Asimov Estate Authorizing New I, Robot Books...

...and they're already getting slammed:

They should not be followed up and continued. Isaac Asimoc(sic) died forty years after they were first written. If he had wanted to follow them up, he would have. The author’s intentions need to be respected here.

Ok, I'll agree there's logic to that. I'm sure if Asimov had wanted to toss another robot book in there, he would have. It's not like he had any shortage of opportunity to publish new books, there's only a few hundred titles out there with his name on them.

However, can't we at least wait for the books to come out before we declare them a desecration? We've been down this path before, with both well-known (Bear, Benford, and Brin with the Second Foundation Trilogy) and lesser-known authors (Robot City). The Second Foundation Trilogy, while not Asimov books, were excellent in their own right, and Robot City was at least an acceptable read. (We won't discuss the movie; in fact, it's best to just pretend it never happened since it was never really intended to be related anyway.) Even though they're never "the same" as what came before, when a series is extended by a different author it can still result in excellent work–let's hold off on the pitchfork-and-torch brigade until we at least have something to look at.

By Special Request: War on Sci Fi

So, whilst I was off being a good little grad student, apparently there was a Thing in the blogosphere about this fun little rant. By special request of RRRJessica, here's my take on the subject:

He's got a point.

Wait! Stop! Before you fire up the hate mail, I should probably clarify that a bit. There is a valid point in there. It's a tiny little thing; like most points it is 0-dimensional, lacking depth, width, and breadth, and is easily missed in the massive Calabi-Yau manifold of fail that makes up most of the post and would force us to use specialized mathematics to determine its true extent. But...it's a point that should be dealt with before dismissing the rest of the article as the sincere troll that it is.

Science fiction has, for several generations now, been one of the bigger sources of inspiration for the engineers and scientists in our society. There isn't much wiggle room there: anecdotes and studies both seem to agree that sci-fi, while not necessarily a determining factor, is certainly a critical factor in motivating many of the people who end up in those fields. So sci-fi, whatever it may be now, does have a history of pushing kids in the direction of curiosity and discovery that is so important to keeping them going through the decades of training that are now required before most researchers can even dream of making any sort of significant contribution to their fields. Hyperspecialization sucks folks, and if you're going to put in the investment of essentially all of your time for your entire life, there better be some kind of idea to grasp tightly and don't-let-go when your eyes are blurring over the latest dataset to process at 3AM. In the sciences, that role is often filled by sci-fi.

But the question is, does sci-fi now do what it did for several generations in the 20^th century? Certainly, sci-fi has changed. In general, I'd agree with the observation that it has become more character-oriented as the decades went by–it's even visible in the course of the careers of individual writers, as I hinted at in a writeup on Asimov's work a little while ago. But that's not the question; the question is if those changes have damaged the utility of sci-fi in general. I don't have any convenient answers for that one, other than to say that I find the whole invasion of the gays and women angle from that article to be ridiculous at best.

I would, though, suggest one way I can think of that it could be making sci-fi less effective than it used to be. The most successful people–in any field–often have a certain degree of monomania in their personalities. Golden Age sci-fi, whatever else it may have been, was usually characterized by a highly focused storyline and world that I suspect made/makes it more attractive to those personalities. Modern sci-fi is much more aware of character and relationship and may not be as interesting to the sort of personality that doesn't want to wade through all that other crap to get to the stuff that inspires and motivates them. (It would be easy to generalize that into being a geek-thing, and maybe it is to a degree, but monomania is a feature of successful people in a variety of areas, not just science and engineering.) So, in making the product less attractive to the potential pool of future contributors, yeah, maybe it does hurt the cause a bit.

But I would also point out at least two caveats to that idea. The first is that even Golden Age sci-fi was almost never just about science and math. While the most basic formula started out with the author imagining a new technology, the key was that they then extrapolated an entire world (or more) based on the impact of that technology on society. In the very best sci-fi, the technology really only acts as a setting through which the author can explore humans. Kirk may have gotten all the (green) girls, but Spock was the icon of the original Star Trek because he was the one that was outside of humanity and could act as a proxy for the viewer who was trying to understand the strange new worlds Roddenberry was creating. 1984 and Brave New World featured unusual technologies, but they were really about unusual societies. My favorite sci-fi series, The Beggars Trilogy, was written in the 90's (by a woman, Mr. Spearhead!) and followed this same formula. So sci-fi has never been just about the technology, and maybe monomania just isn't a factor; but then again, the societies and technologies were so inextricably connected that it could be that they would both be considered as extensions of the same tunnel vision concept. I'm not sure that would apply as powerfully to the focus on character and interpersonal relationships that is so common in sci-fi now.

