Necessity and Nemesis

Here at the end of WebMage, we have SpellCrash, and what, the first time around, I was surprised to see as an ending to the story.

We start with Ravirn returning from his sojourn into the Norse MythOS (aka MimnirNet) minus Tisiphone but bearing Fenris. Necessity, on the other hand, is still having serious issues, having basically had the Goddess Computer's version of a stroke with aphasia issues. As such, Shara, the little WebGoblin who took over Persephone's role in the Olympian OS has become the voice of Necessity, doing her best to run things until a reboot can be arranged. To help in this, Tisiphone is replaced by the Fury of Ice, Cerice. Whom neither Megara nor Alecto is very happy with.

In fact, Megara is busy being lead around by what she feels is the TRUE Voice of Necessity and a spinerette named Delé. Which puts her at odds with Alecto, who, while not liking Cerice, still listens to Shara.

Whatever voice is leading Megara is also quite interested in killing Ravirn, which leads to quite a few notable chases throughout.

However, most of the plot revolves around the idea of Necessity's power as Fate of the Gods being up for grabs when the reboot happens, thus leaving the 4 major pole powers in the pantheoverse doing what they can to get in line to take over. (Thus Zeus, Hades, Fate, and Eris become major players in the stakes, not to mention the "Voice of Necessity".)

It's a very dense book for being only about 300 pages. One almost wishes he had spread this over 2 books to further develop some of the plots that get the short shrift by the end. I mean, there's a lot going on in this Greek Ragnarok, and not everything gets fully explored by the end. But, he didn't. Which doesn't make it any less a fabulous read, just a rougher one that what could have been.

Unrelated, the main library re-opens tomorrow, which means I can start reserving books again. Shoudl the last book of the Blending not take as long as it takes for reserves to show up, there are a few one offs I can add in to keep occupied.

More consonants than Wheel of Fortune

So, as we begin Kelly McCullough's MythOS, our favorite trickster Ravirn is busy trying to break into the central mainframe of Necessity again, trying to fix the universe's mainframe. When he ends up stuck in a room full of abacuses, along  with his sort of girlfriend Tisiphone (who's still quite irked with him), something happens, landing Ravirn, Melchior, and Tisiphone in Prince Edward Island. Well, PEI, but not in a universe ruled by the Greek Pantheon. On the other hand, we also find out where Allhan wound up when Shara's clone in Necessity moved her someplace safe.

Mainly because she manages to save Melchior and Ravirn from a rather tense encounter with a guy named Loki. (Tisiphone gets really mad after arrival, flies off, and gets attacked by a large wolf chasing the moon.) Loki is walking a large poodle who spits up a hand. Said hand becomes Laginn, sort of a Norse Thing. Said hand is also remarkably annoyed with its previous owner, Tyr.

Through the course of the book, we meet Odin, but before we get that far, we meet Odin's birds, Huginn and Muginn (Thought and Memory). These two summon Ravirn to Odin in Valhalla, whereupon Ravirn gets named "Intuition/Impulse". Through heavy use of the Skuld (who also does a bit of foreshadowing for the last book), we learn about the Norse MythOS, forever trapped in one march toward Ragnarok. Seems the entire OS's main processor is the Head of Mimir, and Odin's eye in Mimir's Well lets him know everything. Except for what is up with Ravirn. Ravirn can't be seen by Odin's other eye, the one sacrificed for knowledge.

There's a rather large amount of things going on throughout this, including some wonderful asides on every character's part. We have Fenrir, who seems to be the only honest character; Hati, who appears as a rather absentminded fox at one point; Loki, trying to save his family from Odin's tyranny; and Odin, who's trying to find a way to stop Ragnarok. Oh yes, and at one point, we even meet Jormungand, who spends most of his time reading at the bottom of the sea.

Add to this Allhan dying due to the difference in the quality of Primal chaos in the Norse realms and Tisiphone getting might annoyed to find bits of a Fury that didn't exist coming through from teh Greek MythOS, and you have quite a tale.

While I love the Iron Druid Chronicles, Kevin Hearne's depictions of some of the Norse pantheon don't quite jibe with how they're normally presented. To his credit, McCullough does stick closer to the Eddas, and even gives a better idea of WHY the gods act the way they do. (On the other hand, Thor comes across as semi-nice in this book, which generally isn't normal.) Still not quite as much fun as Neil Gaimen's veersion of the Norse, but hey...

Even if I'm not a huge fan of Norse mythology, that didn't particularly affect my love of this particular volume. That, and now, on re-reading, can see how much this sets up the fifth and final volume, I remain in love.

Wrong universe, Ghost Rider

I managed to finish off Kelly McCullough's CodeSpell a bit quicker than I had ioriginally anticipated, but on the other hand, it's the only one in the series I couldn't remember any details about. It was almost like reading it for the first time.

Again, we're following around Ravirn/Raven as he's navigating some rather fractious politics among the Greek Pantheon. In this case, we start on Olympus at a party hosted by Zeus celebrating the return of eternal summer thanks to the hard won freedom of Persephone at the end of the last book. Mind you, no one knows what happened to Shara or the Web Troll Ahllan. That Necessity is also working rather spasmodically recovering from Persephone's virus isn't helping much either.

However, the real shock happens at Zeus's garden party, where Ravirn runs into his dear friend Dairn, whom we last saw dying while being shoved into a fairie ring. It seems that Dairn has merged with everyone's favorite spirit of vengeance, Nemesis. Nemesis has been missing in action for a few millennia after Necessity got annoyed that she had her own ideas on how to perform her job. which lead to the creation of Tisiphone, Alecto, and Meagara, the Furies.

Clotho reclaims Cerise at the party to work on Fate's attempts to repair the mWeb, which leads to more than a few relationship kinks with Ravirn. That Tisiphone, who hasn't known a man in about 1,600 years or so has taken an interest in Ravirn, doesn't really help this situation. (To be frank, Alecto isn't all that pleased either.)

Most of the plot revolves around Nemesis trying to kill Ravirn, or later on, kill her mother, Necessity.

We also get to finally meet Zeus and Athena, as well as the muse Thalia, who's actually Ravirn's paternal grandmother. We also find out fairly quickly that Cerberus cheats at Poker.

Really, this is quite possibly the breeziest read in the entire series, since it's honestly one really big race to figure out how to reconnect everything with Necessity, something not even the Furies can do. There's also the question of where the heck Nemesis has been for several millennia and why she's suddenly back in the picture. Ravirn also begins an affair with Tisiphone, she of the flames, which also gives a rather strange vibe to the proceedings.

It's a wonderful entry, and the overall presentations of both Zeus and Athena are fairly true to the myths.

Lyric Coding

By the end of Kelly McCullough's Cybermancy, we have a better, if uglier view of his take on the modern Greek pantheon than we did at the end of book 1. However, there are moments of supreme lightness that help keep it from becoming a DC Cinematic Universe tale.

We start with Ravirn on the near bank of the Styx playing Bridge with Mort, Bob, and Dave. Who are Mort, Bob, and Dave? Why, the three heads of the Cerberus. Ravirn is hanging out with them trying to figure out how to pull an Orpheus, freeing Cerice's Web Goblin Shara out of Hades, particularly since Shara still has most of Cerice's dissertation on her hard drive. (I'm sure most grad students would risk more to get theirs back should it wind up on the wrong side of the river.)

Ravirn, who's avoiding using the name Clotho gave him at the end of Book 1, Raven, makes an oath and ends up breaking into Hades to free Shara. Which introduces us to McCullough's tragic heroine, Persephone.

A quick recap for those of you who never studied Greek mythos, or prefer to use Roman Prosperina. Persephone would be Demeter (Goddess of the Earth)'s daughter, the embodiment of Spring. In most tellings,  she picks the wrong flower and gets kidnapped by Hades and taken to the underworld. Demeter is not happy about this and causes eternal winter until Persephone comes back. Zeus (King of the Gods, lord of the sky, and all around lecher) eventually caves in, but since it's found out Persephone ate a debated number of pomegranate seeds while in Hades, she will remain in Hades that many months of the year, returning to her mother during her off time. Demeter isn't fond of this arrangement and states that while Persephone is down under, nothing will grow. Thus the seasons.

For this particular incarnation, it's 3 seeds. And unlike some retellings, Persephone isn't happy about spending 3 months out of a year in Hades for eternity. Then again, the way it's presented in this narrative, Hades is raping her pretty much non stop the entire time she's in Hades. And beating her. Anyway, she offers to help Ravirn to escape Hades and get Shara out in exchange for favors later to be determined. Problem is that Shara gets lost for a while while being e-mailed out, showing up a few hours later having been redirected through a mysterious server on the way.

And then the entire MWeb starts crashing. Worlds go offline, Cerice defies her great grandma Clotho, the Fury Tisiphone confesses that she has the hots for Ravirn, we sort of meet Zeus.... (We hear him "entertaining" his secretary through a closed door.)

It's a fun book, really taking the world building of book 1 much farther, and not letting Eris steal the entire book. The presentation of the Cerberus is quite humorous, and it's nice to see the Furys grow into more complex characters. By far the only real thing that took some adjustment on my part was the telling of Persephone's myth in here (even if he does point out such a traumatic event would tilt anyone's personality, thus the axial tilt that science claims causes seasons), since most translations don't particularly present it quite the way it's represented in here.

Be warned, while the book is well written, some of the presentations of will likely trigger a few things.

Golden Apples of the Sun

A couple "bookkeeping" notes before we dive into this one. As mentioned previously, Columbus Metropolitan Library's decision to rebuild ALL the branches has lead to a distinct lack of a place to go wonder the stacks. Which has allowed me to get through some of my backlog of books I own that I want to read/re-read. However, my current plan got sideswiped by two reserves showing up, so rather than my original intent, there will likely be 2 reviews coming up that won't fit the pattern.

Last September, someone put all 5 volumes of Kelly McCullough's WebMage series (autographed, no less) into a silent auction where I was camping. Having read the series 6 years ago, I spent a bit more than I had planned on, but I won the auction. Now it's April, and I finally had time to read book 1.

WebMage introduces us to Ravirn, a student at the University of Michigan, although not the one on the prime locus reality. Ravirn also happens to be a grandson of Lachesis, the measurer of the threads of life. (There's a few greats in there, but grandma works for our purposes.) Ravirn is assisted by his webgoblin laptop, Melchior. When we first look in on Ravirn, he's breaking into his Aunt Atropos' (she who cuts the threads) domain looking for her "Puppeter" program, one which would essentially erase free will from the cosmos. (In this setting, the 3 fates represent one end of the order/chaos continuum. Eris, Goddess of Discord; and Tyche, Lady Luck, lie at the other end.)

Atropos wishes for her nephew to find the problem in the code causing Puppeter to fail. While he hems and haws about it, she places him under a similar restriction to the aegis Cassandra of Troy labored under. If he talks about what his Aunt is up to, no one will believe him.

In his quest to destroy Atropos' program, Ravirn manages to annoy quite a few people, which isn't particularly helped by Fate's ability to make up evidence. Thankfully, Ravirn has allies in Cerise (Clotho's [she who spins the threads] granddaughter) and her webgoblin, Shara. Also, as we come to discover in a realm well off the main loci, Ahllan, one of Atropos' discarded webgoblins. Ahllan is one of the first webtrolls to discover free will, and runs something of an underground to protect the webbeings, who are mostly looked at as non-sentient equipment.

And about two thirds of the way through, out in the primal chaos, as part of a plot to clear his name, we enter Castle Discord, meeting the Virgin Goddess Eris who has her own unique agenda.

Mind you, this happens not long after meeting Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone, the three furies.

The first time I read through this, it took me a while to get my head wrapped around the multiplicity of realities operating off of Fate's mainframe, particularly since I'm rather sure there's a really big comparison to how the internet actually works. (Some of it comes off as a bit dated, since there's a large discussion of packet loss in there...) However, the mixture of magic and technology is quite facinating , as arcane magic exists side by side with using code to make changes to reality.

By far the one thing I absolutely loved in here, that made me forget all the rough patches, has to do with Eris's servers. Eris, who in the original myths comes off almost like Maleficent, in here is a bit less spiteful, although she is chaos incarnate. However, she runs her own set of servers, that just happen to be Macintosh servers of a metallic yellow hue.

Having read through the series before, it's a bit odd to go through how it all begins again, knowing where everyone ends up. But, his take on Greek mythology here is quite well conceived and a joy to read.