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jazzfishLast night I finished the ebook I was reading[1] and wanted something relatively relaxing to counterpoint Strange & Norrell in hardcopy, so I finally got around to picking up an ebook of Barbara Hambly's The Silent Tower.
I read The Silent Tower, and its sequel The Silicon Mage, repeatedly in the late eighties and nineties. They were bound together in a SFBC edition entitled Darkmage, with a picture of an elderly wizard squinting at a computer screen. I'm pretty sure I've not gone back to them this century. If you'd asked me what I remembered, I would have said: Stonne Caris the sasennan warrior ('sasennan' translates to 'weapon': the sasenna are meant to have no thoughts or emotions, which makes Caris a bad sasennan but a fantastic character); "The Dead God, though they've forgotten why he died" (he turns out to be a lost/trapped extradimensional alien, which is Really Neat); and the password-guessing at the end of the first book. Tiny fragments, in other words. No real sense of the book.
Six pages in and memories started flooding back. "A portion of the Empire of Ferryth," decrees the map. The mages, old Aunt Min (Mynhyrdin the Fair) and imperious Lady Rosamund and Thirle the gardener. The Church's ban on magic and the way people only barely believe in it anyway. The awful Prince-Regent Pharos. The whole atmosphere: not bog-standard fantasy like I'd vaguely recalled, but early industrial revolution. It all feels so wonderfully familiar. And it brings back other fragmented memories: "I think you should visit Suraklin's citadel, it was built on a node of the lines." "You mean, like Middle Earth? Cool." Joanna's mildly-slimy boyfriend Gary who gets much much worse, Caris's lover Pella. "I swear to you, Joanna, I did not kill Salteris." The futility of carting a floppy disk across a fantasy landscape. I still don't remember much of the book, but it just feels right.
I never read much other Hambly for some reason... oh, right. I picked up the Sun-Cross duology from the SFBC, and when the second book took place entirely in Nazi Germany instead of in the rather neat fantasy world of the first, I felt sufficiently betrayed that I wasn't willing to take more chances. I did read the Sun Wolf and Starhawk books at some point, I think? And I think I enjoyed them? But that was after I'd left high school, when my reading and rereading time was starting to vanish under college and job and whatnot. Hm.
[1] Mirage, by Somaiya Daud, which had a neat Persian-inflected SF setting but did not particularly grab me for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the Stockholming of the main character.
I read The Silent Tower, and its sequel The Silicon Mage, repeatedly in the late eighties and nineties. They were bound together in a SFBC edition entitled Darkmage, with a picture of an elderly wizard squinting at a computer screen. I'm pretty sure I've not gone back to them this century. If you'd asked me what I remembered, I would have said: Stonne Caris the sasennan warrior ('sasennan' translates to 'weapon': the sasenna are meant to have no thoughts or emotions, which makes Caris a bad sasennan but a fantastic character); "The Dead God, though they've forgotten why he died" (he turns out to be a lost/trapped extradimensional alien, which is Really Neat); and the password-guessing at the end of the first book. Tiny fragments, in other words. No real sense of the book.
Six pages in and memories started flooding back. "A portion of the Empire of Ferryth," decrees the map. The mages, old Aunt Min (Mynhyrdin the Fair) and imperious Lady Rosamund and Thirle the gardener. The Church's ban on magic and the way people only barely believe in it anyway. The awful Prince-Regent Pharos. The whole atmosphere: not bog-standard fantasy like I'd vaguely recalled, but early industrial revolution. It all feels so wonderfully familiar. And it brings back other fragmented memories: "I think you should visit Suraklin's citadel, it was built on a node of the lines." "You mean, like Middle Earth? Cool." Joanna's mildly-slimy boyfriend Gary who gets much much worse, Caris's lover Pella. "I swear to you, Joanna, I did not kill Salteris." The futility of carting a floppy disk across a fantasy landscape. I still don't remember much of the book, but it just feels right.
I never read much other Hambly for some reason... oh, right. I picked up the Sun-Cross duology from the SFBC, and when the second book took place entirely in Nazi Germany instead of in the rather neat fantasy world of the first, I felt sufficiently betrayed that I wasn't willing to take more chances. I did read the Sun Wolf and Starhawk books at some point, I think? And I think I enjoyed them? But that was after I'd left high school, when my reading and rereading time was starting to vanish under college and job and whatnot. Hm.
[1] Mirage, by Somaiya Daud, which had a neat Persian-inflected SF setting but did not particularly grab me for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the Stockholming of the main character.
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Date: 2020-08-27 11:08 pm (UTC)Like you I've read The Windrose Chronicles, all 4 novels), and recalled liking them enough that I've got at least some as ebooks although I haven't reread them. I am a bit afraid to lest the suck fairy had gotten to them. I also read one or two of the James Asher vampire novels but the rest of her fantasy never attracted me.
I did read 6 or 7 of the Benjamin January historical mystery series which were excellent. But I burned out on them and haven't read the rest. Bad things happen in them, of course, I guess, partially because mysteries duh and January being a free man of color in the deep south. I also felt like not enough character development was happening. There certainly was more than many other series, but I just got tired.
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Date: 2020-08-28 04:48 pm (UTC)I know I've read Dog Wizard but I have no memory of it at all... and I know I owned Stranger at the Wedding but I'm not sure I ever read it. More for now! Thus far can confirm that the Suck Fairy has stayed mercifully far away from The Silent Tower.
I've heard good things about the Benjamin January books, but American historical is a hard sell for me, for various reasons.
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Date: 2020-08-28 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-29 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-04 12:37 am (UTC)My favourite Hambly is Dragonsbane, which is about being a working mother with a career in the 80s, except it is a fantasy novel with wizards and dragons. Although I do remember liking Time of the Dark rather well, but only vaguely.
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Date: 2020-09-04 05:42 am (UTC)I've heard good things about Dragonsbane (et seq), and it is definitely on my far-too-long list!
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Date: 2020-09-04 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 05:25 pm (UTC)At this point my list, of physical books anyway, consists of finishing Strange & Norrell (only 150pp to go), then maybe a reread of Gideon the Ninth before I dive into Harrow, and /then/ finally The Baron Of Magister Valley. Unless I get distracted.
I did a Great Big Dragaera Reread, mm, three? years ago, when Vallista came out. Very pleased to find that they've aged quite well.
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Date: 2020-09-24 08:51 pm (UTC)I did finish The Three Musketeers, which was not at all the book I expected it to be, but I haven't picked up The Phoenix Guards yet.
I loved Gideon the Ninth and did reread it before Harrow, which I loved much less although I am still glad it is a thing that exists. And having heard that Muir was a Homestuck fan I have been reading that and have reached the point in it that I am swallowed whole for weeks at a time, which I always enjoy even if it is detrimental to other reading plans.
I hope you are doing well -- sorry to appear and then vanish so quickly, but my time is extremely variable.