Diana Peterfreund: Ascendant

Unicorns are bloody animals in this book: quite capable and willing to kill humans, as much an animal as any other. Though they were believed to have been destroyed hundreds of years ago by Clothilde Llewelyn and the efforts of the Order of the Lioness, a group of female hunters, they have reemerged in contemporary day and a new Order has formed to combat them. Owing to the fact that only female virgins descended from certain lines have the abilities to hunt them, the new order is made up of young women - and Astrid Llewelyn is one of them.

While I liked the conceit of the book (indeed, it was why I picked it up) - with unicorns being not the mystical peace-loving creatures but a danger to humans, and hunters required to keep them in check somehow - I felt the story hadn't been well enough developed to really stand on its own. There was a strong sense of second-in-the-series-itis, by which I mean I could hardly keep track of who was who and why things were important. As a reader, I'd rather hear retreads of previous tales (and I do love them) than wonder and be bewildered at events. I couldn't understand the random name drops of girls at the Cloister, their relationships to each other, nor what the difference between a zhi and a karkadann or an einhorn were, nor their significance. There were some problems with the premise, too. If there had been unicorns once, and they were the same carnivorous wild animals, then surely, the mythology should not be the same as ours?* I liked the contrast between what was expected of unicorns (rainbows) and the reality (not) but it seems rather unlikely, especially since even a scratch from the horn would be poisonous and deadly.

Moreover, as you might guess from the premise instead of plot summary I've given above, it's not got a very tight plot to hold it together, either. Astrid struggles with unicorn hunting, her separation from her boyfriend (and her ex), her status as a Llewelyn (which many see as an automatic proof of exceptional hunter skill), with Gordian Pharmaceuticals, a former company that aided their Order before withdrawing support. She has problems with her mother, who cares only that her daughter is bringing in publicity for TV ratings, and with her friend and cousin Phil, who wants to conserve the unicorns, despite being one of the heads of the Order. The novel ends inconclusively, with the abruptness that suggests another book is probably needed, though the author's website said a third book hadn't been contracted.

*I have similar problems with Novik's Temeraire series. As much as I enjoyed the conceit of dragons + Napoleonic Wars, I was bothered that history had played out exactly - or almost exactly - the same way, with similar customs and morals being preserved in Britain and France.

Neil Gaiman: The Graveyard Book

Nobody Owens is an ordinary boy living in a graveyard. On one night years ago, a toddler is taken in by the denizens of the graveyard after having narrowly escaped murder; all his family is killed. That night, he is given the right to live in the graveyard and granted certain ghostly tricks - such as the ability to Fade and not be seen, to see in the dark, and so on. The Owens couple, dead hundreds of years, adopt and take care of Bod as he grows up, because the killer of his family is still out there. The book mostly follows Bod's adventures.

It's a children's book, and illustrated; I picked this up because I'd heard so much about it, albeit years ago, and ventured at last to see what the book was about. The illustrations were surprisingly lovely and scary - all that dark ink around where they were talking about the serial killer actually freaked me out - but it's ultimately a very short, small book. With the exception of the murderer, the events are bound together by Bod's life, nothing more. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the various interactions between Bod and the graveyard, the way that characters were introduced first by their grave etchings and then by personality.

Jack Whyte: Uther

This novel traces the life of Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur Pendragon, and his growth from a boy to a king and ultimately his death fighting. It is told simply, without magic or trickery, and aims to make the story sound plausibly placed in a historical context. It's not set up to be the accounting of Uther, but instead a story about him, and at 832 pages does a rather full accounting. Uther is the sixth book in Whyte's Dream of Eagles series, which has other books set in the same period about other characters in Arthurian mythology - Merlin's story, in particular, runs parallel to Uther.

To be honest, though I read through about 760 pages and gave up at last, I could not like Uther well enough to finish, nor most of his companions. The novel follows Uther right enough, and if it were a biography would be lovely, since events that occur are entirely unconnected. There are many descriptions that I had taken to be foreshadowing and expected to morph into important plot points later (such as Nemo and her upbringing and character), but none of those were resolved. Unlike fairytale conventions, when characters are often archetypes, Whyte avoids such storytelling and clearly tries to portray characters as more fleshed-out people. And while I admire that he tried, many of the characters' actions seemed odd, such as Uther's grandfather. The town in Cambria Uther lives in is, by his accounting, lived in by suspicious and superstitious folk, and against that backdrop Uther's grandfather seems strangely magnanimous and generous and noble. The same goes for the man who trained Uther - unexpectedly gracious and levelheaded. As a foil, I suppose, is the character of Nemo, who is unswervingly obsessed with Uther and also unaware of others' feelings and unconscious of any personal pride or hurt or - really - emotion. The characters were just flat.

