actually do it in the next session. All else aside, you’ll need to collect a number of sheets of blank paper, and paints and/or color pens, pencils, or crayons.

To begin the session, even if they’ve told me the dream before, I ask, "Can you tell me the dream you want to work on?"

If there's multiple ones, I have them pick the one that feels most important, frightening, emotionally intense, etc.

The client tells me the dream. I listen to the whole thing. You can listen uninterrupted, or occasionally ask questions.

If there's a lack of vivid detail, in whole or in part, I ask questions. If you ask questions, they should be geared toward enlarging on the details of the dream, not on associations or possible meanings. You want to keep the focus on the narrative of the dream itself.

If it involved snakes, a good question to ask would be, "What did the snake look like? Was it a particular type of snake? How big was it? What color was it? Did it make a sound?" etc. (Not ALL those questions, but one or maybe more if the client doesn't elaborate on their own.)

When they're done, I ask, "Can you pick ONE moment in the dream that feels important to you? Like, the most intense, the most scary, the most mysterious, the one you're most curious about…?"

They say what that moment is. If it's too long or complex, narrow it down. For instance:

Client: "The moment when I opened the door to my home and saw my mother covered in snakes and then the snakes started chasing me."

Me: "Okay, but of that part, which was most intense or meaningful? Was it the door opening? Was it seeing your mother…?"

Client: "I think it was seeing my mother."

Me: "Okay, now paint that moment. It doesn't have to be literal at all. It could be just how you felt. Or if you want to try to represent it literally, feel free, but just remember that it doesn't have to be a good or accurate drawing at all."

Clients are often hugely self-conscious about not being good at art, so unless the client is already an artist, I’d emphasize the “doesn’t have to be good” a lot.

The client then creates a painting. We look at it and I ask if anything jumps out at them about it. If so, we talk about it. Then I ask (if I haven’t already) exactly what part of the moment of seeing her mother the painting represents.

They show me on the painting: “Those black lines are the snakes on her body.”

Me: “Okay, you know how on shows like CSI, they have the photo of the crime scene, and then blow it up, to show more detail? We’re going to blow up that part of your dream. Of the moment when you saw the snakes on her body, pick a detail that seems like the most important or emotional or scary, and just paint that. Maybe a detail of your mother, or of one of the snakes…?”

Client: “Yeah, this one snake had its mouth open and I could see its fangs. It was really scary!”

Me: “Okay. Paint that. Remember, it doesn’t have to be literal – just the feeling of the fangs.”

On a new sheet of paper, the client paints the fangs.

If we have time, I’ll have them blow up the dream several times, painting various details.

Also, have them do at least one association that may or may not be in the dream itself: “Did anything in that moment of the dream remind you of anything else in your life? Was any part of it a real thing from your past?”

Client: “Yeah, the light from the window reminded me of sunset in the town I used to live in.”

Me: “Can you paint the sunset, or the feeling of the sunset…?”

You should end up with at least three paintings: one original, one blow-up, and one associational. Ideally, you will also do a blow-up of the association: one detail of the sunset that seems most important.

Then you have the client go through them one by one and look at them as paintings, as if she walked into a room and saw them hanging on the walls. What feelings do they evoke if she looks at them as if someone else painted them? How are they related to each other? Is there some kind of progression from one to the next?

This is the part where clients should start noticing things they didn’t before. You’re having them step back and look at their paintings from a perspective they didn’t expect to take. Talk about what they see and how it makes them feel.

Then have the client look at the paintings again, this time relating them back to the dream. Do they say anything about the dream that she didn’t notice before? Do they remind her of anything, maybe something from her past? “Looking at the paintings, how do you feel about the dream now? Do they shed any light on it? What about the town where you used to live? Does the dream have anything to do with that?”

You can continue as long as you like, blowing up details or delving into associations, then alternately looking at the paintings as paintings and as they relate to the dream or associations from the dream.

This can be really interesting for a client who wants to explore their subconscious or see things in new ways. It’s not a source of answers, but it’s a source of inspiration, insight, or simply having a new experience in therapy. You can do it yourself, but I think it’s easier to do with someone else. It’s hard to describe, but powerful to experience: a dreamlike experience in waking reality. It produces a feeling of insight which is hard to put in words.

