Title: Judge

Author: Karen Traviss

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Eos

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0060882409

Pages: 391

Keywords: SF

Reading period: 18–21 June, 2008

Judge is the sixth and final book in the Wess'har Series, and the sequel to Ally.

For the first time, focus shifts to 25th-century Earth, as the ecologically radical Eqbas arrive to clean up the mess. Once again, the central themes are ethics and environmentalism, and the moral quandaries posed by the existence of c'naatat, a parasite that confers immortality upon its host. The series draws to a close, resolving the fates of the central characters: the ruthlessly principled former cop, Shan Frankland; her two husbands, the gentle marine, Ade Bennett, and the alien war criminal, Aras; and Eddie Michallat, the journalist.

It's an impressive series of novels: strong characters, an interesting plot, aliens with fundamentally non-human ethics, moral dilemmas, and conflict galore.

Title: In Dublin's Fair City

Author: Rhys Bowen

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0312997027

Pages: 282

Keywords: mystery, historical

Reading period: 15–18 June, 2008

Molly Murphy, an early twentieth-century private detective, returns from New York to her native Ireland, in order to track down her client's long-lost sister. Along the way, she encounters a dead body in her cabin, revolutionaries in Dublin, and (briefly) James Joyce.

Molly is engaging and quick-witted, with a contrarian streak that gets her into trouble. Bowen evokes the early 20th century from bustling New York to the social stratifications of a liner, to British-occupied Dublin.

The book is marred by some elementary geographical errors: the River Liffey, not Liffy; Dublin is on the Irish Sea; the North Sea is on Britain's eastern coast.

Title: Passage

Author: Connie Willis

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam

Copyright: 2001

ISBN: 0553580515

Pages: 780

Keywords: science fiction

Reading period: 8-15 June, 2008

Two scientists are researching Near-Death Experiences, to learn what causes them and what happens during them. This is partly a detective story, partly a story about doing science. The two main characters are likeable and there's a memorable cast of supporting characters: the garrulous WWII veteran; the manipulative but charming nine-year-old girl; the horrible psychic fraud; the hardboiled ER nurse; the former English teacher with Alzheimer's; and his caretaker niece.

Entertaining, but too long.

Bloomsday is around the corner. As ever, we at the Wild Geese Players of Seattle are staging a reading from James Joyce's Ulysses, at the Elliott Bay Bookstore, 101 S. Main St, on Sat 14th June 2008 at 4:30pm.

In the Oxen of the Sun, Leopold Bloom visits the Holles Street Maternity Hospital and falls in with Stephen Dedalus and a crowd of drunken medical students, in a chapter that not only recapitulates the forty weeks of pregnancy, it also constitutes a tour through the development of the English language.

I play Stephen Dedalus, the second most important character of the book. In this chapter, it is neither a large nor a small role.

Behind the scenes, I was responsible for turning Joyce's text into a script suitable for a staged reading. A few months ago, I despaired of it. It was a daunting challenge technically, and we didn't have nearly enough readers. I'm happy to say that I found my way through the labyrinth of dramaturgy and a large crop of new goslings joined the Players for this year's reading.

Finally, let me repost a Google Ad that I saw beside one of our internal emails:

Natural Geese Repellent

Enviromentally Safe Unit Rids Geese Maintenance Free, Solar Powered

www.AwayWithGeese.com

Title: Iron Kissed

Author: Patricia Briggs

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0441015662

Pages: 287

Keywords: urban fantasy

Reading period: 6-8 June, 2008

Mercy Thompson, coyote shape shifter, mechanic, and heroine of Blood Bound and Moon Called, is asked to investigate the murder of some fae. The fae (faery) are creatures from the old tales, barely assimilated into modern society, and far more dangerous than Disney tales suggest. One of their own, Mercy's mentor, is falsely accused of the murder. Most of the fae would rather see him go down so that the whole thing will blow over quickly. Mercy is determined to get him off, and that doesn't sit well with the fae. Not to mention, she's juggling two suitors, both alpha werewolves.

An entertaining, fast-paced read.

Title: Blood and Honey

Author: Graham Hurley

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orion

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0752878018

Pages: 512

Keywords: fiction, police procedural

Reading period: 2-5 June, 2008

Two separate police investigations take place in Portsmouth at the same time. DI Joe Faraday is called over to the Isle of Wight to investigate the headless body found washed up at the base of a cliff. Suspicion falls on an ex-soldier who runs a nursing home, a man with a dangerous reputation.

DC Paul Winter becomes involved with a callgirl who has ties to a prominent businessman, who won't take no for an answer. Winter's poor judgement may be due to the crippling headaches he's developed of late.

Hurley has written a police procedural that is both well-plotted and character-driven. Joe Faraday is believably solid and competent with interesting quirks. Paul Winter has sailed too close to the wind for years and is coming apart.

Title: Nine Layers of Sky

Author: Liz Williams

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam Spectra

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0553584995

Pages: 427

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 29 May–1 June, 2008

Ilya Muromyets, a figure of Russian legend for 800 years, still lives, albeit mostly in a haze of narcotic self-pity. He is recruited to track down a mysterious artifact found by a former cosmologist, Elena Irinonova, in Kazahkstan. Others also seek the artifact, which can open a gate to a parallel world where humans and other races live.