But Whyte's presentation of Uther's world is something else. Uther's maternal grandfather is Publius Varrus, connecting Uther's Cambria to the Roman Empire (or rather, what's left). The narrative is told through different people - Veronica, Uther's mother, who writes letters to her family - but mostly with a third-person omniscient view, which gives a broader view of the various characters that move in and out of the story. I did enjoy the confederation of chiefs come to choose the new king of Cambria. Mostly, though, the different spellings predictably intrigued me (Camulod, Merlyn, etc).

Perhaps it's reading the last books without reading the first, but I found the characters dull and often flat or out of place, and couldn't stick it through the end. Whyte gets points for trying realism, but the characters just aren't real enough to support it. 6/10

Kim Vicente: The Human Factor

This is a nonfiction book that deals with the intersection of humans and technology. Vicente first argues that our thinking has become two separate views that don't interact: what he terms mechanistic and humanistic. One view primarily considers people (he cites cognitive psychology as an example of one such discipline); the other is an analytical, technical science, like engineering. He argues that we have become used to seeing the world by dividing it up into these two views, and thereby blinkered by attempting to solve problems while only considering one view.

He begins by explaining what he calls "Human-tech", a mix of the two competing views mentioned above. In the lowest rung of the ladder, what Vicente calls the physical level, is indeed the physical compatibility of some technology with human physiology. Is the toilet paper dispenser in public bathrooms easy to use? (Since he brings it up, the answer is "not always" – trying to get the last bits of paper out of the kind that have teeth demonstrates that toilet-paper dispensers eat human flesh). In later chapters he talks about the fit between humans and other types of technology, things that aren’t usually considered "tech" – psychological, team, organizational, political. In each of these different topics, which Vicente stacks in a ladder, the focus is on the interaction between humans and the technology, not the merit of technology alone.

In this way, the book argues for a different way to design things. He reiterates throughout the book that technology, no matter how well designed from a mechanical/technical perspective, can never do better than how well people can use them. Examples range from Three Mile Island disaster to hospital and aviation systems to the fender stratocastor (an immensely popular electrical guitar). As he moves up the ladder, like when considering the Walkerton disaster*, the effects of more than one level are felt. In Walkerton, for example, there were significant organizational flaws, such as the fact that the man who was employed as foreman at the plant had little training and didn't even know what E. coli was; political flaws such as the Conservative party's slashing of the number of public employees played a major part as well, since there simply weren't enough resources to properly inspect Walkerton. On a organizational-human basis, the examples of hospital work is brought up. Vincente argues that hospitals and health care should avoid pointing fingers at mistakes, because most mistakes are neither malicious nor infrequently made, and workers are aware and unhappy that mistakes are made in the first place. Instead, the book suggests hospitals work on reporting issues and trying to make systems that avoid the error in the first place. Cited as an example is three separate disasters involving vincristine, a drug to treat cancer; in three geographically distinct and unrelated cases, doctors accidentally administered it intrathecally instead of intravenously, which is fatal; because there was no reporting system, doctors were suspended or punished, but the information wasn’t passed on, and steps to actually prevent the wrong administration weren’t taken.

The book is composed in three parts – introduction, examples explaining the levels and the misfits between humans and technology, and a conclusion which tries to address what we should do next and what’s currently happening. Theoretical explanations are form a small iintroduction, but the bulk of the book is taken up with examples. Though I have not independently verified the sources, the book is actually footnoted and references respectable sources. A very informative, interesting book.

*Walkerton, Ontario, had an E. coli breakout in 2000. Population of 4,800: seven died and about 2,300 became sick; applying these figures to a larger city is horrifying.

Round-up.

These days I post rarely because my life is probably quite dull. And when I talk about books, all that comes out is KUSHIEL'S TRILOGY, oh, madness, I have many private entries which are mostly reaction posts. Frankly, it's rather embarrassing. And even more dangerously, I am actually considering fic, and wondering if my AO3 account is divorced enough from RL (going from RL to fandom, that is, not the other way round). I know what's going on Yuletide though. Naamah's trilogy characters, Collegia Magica.

But I have reviews! These are badly, badly backlogged, but I've gotten through some (they were all DOOO'd). Title, author, shortest summary I can think of, links to same thing on lj/dw.
Ascendant, by Diana Peterfreund, killer unicorns: LJ | DW
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, boy lives in graveyard: LJ | DW
Uther, by Jack Whyte, Uther's life: LJ | DW
The Human Factor, by Kim Vicente, humans & tech mismatching: LJ | DW