The second caveat is that, while I might acknowledge that something has been lost, I'd also have to look at what is gained by strengthening character relationships. The sci-fi stories I mentioned in the last paragraph are significant because they not only posit new societies, but also because they critically examine the ethical ramifications of the cultures and technologies they discuss. Obviously the ones I mentioned have all been successful to varying degrees, and for the most part it's because they take the standard sci-fi formula and then add in enough empathy to reach readers and get them to truly understand what it means to, say, be a genetically-engineered super human in a world that fears you. It's an integrative aspect that differentiates significant, world-changing science fiction from pulp sci-fi about guys with fancy guns and spaceships.

Character and empathy, human relationships? That sounds a lot like what this guy is complaining about...and yet, it's what made all of this classic sci-fi, well, classic. Why would you then complain about those features growing in the modern realm of sci-fi? Of course there will be cases when it does nothing but add emo-drama to an otherwise perfectly good book, but more character and more empathy really just means that there is more opportunity for really good sci-fi. The sci-fi is not going to be the same as it used to be, but really, how can anything improve if it never changes?

I've pretty much ignored what the guy in the original article wrote, and I'm sure a lot of my arguments above have already been mentioned in the blogsplosion that I didn't have time to read. Mr. Spearhead reads like a bad parody, and my general philosophy is to avoid feeding the trolls. But while gender may be a bad way to slice the data, I do think that the changes in sci-fi will make it more or less attractive to people with certain personality characteristics. Frankly, I'd much rather have somebody who is capable of integrating science and society doing the research of the future than some of the tunnel-vision types that have been at the switch in the past. Maybe if there was more banking fiction we could have avoided a lot of problems lately.

Halloween Reading

Is anyone reading any special books for Halloween this October? I realized what month it was and decided I want to read one or two books that are fitting, but it's hard to pick those types of books when you're too much of an easily creeped-out wuss to be much of a horror fan (as a kid, just hearing the spooky Unsolved Mysteries music on TV kept me awake at night - and I saw the movie Aliens on TV when I was about six years old and was spooked out of my mind anytime I was alone for at least a year).

Last year I read a book that was not horror but was very fitting for Halloween - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. After looking through the bookshelves, I'm not sure what else I have that fits but came up with a few possibilities:

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due (which I was considering reading this month anyway)

The Good, the Bad and the Undead by Kim Harrison (Although it is shelved in horror, the first book was not horror, but it does have vampires, demons and witches so it may be somewhat fitting.)

The Duma Key by Stephen King (Confession time: I have never read a book by Stephen King, even though he's a local author - and someone just about everyone has read. So one of my friends who is a big fan loved this one and sent it to me for my birthday. It's the only book that I own that is definitely horror, but it also doesn't sound like "Halloween" season horror. Plus it's a little longer than I wanted to read right now with the amount of spare time I have.)


So, to anyone who has read those books... Are any of them good reads for Halloween? Or are there other books I should read instead?

Technical Supplement: The grrm

A brief technical supplement in support of our proposed new unit, the grrm.

The grrm is a unit of change over time. Specifically, it measures the degree of warping of a shelf under a constant weight per distance over a given length of time. In terms of quality, more grrms represent a shelf that bends more under stress. In standardized units, 1 grrm can be described as:

1 degree of deflection under the weight of a full shelf of ASOIAF (books 1-4) over a given amount of time. Standard constants for weight and time are given below.

Obviously this definition requires a bit of explanation:

• 1 degree of deflection
  This angle is measured between the nadir of the bowed shelf and a horizontal line perpendicular to the sides that represents where the shelf would be if it were not warped. Note that this is not just the distance that the middle of the shelf has dropped, so a 1cm drop will represent a smaller angle for a 1m wide shelf than one that is only .6m. This helps represent the fact that a longer shelf is more difficult to keep flat, and if it only deflects the same amount as a short shelf it is probably of higher quality than the shorter one.
  
