#5 Platform: Terrier

Usually, I don't like dogs, but this time I'll make an exception.

Book #39: Terrier
Author: Tamora Pierce
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library

Last year, I ran across a short story collection of Tamora Pierce's in the library, and picked it up, under the idea that I liked her stuff, and particularly the Song of the Lioness quartet, when I was growing up, and I should give it another shot now. I ended up being fairly disappointed in the collection, but I thought some authors find the short story too constraining a format to really shine, so I made a mental note to come back and try something longer, and in particular the Provost's Dog trilogy, of which Terrier is the first, since I remember having seen it get some good press.

It turns out that this hypothesis was largely justified, since Terrier was much more enjoyable of a read. I think a lot of the fun of Pierce's books comes from the world-building aspects, and that's much easier to do with a few hundred pages to play with, building up your city and its cast of characters. Definitely that's the case in this story, set in the capital city of Pierce's oft-visited fantasy kingdom Tortall, Corus. There's a small frame story telling you of the time frame (a healthy number of generations before the Song of the Lioness books) and some of the setup for the main character, her skills and background, by giving you bits and pieces from a number of characters' diaries.

But then it settles into the diary and voice of Beka Cooper, a Puppy or trainee city guard, in the most hardnosed district of Corus. It's not the easiest place to live, but it's somewhere she's very familiar with, even after having spent a number of years with her siblings in the household of the Provost himself after helping crack a case when she was a young girl. She's wanted to be a Dog for a long, long time, and she's determined to find her way, even if it's lonely at first. But she's got some small degree of magic, and she's got the best guardsmen in the precinct as her mentors, so the road isn't too hard to see. Over the course of the story, she gets entangled in two mysteries, dealing with an influx of incredibly precious rare stones and abductions and murders among the poorest parts of the city.

The mysteries are actually pretty well presented and clever, but the prize of the writing is Beka's voice and the world-building. Pierce isn't the world's foremost prose stylist, but you do sink very solidly into Beka's world, between all the local argot that shows up in her speech and her particular view of how the world should be, and how she can best find her place in it. She's a talented young woman with drive and curiosity, but she's also realistically sensitive and real. You get a real sense of her and her life, and of the city she's in. Pierce populates the place with a wide variety of interesting characters, and makes Corus breath to their rhythms, from the Rogue's Court to the Dogs, Beka's friends on both sides of the law, the little shopkeepers and the nobility. Corus feels like a real city, and even if you don't see the nicer parts, you hear of them, alongside the hardships and the people working to keep their lives whole, staying away from slavery and poverty as best they can.

This is a different world from the Tortall of the Alanna series, a rougher and looser society, in need of lots of obvious reminders of how the place should be in order for the people of the capital city to be satisfied in life. Considering how well imagined the later chronological books dealing with Tortall are, this is no small feat, and it's an impressive feat. I'm glad to get back to the world of Pierce's novels, and I'm looking forward to seeing Beka's growth and the widening world in the next books. I'm definitely not going to go as long before I pick up her series again.

Next up: well... thinking Mortality, but we'll see how I feel tomorrow.

#5 Platform: Mortality

A topic perhaps best addressed concisely, after all.

Book #49: Mortality
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library

And now, a return to a question I've addressed before: do you give a book more credit for the circumstances in which it was written? Because here again, we have a book written by a well-known and respected author, Hitchens, as he was dying, in this case of esophageal cancer. This is a book that's in part about the processing of dying, and in part about the thoughts that come to one along the road to their final resting place. There are essays on losing one's voice, on how what doesn't kill you certainly doesn't make you stronger in many cases, on the topic of religion and how the whole cancer deal hasn't changed Hitchens's views on the absence of a god, among a few others.

All of the essays are well-written, and a small fragmentary section at the end collects Hitchens's last jottings from the end of his life before he'd been able to turn them into a full piece. Even if Hitchens had lost his physical voice, his writing voice remained intact to the end, it seems. There's a real and honest undertaking of describing what it's like to be dying, and what one might think of. So as a small valedictory piece, this isn't a bad little book to try. Emphasis on little, though. The book is quite short - slightly over a hundred pages with foreword and afterword, and in quite large type to boot. You can knock the thing off in a couple of hours tops; I'm really glad I got it out of the library.

On the whole, if you want to hear the last words of a distinctive writer, and what he wanted us to last take from him on the way out, this is an interesting read, and thought-provoking, but I daresay it's not really worth the hardcover price. If this had been someone besides Hitchens, I very much doubt this would be a book. Now that it's there, though, it's worth the quick read. This time, I think I do give the credit to the book: it's inspiring, knowing how the book was written, and seeing the final output. Not enjoyable, no, but inspiring. And I like that.

Next up: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, likely. On the dead writer's front.