Five Portraits, by Piers Anthony – I was up to date on the Xanth series for a little while, but then I fell behind again. This one is from 2013, and doesn’t particularly deviate from the formula, although it does finally show a single parent adopting children. There’s also a gay character in a generally incredibly heteronormative fantasy land, but he’s not a huge part of the story. As is often the case in these books, the plot revolves around a group of nearly all-powerful Demons, many of them associated with celestial bodies, playing a game that involves the actions of normal people (well, relatively speaking) in Xanth. The main character is Astrid, a basilisk who usually takes human form, who is still journeying around the country with her companions trying to eliminate all traces of an anti-pun virus. One of the Demons, Fornax, decides to try to make friends with Astrid, which then leads to her helping out the basilisk in indirect ways on her adventure. On Wenda Woodwife’s advice, Astrid and her friends seek help from the Demoness Dysnomia in journeying to a possible future where Xanth is destroyed to adopt some children from that time. These kids are a boy who makes fireworks, a girl who produces wind, an alien squid who can shift her shape, a girl who turns to mist, and a boy who makes holes. There are a lot of references to stuff from earlier books, some of which I can remember. It’s pretty disturbing how often it mentions rape, which is certainly presented as a bad thing, but used way too often as shorthand to make it clear someone is evil. There are plenty of other ways that could be accomplished.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne – This is something I’d been considering reading for a long time, and only recently got around to it. I read a Kindle edition translated by F.P. Walter. It’s a travelogue, so it meanders a bit, a lot of it just being the characters exploring the seas both above and below the surface, and it does drag a bit sometimes. The narrator, Professor Aronnax, sets out on a voyage with the classification expert Conseil and the harpooner Ned Land, only to be abducted by a sea monster that turns out to be a state-of-the-art submarine (very much unlike the one that recently made the news). Aronnax is fascinated by its commander, Captain Nemo, and has a strange attachment and loyalty to him despite being his prisoner. He also talks a lot about how great his two companions are at what they do. He barely even notices the members of Nemo’s crew, though. He’s a very selective kind of guy in that respect. The name Nemo comes from the Latin for “no one,” and we learn little about him other than that he’s from India and had somehow lost his family. I understand that a sequel identified him as Prince Dakkar, but that there are also a lot of contradictions in that book. I believe Little Nemo was also named after the “no one” connection, but I wonder if the fish from Finding Nemo was called that because of the association with the sea. Nemo is an interesting character, someone who does terrible things but is also admirable in some ways, including his genius and zeal for adventure and exploration. There are some aspects to the book that didn’t age well, like the Nautilus going to the South Pole when we now know it’s on a then-undiscovered continent; but it’s not like Verne would have been aware of this.
A Killing Frost, by Seanan McGuire – October Daye finds out that, due to her being a changeling with a human father, her legal dad is her mother’s husband Simon Torquill, and she needs his approval to get married. He’s the one who had turned her into a fish, but they started to get along better after they traveled together to find his daughter August. After that, however, some magic caused him to revert to his worst self and lose his way home. Toby has to bring him back, and also ends up finding Oberon, who had actually been involved in the series in a different form. Simon ends up divorcing Toby’s mother Amandine, and ending up in a polyamorous relationship with his best friend Patrick and Patrick’s wife Dianda. The accompanying novella, “Shine in Pearl,” expands upon the relationship between these characters. I’ve read so many entries in this series that it’s difficult to judge each one individually, but there were some major developments in this one.
A Thousand Recipes for Revenge, by Beth Cato – I thought this set up an interesting world, although the story didn’t really stick with me. It didn’t really seem to go anywhere, despite all the plot elements that it introduced. It’s set in a country resembling France, in a place where chefs use magical ingredients. The two protagonists, the chef Amandine Garland and the Princess Solenn of Braiz, both have some skill in this sort of magic. The world also has five gods, who are connected to cooking magic and are manipulating events for their own purposes. And rather disturbingly, it turns out that the magical ingredients come from intelligent living beings.
VoVatia 