Month: August 2010

Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was

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Per the suggestion of a friend/colleague, I located and read this first of three books by Barry Hughart in the The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox series.  The book and series follow the adventures of a Number Ten Ox, a simple but strong Chinese villager of no particular status, and Master Li, an anciently old and incredibly shrewd sage.  The books very much follow the model of the Sherlock Holmes adventures in that the are from the perspective of the companion to the wiser protagonist.

In this first volume, all of the children between the ages of 8 and 13 in Number Ten Ox’s village seem to befall a plague that puts them into comas.  Seeing as the abbots cannot figure out how a plague could possibly target children of a particular age range, Number Ten Ox is sent to the nearest city to find a wise sage to help shed light on this mystery.  After being rejected by most of the wise men in the city for having such a laughably small amount of coin to secure such services, he finally stumbles upon Master Li Kao – who is old cold, hung over, lean as a bird, and very old.  Ox prepares to leave without bothering him when he discovers that he had once one a prize from the emperor making him one of the wisest men in China at the time.  After sobering him up and getting some food in him, he takes the case.

The root case, as it turns out, is easy to solve – the kids who were afflicted had been eating leaves that were poisoned as they collected them to feed to the silkworms; children under 8 were not used for such tasks and children over 13 refrained from such impulses.  The mystery of the poisoning also was quick to be solved, but the mystery of the cure turned out to be an adventure neither of them could have expected.  With Master Li riding on Number Ten Ox’ back, the pair trek all over China, wend through various labyrinths and face off against monsters, ghosts, immortal dukes and various other characters in their travels, making friends and foes alike.  And in the end they find that their journey is not nearly the serious of random coincidences it initially appears to be.

While this tale incorporates a significantly greater amount of mysticism and magic than one would tend to find in a Sherlock Holmes tale, it certainly makes for a similarly entertaining and brain-teasing adventure.  And the narrative format of being written from the perspective of an ancient Chinese man of humble roots really yields a unique perspective.  Even though there is no cliffhanger to the story – it is well encapsulated – I can easily see myself reading through the second and third books in this series.

Windfall

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As promised, this review is close on the heels of my review of book three (mostly because I pretty much read them back to back).  Overall I’m definitely getting into the flow of these books and I’m interested to see how long they will stretch out.

In Chill Factor, Joanne managed to save the world from both the nihilistic tendencies of the god of Djinn under the ownership of a misguided teenager and a dirty cop that switched to drug smuggling to Djinn smuggling (partially due to her own past meddling).  And in the end when faced with the choice of joining up with either the newly discovered Ma’at or her old job with the wardens, she opted for neither.

In Windfall,  we find Joanne doing her best to stay off of the aetherial radar – most poignantly as a weather girl on a Ft. Lauderdale local TV affiliate.  It pays the bills and keeps the wardens from bothering her … mostly.  But when strange things start to swirl around her (e.g., freak storms, missing wardens, Djinn standoffs in the streets), fingers start to migrate in her direction.  But having a Djinn boyfriend that is barely holding himself together (literally), having limited abilities herself due to her Djinn tether and the unborn Djinn daughter in her belly, and having her recently divorced sister mooching off of her all seem to hamper her ability to do much to clear her name much less save the day.  But she manages to make a dent none the less.  And in the end, things change fundamentally once again.

While I’ve been enjoying Rachel Caine’s first-person perspective throughout these novels, I have to say that I’ve seen a marked improvement in her writing form in this book.  Where many of the past volumes had about 3 or 4 long chapters, this one had about 7 shorter chapters that each had an interstitial arc that nicely wrapped up into the main story arc by the end.  It made the story much more interesting to read and added a narrative element that introduced a key alternate perspective as well as pertinent background that would otherwise have been difficult to integrate.

Once again, this story ends with drama in progress, so I will likely be starting book five as soon as I can.  Though I’ve taken a brief break from it to read another book recommended by a friend.  So I will likely be reviewing that book before another Rachel Caine review appears here.

You and Me and Your Brother Makes Three

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It seems that it will be a mom-free weekend.  Starting tomorrow morning through Sunday it will be just me, Cricket, and Grasshopper fending for ourselves.  I’m not actually particularly concerned.  I’m not one of those passive working dad’s who defers the majority of parenting to the matron of the house.  I even cook sometimes (mostly on the grill, but not exclusively).  So I’m sure we will survive …. hopefully.

My wife will be departing early tomorrow morning on a trek to NYC for a blogging conference (in case you weren’t aware, she has not one, but two blogs that she likely updates more often than I do: Down to Earth Mama and She Acts).  She will be whooping it up in the Big Apple for the weekend with blog-related discussions and parties.  Not that I would worry for the sanctity of our marriage regardless of the nature of the conference, but being that she will be surrounded mostly by female bloggers, the most that will likely happen is some all-girl drunken music videography (it’s happened).  I guess there is a sliver of the possibility she might get swept into an overzealous celebration of the repeal of Prop. 8, but I’m not overly concerned.  What hyjinx will ensue are likely to be of a much more tame and innocent variety of which she greatly deserves.

