The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham

Bloggers have been praising The Dragon's Path like it's the best thing since sliced bread. I barely managed to get through it. It was so dense, predictable and boring. The characters are quite forgettable and the setting, mundane. There are a dozen sentient races which the bugger doesn't bother to describe properly and you're left imagining a character who you think (perhaps) looks remotely like a warthog. I barely remember the story. Here's the description off the author's site: 

"Summer is the season of war in the Free Cities.

Marcus wants to get out before the fighting starts. His hero days are behind him and simple caravan duty is better than getting pressed into service by the local gentry. Even a small war can get you killed. But a captain needs men to lead — and his have been summarily arrested and recruited for their swords.

Cithrin has a job to do — move the wealth of a nation across a war zone. An orphan raised by the bank, she is their last hope of keeping the bank’s wealth out of the hands of the invaders. But she’s just a girl and knows little of caravans, war, and danger. She knows money and she knows secrets, but will that be enough to save her in the coming months? 

Geder, the only son of a noble house is more interested in philosophy than swordplay. He is a poor excuse for a soldier and little more than a pawn in these games of war. But not even he knows what he will become of the fires of battle. Hero or villain? Small men have achieved greater things and Geder is no small man. 

Falling pebbles can start a landslide. What should have been a small summer spat between gentlemen is spiraling out of control. Dark forces are at work, fanning the flames that will sweep the entire region onto The Dragon’s Path — the path of war."

Savvy? Celebrated war weary captain guards caravan. Girl dresses as a boy in the caravan illegally smuggling a bank's gold and jewels out of an occupied city. Girl starts her own illegal bank franchise and hires captain to guard her jewels. An inept oaf of a general burns down the occupied city and then goes on a pilgrimage to a temple in a desert and brings back a priest. 

Predictably, this is the first book of what I think is a quartet. Good luck to us all. 

Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove

Age of Aztec is my first encounter with prolific British writer, James Lovegrove. It's the fourth book in the unconnected Pantheon series which also includes Age of Ra, Odin and Zeus. Ask any nerdy child what his favourite ancient civilization is and the answer will probably be Egyptian or Aztec. It's not hard to see why. Those Mesoamericans were so cool with their human sacrifice, blood letting, monumental architecture, ball games and bizarre deities. Lovegrove taps into this weird and rich culture and presents his readers with an original premise. What if Cortez, the conquistador who brought down the mighty Aztec empire, was defeated? What if Tenochtitlan never fell? And what if Montezuma, the last Aztec emperor, set out to successfully conquer the world and rule it as an immortal? 

The plot begins in modern day London in Lovegrove's alternate reality, which for all purposes is really not that different from the London we know, save the massive pyramid (why does he call them ziggurats?) that rises over the spot where Westminster Abbey once stood. The Aztecs rule most of the world from their lake-island capital of  Tenochtitlan including England which was the last independent country to fall. Their rule is efficient as it is cruel. Some regimes demand taxes, this one demands human sacrifice. Resistance is muted except for the Conquistador, a shadowy super-hero like figure who dresses in Spanish armour and regularly assassinates important officials. His nemesis is Chief Inspector Mal Vaughn who will use any means to bring the Conquistador to justice. 

The first half of the book was fast-paced and gripping. The second half of the book after the Conquistador is unmasked and is whisked away to Central America gets a little dull. And then when the "gods" are introduced, the story goes completely pear shaped. So, it naturally follows that the ending was slightly daft.  

A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French

Stupid Google with its conformist, imperialistic ways; forcing us to use deviant American spelling. What pray is wrong with two Ls in marvellous? My very being (produced by a long line of colonial British lackeys) is insulted by this squiggly red line under the word "marvellous". Okay, I am just stalling. I barely remember what A Tiny Bit Marvellous was about. I do recall though that it wasn't all that funny. 

I have been a Dawn French fan ever since my prepubescent self turned on the telly one horrid xmas holiday in London and experienced a rotund presence like no other. I loved her in Vicar of Dibley despite the repetitive gags and annoying supporting cast. I even loved her quirky lesbian role in Wild West which no one else seemed to like. And of late, I thought she was the only redeeming aspect in both Jam & Jerusalem and Psychoville

(faux Gallic voice) Mais, az an auteur? I zoo not noe! 

