★★★★☆ Humans, the Others, and Meg, and winter in Buffalo

Written in Red

Anne Bishop

Written in Red is the first book in Anne Bishop's the Others series. There are two kinds of people in the world of Namid: Humans and terra indigene, whom humans call the Others. Humans live in their cities and settlements, and the Others live in the Wild Places. The continent of Thaisia was once entirely one of those wild places. The first wave of human settlers to cross the Atlantik Ocean to Thaisia was wiped out by the Others, as was the second wave. To the Others, humans are meat. Eventually, however, a fragile détente was established. Humans live in a small number of cities on Thaisia and farm some lands. They provide the Others with agricultural products and technology that the Others value. Thus they are tolerated -- barely. Each human city on Thaisia has a small area called the Courtyard set aside for the Others. In the Courtyard there are signs reading "H.L.D.N.A." -- Human Law Does not Apply. Within a Courtyard murder is legal, or at least it is not illegal.

Meg Corbyn shows up at Lakeside Courtyard on the run from her controller. Although superficially human, it is obvious from the start that Meg has some special sauce. I will say no more about this, since the gradual revelation of Meg's nature is a major plot point. Lakeside Courtyard is perhaps the most progressive of Thaisian Courtyards in promoting business relations between its Others and human inhabitants of the city. Meg sees a posting for the job of Human Liaison and applies, thinking that a job in the Courtyard will shelter her from those hunting her. Thus she comes to know Simon Wolfgard (a werewolf, though that word is not used), Vladimir Sanguinati (a vampire), and other shapeshifters and even more dangerous terra indigene. But Meg's hunters are determined and dangerous and not apt to be deterred by the routine dangers of a Courtyard.

It's a good setup, and a great story, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I will certainly continue with the series.

I particularly enjoyed Written in Red's sense of place, because I recognize it. Bishop is deliberately vague about the geography of Namid. However, it is, as far as I can tell, identical with the geography of Earth, except for the human parts. Names are different and the cities are different, but Thaisia is what North America was before humans arrived here. Lakeside is so named because it is located on the shores of Lake Etu, one of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes are Superior, Tala, Honon, Etu, and Tahki -- if those are listed in the usual upstream to downstream order, they would correspond to Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Bishop describes the town of Talulah Falls as "up the road a piece" -- that clearly corresponds to Niagara Falls. She also mentions the nearby "Finger Lakes". Lakeside's location thus matches that of Buffalo, New York, although Lakeside is a smaller city than Buffalo. In fact, Bishop lives in upstate New York.

The action of Written in Red takes place over the course of a few weeks during a single winter. Bishop knows and vividly portrays the savagery of a Buffalo winter. Indeed, Winter is a character in the novel.

Written in Red on Amazon

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ Go, Team Weird!

Premeditated Myrtle Elizabeth C. Bunce Probably when you were a kid there were times when you felt you were not like other kids. (I may be wrong, but I'm guessing this is a universal human experience.) Myrtle Hardcastle (the hero of Elizabeth C. Bunce 's Myrtle Hardcastle series is a precocious 12-year-old girl, the daughter of Prosecutor Arthur Hardcastle. His position is something like that of a District Attorney in the modern US legal system -- a government lawyer whose job is to prosecute criminals in court. As Elizabeth C. Bunce explains in an Author's Note, such Prosecutors were a relatively new thing in England in 1893. Myrtle is motherless -- her mother, who studied to be a physician, died of cancer some years ago. Myrtle's ambition is to be a detective or prosecutor or something like that. (She probably knows precisely what she wants -- that would be like Myrtle, but she was not entirely explicit about her plans, hence my vagueness.) To this end sh...

★★★☆☆ Nadya's story

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear Seanan McGuire The origin stories of Seanan McGuire 's Wayward Children series have a formula. They start with a child who doesn't fit. He or she is abandoned by those who should under ordinary circumstances take responsibility for providing them with a healthy childhood. In some cases the abandonment is more figurative than literal. In others -- and Nadya is one -- the abandonment is literal and explicit. This child comes across a door, always bearing the words "Be sure" that takes her to a new world where she fits better. Unusually, we are often told the ends of the Wayward Children stories before the beginnings. We have met Nadya before, in Beneath the Sugar Sky , where we met her as one of the students of Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, where she was introduced as a "Drowned Girl" who "was one of the school’s long-timers: five years so far, from the age of eleven to the age of sixteen." Thus we...

★★★★★ Finding a home

The Blue Sword Robin McKinley When I was growing up my father's job kept my family moving. Mom and Dad eventually settled down, but just when they did I became an itinerant academic, moving to study and work at various research institutions. I was a 27 year old grad student at Stanford when I first read The Blue Sword and the longest I had ever lived in one place was six years. (Understand, I am not complaining -- I was and am a Happy Nomad.) There's a peculiar type of homesickness experienced by rootless people. One usually thinks of homesickness as being away from and missing a very specific place -- the place one calls home. But I had no place to call home. And yet I sometimes felt homesick -- I felt the lack of a home -- all the more because there was no home where I longed to be. In the first few chapters of The Blue Sword I immediately recognized this feeling of rootless homesickness in Angharad (Harry) Crewe, the hero of the book. As the book begins Harry ...