  
• A full shelf of ASOIAF books
  Of course, everybody should fill their shelves with ASOIAF, preferably as many hardcover copies as is necessary to completely fill the shelf. However, in recognition of the fact that many people will only have three or four copies of the series in hardcover (or even-gasp-one) this requirement can be averaged to a standard amount of weight distributed over a certain length of shelf space. Unfortunately, the provisional nature of this unit and the varying editions of ASOIAF prevents us from defining this quantity precisely. While it has been proposed that the official values be based on a reference set of first edition hardcovers kept in a hermetically sealed vault in George R.R. Martin's library, preliminary values are as follows:
  
  - A Game of Thrones: 4.572cm wide, 997g
  - A Clash of Kings: 5.334cm wide, 1088g
  - A Storm of Swords: 6.35cm wide, 1360g
  - A Feast for Crows: 4.064cm wide, 1088g
  
  These values yield an average density of 223 grams per linear centimeter, also known as the golden grrm. When establishing the grrm rating of a shelf, this weight should be evenly distributed across the entire length of the shelf in question. Again, please note that these numbers are preliminary and will be revised if and when George R. R. Martin measures and weighs the copies stored in his hermetically sealed, climate controlled vault. (If anybody knows him to ask him, please feel free to report back the results in the name of SCIENCE!) Upon the release of future books, the average will be updated and all shelves previously measured should be destroyed, replaced, and retested.
  
  
• A year
  This is, well, a year. Not to be all Euro-centric or anything, but we're going with the 365.25 day calendar. Bowing is not likely to be a linear process, so ideally the first year should be used so results are comparable across tests. Otherwise, this is pretty much just a year.

Testing using exact weights may be problematic. Anywhere outside of a NIST laboratory, occupying (some might say 'wasting', but that seems a bit judgmental) an entire shelf with standard weighting instruments just for the purpose of determining the quality of your shelf is likely to be impractical. In deference to those who wish to test their shelf but do not have the space to sacrifice to proper methodology, this proposal suggests calculating a normalized grrm rating by comparing the actual weight and length figures to the standard constants defined by the grrm. There are a number of engineering problems with this procedure, but frankly, SCIENCE! is no fun if there's not a home game. All we ask is that, when normalized grrm figures are presented publicly, they should be acknowledged as such and never compared to standard grrm ratings.


Other testing guidelines:

• Shelves in a bookshelf that are structurally different from other shelves in the same unit should be tested separately. This is most common with the top and bottom shelves, which often have better support than middle shelves. When a single grrm rating is reported for an entire bookshelf, it should be the result of testing on the middle shelves.
• Whenever a book is removed from a shelf that is undergoing testing, another book of identical weight should replace it. Empty spaces on shelves, even for books that are currently being read or as organizational space set aside for future books by an author or in a series, is not permitted during testing.
• The grrm is only applicable for long-term testing (thus the inclusion of the time component). Instantaneous destructive stress testing is covered by a related standard, the Erikson, but that is beyond the scope of this document.

The first application of the grrm is in Kristen's bookshelf review below.

This Made Me Sad

What makes me sad is not just the fact that I am missing WorldCon but also that I read that WorldCon Guest of Honor Neil Gaiman mentioned that there were almost 6 more issues of Sandman (apparently, this is old news but like the blogger who wrote this post, I missed it). For the twentieth anniversary of Sandman, Gaiman was planning to write a prequel until DC Comics told him that they would only give him the same contract he had 20 years ago when he was an unknown author. It boggles the mind - Gaiman has won many awards and sold a lot of books, but DC would only give him starving artist wages to write more Sandman, which is often considered to be his best work. And as John pointed out when I told him this, who wants to be making the same amount of money they were two decades ago?

As already stated, this makes me sad. Even though I do not generally enjoy graphic novels as much as novels, I wholeheartedly agree these were Gaiman's best writing based on what I have read by him so far. Although I loved The Graveyard Book and Anansi Boys and enjoyed Neverwhere, none of them were as wonderful as Sandman, which managed to include various world mythologies and Shakespeare and was just plain full of awesomeness. (Note: American Gods was left out because I haven't read it yet, not because I'm one of the people who didn't enjoy it - I just don't know if I like it yet or not.) Sandman is dark and has well-developed characters and it completely blew my mind since I thought I could never get to know and love the characters in a graphic novel as much as a full length one. I would really love to read a prequel and wish it was going to be a reality.