Anyway, besides regularly scheduled events of the weekend (of which there are surprisingly many) I have very little in mind for our sans matronus weekend.  As it stands, I have to take them to swimming lessons, the farmer’s market, a family reunion, and potentially a free movie screening (and probably some other events that my wife will point out that I forgot to mention and therefore will not remember to do).  So outside of meals there is limited bandwidth for other events.  But I may try to fit in some shopping and some other entertainment where I can – perhaps even some fruit picking if time and weather permit.

My biggest concern is that I’m going to be plagued with work issues that try to follow me home.  I’m slowly working to have more redundancy and less direct dependency for certain things, but the curse of being good at certain things is that you are the only one who can handle them – I’m not playing arrogant here, it is simple fact.  But I’m training a new guy to be the next me, and trying to leave no issues up in the air so that I can make the most of a wife-free and hopefully work-free weekend.

Chill Factor

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I’m writing this post belatedly because I’ve since read the fourth book as well and will likely start the fifth book soon.  But I’ll attempt to try and keep the events separated enough now to review the third volume (and I’ll likely write another post shortly reviewing the fourth).  Anyway…

So in the first book, Joanne Baldwin was a weather warden on the run (being that she accidentally killed a prominent weather warden in the process of getting a demon mark thrust into her) and died at the end to save the world from the evil growing inside of her.  In the second book she is reborn as a Djinn, but quickly learns that (a) being a Djinn isn’t as easy as it looks and (b) the price of her afterlife was higher than she could have imagined – in the end she spends her life force to make it right, and is then gifted with rebirth as a human.  Now in the third book, she has unfinished business to attend to – namely that a punk teenager has bound to his service the most powerful Djinn in existence.  And they are holed up in Las Vegas.

Through this story Rachel Caine continues to build out the canon behind the Djinn, their origins, and their nature.   What I find most interesting about Joanne’s character is that she holds nothing back – she will confront anyone about anything regardless of whether she is out-matched, out-powered, or out-classed.  In that way, she is a bit like a small, yippy dog – always barking at everything and everyone.  But she has the bite to back it up.  And unlike many of the protagonists I’m accustomed to reading about, Joanne hardly ever has a clue what she is getting herself into.  But that rarely stops her from jumping in mouth first.  And once again the smaller struggle she is working through seems to have world-changing repercussions if she fails.

Once again, there are moments of male-ogling that I could do without.  But they are less frequent and the story is definitely compelling enough to make it a non-issue.  And while this book does not end in nearly so much of a cliffhanger as the second volume had, it still ended in a way that left me eager to see where things may go next.  What really makes the series easy to breeze through is that each volume is fairly short (a little over 300 pages).  And through many of them, the timespan between volumes is no time at all.  So the series is very fluid.  If you are looking for an easy-read series with some action and some mystical elements set in a familiar setting, The Weather Warden series is a great choice.

The Great Wall of China

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A dishware replicate of this landmark had been forming in my kitchen.  For the past several weeks, my dishwasher has been little more than a glorified drying rack (and questionably effective at that).  Seemingly at random, this appliance had ceased to turn on at all.  And despite my best investigative efforts, I could not bear out any electrically rooted cause.  I recommended calling a repairman to look at it, but my wife would more readily spend the money on a replacement than a repair (it was a pretty cheap dishwasher – it came with the house).  And as it turned out, a decent replacement became available to me through a work colleague/friend at the best possible price (thanks again SK!).

So this weekend I went and picked up the replacement unit and spent much of Sunday attempting to swap out the old one.  There were various struggles and pitfalls along the way.  I shocked myself at least 2 times (thinking I had they right breaker off) before I just turned off the main breaker.  I went through 2 changes of clothes that got soaked by a combination of sweat, old dishwater, and a small amount of cleaning materials.  And once I managed to free the old dishwasher after a lot of disconnecting, cutting, and banging on things, I had to do some thorough cleaning as well as a certain degree of spackling (it seems the underside of our dishwasher had served at one time as a mouse hotel – hopefully my putty-work will fetter return visits).  I then had to make a run to Lowe’s to pick up some adapters and extenders to the hosed in order to connect the new unit.  Eventually I managed to get all of the connections hooked up, the dishwasher positioned and fastened in place, the power turned back on and …

Nothing.

After checking out the breaker box twice, it turned out that one of my breakers was half-tripped.  Not trusting the breaker to handle a job so vital as running half of my kitchen, I did some wire swapping with another similarly rated breaker (the questionable one is now sequestered to the less critical task of powering the smoke-detector array – at least with those I’ll know if the breaker went).  I got everything reassembled, went back upstairs and …

Nothing.  Again.

Luckily I noticed that the coffee maker also kicked out and saw that the outlet it was plugged into had its own breaker that was triggered (why such things would be connected in series I have no idea).  I pressed the reset button and EUREKA!  I have a working dishwasher again!

While it would be easy to chalk up the failure of the old unit to the circuit breaker, but I am not convinced that it was tripped the whole time (after all, I did get shocked by it twice).  So the old unit is still destined for the curb and the new unit is earning its keep as we whittle down the great wall of dishes.