★★★★★ Witches and pain magic

Storm Cursed Patricia Briggs As I have noted elsewhere , the three pillars of magical society in Patricia Briggs 's Mercyverse , also Mercyverse , are werewolves, vampires, and fae. However, she also feels free to import any folkloric creatures that anyone has ever told stories about. Thus Mercy herself is descended from First Nation not-quite-a-god Coyote. Aside from the big three, most of these other magical beings are one-offs. And since Briggs is all about the politics and palace intrigue, they don't have the standing to become pillars of Mercyverse magical society. In fact, the first three books, Moon Called , Blood Bound , and Iron Kissed , served as introductions to werewolves, vampires, and fae, respectively. If there is a fourth, it is witches. Witches are important in the Mercy Thompson series and even more in the companion Mercyverse series Alpha and Omega . Columbia basin witch Elizaveta Arkadyevna has a...

★★★★☆ Myrtle's Vacay

How to Get Away with Myrtle Elizabeth C. Bunce The title of How to Get Away with Myrtle , the second book in Elizabeth C. Bunce 's Myrtle Hardcastle Mystery series, is, like all the titles in the series, a pun. The double entendre in this case involves two meanings of "get away": to take a vacation, and to escape punishment for a crime. Neither of these things actually happens. Myrtle's father, Arthur Hardcastle and aunt, Helena Hardcastle, in their unending yet futile quest to change Myrtle into something that vaguely resembles a normal 12-year-old Young Lady of Quality, have arranged for Myrtle and her governess, the estimable Miss Judson, to take a seaside holiday. Aunt Helena, who is reminiscent of Bertie Wooster's Aunt Agatha in her relentless disapproval of the younger sprout, alas, accompanies them. (Myrtle's father, in Paris for a criminology conference, does not appear.) The holiday is a package deal arranged with one Sir Quentin Ballingall, an ol...

★★★★★ The best kind of childishness!

What If? 2 Randall Munroe Randall Munroe is the author of the free web comic XKCD . XKCD comics are instantly recognizable by Munroe 's surprisingly individual and expressive faceless stick-figure characters. They are less instantly recognizable by their focus on science and mathematics, and by Munroe 's ability to write startlingly accurate jokes on these subjects which are actually funny, but also sometimes informative or touching, For a few years now he has also had a blog called "What If?" in which he answers questions from users. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions and What If? 2 are collections of those questions and answers. I started with What If? 2 because I mistakenly ordered it before What If? 1 . I do, however, follow Munroe 's What If? blog, so it is likely I've seen most of What If? 1 . Just to give you a taste, the first question of What If? 2 ...

★★★★★ No one gets plot armor

A Storm of Swords George R.R. Martin ** spoiler alert ** I bought audiobooks A Game of Thrones , A Clash of Kings , A Storm of Swords 5-Oct-2005. Those were, at the time, all published books of George R.R. Martin 's A Song of Ice and Fire . Not long after (2-Feb 2006, to be precise), I bought and read A Feast for Crows (in hardback). I then decided to quit reading, to resume only if and when Martin finished the blasted series, having been burnt by Wheel of Time . A Feast for Crows made it obvious to me that Martin didn't have a clue how to finish this thing. He wasn't winding things up: we were getting more subplots and more characters, and focusing more and more on relatively minor characters. As of 13-Feb-2024, Martin has still not polished off this sucker, and I still haven't read past book 4. Of the four I've read, this one, A Storm of Swords is, I think, the best ...

★★★☆☆ Dickensian story of an American girl trapped in Germany

Queen of the Bremen Marlies Adams DiFante, Ann Marie DiFante I received Queen of the Bremen: The True Story Of An American Child Trapped In Germany During World War II as a Christmas present from my nephew. I suppose he must have gotten it in a used book store somewhere. It's a self-published memoire of an American woman, Marlies Adams DiFante (recorded by her daughter-in-law Ann Marie DiFante) telling the story of how she was trapped in Germany with her family for seven years during World War II. Her father, John Adams, emigrated from Germany to the USA, where he started a family and became a citizen. In 1939 his wife (also German-American) received a letter informing her that her father was dying. John Adams obeyed the summons to his wife's father's deathbed -- taking his son, Peter, and daughter, Marlies, (six and five years old) and his pregnant wife to Germany. It was terrible timing. Hitler had recently come to power. He invaded Poland, starting World War I...

★★★★☆ What are these people?

Red Side Story Jasper Fforde When I reviewed Shades of Grey , the first novel in Jasper Fforde 's Shades of Grey series, I asked Although I referred to Eddie as a young man, it is not clear to me what the people of the Collective are. I think they are more-or-less human. ... However, in some ways they behave like automata. These are puzzles that I hope Jasper Fforde will clear up in subsequent novels in the Shades of Grey series. Now I'm patting myself on the back, because that is indeed what Red Side Story is about. Or so say I. You might think it is about other things -- a love story, a fight to survive, a battle for justice, a cycle race -- and you would not be wrong. Red Side Story contains multitudes. Shades of Grey ended in a flurry of revelations about the Collective. Eddie, Jane and Courtland Gamboge visited the abandoned town of High Saffron, where Jane revealed that all the people supposedly sent to Reboot were in fact sen...

Search This Blog