Note: This was written by Sholio, a friend of mine, and I was one of the betas. The sphinx ship was my suggestion.

A gecko shifter secret agent joins forces with a dragon shifter gambler to fight crime aboard a ship shaped like a giant sphinx, while also playing in an underground, I mean illegal, high-stakes poker match. Cue hijinks and every trope ever.

A charmingly over the top fantasy adventure with a bit of romance, but definitely action with romance rather than the reverse. Great action, great characters, utterly cracktastic, and really, really funny. Part of a series about shapeshifter secret agents, but the books are all standalones and you can easily start here. If you liked Marjorie Liu’s Dirk & Steele series, you will like this.

The heroine, Jen Cho, is an adrenaline junkie caffeine addict gecko shifter secret agent who enjoys rock climbing in her spare time and spends much of the book clambering over unlikely places in both human and gecko forms. Jen is hilarious and her unflappable POV is the best.

The hero, Lucky, unsurprisingly has the power to influence luck, which is one of my favorite mutant powers and is played out in consistently entertaining ways. (He can apply it with a purpose, but unless he’s trying for something vey specific, he doesn’t know how it will work. For instance, “Leave the window open” will make the window get left open. But “help me win this fight” could do just about anything.) He is also a dragon shifter, but the way this works is pretty original and clever, not to mention often quite funny.

I don’t want to ruin the hilarity of their meet-cute, but it is truly hilarious. I’ll put it behind a cut, but if you think you might want to read the book, don’t click.

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Most of the book is set aboard a giant floating sphinx on which a secret, illegal, incredibly high-stakes poker game is being played. Despite the total ridiculousness of this, so much thought went into the details of how all of that might actually work that it feels weirdly credible.

The supporting cast all feel like real people with lives and motives of their own, down to ship workers who appear in one scene and have two lines.

During the climax, almost everyone aboard the ship is high as a kite for plot reasons, and while the heroes and villains are having their dramatic final battle, they keep having to dodge random people attempting to pet their hair or tell them all about the pretty pink bubbles.

Fluffy and delightful. Definitely a read-in-one-gulp type of book.

Dragon's Luck (Shifter Agents Book 3) is only 99 cents on Amazon!

I read this ages ago, but never got around to writing it up. So I may be misrecalling some stuff. Luckily, however, I read it on my Kindle and made liberal use of the note function, mostly to write stuff like “YOU IDIOT” and “Did you consider asking her, dumbass?” and “WTF! Idiot.”

This is something like the tenth book in a series with sub-series and related series and so forth. I would definitely not start here.

I’m not sure where I would advise you to start, or if I would advise you to start. There are two trilogies (“Assassin’s Apprentice” and “Magic Ship”) in which I loved the first book, had mixed but generally positive feelings about the second, and disliked the third. But they’re not standalone at all, so you can’t just read the first books because they end on cliffhangers.

Also, be aware that part of what I disliked about the third books was that they either failed to resolve mysteries or plotlines set up in the first books, or resolved them in ways which I found anti-climactic or annoying, so reading the third book just to find out what the hell was up with [X plotline you care about] may not result in a happy experience.

Spoilers for Assassin books: ( Read more... )

And then there’s more books that resolve some things but not others, and are incredibly padded – in one book, Fitz spends something like 300 pages angsting over whether or not to leave his cottage. Every now and then he breaks up the monotony by making some tea.

I felt like a compulsive masochist just picking this book up, but I had managed to get invested in a certain relationship between two characters (Fitz and the Fool) in the very first book, and wanted to know what was up with it despite my near-certain knowledge, based on something like nine previous books, that the book would be incredibly slow, the characters’ refusal to talk to each other or pick up on incredibly obvious stuff going on would drive me batty, and it would probably end with their relationship not having progressed at all. Spoiler: I was absolutely right! Also, if you thought Fitz made some stupid decisions in previous books… you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Whump fans note: If you wondered if anything could top a character being tortured to death, the answer is yes.

Cut for detailed, irritated spoilers, mostly involving weapons-grade stupidity and also tragic yet somewhat hilariously OTT whump. ( Read more... )

Fool's Assassin: Book I of the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy