Left me breathless.

While I was dealing with Dan Simmons back in March, I started some research into Everest, mainly in an attempt to get a better idea of what he was going on about. Bits of that lead into the 1996 disaster on the mountain, which in turn lead to Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer.

For those who don't remember, on May 10th and 11th, 1996, three expeditions attempted to summit Mount Everest from the Nepal side. (There was also a team ascending from Tibet, but they evidently didn't summit. Their fate, however, was just as bad.)

Jon Krakauer was on one of the 3 Nepalese-side expeditions that summited during this period, having joined Rob Hall of New Zealand's Adventure Consultants for the long journey to the roof of the world. (Jon was/is writing for Outside magazine, who ponied up the cash for Jon to go. They did this partially by giving Rob Hall advertising in the magazine for a reduced fee. Which, given the amount spent on equipment, permits, travel, Sherpas etc. adds up to be more cash than I'll ever see at one time.)

Krakauer suggests at the outset of the narrative that half of what he wanted to discuss was the severe danger of overcrowding on the mountain, as more and more people trying to make summit attempt in a very small window presented by the weather as the typhoon moves in and the jet stream moves out. Also, given that anyone with the money can buy a chance at the summit, regardless of experience or fitness.

Not that it still happens at all in the new millennium, as this photo by SubinThakuri
(published by National Geographic) shows. (Yep. That's the line to the summit in 2012
on the Hilary Steps on the way from the south summit to the summit.)

Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants is one of three expeditions at the base camp planning on a summit attempt on May 10th. Another, Mountain Madness, is being lead by Hall's friend and competitor Scott Fischer. The third, which, like the South African expedition, weren't really interested in participating in negotiations on which teams would be trying for summit when, was the Taiwanese group. (The South African group get almost a full chapter devoted to their drama. Which has to do with names not being listed on the permit, passports of countries other than South Africa, and the leader being something of a fascist dictator. And not in the way a mountain guide should be.)

I should mention here that the book starts with Krakauer waiting at the top of the steps after summiting trying to descend back down to Camp IV, only to be delayed by the number of folks climbing up the steps. (See above, although the picture above is a few more people than what Krakauer is faced with.)

Most of the first half of the book is devoted to travel to Everest from Kathmandu and the acclimatization process employed by Hall to keep his clients from passing out and dying even with oxygen at the higher camps. (Which mainly seems to involve climbing up to various camps, staying for some period of time, then returning to base camp.)  A few of the expeditions attempt the summit in the days preceding the May 10th attempt Hall and Fischer's groups are shooting for. Due to weather, none of those groups make it. However, as May 10th rolls around, the weather looks good and both Hall and Fischer's groups roll out at some ungodly hour of the morning to begin a summit attempt. (As a fun sidebar to this, David Breashears had a group recording an IMAX movie of their attempt, and they got involved in the issues happening higher up. As such, if you watch Everest: IMAX, you get to see live shot footage of some of the events in this book.)

Krakauer and a few others from Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness manage to summit fairly early, well before the 2PM turn around set by Hall. (The idea being, for safety concerns, no matter how close to the summit you are, at 2PM you turn around and head back to Camp IV.) This is in spite of a few missteps along the way, such as two portions of the summit route not being roped before climbers arrive. (This is largely placed at the feet of Sherpas from the different groups being mad at each other and refusing to work together.) 

Which brings us back around to the book's opening. Except now we hear from one of the climbers, a former airline pilot, that the clouds rolling in on the path look to be thunderheads. And thanks to a confused guide at the south summit (given the conditions, probably suffering with hypoxia), no one thinks there's any more oxygen waiting at the south summit for the climb down to the South Col.  There are also people still ascending even as the thundersnow rolls in, creating a nightmare blizzard of zero visibility. (I'm skipping bunches of stuff in here in the name of keeping it short.)

So, basically, even as Krakauer passes out from exhaustion and lack of oxygen, people are getting quite stranded trying to get up and down the path from Camp IV and the Summit.  (Among other issues, somehow, one client, Doug Hansen, had failed to summit the past year. That the guides got him to the summit at 4PM, much later than the turn around time didn't help. Doug and two of his guides died about 500 feet from each other around the South  Summit. It's assumed that Doug and Andrew "Harold" Harris managed to pall off the ridge. Hall died a few days later of exposure. Fischer died in the same general vicinity.) 

Now, the remains of the two non-Taiwanese groups that were still alive and not stuck above the South Summit did manage to get down to the South Col and get stuck in zero visibility away from Camp IV. Of these, only one died of exposure. Beck, who was part of the Adventure Consultants group, was left for dead, woke up the next morning and walked into camp. He almost died again, but was managed to get down to Camp II at the top of the Western Cwm, where they managed to land a helicopter to get him evacuated. 

Again, we're skipping a lot of narrative here. 

Most of the disaster portion of the book is centered around survivor guilt, for lack of a better term. what Krakauer could have done to save people if he;d been in better condition. (For instance, in his hypoxia, Krakauer managed to mistake a 130 pound American for a 200 pound New Zealander guide. Thinking the guide had returned safely to camp, he reported it as such. Then he found crampon tracks leading off the Lhotse face that he thought might have belonged to the guide. Found out those belonged to one of the Sherpas who'd overshot the Col. Come to find out the guide had gone to find Hall and Hansen to deliver more oxygen.)

Anyway, Adventure Consultants managed to lose 4 of the 6 members who summited. Mountain Madness managed to lose one guide, who happened to be the owner. On the other side of the mountain, 3 Indo-Tibetan climbers managed to die. Including one who now has the ignominious role of landmark and the nickname Green Boots.

Green Boots, as photographed by 

Dominic Goff, published in Smithsonian

There were other fatalities that season, but the 8 killed in one day was something of a record. Although, as Krakauer points out, the grand total of 12 fatalities for the 1996 Spring climbing season is lower than normal. 

 

I knew from previous research that there was a bit of controversy with Into Thin Air, mainly with his portrayals of Mountain Madness guide Anatoli Boukreev, and to a lesser extent, socialite climber Sandy Hill Pittman. In fact, Boukreev and a partner (Gary DeWitt) wrote a rebuttal titled The Climb. The rebuttal to this rebuttal makes up an postscript in Krakauer's book. 

 

For my part, I'm not a climber. The closest to high altitude I've made it involves a trip to Colorado at a much younger age. I will say that I understand why Krakauer thinks Boukreev was in the wrong for not using oxygen and descending well ahead of any of the folks he was supposed to be guiding up to the summit. But, oddly enough, had Boukreev done that, he likely would have died with the others above the South Summit instead of being able to run search and rescue in the storm. By all accounts, Boukreev and Krakauer had reached detente prior to Boukreev's death in an avalanche on Annapurna I in 1997.

Really, I enjoyed this book. It makes an interesting companion to Everest: IMAX, since thinks glossed over in one are discussed more thoroughly in the other. And particularly in light of the current Sherpa strike in Nepal, it's quite interesting to see how long the problems have been here, and how few answers are available that would actually be feasible.

Still in Hollywood

So, Walter Jon Williams' most recent Dagmar Shaw entry has less to do with Dagmar than the last two books, but oh, wow, what a read. The Fourth Wall mostly concerns Sean Makin (who narrates most of the book in First Person Present tense. (which seems to be a thing anymore, since several of the more recent books post on here have used the same device to build tension.)

Sean, whom we meet as he's wrestling in cottage cheese against another former child star, used to star in an 80's era sitcom called Family Tree with a tagline of "Whatever lifts your luggage." However, following a less severe career trajectory than say, Dana Plato, still leaves him in a financial crater of sorts, thus why he's on the wondrous Celebrity Pit Fighter reality show.

Long story short: despite laws designed to prevent it, his mom and dad more or less walked away with the majority of his enormous earnings from Family Tree. Dad mainly spent it on scams and gambling, while Mom spent money getting closer to her guru, who she thinks is an incarnate God.

His agent, who's pretty much the only rep willing to touch him, sets him up with an offer from on Dagmar Shaw, who's producing a new kind of serial movie. The idea being that the plot branches at the end of every installment based on what the viewer chooses.  Viewers would then be encouraged to share versions, since, with only one branch per device, people would want to see what they missed out on. (It should be pointed out Dagmar is pregnant with Ismet's baby now.)

Anyway, there's much less emphasis on the ARG in this installment, beyond Sean signing up for one early on and getting strange phone calls from one of the characters. Sean's blog also becomes part of the Game created to promote Escape to Earth, as well as providing insight into Sean's life story. (Mind you, we really only find out about some of his worst moments through the regular soliloquies throughout. Like how his test run for a DUI comeback attempt derailed when a friend of his died as he was trying to engineer a crash for himself. Or how he sold video of a younger pop star having a melt down to a tabloid to make money.)

Throughout the course of the narrative, we get a rather cynical look at fame and Hollywood, reality show competition fixing, and several murders. Oh yes. while Dagmar faced small amounts of danger in the last book, Sean gets to deal with a psychotic devotee of his mother's guru, a black SUV that tries to run him down a few times, and many of the cast and crew dying not long after their part in the movie is finished.

Oh yes, Sean is a trouble magnet. And that's half of what makes him so fun to read. I look forward to any future installments, since this series is quite engaging and fun.


Now, as I was reading this, I was reminded of another series, which in turn may be mentioned later this week when and if I get around to doing a survey/synopsis on gay mystery series.

The Actor's Guide series by Rick Copp also involves mysteries being solved by a semi employed former child star. Namely, one Jarrod Jarvis of Go To Your Room! and "Baby, don't even go there!". His career decline starts with him making out with another guy at a rodeo, thus the whole gay mystery thing. Again, it's full of Hollywood cliches, and lots of gay references, but the books themselves are fun to read, and worth trying to find on Amazon. (There's only 3. Murder, Adultery, and Greed.)

Moving right along

The Great A'Tuin moves. On his back, 4 Elephants. (There was a 5th elephant, but it crashed in Uberwald and left fat deposits.) And on the elephants' trunks, a flat surface with hub and rim.

Yep, Terry Pratchett released the 40th installment of Discworld, Raising Steam, in which Moist van Lipwig (Of Going Postal and Making Money fame) gets to help start Discworld's first railroad. Not that he's alone in this, as just about everyone from Ankh-Morpork makes at least a cameo in the course of the narrative. We also get a peek at how politics on the disc have evolved following the events of both Thud! and Snuff, which is to say the truce between the dwarfs and the trolls still holds and goblins are quickly becoming a civilized race. (In fact, it turns out the goblins love technology, and have become adept at running clacks towers as well as helping with the railroad. Also, Adora, Moist's wife, is doing for the goblins what she did for the golems. Looking out for their rights and protecting them from exploitation.)

As Lord Vetinari is involved in the railroad building (essentially making sure Moist is protecting the city's interest in it), politics ensues. Beyond the normal stuff (the railroad connecting with the Sto-Lat plains allows for urban flight to happen to a degree), we also get to deal with the grags (Dwarven fundamentalists) who remain unhappy about how Dwarf culture is evolving. This leads to burning down Clacks towers, sabotaging the railroad as the Uberwald Express comes rushing through, and also usurping the Scone of Stone while the king is in Quirm having parley with the Diamond King of the Trolls.

As this is Discwrld, there's a heck of a lot going on. As usual, Pratchett (and probably his daughter*) does a marvellous job of balancing several different story lines, from the Goblin workforce to the sentient locomotive engine, from Moist selling the railway to Blackboard Monitor Samuel Vimes. (Sadly, the witches don't show up, although Nanny Ogg is mentioned in passing as visiting the Lancre Clacks towers.)

To go too far in depth with the plot would ruin the book for folks. so let's leave it at Although Moist is not among my favorite characters in the Disc, Raising Steam is still an exciting ride that advances Discworld into 19th centure fantasy technology.

*Pratchett has Alzheimer's dementia, sadly. By all accounts, his daughter Rhianna is poised to continue the series when Sir Terry reaches a point where he can't write.

A Hollow Ending

In what's supposed to be, I think, the last book in Kim Harrison's The Hollows series (The Undead Pool), we get to see Rachel Morgan deal with Elvish religion in the only way she knows how.

We begin with Rachel, day walking demon who started off as an Earth witch, working security for Trent, the elf who's father developed a cure of sorts for Rosewood disease. Trent wants to date Rachel, but really can't because of his impending nuptials to Elizabeth, the elf who's acting as mother to two elven babies in Trent's care.

Then things start exploding.

As the book progresses, we find that Living vampires in league with the Dewar elves are using bits of the elvish goddess to knock out the Undead vampire, which is causing chaos with any form of magic. (It's a very convoluted plot.)

As an ending, it works, I guess. It's not nearly as bad as the epilogue Charlaine Harris gave her Southern Vampires, and thankfully, Harrison hasn't dragged the Hollows out the way Laurell K. Hamilton has dragged out Anita Blake.

There are things I really like in here. I love the idea of the elvish goddess being less a being than a collection of infinite awareness that form a kind of hive mind. I love that she's managed to give the cast a spot in here without having to shoehorn in stragglers.

There are things I wasn't as fond of, since Rachel and Trent's relationship over the course of the series is a bit like the early seasons of Moonlighting. You know, frenemies. In this book, it seems more than a little forced.

There's also some fairly uncharacteristic erotica slipped in the middle third. While the series has used sexual tension quite effectively, it normally doesn't delve that deeply into the play by play. On the bright side, it's as awkward for the characters involved as it is for the reader. (This is not some other series, where the sex is always mind blowing and perfect. This is much more of the "I just got an elbow in my face" variety.)

If this is indeed where Rachel's story ends, I'll miss her. If it's not, hopefully Harrison has a way to rekindle the magic after such a fairly final end.

I find your lack of Yeti disturbing...

With a name like The Abominable and most of the book taking place on Mount Everest, I was really expecting more Himalayan snow demons in Dan Simmons' newish book.

Lord knows I'm been joking around about this lack of furry murder monsters on the peak on Facebook for most of the duration of my read, but honestly, the book is well written enough that the severe lack of hairy killer beasts isn't actually much of an issue.

We start our very long journey up the slopes of Everest in 1992, when the author goes to Colorado to meet Jake Perry, an elderly man with cancer, who was on the 1935 Antarctic expedition with Admiral Byrd. (Jake, it seems, managed to annoy Byrd enough that he got to winter in the Penguin Observation hut on Cape Royals, watching penguins that had already headed out to warmer climes.) Simmons mentions some of the stuff that he'd written about previously in The Terror, leading the reader to assume that Jake also inspired that interesting history of the search for the Northwest Passage.

Jake ends the conversation (which somehow revolved around an Antarctic expedition being menaced by giant mutant killer penguins and not Yetis) by asking Simmons to read his story of Everest in 1925, following the previous year's failed expedition by Mallory and Irvine. Simmons agrees to read it to make the old man happy. The old man dies, but it takes Simmons about 20 years to get the manuscript due to familial inheritance and someone not directly forwarding it on after Jake's death. Which, after reading, Simmons decides to publish.

We meet a much younger Jake, sitting on the summit of the Matterhorn with his Alpine climbing buddies, Richard Davis Deacon (an English Peer who really never uses his title) and Jean-Claude Chamonix (of the French Chamonix alpine guides). It's June of 1924, and news of Mallory and Irvine's disappearance on the way back down Everest is front page news. There's also odd news of the unrelated vanishing of one Lord Percival Bromley and Kurt Meyer, witnessed only by German climber Bruno Sigl and his party of German climbers around the Second Step of the North Face of Everest.

Deacon, while smoking a pipe at the high altitude of the Italian/Swiss border (also unsurprisingly yeti free), asks the gentlemen if they'd like to climb Everest the next Spring. Unsurprisingly, both Jean-Claude and Jake agree.

Which sets up the ostensible reason for the 1925 Deacon-Bromley expedition. Lady Bromley, Percival's mother, remains convinced that her son is alive on the mountain, and employs Deacon and party to go find him and bring him home. Or, if they find him dead, do their best to recover the body and bring it home to England. They are to go to the Bromley family's tea plantation in Darjeeling and meet Percy's cousin Reggie, who will guide them to Everest and help arrange the actual climb.

With that narrative hook, the trio begin researching Percy's death and begin the fun of getting equipment for an Everest expedition. As unrelated at this entire section seems to be, it does manage to give us much information on mountain climbing techniques and equipment, and give us tantalizing clues about the Yeti. We also meet Bruno Sigl in Munich (where Jean-Claude refuses to go, having lost family to the Germans during the Great War) at the Bürger Bräu Keller, the Beer Hall where Sigl's political hero had recently been arrested during a failed attempt at government overthrow. Sigl's devotion to National Socialism is very disturbing to me, but then I live nearly a century after seeing what his glorious der fuhrer actually did to the world after taking power.

Anyway, with new, better climbing ropes and new 12 point crampons, as well as lighter and better designed oxygen tanks, the trio rater quietly make their way to Darjeeling to meet Percy's cousin Reggie. Now, in what's a surprise for them, but not for us, since it's revealed on the dust jacket, Reggie is female and has ever intention of trying to summit Everest along with Deacon and crew. As well as recover Percy's body, where ever it may be. She has previously been to Everest searching with her doctor and friend Pashang. Reggie also has all the papers to get them through to Tibet, since the Dalai Lama at the time has closed off expeditions following Irvine and Mallory's failure. The official reason has to do with the amount of litter on the mountain, including bodies, oxygen tanks, etc, but according to Reggie, has more to do with a British supervisor who pressured the Dalai Lama into cutting off the route. (Evidently, Nepal was closed to foreigners during this period, making the North route the only one available.)

This begins the middle third of the novel, wherein we learn the intricacies of the siege of Everest, with advance teams going up head and laying paths for porters to come up with the heavier gear. The setting up of camps on various ridges, each given a number after the Base camp. (Pretty sure most modern folks use the south route from Nepal and use 4 camps. The route taken here has at least 7 camps and a bunch of glacier walking.) We meet the bandits, lead by James Kahn, as well as the monks of the Rongbuk monastery. We lost a sherpa along the way and witness an air burial (which I was only familiar with thanks to Gaimen and his Sandman series.)(One side note here. They mention the provisions taken by Mallory and Irvine up the mountain to eat at high altitude. I find the idea of dragging Fois Gras up a few miles of vertical rock amusing.)

Which sets up the third section, which start with meeting the sherpas at Camp IV, having climbed up from base camp, convinced that the yeti had killed all of their friends.

It's a fascinating and thoroughly researched book. Simmons, despite his occasional prejudices, is a master at descriptive language, making it easy to visualize such things as an oxygen tank falling around 2 miles from the North Col onto the glacier below, or the mummified remains of climbers found along the way. Or the very graphic depiction of the air burial, which is a lot more involved than At World's End let on. The breathtaking chase up the mountain in the last part of the book had me gasping for air along with the characters, even as the previous section with the climbs up and down the mountain had me feeling like I was watching Benji or Chariots of Fire, wherein I felt as though I was climbing right along with them.

By far the biggest thing was the reveal of what The Abominable actually is. Much like our narrator, I was kind of disappointed by that big reveal, but in the wrap up, I think I better understand what the point was. And part of me was very touched final result of the expedition.

As another reviewer said when I was looking for a good synopsis to figure out if I wanted to read this, (To be honest, the last Simmons I read was the Illium/Olympos duology, which while fascinating and very good, suffered from a touch of Simmons anti-Islamic leaning. It's odd, Simmons seems to be fairly right wing Libertarian in most of his views, but on that, he seems to not be as open.) The supernatural in The Abominable is a bit like seasoning in a very rich stew. It isn't the focus of the meal, but rather helps bring out the other flavors in the broth. Even if there weren't wall to wall yeti stretching from Wales to Tibet, the book is well worth the read. Just keep Wikipedia or Google open nearby to look up some of the references, since it occasionally takes a while for one of the characters to explain something.

Three Words. Possessed Poetry Magnets.

On one of my last library trips, I happened to glance at a display rack, catching a glimpse of some blurb how this book is something Neil Gaimen fans would be immediately taken. Given said blurb was via Publisher's Weekly, I took it with a grain of salt, but I did enjoy reading J. Lincoln Fenn's Poe anyway.

We start off meeting our narrator, Dimitri Petrov, who narrates the book in First Person Present Tense. (Which, as mentioned previously, takes a bit of adjustment.) Dimitri lives and works in the small New York town of New Goshen, writing obituaries for the local paper.Given the average age in New Goshen is well over 60, he keeps quite busy with this. He has a casual flirtation with Lisa, who works at a receptionist at the local nursing home; Lisa is also a source of information that rarely makes it in to the obituary.

Dimitri's boss, Mac, decides that Halloween night would be a perfect excuse to send Dimitri (and Mac's son, Nate, who does editing work) to a seance at the local run down haunted mansion, Aspinwell. The medium is their coworker Myrna's sister, Maddy. Aspinwell has quite a history, involving murder and fire, and all the gothic conventions. Lisa, who has never met Dimitri, crashes the party for reasons that don't become clear until the midway point.

Given the book wouldn't have much of a plot without a narrative hook, Myrna succeeds quite well in channeling a spirit for the seance. It in fact causes some violence within the medium, who crashes through the rotted floor of the mansion. Mac goes to get help as Lisa and Dimitri head to the basement to rescue Myrna. Well, they try, anyway. Dimitri finds out the hard way there's a well in the basement when he falls into watery darkness.

Cut to a few days later when he wakes up in the morgue. Now thankfully, due to being misdiagnosed, the hospital takes rather good care of him as he recovers, if only to avoid a lawsuit. Mind you, Dimitri is still semi remembering a woman he saw in the well, whom he nicknames Poe. Poe continues to haunt Dimitri after he's released and begins to sort of date Lisa. Poe starts off doing poltergeisty activity (broken windows with the glass making patterns), but eventually settles into using Dimitri's mother's poetry refrigerator magnets to pass on some basic information. Well, at least until the dreams/hallucinations start.

We also learn a bit of Lisa's backstory. Like her paranoid schizophrenic brother who tried to kill her.

Eventually, all the plot threads connect, wrapping up exactly who Dimitri's parents were, what's so important about his ring, what's really going on with Lisa's brother, and why the heck Rasputin (yes, Rasputin) had two magical grimoires.

It's a bit uneven at times, and things seem to be last minute additions toward the end, but for the most part, it remians interesting and fun to read. It even gets bonus points for Dimitri;s relationship with his guardian, which reminded me of several conversations I've had in a similar vein.

Also, it has about as much in common with Gaiman as a horse has with a crab.

The Revolution Will not be Televised, but it will be Tweeted.

A bit of preface to this entry. A few years back, a friend of mine recommended I read a book by Walter John Williams. Sadly, I wasn't able to find that book until recently (I know own the paperback and the nook version), but the library DID have a book called This Is Not A Game. That particular book followed a character named Dagmar Shaw around as her ARG (Alternate Reality Game) went off the rails and wound up with murder and Russian Mafia hits.

I found out recently, and quite by happy accident, that Mr. Williams has since released 2 more books about Dagmar. The first, Deep State, is much like it's predecessor in the very layered approach as to what the heck is actually going on.

The prologue introduces us to two geek at an American listening post in the mountains of Turkey. They've been trapped for a few weeks due to a military junta displacing the government, making it impossible to do anything resembling their contracted jobs. As the military approaches the listening station, they try to escape, but find out as they stop at a monastery, that they have the XBox, not the laptop with the very classified files on it.

Cut to: Turkey a few months later, where Dagmar and her Great Big Idea team are running an ARG to promote the new James Bond movie, Stunrunner, featuring Ian Attila Gordon, a Scots pop star. Most of the puzzles have to do with crosswords that are roughly the same in Turkish and English, making it easier for players in Turkey and North America to play along. However, during a stop in Ankara, Dagmar and her crew get to forcibly meet General Bozbeyli, now president of Turkey and leader of the junta. While the entire thing is a PR event, Dagmar ends up trading veiled barbs with Bozbeyli, who in turn makes life difficult as the game rolls into Istanbul (not Constantinople).

As the game ends, one of Dagmar's liaisons, Lincoln, hires her for government work. This sets up the next part of the novel, as Dagmar, a few of her Great Big Idea people, and some hires of Lincolns converge at the RAF Airbase on the Greek side of Cyprus. Their mission, astroturf a revolution in Turkey to overthrow the ruling junta. Using crowdsourcing, spam e-mail, and a few instigators on the ground, they set off at achieving this goal, which takes up the bulk of the book.

There's much thematically here, as we see echoes of the Arab Spring, with news going out via twitter... Revolution creep, wherein other countries start demonstrating with the Turks... Using crowdsourcing to get information needed to advance the goals. There's also push back from the junta, whom no one believed to be technologically savvy. It actually reads a bit like the old movie Hackers, only a lot more informed on what's possible.

Mind you, it's obvious Williams has researched Turkish culture and civilization, and he does an ok job of getting most of it across. However, parts of it sent me running for wikipedia and other online resources looking for better explanations of what the heck he was talking about. Which I found really can't be explained in simplified terms. (Alevi, Kurds, TCP/IP....)

What I'm left with after reading is a desire to see Turkey myself, maybe even sailing the Bosporus myself to Greece. My suggestion would be to keep Google Image Search open, to get a feel for the sights as the characters find them, from the Hagia Sophia to the phallic stone where Aphrodite first walked out onto the sands of Cyprus.

It's not really shapeshifting, but it is!

As I recall, I wound up picking up In A Fix by Linda Grimes because the review of the second book sounded interesting.

Given how mediocre the first book is, I doubt I'll find out how true that statement is.

Ciel Halligan assures us early on that she's not a shape shifter, but constantly shape shifts throughout the narrative. She does so by borrowing people's auras and becoming them. Which aids her in her job as a "facilitator", wherein she takes over the life of a person in order to facilitate something they themselves can't do. At the start, she's impersonating Mina, a well-to-do socialite trying to get her boyfriend Trey to propose to her on vacation in the Bahamas. Which is fine, until the cabin they're co-habitating explodes.

This is when we get to meet her "brother" Billy. (Her mom's best friend's step son.) Billy, of course, is dolled up as Queen Elizabeth II. We hear about how close knit the adapter community is. We meet her other "brother", Mark, who's a CIA spoook, and we eventually meet her biological brother Thomas, the lawyer.

And we get fed a silly plot about neo-Vikings trying to get Sweden to man up. We get some really bad erotica, and a female author who obviously has no idea how male parts work. (Which wouldn't be a big deal, but one of the bits involves Ciel adapting to become a frat boy with a twitchy penis.)

And honestly, even if the book remains readable and mostly interesting, it's very hard to get past the narrator telling us she's not a shapeshifter and the spending several scenes shapeshifing to escape from any number of women in jeopardy cliches.

That, coupled with the mildly incestuous love angles, really didn't endear me to the idea of reading another book in this series.

Abyssinia

I posted about Tales of the City back in October not long after finding out that Book 9, The Days of Anna Madrigal, would be released this year. Happily, the book indeed got released, and I finished the book Sunday on my lunch break. Amis tears. If I were a drag queen, my mascara would be running.

It's a very touching book and a fitting end to a series that started in the 70s and has continued sporadically since then.

As Days starts, we find the nonagenarian Mrs. Madrigal living quietly in San Francisco, being helped by FTM trans person Jake (who's hysterectomy was one of the plots in the last book, Mary Ann in Autumn). A phone call from Brian Hawkins informs us that he's found a new woman to ride around in his Winnebago cross country. We find out shortly thereafter that this mystery woman is someone we met back in Significant Others. Wren Douglas, the World's Most Beautiful Fat Woman, as she used to be known, is now Mrs. Brian Hawkins. Brian and Wren end up taking Mrs. Madrigal across state borders to Winnemucca, Nevada, where a young Mrs. Madrigal grew up as Andy Ramsey at the Blue Moon Brothel.

In the mean time, Jake, Amos (Jake's cis-gendered partner), Shawna (Brian and Mary Ann's adopted daughter), Michael, and Ben (Michael's much younger boyfriend) plot a trip further south in Nevada to Burning Man. Jake has created an art car to honor Mrs. Madrigal as a pioneer in the trans community. Shawna wants to get pregnant at Burning Man, preferably with Ben's sperm. Michale is worried he's too old and fat to enjoy himself. He's also grossed out by Shawna's sperm request.

And between all of these plots, Mrs. Madrigal keeps flashing back to being 16 at the Blue Moon, revealing her past. And oh wow, what a humdinger that is. Margaret, Mother Mucca's good friend and older call girl, helps Andy find himself, usually with turquoise pedicures and shimmering nightgowns. We meet Lasko, the handsome Basque and Mexican boy who works at the local Pharmacy, when not in school or helping at his parents' restaurant. Andy had a bit of a crush on Lasko, who he once watched running in native costume at a festival. Lasko...oh Lasko. The love story here is like so many young loves short and very poignant. While I can't say I ever went to quite the extremes Andy and Lasko did, I understand all too well the desire to hurt someone you care about because you yourself are hurting. I'm not sure I needed that reminder of my misspent youth.

