Dead Water (Benjamin January # 9), by Barbara Hambly

The owner of the bank that Ben and Rose put all their money into approaches them in secret to inform them that a bank employee has made off with so much of its money that the bank will go under if it's not retrieved and/or anyone finds out. He knows where the employee is, but not where the money is. And so Ben and Rose, posing as slaves owned by Hannibal, get on a riverboat headed into slave territory to find the money.

This becomes a classic mystery, with plenty of clues, murders, suspects, and misdirections. It's got tons of great character interactions, a very clever and solid plot, good supporting characters, and is absolute gold for Hannibal fans. In fact this is the book that tipped me into becoming much more of one than I already was, and I already liked him a lot.

It also has one of my favorite trademarks of the series, which is the sudden plunge from a comparatively low-key pace into wildly tropey action in which an incredible number of wacky things happen in extremely fast succession. They're all meticulously set up and logical things, which makes it even more amazing and hilarious.

Here are my very spoilery emails to Layla once I hit that part, with timestamps so you can get a sense of how fast everything starts happening.: ( Read more... )

Grimness quotient: Low. Taking the time period into account, it's surprisingly upbeat.

Only $4.49 on Kindle: Dead Water (A Benjamin January Mystery Book 8)

Hopepunk?

I pulled this comment of mine from a locked entry on my f-list on "hopepunk," which linked to some articles on it. After reading the articles, I wrote:

Apart from the impossible-to-pronounce name, hopepunk is a weird movement because it seems so utterly undefined as anything but "not grimdark," which is also a useless term as nobody agrees on what that even is either. One of the articles says The Handmaid's Tale (novel) is hopepunk because Offred is resisting inside her mind, but lots of others would say the book defines grimdark.

You can't have a movement without a set of media that everyone agrees exemplify it, but there doesn't seem to be a single example of something everyone can point at and say "it's hopepunk." If you take steampunk, there's tons of things that everyone can point at and say, "Those are steampunk." I think "punk" should be limited to things with a clear aesthetic that includes visuals - which was also the case for originalpunk.

The most interesting possible definition of hopepunk, IMO, would be this:

- Stories involve communities rather than lone individuals.

- Great change requires communal effort.

- Communities are not inherently bad, though some may be.

- People are not inherently selfish and cruel, though some may be.

- Compassion, kindness, and idealism is more likely to lead to good rather than bad consequences.

- Protecting only yourself or only your own loved ones at the expense of the Other or strangers is wrong.

- Meeting strangers is more likely to lead to interesting conversations, trade, or relationships than fights to the death.

- Even if the society contains prejudice, from the point of view of the story, all people are equal. Even if a story takes place in a racist and sexist society, the story itself will not marginalize those characters.

- Non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic (etc) societies are common in these stories.

- The visual aesthetic is pretty/beautiful/intricate/fun, with multiple cultures represented. There is an effort to make even ordinary items fun to use and pleasant to look at. Clothing is colorful and individual. The aesthetic is that things are both for use and for pleasure, showing that life is not only for survival.

Black Panther would be a good example of this, I think. Everything ever written by Diane Duane and Sherwood Smith.