Books of August

So, what's everyone reading or hoping to read this month? After reading a few long books, I plan to read some shorter ones and hopefully read a few more this month than I have been lately. I just finished Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie and will be reviewing that soon, and I just started on Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire last night. After that, I am hoping to read:

• Dreamdark: Silksinger by Laini Taylor (or possibly Fire by Kristin Cashore or Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - to celebrate Young Adult Appreciation Month over at The Book Smugglers)
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman
• The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber
• The Drowning City by Amanda Downum

There are many more I'd like to squeeze in this month but 5 books is probably about my limit unless I win the lottery in the next couple of weeks.

Last Argument of Kings

Right now I've only read one book that I haven't given at least the mini-review treatment - Last Argument of Kings, the conclusion to Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. Since I read it about a month and a half ago now, I'm not going to review it. I put that one to the back of the review queue when I was busy with wedding planning then getting caught up once that was over, figuring the world didn't really need yet another review of this novel (as you'll see if you scroll down to the links below) and that anybody who had read the first two probably had a pretty good idea of whether or not they wanted to read the final volume in the series (which should definitely be read before this book, starting with The Blade Itself and followed by Before They Are Hanged). Plus I'm a little over halfway through Abercrombie's latest novel, Best Served Cold, right now and will most likely be discussing it in relation to the series in that review.

So I'm just going to say a little bit about the series in general and link to some of the aforementioned numerous reviews for anyone who does indeed want to read a review of Last Argument of Kings.

The First Law trilogy is a partially serious, partially humorous epic fantasy series in the tradition of the trend toward "gritty" fantasy. (Yes, I used that word. Oh well, I'm straying from my review rules in this and just saying whatever comes to mind and not rereading it 100 times and revising it. Note: Haha, that was funny of me as I am writing this sentence after reading it for about the tenth time.)

On the outside, it may seem a little bit like stock fantasy but what sets it apart is the way in which it is told, although I still wouldn't say it's one of the best fantasy series I've ever read. It's full of dark humor and is very readable. For the first part of each book, it didn't seem like a lot was happening plot-wise, but the characters themselves and their cynical observations kept me reading. The part I really enjoyed in the latter part of the series is the way the author started out with a fairly standard predictable, fantasy plot and then took it in a different direction.

Although I found these fun to read, they are not for everyone - especially those who prefer to stay away from books with violence, bad language, and sexual content. I also would not recommend them to people who enjoy likable characters who tend to do the right thing. If you are looking to read uplifting stories about heroics, nobility, and the goodness of human nature, these are not for you, and the final volume is the most depressing of the three.

Now I need to get back to reading Best Served Cold so I can review that one soon. I was hoping to have it finished by Wednesday (the US release date) but that didn't happen so I'm hoping to finish it this weekend instead. If only I could read faster... Now, for the promised links of actual reviews of Last Argument of Kings (conveniently found on the review index on Fantasy Book News & Reviews, with the exception of Jeff's own review):

• Adventures in Reading
• Bill Ward
• The Deckled Edge
• Fantasy Book News and Reviews
  
• Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
• Grasping for the Wind
• Neth Space
• Sandstorm Reviews
• Speculative Horizons
• Strange Horizons
• The Wertzone

A Brief Entry to Asimov

Note: I started this as a reply to a comment on my review of Marooned in Realtime, but it grew to the point where I decided to split it out into its own post.

Well, the most important Asimov to read is the Robot-Empire-Foundation series (which is actually three separate series that he joined into the same universe after the fact). Wiki can give you the full list in chronological order, but I think how you read them depends on what you're looking for.

In my opinion, the natural entry points are Caves of Steel (the first robot mystery), Foundation (the first foundation book published), or Prelude to Foundation (the first foundation book chronologically, at least as far as the ones written by Asimov himself go). I didn't include The Currents of Space, the first Empire book, because I really think the Empire books are the weakest of the three series and I mostly read them as background for the Foundation books that came after the series were connected.

Caves is a detective novel in a sci-fi setting, more or less. It posits an interesting future Earth where the cities have been domed over and the land in between is reserved for robot agriculture. At this point Earth has also colonized many exoplanets and the people on them have created a distinct culture that is very different from Earth's. Most of the conflict in the book is between Earth and Spacer culture and centers around the use of robots, which Spacers take for granted but Earthers only accept in a very racist/slave owner sort of way.