At Burning Man itself, we find out Mary Ann is also there, eventually bringing back some of the magic from the earlier books, where coincidence abounds. (There are a few passages where Brian tried to explain the magic of coincidence that permeates the series. While it's slightly unbelievable, it's also quite charming.) And the serendipity effect is still blossoming here, what with Jake's trying to be ex-gay boyfriend from the last book being strongly hinted at being dressed as a satyr at Burning Man, as well as pretty much falling in at all the right places towards the climax of the novel.

One thing I both loved and hated was the ending. It's quite enigmatic. While I assume one thing, it's written in such a way that many other things might also be true. And, as sad as I am that the series in ending (again), this is as good of an ending as we could have wished for. At least it doesn't end with a sympathetic character going off the deep end and moving to New York.

Fur flying everywhere.

I'll preface this by stating I wasn't sure how much I'd like The Silvered by Tanya Huff. I love her other books, but I loathe werewolves. Thankfully, my love won out and I really enjoyed reading about Mirian Maylin taking on prophecy and becoming part of a duo out to overthrow an Empire.

The book opens on said empire's invasion of Aydori borders by Captain Reiter and his rag tag band of Imperial shields are sent by a prophecy to retrieve 6 pregnant mages from far off Aydori. In the meantime, Mirian Maylin has been told not to return to University, having not mastered more than the first level in any of the 5 magical disciplines. Not that that's stopping her mother from trying to set her up with any member of the pack, the werewolves that act as protectors of Aydori. Because were Mirian to become Mage-Pack, that would increase her mother's societal standing and hopefully get the Pack to start banking with Mirian's father. Which leads to a scene at the Opera, where the Mage-Pack (women) mated with the Pack (men) try very hard to keep people calm in the beginning of the invasion, telling folks to wait until morning to begin pulling further withing Aydori borders to the more defensible capital. Mirian also catches the nose of one of the unmated Pack, who tells her she smells amazing. (Pretty much any Pack we meet throughout the book says this or something similar. Given most of those saying it are barely out of adolescence, I assume her amazing mage powers smell like pizza.)

Anyway, Mirian sees Captain Reiter capture 5 of the most powerful members of the Mage-pack and takes it upon herself to go report the taking of the mates to the Pack fighting on the front lines. Whereupon she gets captured by Captain Reiter, who thinks her to be the 6th Mage. Lord Tomas Hagan, nephew of the Pack Alpha (who just died to Imperial weaponry) finds and rescues her, leading to a rather hurried race against both Captain Reiter (trying to re-capture her) and whatever fate will befall the 5 Mage-pack members once they reach the Capital of the Empire.

Which we as readers get to see in rather graphic detail. See, The Emperor has declared both Mages and Pack to be abominations, less than human, and expendable. Thus why Pack pelts are worth money in the Empire. His grand plan involves mating the beasts with the other beasts to get Mages he alone controls. (The Empire is a very science heavy realm, where magic is dying out. Even though most of the decisions the Emperor makes is based on Soothsaying.)

It's actually quite brutal in places. And the gay subtext in this is hard to miss, particularly since Ms. Huff is married to a woman. One of the biggest themes here is the idea that by declaring someone as less than human, it's a lot easier to torture them and kill them, because they're nothing but an animal. And again, Ms. Huff has no problem portraying gay male relationships in her fictions. We meet a were in the Empire who's paired with a soothsayer who end up taking Tomas and Mirian in about 2/3rds of the way through the narrative. They, along with the mental ghost of Mirian's mother as well as heroines of books Mirian read provide a little levity to the story. (Seriously. The mother's instructions on how to be a proper lady crop up at inopportune times during the chase.)

Another bit of subtext falls under the idea that the more society advances and become more civilized, the less room we have for magic and wonder in that society. Which has its good and bad sides.

Really though, I ended up liking the book. While it's not listed as series fiction, I wouldn't complain if she returns to this world for another story or two.