The story is about this English family of four (yes, stating the obvious - it's not going to be set in Burkina bloody Faso). The chapters swing between the POVs of the four characters. No, strike that. Seventy five percent of the time, we hear the fidgety, irritating voices of Mo, the mother, a sexually repressed psychologist, and her 17 year old daughter Dora, spectacled, fattish and desperately in need of a good bonking. Poor dad only has one chapter. The only redeeming (oh fuck, I've repeated the word twice in the same post) character (is that even an acceptable collocation?) is Oscar ne (where the hell is an accent grave when you need it most?), the sixteen year old, quite gay and seriously mental son of the family who thinks he is the incarnation of Oscar Wilde. How I laughed when chapters were preceded by the word Oscar! 

What I admired: 

• Oscar
• French's skill in switching "language" in a credible way between characters. 

What sucked: 

• Everything else, particularly Mo and Dora. 

Planesrunner by Ian McDonald

Have you read my paeans to McDonald? There isn't just one but three separate sycophantic posts to his genius on this blog. So expectations were set pretty high when I started out on his latest offering, a YA novel swimming down the science fiction stream as opposed to the speculative plots with non-Anglo world settings that are familiar McDonald territory.

Planesrunner is the first installment in the Everness series. Normally, I would be skipping with glee at the thought of the certain promise of book after book of this prodigy's magic. The truth is that I didn't really enjoy Planesrunner. Before you scream blasphemy and blue murder, hear me out.

Actually, I don't really remember why I didn't quite like it. I read it months ago at the very beginning of my review hiatus. I do remember skimming over portions. Sacrilege. I know.

Planesrunner starts off auspiciously with the mysterious kidnapping of Everett Singh's father, a renowned quantum physicist. Although Everett is astute enough to take pictures of the pop-snatching, the police return the images to him after deleting any incriminating evidence. He starts getting followed, receiving threats and to top it all, a mysterious application is mailed to him by an automated mechanism that becomes activated when his father is offline for a certain period of time. The application is the Infundibulum, an atlas of parallel earths and the bad guys want it, desperately. Pretending to play into their hands, Everett discovers that nearly ten parallel Earths have been discovered and a number of them are in contact with each other. He then uses a Heisenburg gate which his father has helped built to spirit himself to an electropunk version of the earth, one whose sky is dominated by electric airships. His father is being held somewhere in this world's London and he has to gather a  crack team to help get him out.

Thumbs up for the vernacular McDonald invented for the airship crews (forgotten what they were called). Another thumbs up for giving us a half-Indian protagonist (who incidentally spends an inordinate amount of time cooking Indian food). What was not so impressive was the way in which the story progressed. Where was the smooth interweaving of disparate strands? Where was the measured tension before a dive that I admired so much in McDonald's writing? All compromised on the altar of a linear plot, easy denouements and irritating perfectionism from the protagonist.

I suppose writing YA fiction means making compromises. Planesrunner disappointed but my admiration for McDonald is as strong as ever, whether on this earth or any parallel world. 

Lyaizi lyaizi bum

I just can't will myself to write. This ghastly weather's making me really lyaizi. Maybe in June when the monsoon arrives; as the earth attests to its fecundity by sprouting all sorts of things, green in color and nature - this blog too may experience a similar sprouting of posts.

Here's the lowdown of what I've been reading over the past couple of weeks. I've fallen head over heels for Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards, having read two volumes back to back. I am impressed by Vernor Vinge's storytelling skills (and I've promptly procured the recently written sequel to a A Fire Upon the Deep) and I'm sold on Colin Thubron unassuming but captivating voice. The Dragon's Path and Age of Aztecs - I'd rate as average. I just can't seem to get over this fantasy fetish. I want to read some Indian writing soon - I've ordered Sonia Falerio's Beautiful Thing - I hope the book lives up to the accolades it's received.