January has been an productive and rewarding reading month.
Monk's Hood - Ellis Peters (1980)
The third novel in the Brother Cadfeal series about the eponymous crime-solving medieval monk. I'm loving these books. They're super cozy and go down quick, but that's not to say they're unsubstantial. There's plenty going on beneath the surface; less about the who-done-it than conflicts between what's right by law and what's right by man, and they typically end in a profound moment of quiet grace or harmonious alignment. Plus, the prose is gorgeous in a humble understated way. Great stuff. This one deals with an elderly landowner who gifts his manor to Cadfeal's abbey but is poisoned before the deal can be affirmed, which opens all sorts of knotty questions of inherence and legal distinctions between Wales and England.
"ON THIS PARTICULAR MORNING at the beginning of December, in the year 1138, Brother Cadfael came to chapter in tranquillity of mind, prepared to be tolerant even towards the dull, pedestrian reading of Brother Francis, and long-winded legal haverings of Brother Benedict the sacristan. Men were variable, fallible, and to be humoured."
The Face - Jack Vance (1979)
Excellent excellent. A+++. 20 stars out of 5. This one knocked me sidewise and I'm still reeling. Fourth book in the Demon Princess series about Keith Gersen and his lifelong quest for revenge on the five notorious slaver-pirates that destroyed his home settlement. In this volume he's tracked the sadistic trickster Lens Larque to the planet Dar Sai, one of the most odious yet compelling settings I've ever encountered in fiction. A subtle critique of class disparity, at first the book sets us up to despise the Darsh and their horrific society then turns everything on its head before ending on an astonishing moment. Absolutely phenomenal.
“The woman behind the bar called out: ‘Why do you stand like hypnotized fish? Did you come to drink beer or to eat food?’
‘Be patient,’ said Gersen. ‘We are making our decision.’
The remark annoyed the woman. Her voice took on a coarse edge. “Be patient,’ you say? All night I pour beer for crapulous men; isn’t that patience enough? Come over here, backwards; I’ll put this spigot somewhere amazing, at full gush, and then we’ll discover who calls for patience!”
Rumfuddle - Jack Vance (1973)
Long short story about the invention and exploitation of infinite parallel dimensions. Has the flavor of a really good Rick and Morty episode (without any Roiland-isms thankfully) and haunting in its implications. To say more would ruin the fun. "Fun."
"I can now report that the mathematics of the multiple focus are a most improbable thicket, and the useful service I enforced upon what I must call an absurd set of contradictions is one of my secrets. I know that thousands of scientists, at home and abroad, are attempting to duplicate my work; they are welcome to the effort. None will succeed. Why do I speak so positively? That is my other secret."
Saint Peter's Fair - Ellis Peters (1981)
At the yearly summer fair and horse auction at the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul an inauspicious merchant is found stabbed in the back with no apparent motive or profit in the murder. Cadfeal is pulled into the investigation and the welfare of the merchant's shrewd niece who knows more than she's telling. Peters has a gift for transporting the reader to 12th century and I was hoping for plenty of delicious details about the fair itself but most of the action is focused on the evolving nature of the crime. That's okay though, still a wonderful read. Everything ends happily: a hero emerges to stand up against base greed, lovers are united, and there's that surprising moment of grace, here resolving the inciting incident which was apparently discarded way back in the first chapter. Then it concludes on a pleasantly bitter note as the camera pulls back to reveal how the small concerns of the plot have ominous implications for the larger historical context.
"Child, death is with us always," said Cadfeal, patient beside him. "Last summer ninety-five men died here in the town, none of whom had done murder. For choosing the wrong side, they died. It falls upon blameless women in war, even in peace at the hands of evil men. It falls upon children who never did harm to any, upon old men, who in their lives have done good to many, and yet are brutally and senselessly slain. Never let it shake your faith that there is a balance hereafter. What you see is only a broken piece from a perfect whole.
"Such justice as we see is also but a broken shard. But it is our duty to preserve what we may, and fit together such fragments as we find, and take the rest on trust."
A Taste of Honey - Kai Ashante Wilson (2016)
Wilson is my favorite contemporary fantasy author, though unfortunately he hasn't published much. This is his follow up to the outstanding Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. It's not as immediately impactful as that book, being more reserved in both the story its telling and in the stylistic excesses by which its told. It's ending in particular comes off as almost a non-event on first pass, the equivalent of a cheesy "it was all a dream!" cop-out. But Wilson is way too skilled a writer to fall into such a basic trap and the more I think on the ending the more it gains thematic and consequential power. The story relates the homosexual romance between Aqib, a minor noble (read: demigod) of Olorum, a north African-like kingdom, and Lucrio, a visiting soldier from a Rome proxy. It's told out of chronological order, bouncing between the ten days of their passionate affair and the fallout that constitutes the rest of Aqib's life. Beautifully written and I'm still pondering on all the implications of that ending.
"Men cannot kiss!" Yet it seemed there was a conspiracy within his own body. For it took all of his strength not to consummate their nearness into actual touch, while he was utterly strengthless to shift even an inch away.
"I bet you they can." The soldier's breath smelled of young palm wine. "Anybody ever make love to you, Aqib?" So near, his words were sensation, a brush of feathers. "Let me; I want to. Can I?"
A mystery clarified for Aqib, and not just concerning this long walk, this fraught conversation—not just tonight's mystery, as it were—but the deeper one concerning his inmost self. Ah, this was why his wayward gaze alit so often on whom it shouldn't, going back to peek howevermuch snatched away: those taught bellies and hard thighs of men heroically scrawled in scars. So yes, then: clearly two men could kiss!
The Leper of Saint Giles - Ellis Peters (1981)
Cadfeal book 5. The squire Joscelin Lucy is accused of strangling his lord Huon de Domville (great name to say out loud) on the eve of his wedding to the demure Iveta de Massard, a girl some 30 years his younger and to whom Joss has fallen in love. Joss finds refuge in a leper's sanctuary and plots for a way to free Iveta from the control of her dragonish aunt and uncle. Meanwhile, Cadfeal takes the case more for the sake of the girl than justice for the corpulent and base de Domville. But there's a second mystery lurking around the edges of the action and its reveal in the last few pages caused me to gasp out loud then brought me to tears. I'm constantly amazed how these books can turn in a split-second from fun but slight whodonedems to sparkling ruminations on the human condition. I'm now a quarter of the way through the series and each has been a delight. I'm concerned about series fatigue so I might pump the breaks for a bit but these go down so smooth that it'll be hard to not jump right into the next.
“Here I begin to know that blessedness is what can be snatched out the passing day and put away to think of afterwards.”