Foundation is probably the most famous book Asimov ever wrote, even though it's actually a collection of serial shorts he wrote over the course of a decade. In some ways, it is like Marooned because it tries to capture human events on an epic time scale. The difference is that Foundation is concerned with the course of civilizations rather than individuals. The galactic empire is slowly falling, and Foundation is mostly about how you pick up the pieces of humanity after decline and fall.

Prelude to Foundation is exactly what it sounds like, a novel dedicated to the events before Foundation itself. It tells the story of a young Hari Seldon, the genius who tried to mitigate the damage of the collapsing empire. The reason I'd include it as one of the entry points to the series isn't as much about chronology as it is about the story itself. Asimov's early work was pretty rough by modern standards. It was all about the ideas, and things like characterization were not handled all that well. In addition, because Asimov's ideas were so wonderful they have been copied and expanded upon since his original versions came out. They tend to lose some power now because you think "well, that's just like x" except that you have to stop and realize that Asimov was the one who did it first and made x possible. Prelude, however, was written in the 80's when Asimov was a much more complete storyteller, so it is more accessible to modern readers than Foundation might be.

Other starter Asimov that's worth looking at are the robot short stories (collected in I, Robot among many others, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the movie), The Gods Themselves, Nightfall, or Azazel (for something a little different). Personally, I think a lot of his best work is in his short stories, so grabbing a collection is not a bad way to get into his writing.

Final Thoughts: Camp Concentration

The first book blogger discussion week has come to an end. (For more information on the origins of this, you can read about it at OF Blog of the Fallen.) It was a great idea and I'm looking forward to the next one covering Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling in December. Although I didn't think it was a particularly enjoyable book, Camp Concentration was a great selection since it offered more to talk about than a lot of the more entertaining books that are out there.

It was fun to read everybody's reviews and I think getting a few different perspectives on the novel was helpful in appreciating it more. I found it helpful to actually spend the week reading different reviews and comments instead of writing my review and then just moving on to the next book. Reading the reviews and comments and writing my own comments also made me think of a few things I wish I had further clarified in my review so I'm going to write about them now.

My main issue with Camp Concentration was that I didn't feel like I knew enough about the characters to really care about what happened to them or be sad about some pretty harsh circumstances. However, this novel was still fairly character-driven, especially taking into consideration the fact that this was not common for science fiction novels written around the same time. It was told entirely through the eyes of one character and detailed his life at Camp Archimedes and his transformation throughout the story. It still did not entirely work for me (although his characterization was certainly better than some of the older science fiction authors such as Asimov), but I think it is important to remember that it is a fairly old book as far as science fiction is concerned. This is why I'd be interested in finding out more about how Disch's work was influential and which authors would claim him as an inspiration.

I also stated in my review that I did not feel the book was particularly original or challenging, and I think this could have used some further clarification. It did not seem particularly original to me because there have been plenty of books about corrupt governments treating their citizen's lives as a means to an end, enhancing intelligence in some way, experimenting on humans, life as a prisoner, etc. Also, the exploration of the relationships between intelligence and knowledge and intelligence and madness were nothing new to me, either. Upon further reflection, combining these elements with literary references and the way it was put together was probably more original than I gave it credit for being. The pieces were somewhat standard but the whole was not unoriginal.

By saying the book was not "challenging" I did not mean it was not profound or thoughtful. It did contain much to think about - it's just that the parts that stood out to me were ideas that I'd already read about before. Therefore, it did not challenge my worldview - I never stopped and thought about how I'd never thought about something that way before or changed the way I viewed an idea. For instance, I already thought that IQ tests are not a great measure of intelligence and that genius is often a matter of luck before reading about it in this novel. There was never one of those "Aha" moments for me - which doesn't mean someone else will not have one when reading it (or that I might not have some were I to reread it).

I rambled a bit more than I meant to... I do think it was one of those books that was far more fun to discuss than it was to actually read, so it is a great book for reading groups.

Notable Reads of 2008 (so far)

With 2008 halfway over, I reached my goal of 25 books read halfway through the year so I'm hoping to actually finish 50 books this year. I really didn't think I'd make it that far since I had a bunch of extra work eating into my spare time a while ago and had a month where I didn't get much reading done because of it so I'm glad it's working out so far.