That world, Byelovodye, quite literally is the sum of human dreams and fears, and the disillusionment in the post-Soviet republics is destabilizing it.

A very unusual, well-written take on the fantasy quest.

Title: Agents of Light and Darkness

Author: Simon R. Green

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Ace

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0441011136

Pages: 233

Keywords: fantasy, noir

Reading period: 26–28 May, 2008

Next book after Something From the Nightside.

The Unholy Grail has come to the Nightside, and the angels of both Heaven and Hell want it. The Fallen and the Elect are deadly and implacable and wholly careless of casualties.

John Taylor, the man who can find anything, must lay hands on it first and keep it from either side.

A fantasy noir with a heavy dose of black humor. Moderately entertaining.

Title: A Princess of Roumania

Author: Paul Park

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Tor

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0765349507

Pages: 460

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 21–26 May, 2008

In a parallel world, Roumania is a great European power and America is a barely settled wilderness. Miranda was sent to our world by her aunt, Princess Aegypta, when she was a small child, for her own safety. Now Aegypta and the Baroness each want to retrieve her, for their own reasons.

The book revolves around Miranda and her two friends, lost and confused in the primeval forests of New England, and the Baroness in Bucharest, The latter is the more interesting character: an impulsive former actress who climbed into high society and is now falling downwards, struggling as her plans go awry.

Title: Un Lun Dun

Author: China Miéville

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Del Rey

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0345458443

Pages: 471

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 18-21 May, 2008

Deeba and Zanna, both twelve-year-old London girls, find their way into Un Lun Dun (UnLondon). Magic works in the abcity: there's feral rubbish, the ghosts of Wraithtown, words made flesh. Most of all, there's the Smog, an enormous cloud of pollution that's become sentient and wants to consume everything.

This book is aimed at a younger audience than his Bas-Lag novels, such as Iron Council. Supporting characters do die and Deeba must undergo trials, but this book is not grim. Indeed, in places, it's positively whimsical, and Miéville owes a clear debt to earlier English fantasists, like Mervyn Peake and Lewis Carroll.

Recommended.

Title: The Wee Free Men

Author: Terry Pratchett

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: HarperTeen

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0060012382

Pages: 272

Keywords: humor, fantasy

Reading period: 13-18 May, 2008

Tiffany Aching is a nine-year-old dairymaid with the First Sight and the Second Thoughts. She sees more than others do. She sees the tiny Nac Mac Feegle, the little thieving fighting pictsies, who speak with a Scottish brogue and have nae time for laird nor queen.

When the Queen of the Fairies attempts to invade the Discworld by stealing children and their dreams, it is up to Tiffany to stop them.

Ostensibly aimed at children, any adult fan of Pratchett's Discworld novels should enjoy this book too.

Title: Garnethill

Author: Denise Mina

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Copyright: 1998

ISBN: 0316016780

Pages: 402

Keywords: mystery, tartan noir

Reading period: 10-13 May, 2008

Maureen O'Donnell wakes up in her Glasgow flat after passing out drunk and finds her lover tied to a chair, his throat cut. Douglas was a therapist, married to another woman. The police think she's guilty but can't prove it: she has a history of mental illness, her mother's an alcoholic, and her twin brother's a drug dealer.

Mauri is feisty but flawed, coping fairly realistically. She manages to find the real murderer and uncover a nasty case of sexual abuse, against a backdrop of domestic violence, alcoholism, and poverty. Her friend Leslie is a treat; her mother is a horror.

The notes at the back of the book say that Denise Mina got sidetracked from writing her PhD thesis on mental illness and female offenders. This novel is far more readable than the thesis would have been.

Tomas Restrepo wrote a post about sharing dotfiles between Windows and Ubuntu, specifically about sharing .vimrc (Linux) and _vimrc (Windows) and the .vim (Linux) and vimfiles (Windows) directories.

I have a different solution. On Windows, my C:\AutoExec.bat includes:

set HOME=C:\gvr
set VIM=C:\Vim
set VIMDIR=%VIM%\vim71
set EDITOR=%VIMDIR%\gvim.exe
set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Win32app;C:\GnuWin32\bin;C:\UnxUtils;C:\SysInternals;C:\Python25\Scripts

%HOME% (C:\gvr) contains _vimrc, vimfiles, and other stuff accumulated over many years. This directory is stored in a personal Subversion repository at DevjaVu. All my Vim files are stored with Unix LF endings, not Windows CR-LFs, so that they'll work on my Mac OS X and Linux boxen. I play some games with ifhas("win32") and ifhas('gui_macvim') to ensure that my _vimrc works cross-platform.

On my *nix boxes, the gvr folder lives under my home directory at ~/gvr, and ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim are symlinks:

$ ln -s ~/gvr/_vimrc ~/.vimrc
$ ln -s ~/gvr/vimfiles/ ~/.vim

In addition, the dotfiles that I keep in SVN are stored locally in ~/gvr/dotfiles without a leading period in their names, which makes them easy to see:

$ ln -s ~/gvr/dotfiles/bashrc ~/.bashrc

This arrangement works well for me.