Book Chain, etc, Week 14
Apr. 5th, 2026 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther#11: A book from a series with the same number of instalments as the previous book
I found myself on ambiguous ground again: although 1066 and All That is usually regarded as a standalone work, its authors followed it up with And Now All This, written in similar style but not precisely a sequel. I opted for a book where the answer to "how many other books in the same series" is also "probably none"; it shares a setting with another of the author's novels, but takes place centuries earlier and has no plot ties. (It was also on the shortlist for the "Keyboard Keys" challenge prompt, but I wasn't in the mood for it at the time.)
When the King Comes Home by Caroline Stevermer. An apprentice artist stumbles onto a plot to bring a legendary king back from the dead as a puppet for an overthrow of the current regime.
I've been meaning to get around to reading this for years, and the book I'd built in my head out of the few things I'd heard about the plot wasn't quite what the real book turns out to be, though the real book is at least as good. A College of Magics, Stevermer's other novel featuring the same kingdom, is an old favourite, though I last re-read it over a decade ago, so my existing knowledge ended up being more distracting than useful; I might have had an easier time of figuring out the worldbuilding without being interrupted by trying to fit in details from the other book that I remembered only vaguely and not always correctly.
I also had a bit of trouble because I spent most of the book waiting for a plot twist that never came. Part of the set-up is that the current king has been on his last legs for ages and everyone knows that the real power in the kingdom is the senior churchman who rules in his name; in retrospect I think perhaps the fact that the regent was an ecclesiastic was supposed to signify that he was trustworthy and above politics, but I've read Dumas so I took it as given that he was a Richelieu-type and wasted a lot of time attempting to discern evidence of ulterior motives. (To be fair, my view of him wasn't helped by the bit where he tries to keep a lid on the situation by threatening to have someone arrested and imprisoned for a treasonous act he knows she didn't do.)
In the absence of the prince-bishop developing villainous tendencies, the book feels a bit short-staffed in the villain department. The nobleman who's actually behind the plot is only ever glimpsed from a distance and has no lines, and there are a few confrontations with the necromancer doing the heavy lifting but we don't get much sense of her as a person. In a way, though, the defeat of the villains is not really the point, so much as how the protagonists choose to deal with the consequences, intended and unintended, of their initial actions.
#12: A book told from a different kind of POV from the previous book
After that, it seemed obvious that it was time for another re-read of:
A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer. As the nineteenth century is giving way to the twentieth, the heir to a duchy is sent to a magical boarding school and finds herself entrusted with a task on which the fate of the world depends.
This is undoubtedly my favourite of Stevermer's solo novels (if we allow collaborations, it has competition from Sorcery and Cecelia). One of the key reasons, as I was reminded almost immediately on starting to re-read it, is its sense of humour. It's constantly amusing and full of banter, without undermining the seriousness of the adventure.
#13: A book with a page count within 100 pages of previous book
April: Ordinal Numbers
First attempt: The Last Coin by James P Blaylock. A man is trying to track down and acquire the thirty silver coins with which Judas Iscariot was paid, to use for sinister occult purposes. At some point, presumably, one of the other characters is going to figure out what he's up to and stop him.
There can be a tricky balance, starting out a story like this. If you don't explain enough up front, you risk the reader getting lost. If you explain more, you risk the reader deciding that he knows enough about what's going on that he's in no suspense about how it's going to end, and that he doesn't care enough about any of the characters to stick it out for the sake of learning the details. And either way, you risk the reader finding that it's not as funny as the author thought it was.
I found myself on ambiguous ground again: although 1066 and All That is usually regarded as a standalone work, its authors followed it up with And Now All This, written in similar style but not precisely a sequel. I opted for a book where the answer to "how many other books in the same series" is also "probably none"; it shares a setting with another of the author's novels, but takes place centuries earlier and has no plot ties. (It was also on the shortlist for the "Keyboard Keys" challenge prompt, but I wasn't in the mood for it at the time.)
When the King Comes Home by Caroline Stevermer. An apprentice artist stumbles onto a plot to bring a legendary king back from the dead as a puppet for an overthrow of the current regime.
I've been meaning to get around to reading this for years, and the book I'd built in my head out of the few things I'd heard about the plot wasn't quite what the real book turns out to be, though the real book is at least as good. A College of Magics, Stevermer's other novel featuring the same kingdom, is an old favourite, though I last re-read it over a decade ago, so my existing knowledge ended up being more distracting than useful; I might have had an easier time of figuring out the worldbuilding without being interrupted by trying to fit in details from the other book that I remembered only vaguely and not always correctly.
I also had a bit of trouble because I spent most of the book waiting for a plot twist that never came. Part of the set-up is that the current king has been on his last legs for ages and everyone knows that the real power in the kingdom is the senior churchman who rules in his name; in retrospect I think perhaps the fact that the regent was an ecclesiastic was supposed to signify that he was trustworthy and above politics, but I've read Dumas so I took it as given that he was a Richelieu-type and wasted a lot of time attempting to discern evidence of ulterior motives. (To be fair, my view of him wasn't helped by the bit where he tries to keep a lid on the situation by threatening to have someone arrested and imprisoned for a treasonous act he knows she didn't do.)
In the absence of the prince-bishop developing villainous tendencies, the book feels a bit short-staffed in the villain department. The nobleman who's actually behind the plot is only ever glimpsed from a distance and has no lines, and there are a few confrontations with the necromancer doing the heavy lifting but we don't get much sense of her as a person. In a way, though, the defeat of the villains is not really the point, so much as how the protagonists choose to deal with the consequences, intended and unintended, of their initial actions.
#12: A book told from a different kind of POV from the previous book
After that, it seemed obvious that it was time for another re-read of:
A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer. As the nineteenth century is giving way to the twentieth, the heir to a duchy is sent to a magical boarding school and finds herself entrusted with a task on which the fate of the world depends.
This is undoubtedly my favourite of Stevermer's solo novels (if we allow collaborations, it has competition from Sorcery and Cecelia). One of the key reasons, as I was reminded almost immediately on starting to re-read it, is its sense of humour. It's constantly amusing and full of banter, without undermining the seriousness of the adventure.
#13: A book with a page count within 100 pages of previous book
April: Ordinal Numbers
First attempt: The Last Coin by James P Blaylock. A man is trying to track down and acquire the thirty silver coins with which Judas Iscariot was paid, to use for sinister occult purposes. At some point, presumably, one of the other characters is going to figure out what he's up to and stop him.
There can be a tricky balance, starting out a story like this. If you don't explain enough up front, you risk the reader getting lost. If you explain more, you risk the reader deciding that he knows enough about what's going on that he's in no suspense about how it's going to end, and that he doesn't care enough about any of the characters to stick it out for the sake of learning the details. And either way, you risk the reader finding that it's not as funny as the author thought it was.
