Sing the Warmth by Louse Marley

Finished:  Sometime in March
Pages:  xx

ABC Books and Comics closed for good in January of this year.  RIP ABC.   They had the best SF and fantasy selection of any bookstore I have ever visited, anywhere, any time.  And yes, it was better than any of the specialist SF bookstores that I've ever had the fortune to visit too.  But when their lease was up their landlord decided to more than double the rent, and ABC was no more.

I restrained myself, and only bought a few armloads of books during the sell-off,  mostly buying books by authors I'd read before.  The whole process was kind of random, so I'm never sure what I'm going to find when I visit the bookshelves that I filled with my plunder.

Which is how I came to read "Sing the Warmth".  I'd previously read  Marley's "The Maquisarde", and while it wasn't a stunningly good book it was interesting enough that I thought I'd try some more.  But what I didn't notice is was that I'd purchased books 1 and 2 of a trilogy, and that this was book 2.

Book 2 of any trilogy is problematic.  Book 1 is the introduction.  It introduces the characters, sets up the conflict, and launches the plot.  Book 3 concludes the story.  Book 2....is all of that stuff in the middle.  If you're going to read ONLY book 2, you have to take a Zen approach....I see and appreciate the slice of life in front of me.  Be here now.  Don't regret the past, and don't anticipate the future.  Live in the now.

Apparently the trilogy is about cultural change in a closed medieval society whose very existence is made possible by the talents of a caste of telekinetic singers who protect the human population of the planet from its extreme climate.    Or so I gathered from the slice of story I had.  How the story began....how the story ends...  Well, I could make a pretty good guess in both cases.  The plot line wasn't stunningly original.  But it was reasonably well told, except for a fundamental flaw.  The ECOLOGY OF THE PLANET MADE NO SENSE!!!!  Whew, had to get that off my chest.  I could be generous and assume that either the beginning or the end of the story explained how it was possible that native plants and animals survived a year with a 1 year summer and a 4 year-long fierce and snowy winter, and why it was that hunger and food shortages never seemed to be a problem for the non-native human population.  Or I could be irked that the author wasn't clever enough to see this gaping hole in the story she was trying to tell.

Ommmm.....Oooommmm...Nope.  I'm not that good at Zen.  I'm afraid that I mentally picked door number 2.  :-)