Spear

Nicola Griffith's Spear is a short, fascinating novella that retells a side quest legend in the Arthurian constellation of stories and characters.

It's lovely. The prose is gorgeous, as always from this author. The main character is a woman who gets to make her own choices and have skills and an identity as an individual, which is the kind of detail I wish I didn't have to highlight but I'm glad to see.

Just as with Hild, this book included certain details of daily life and choices that stayed with me. It's raining and two knights are escorting through the woods? One must offer to go hoodless, for the peripheral awareness. Is magic real or is it just cultural significance and placebo suggestions? I loved this, and it was a brief and delicious read.

(I was left with the impression that I missed significant plot choices and story details because I'm not familiar enough with Arthurian legends and lore. That's okay, the book was great anyway.)

This post's theme word is evanescent (adj), "fading quickly; transitory." The evanescent details of lore dimmed beneath the onslaught of accrued cultural Arthurian baggage.

Jhereg

Stephen Brust's Jhereg jumped to the top of the TBR queue because of Cory Doctorow's strong recommendation. It didn't hit any sweet spots for me: it was a quick ~230 pages of fantasy, told in first-person by an assassin, in a fantasy world with sorcery and witchcraft and Dragaerans (descriptions render these more human than the name would suggest). There were action sequences and preparation scenes and scheming and thousand-year internecine feuds. No plot twists were surprising, although the narration chose at many points to casually reveal things that shifted the entire world-building operation (for example, at one point --- and this is not much of a spoiler --- it is revealed that death is not particularly permanent, and in fact is just a way of sending a snippy message to your enemies).

I might read the next book in the series, but it's low-priority. There's a new Jasper Fforde book out! And I still haven't read the sequel to Hild!

This post's theme word is gegg (v intr / noun), "to play a hoax or practical joke; a trick or practical joke." In a world where magic is a daily practice, there is a breadth of possible geggs.