Piss off, Nebula Awards

As most of you likely know by now, A Reader's Respite has a thing for book awards.  We love them.  Even in genres outside of our comfort zone, we try to familiarize ourselves with at least some of the nominees and winners if only to expand our reading horizons.  Most of the time, we feel rewarded by this experience.

Most of the time.

On Saturday, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced the winners of their annual Nebula Awards.  And the winner for Best Novel?  

As it happens, this is one novel that A Reader's Respite tackled last month.  Well, if we're being completely honest, tackled and then threw against the wall and considered burning in it's entirety.  Why?  Because this novel was one of the most pretentious, ridiculous, downright AWFUL collection of incoherent sentences ever to be collected within the confines of a  book cover.

While at first I was intrigued as the author introduces us to life on Mercury in the year 2312, the pages quickly turned into an information-dump where $10 words were substituted for perfectly good and understandable words. I shouldn't have to run to a dictionary or spend hours on the internet looking up things such as the pseudoiterative.  Did we mention PRETENTIOUS?

Somewhere in this info-dump is supposed to be a love story. Our protagonists (a hermaphrodite from Mercury and a frog-type-person from one of the moons of Jupiter), however, are so bland and lost in the confusion that they never generate any kind of sympathy (or even recognition).   Did we mention NO PLOT?

So why on earth (pun intended) do we find 2312 nominated for both Nebula and Hugo Awards this year?  If we may be sold bold as to venture a guess:  Kim Stanley Robinson.  Oh, sorry, to be one of the cool kids one must refer to the venerated sci-fi writer as KSR.  So far as we can tell, the man once produced a fairly kick-ass sci-fi book (Red Mars, and it was a trilogy).  Since then he has settled his pompous ass down on the throne of sci-fi and contents himself with writing incoherent drivel that his minions (yep, those are the voters of the Nebula Awards) pretend to understand so as to remain part of the cool crowd.

So the next time you see some glowing review exalting the genius vision KSR creates in 2312, rest assured that in reality they, too, had no idea whatsoever what this freaking book was about.  They're just hangin' with the cool kids.

And Nebula Awards?  You minions can piss off.  We will be searching out good sci-fi from the people really in the know:  book bloggers.

Title: 2312

Author:  KSR

Publisher:  Omnicorp

Pages:  576 nonsensical, plotless, thesaurus-reliant pages

Source:  Library Copy (which explains why we didn't actually go so far as to burn it)

Rating:  Really?  Need you ask?

Something to consider.....

Round of Quickies: Part IV

Young woman has affair with older, married man.  Young woman becomes pregnant.  Older, married man runs back to his wife and family.  Child put up for adoption.

So now you have the plot of Randy Susan Meyer's newest novel, The Comfort of Lies.  Told from alternating viewpoints, the novel explores all of the ramifications of this one act of infidelity.  We listen to the wronged wife, the adoptive mother, and of course, the young woman.  Their lives are now intertwined.  

It's an easy read and Meyer does a very nice job presenting each character - flaws and all - in a fair and balanced manner.  No one is the bad guy.  Okay, except maybe the cheating husband who caused all this.  Bastard.

Rating:  4 Stars

Source:  Library copy

Did you absolutely love the HBO series, The Tudors?  If so, this might be just the book for you.  In The Boleyn King, Laura Andersen imagines what might have happened had Anne Boleyn given birth to a son, giving Henry VIII no reason to lop her head off and thereby changing the course of history.

While an older, widowed Anne does play a Queen Mother supportive role (albeit a small one) in the novel, the featured character is William, son of Anne and Henry who is now king of England.  Surrounded by court intrigue, William has discovered a plot to overthrow him.  But who can he trust?  He turns to his three closest confidents:  Minuette, a young woman raised with the Boleyn children, Dominic, his best friend, and his sister, Princess Elizabeth.  Together, the four friends work to uncover the plot and secure their own future.  They are England's hope and promise.

Okay, so it's an alternative history.  As such, Andersen can (and did) have fun with it.  If you like your historical fiction meaty and steeping in detail, this is not your book.  But if you're just looking for some light reading fun at the beach this summer and love all-things Tudor, pick up a copy and enjoy.