My favorite new author discovery of the year so far is Sarah Monette. I absolutely loved the first three books in her "The Doctrine of Labyrinth" series - Melusine, The Virtu, and The Mirador. Right now, I'm halfway through the book she co-wrote with Elizabeth Bear, A Companion to Wolves, and it's also very good. Elizabeth Bear may end up making it to one of my favorite author discoveries of the year if the rest of her "Promethean Age" series is as good as the first book, Blood and Iron.

The other reading discovery of the year so far is that I enjoy science fiction far more than I thought I did, so I have been reading and acquiring more of it.

Here are my favorite books I've read so far this year:

Melusine, The Virtu, and The Mirador by Sarah Monette
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The Book of Joby by Mark J. Ferrari
Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear

Other books I've enjoyed more than the average enjoyable book:

Primary Inversion and The Radiant Seas (review forthcoming) by Catherine Asaro
Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
Breath and Bone by Carol Berg
Dune by Frank Herbert

Most fun, easy to breeze through book:

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre

What are your favorite books/new authors so far this year?

Fun ways to waste time

I recently became addicted to the never-ending book quiz on Goodreads. Unfortunately, it lies and it just ended for me, but since members of the site are adding new questions every day, I'm sure there will be more before too long. Not all the questions are science fiction and fantasy related (in fact, very few are) but it was kind of fun to see what I remembered from high school literature and books I read a long time ago. I was amazed at how much useless trivia I remember from reading "The Baby-sitters Club" books as a kid.

If you haven't checked out Goodreads, it's a great place to read book reviews, meet other book-a-holics, keep track of your books, and simply check out what your friends are reading. I also use it to view what books I have available to choose from that I have not yet read when trying to decide what to read next. It's a lot of fun, as is LibraryThing.

LibraryThing is also a great place for keeping track of your books, and it tends to have more active forums than Goodreads for discussing various book-related topics, such as fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, nonfiction, and so on. You can also get recommendations based on books you own or even anti-recommendations (which are semi-accurate, kind of like Amazon recommendations). It's also a good place for reading book reviews. LibraryThing is less social than Goodreads, although I don't actually have friends on LibraryThing so I'm not sure how that part of it compares.

One of my favorite recent LibraryThing discoveries is the Early Reviewer books. Every month the option is available to request books to review, and if you are lucky, you may get one of these books. Early Reviewer books are either relatively new releases or books that have not yet been released. My copy of Last Dragon was from this program, which was quite a surprise since there were only 15 copies and 800 people requesting it. Unfortunately, I didn't get a copy of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which was one of the books they were giving away this month.

Of course, Amazon is also a fantastic way to waste time with all the books to drool over and add to the wish list, reviews to peruse, and author blogs to read. Neil Gaiman, Robin McKinley, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Brandon Sanderson, Carol Berg, and Daniel Abraham all have blogs on Amazon Daily.

Does anybody know any other fun book sites?

Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinth

Warning: The following is not a coherent review. It is just the ramblings of someone who has discovered a new series to add to the favorites list. (However, it is spoiler-free.)

Although I will be reviewing each book in the Doctrine of Labyrinth series individually when I get a chance, I finished The Mirador last night and just want to babble about it since I have no one to talk to who has read it. This is exactly the type of series I love and has moved Sarah Monette into my list of top 5 favorite authors.

This was not a fast-paced, action-packed series - it was more about the world and the characters, especially the characters. About two thirds of the way through The Mirador I realized not much had actually happened when thinking about how to sum up the story, but I hadn't even noticed (and didn't care) because the characters were so fascinating. Each book developed them further and delved more into who they were. They were very realistic and sympathetic yet rather flawed.

I may be so enamored of the characters because I could relate to them so well, especially Mildmay, whose personality is very similar to mine other than the whole assassin/thief thing. The more I read about him in The Virtu and The Mirador, the more I realized I've never been able to relate to a character as well because I've never read about a character who reminded me so much of myself.

Limiting the points of view to just 2 or 3 characters was a fantastic way for writing the series. Most of the books I've read with good characters either have one really good main character or are doorstoppers with so many characters that it is hard to keep them all straight sometimes. Monette did an amazing job of giving each character a very distinct voice, and reading their thoughts on the world and others was great fun.

I'm very glad I got the impression I would love these books from the reviews I read and bought them all in hardcover. The next book is supposed to be out sometime next year, and I can't wait for it! I haven't been this excited about a new series since I discovered Wraeththu about a year ago.