Reading Wednesday: Chronicles of the Kencyrath 8 & 9

All right, I'm taking a break from the Dublin trip to report on a pair of books I read earlier, when we took a short trip to Cape Cod.

I've been following Chronicles of the Kencyrath for literally more than 40 years, ever since I read God Stalk when I was an undergrad at University of Virginia. Author P.C. Hodgell had a run of astonishingly bad luck early in the series, when she had two publishers shot out from under her within a couple of years. Baen Books acquired the series maybe 10 years ago. Although I am grateful to them for rescuing the series from oblivion and allowing Hodgell to continue to publish them, volumes 4 onward have what I consider Baen's signature flaws: lack of decent substantive editing (Hodgell infodumps rather terrifyingly from time to time) and hideous covers. The protagonist, Jamethiel, is constantly described as a skinny girl who is frequently mistaken for a boy, and she is also supposed to be in her late teens in appearance, yet cover after cover showed her as a buxom, hardened woman in her late twenties or early thirties.

I would pay good money for a portrait of Jame as described, because she is one of my favorite characters.

Anyway, Baen seems to be starting to listen to the complaints about the covers, because these two volumes' covers aren't so bad.

I thought I had read The Gates of Tagmeth earlier, but when I started By Demons Possessed, I realized that I had NO IDEA what was going on. Luckily I had both on my Kindle. Looking at my tags here, I find that I reviewed Gates two years ago. And I was unenthusiastic about it then, but I'm still kind of shocked that I had so little memory of it.

( Cut for actual review/discussion, because at this point, it's pretty tough to discuss Jame's story without massive spoilers for the first couple of books. And I include some spoilers for the current books as well. )

The original series info said that the next volume (as yet to be named, I think) was going to be the last ... but I talked to Hodgell in person at Worldcon, and maybe the next book won't be the last! And also we will have more Grimly, which is always a good thing.