Rating: 3 Stars
Source:  Advance Reading Copy courtesy of Ballentine Books

The Ashford Affair is quite a departure for Lauren Willig fans long used to her famous swashbuckling Pink Carnation series.  Set in post-WWI England and Kenya, Willig gives us a rollickin family soap opera featuring the beautiful, scandalous, back-biting debutante of the season, Beatrice Gillecote.  Wealthy, titled, and supremely bored, Bea and her poor mouse of a cousin Addie are raised together in the historical English manor, Ashford Place.  But when Addie falls in love and Bea steals the man, the family is changed forever.  Alternating between present day and the past, Willig proves adept at tantalizing readers into 'just one more chapter.'

Think Downton Abbey.  On steroids.

Rating:  4 Stars
Source:  Library Copy

Originally published in 1974, The Bastard King is the first in Jean Plaidy's Norman Trilogy and was chosen for our Retro Readalong of the month. This is classic historical fiction in which Plaidy recounts the story of William the Bastard, or as we better know him these days, William the Conqueror, without whom modern-day England as we know it would not exist.  William, of course, was the Duke of Normandy who wrested the English crown in 1066, forever changing the course of Western history.  Plaidy's account, for the most part, is quite accurate given the little we know about this period...she has a knack for making traditionally 'boring' historical figures come alive.  In this first book of the trilogy, Willy overcomes a thoroughly traumatic childhood and bears instense emotional scars.  He meets and marries the sassy Mathilda of Flanders and invades England.  The second and third installments trace the trials and tribulations of Willy's pain-in-the-butt progeny.

Plaidy writes with an enjoyable droll wit that is a pleasure to read.  If you ever wanted to learn more about any historical time period in England, go find a Plaidy book.  With eight pen names and over a hundred books to her credit, odds are if you can name the era, Plaidy wrote about it.

Our favorite line?

William's Mother: "There are other women in the world - fine princesses who can bring you as much good as this one." 

William:  "I want this one, Mother."

          William's Mother:  "Then you should never have beaten her and thrown her in the mud."

Touche.

Rating:  4 Stars
Source:  Personal Library

Review:Mr. Churchill's Secretary

From author Susan Elia MacNeal comes a fabulous debut and the start of a new historical mystery series featuring Maggie Hope.  The year is 1940, war has broken out in Europe and Maggie Hope - British by birth but raised in America - has arrived to London to sell a house bequeathed to her by her late grandmother.  Intending to return to her life in America as soon as possible (a coveted spot at MIT awaits her), the war soon changes everything.

Choosing to remain in London and support the war effort, a frustrated Maggie finds that her Wellesley education in mathematics doesn't qualify her for any useful employment beyond a typist.  Smarting from her exclusion from the misogynistic British boy's club, she nonetheless takes a position as a secretary....to the newly-elected Prime Minister, Winston Churchill himself.

Despite feeling marginalized, Maggie excels at her position, but when she accidentally stumbles upon Nazi code in a newspaper ad she finds herself caught up in the world of MI5, sleeper agents, the IRA, cipher breaking, fifth columnists, and double agents.

If you loved the Maisie Dobbs novels, A Reader's Respite is willing to bet that you will love Maggie Hope.  Intelligent and endearing, Maggie's stoic practicality and droll wit are utterly charming while MacNeal's plotting is fast paced and keeps you turning the page.  Perhaps most impressive are the historic details: victory gardens, the Blitz, rationing and blackouts are so expertly woven into the narrative that the reader is almost unaware they are receiving an excellent history lesson.

Short-listed for an Edgar Award this year, Mr. Churchill's Secretary is first-rate historical fiction.  The next book in the series, Princess Elizabeth's Spy is already available and the third book in the series, His Majesty's Hope, will be released on May 14! move over, Maisie Dobbs, there's a new gal in town and her name is Maggie Hope.


Title: Mr. Churchill's Secretary
Author:  Susan Elia MacNeal
Publisher:  Bantam Books
Pages:  349
Source:  Library Copy

Rating:  4.5 Stars....this is good stuff!