(Small editorial preface: I am kind of interested in keeping better track of what I’m reading, so I’m going to try and document it more regularly. As it stands, I seem lately to only blog about books when I’m cranky about them. Like, I went on that big rant about how much I disliked Laura Kinsale’s Midsummer Moon, but mentioned only in passing that I really enjoyed The Hidden Heart, by the same author. And I managed to complain about This Shared Dream, but never mentioned several other books I read in December that were really good. Like A Visit From the Goon Squad, which totally deserves to be written about. I’m always hesitant to try committing to documenting my reading, in part because so much of what I read in any given month is re-reading. If I’m reading a particular romance series for the third time in two years, does that go on the public reading list? Maybe it should. In any event, we’ll give this a try.)
January 2012, #1: Grim Tides, T.A. Pratt
I really thoroughly enjoy the Marla Mason books. I like Tim’s concept for the world that they’re set in: magic is real, every kind of magic you can think of. All at the same time. Every kind of magic you can think of, every belief system and every supernatural power, it’s all real, all at the same time. The worldbuilding in these books is like an exercise in contained chaos, and at the center of it, you’ve got Marla. Marla is the calm, mostly-amoral, slightly heartless heart of this crazy swirling storm of magical mess. She’s holding together control of a series of magical alliances mostly by being a little more ruthless (and a little more reliable) than everyone else. In some ways, she’s the anti-Chosen One. Marla isn’t particularly gifted or special. She isn’t better at stuff than other people, she’s just a little bit more willing to brute-force her way through the problem. It’s refreshing.
And it’s fun. When you’ve got this much tangled mess in the world, and a protagonist whose guiding philosophy seems to be “get shit done now, sort out the consequences later”, you end up with a series of books that are a crazy fun ride. (I feel bad calling them “fun”, frankly, given Tim’s penchant for killing or maiming characters I really like, but dammit, they are fun.) And Grim Tides is, fundamentally, a book about the laters in Marla’s “consequences later” coming due. It’s also a book about what happens when you take a type-A urban-fantasy ass-kicker and drop her on a beach in Hawai’i with nothing to do but drink fruity cocktails and get a tan.
Anyway. I really enjoyed it, and recommend the whole series. If you haven’t read any Marla books, it’s probably best to start at the beginning, with Blood Engines. And if you want to read Grim Tides, you can either buy the whole book, or read it for free as it’s serialized.
Posted Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 at 7:25 pm. Filed under: personal.
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