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rushthatspeaksI don't remember the first time I read James Schmitz's marvelous The Witches of Karres, because I must have been very young. It was one of the books I grew up with, one of the ones my father considered good for any age (and he was quite right).
My father also had a collection of Schmitz's Telzey Amberdon stories, mostly featuring a giant telepathic invisible cat. I read them, of course, and I could tell they weren't as good, but I also couldn't tell whether it was just that I was too young. It might have been the stories or it might have been me.
So I got this volume, which is short stories all set in the same universe and either featuring Telzey Amberdon, who is a very powerful psychic, and/or Trigger Argee, who shoots things. It was definitely the stories, not me; these are--
hm. They're not terrible. One thing they do very well is that they are about women kicking ass in a nonsexualized manner. Both Telzey and Trigger are competent, intelligent, professional, and not afflicted with obligatory love interests. The society they live in is genuinely egalitarian, and it's really enjoyable to watch that.
But I just was never quite grabbed as much as I wanted to be, maybe because this genre, the adventure-thriller, is not my primary love. These stories feature everything from corporate espionage to beings from another galaxy, with plenty of fast-moving action and color, a sense of humor, solid background worldbuilding, and a real sense of variation between plots; Schmitz is not content merely to repeat himself, and these stories vary in type as well as in surface detail. You get things like a sudden clone of a major character, or a tree that is trying to take over the universe. I just-- can't like them as much as on some level I feel they might even deserve. They register in my brain as mildly fun.
If you read James Bond novels, or Modesty Blaise, or that sort of thing, you probably would like these a lot. (![[personal profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija, I am looking at you.) But there's a particular kind of psychological weight that I like in a character, which Schmitz is not interested in doing here (and does not have to be, for the genre he's working in) and the genre is not of sufficient inherent interest to me for me not to find that a problem.
I gather there are four collected volumes of short stories set in this universe, of which the first, Telzey-centered, is probably much of what I had as a kid, and the two after this are more about Trigger; so if you're looking for stories about telepathic chicanery, you want this or the first, and if you want more physical action-adventure, you want this or the later two.
This is where I insert my obligatory mourning about the accidental destruction of the manuscript for the Karres sequel. I hear there's a licensed-by-others one out now written by, as well as about three other people, Mercedes Lackey. The mind boggles. And also winces.
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My father also had a collection of Schmitz's Telzey Amberdon stories, mostly featuring a giant telepathic invisible cat. I read them, of course, and I could tell they weren't as good, but I also couldn't tell whether it was just that I was too young. It might have been the stories or it might have been me.
So I got this volume, which is short stories all set in the same universe and either featuring Telzey Amberdon, who is a very powerful psychic, and/or Trigger Argee, who shoots things. It was definitely the stories, not me; these are--
hm. They're not terrible. One thing they do very well is that they are about women kicking ass in a nonsexualized manner. Both Telzey and Trigger are competent, intelligent, professional, and not afflicted with obligatory love interests. The society they live in is genuinely egalitarian, and it's really enjoyable to watch that.
But I just was never quite grabbed as much as I wanted to be, maybe because this genre, the adventure-thriller, is not my primary love. These stories feature everything from corporate espionage to beings from another galaxy, with plenty of fast-moving action and color, a sense of humor, solid background worldbuilding, and a real sense of variation between plots; Schmitz is not content merely to repeat himself, and these stories vary in type as well as in surface detail. You get things like a sudden clone of a major character, or a tree that is trying to take over the universe. I just-- can't like them as much as on some level I feel they might even deserve. They register in my brain as mildly fun.
If you read James Bond novels, or Modesty Blaise, or that sort of thing, you probably would like these a lot. (
rachelmanija, I am looking at you.) But there's a particular kind of psychological weight that I like in a character, which Schmitz is not interested in doing here (and does not have to be, for the genre he's working in) and the genre is not of sufficient inherent interest to me for me not to find that a problem.I gather there are four collected volumes of short stories set in this universe, of which the first, Telzey-centered, is probably much of what I had as a kid, and the two after this are more about Trigger; so if you're looking for stories about telepathic chicanery, you want this or the first, and if you want more physical action-adventure, you want this or the later two.
This is where I insert my obligatory mourning about the accidental destruction of the manuscript for the Karres sequel. I hear there's a licensed-by-others one out now written by, as well as about three other people, Mercedes Lackey. The mind boggles. And also winces.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
