2011 Books 10

[subplotkudzu]

 10) Sidhe Devil by Aaron Allston: the second of Allston's faerie pulp novels about Doc Sidhe and his fabulous henchmen in an alternate faerie-are-real world. It was a bit of a let down in how similar it was to the previous one - once again our main viewpoint character is someone from the 'grim world' (that is to say our world) transported over, once again they're a highly skilled multidisciplinary ring fighter, once again they have to overcome some life issue surrounding their fighting style, and alas, once again we don't get to see enough of the titular character. There's a style of writing about really cool people where you focus on the people around them so that the cool character never loses any of their enigmatic coolness by blathering on about it - Christopher Priest used it to good effect on _Black Panther_, but that's not what's happening here - as we do sometimes got Doc as the viewpoint character. It's just we don't get enough of it, as his books are really about other people. This is not to say it was a bad book - it was perfectly enjoyable, if a little light, and it's RPG origins were rather evident. But still worth the read.

Comments

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Yeah. that was problematic as well, but I let it slide in that he had established the 60 year time slip between worlds, meaning that we were due for a Nazi Germany parallel. Bus, as you said, still fun.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

It isn't the parallel per se I mind, but that there was absolutely no hint of any racism in the first book, and suddenly, it is all over the place, and only the latest arrival from our world notices. But, yes, and I'd read a third in the series.