Family Tree is the only thing I’ve read by Barbara Delinksy. It caught my eye at the bookshop, and I borrowed it to have something to read on the bus. I didn’t expect much from it, and it delivered. The plot is one that has been cropping up in a lot of mass market fiction these days: white people discover they have African-American ancestors and all hell breaks loose. Much depends on the characters in these books, and in this one, the characters are very two-dimensional. Sensitive white liberal wife from humble roots embraces the possibility of a black ancestor; well-intentioned husband struggles with elitist and latently racist family norms in an effort to accept her and their obviously multiracial newborn, and then…plot twist! It’s the husband whose grandfather was black! Except that it’s an entirely obvious development, and not twisty at all.

I suspect I might have liked the novel better had it been written by a black person, as the author might then have chosen to omit various educational dialogues wherein the wife explains to the husband that he’s a hypocrite if he champions the rights of people of color in his professional life and then shuns their acquaintanceships socially (for example). The book would also have been better without the heavy-handed symbolism in the doll-playing of the biracial little girl next door or the periodic use of ‘African American’ as a noun, rather than as an adjective, which grated on me to no end.

Basically, if you’re a well-meaning white person who’s never considered the complex history of race in the United States, the myths we tell about it, the open secrets and interrelationships that constitute our cultural history, or the possibility that social hierarchies are categorically suspect, this book is for you! Otherwise, give it a miss and read some Nella Larsen.

Like many people this side of the Atlantic, I discovered Philippa Gregory when The Other Boleyn Girl came out in trade paperback. I enjoyed it greatly, and have since read almost everything that’s available over here (the whole Tudor-era series, the Tradescant duology, and the totally trashy Wideacre trilogy). While I still become totally engrossed in them, I haven’t enjoyed her most recent books as much as the first two in the series (The Other Boleyn Girl, and The Queen’s Fool). As she’s written more, she’s moved from the style of those first ones — where the best-known historical figures are at the sidelines of the main action — to a more simple retelling of the well-known stories of the wives of Henry VIII, and of Elizabeth I. Frankly, I didn’t find that as interesting, but I’m sure the fact that I know that history quite well contributed.

Gregory’s prose, however, is certainly enjoyable, and I have always found her books easy to read. This latest volume expands upon two main themes introduced in earlier books: (1) Henry VIII was frightfully mentally ill, and (2) all the women in the Tudor court were total tramps. If either of these propositions is a stunning shock, I apologize for the spoiler. I figure it’s hard to spoil the ending of historical fiction, though — I mean, we all know who got beheaded and who didn’t.

All in all, I’d rank The Boleyn Inheritance at the bottom of this series, behind the two gardener books (which I’d rank between The Queen’s Fool and The Virgin’s Lover in quality), but still above the totally trashy Wideacre trilogy. I can’t imagine that any of her books are worse than the totally trashy Wideacre trilogy, but I still haven’t read A Respectable Trade, so I can’t say for sure.

Un Lun Dun, the latest novel by China Miéville is lovely. Beyond enjoying the story, which I did, I am completely enamored of the useful illustrations. Not all of us can stand ready at any moment to pull up an image of, for example, a variety of mouthless beings. Thanks to the wee drawings, I don’t have to. The images also allow us to peek at another manifestation of Miéville’s rich imagination. I can just see him hunched over a notebook sketching away, and that image warms the cockles of my heart.

With the discussions around this book, it’s also been amusing to me to learn that he can’t seem to help himself with regard to including monsters, in both the narrative and the illustrations (note the venus flytrap in the above drawing). As with his adult novels, several of the imagined creatures endeared themselves to me through their connection to things I love: notably, the explorer and Skool, with their respective links to songbirds and the ocean. Others of the monsters were downright disturbing, although to a student of horror and sci fi, variations on undead creatures are par for the course. I find them creepy, and it’s a testament to Miéville’s writing that he manages to keep them so even in a young adult novel.

Monsters aside, if that’s possible, I enjoyed the book immensely. In the beginning, I found it hard to avoid mental comparisons to other books involving young protagonists, alternate worlds, and quests to be completed before one could return home; I got over that and got hooked on the narrative itself very soon into it. Un Lun Dun compares favorably to earlier works, and is endearingly modern in its sensibility, but I’m an adult now: it will never be the defining such narrative for me.

And, I had only a momentary disappointment that the tall blonde was not in fact going to be the one to save the day. I was kind of a sidekick myself, you see.

On Friday, I took a break from the other novels I’m reading and whizzed through C. J. Cherryh‘s Deliverer, the latest in her Foreigner series. This is the only series of hers I’ve read, as I was drawn to the first contact elements. I know there are other series of hers that include aliens, I just have them mentally categorized as space war books, which doesn’t at all appeal to me. I still think of these books as first contact books, despite the fighting and chasing that is the major plot model, as that’s pretty much the only type of science fiction that includes space travel and aliens that I enjoy reading. The distinction between the books I enjoy and others involving space travel and aliens tends to be the sociological or anthropological slant, rather than the ‘I chase your spaceship with my spaceship and shoot guns at you’ storyline, and by sheer numbers of pages devoted to one over the other, this series still tilts my way. It’s not the best example of this sub-genre, though: my favorite books of this kind remain the Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia Butler, The Color of Distance by Amy Thompson, and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, all of which are excellent at imagining and conveying the experience of first contact.

In the beginning, Cherryh’s series seemed more like those. Sadly, it doesn’t anymore. I am still invested in the characters, and curious about the plot development (such as it is), but I have to confess that I skip large chunks of the narrative as I go along (here is where academic reading skills come in handy). My train of thought goes something like: ‘woe is Bren, blah blah, scary is the world, blah blah, enemies are everywhere and the weight of the world is on my shoulders, blah blah, now is when we ride the mecheiti at breakneck speed through the wilderness, now is when we try to kill the bad guys in the dark, here is where the goodies prevail, oh look, the book’s over.’ In terms of plot movement, I think she’s now managed to stretch the events of a week (two weeks? three weeks at most…) over the course of three books. Movement at this pace leaves many pages free for Bren’s mental problems, er, worrying. In 1994, the idea that a male protagonist could be introspective and concerned about flubbing things up royally was endearing and somewhat different than usual. Now, in the 21st century, we’re confronted by whiny, insecure men at every turn, and it’s really not that interesting anymore (not that it ever was all that interesting outside of science fiction).

Don’t get me wrong: I’ll keep reading the series (and hope that the next three-book-arc gets us back into space). The dragging is not bugging me anywhere near the level that the second series of Brin’s Uplift books eventually did (and the first three were so good), leading me to abandon that series in disgust. The books just seem to be getting lighter and more formulaic as she goes along, which is a shame, as the world she’s built retains potential.