I enjoyed and admired this book. Without any academic snarkiness, Glyer thoroughly dismantles Humphrey Carpenter's assurance in his 1978 work on the Inklings that they had little or no influence on one another. All the odder as he furnishes the book with a fictional Inklings evening, demonstrating that they did. Perhaps the question is in how one defines 'influence.'

Anyway, Glyer's scholarship is vast. She hasn't just read all the Inklings's work (including their small press zines published for fun, like Lewis and Barfield's mock legal "papers" Mark Vs Tristram, after the furor about Mallory's somewhat louche, definitely violent biographical details* came to light, she's read widely about writing process. I saw Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence referenced, and she draws heavily on current process scholarship, specifically Karen Burke LeFevre's Invention as a Social Act. (Which I have not read, but have added to the Gigantic List.)

It's a remarkable achievement that a book so crampacked with rigorous scholarship (20 pages of tiny print for Works Cited alone, and an Index that serves as a model of how Indices should be done) is so clear and even charmingly written. Though I like Lewis and Tolkien's work I am not all that fond of the works of the rest of the Inklings, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I think it's the best on the subject yet, and that by a sizable margin.

The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, by Lois McMaster Bujold, is by a deservedly author popular everywhere. It came out last year, was of course reviewed everywhere, so I don't think I need to run down the plot, just impressions. I enjoy all her work--some more than others, which is generally the case with any author. I do have to say that I love the Miles books better than the fantasies so far, but that doesn't mean I did not enjoy the fantasies. This is a new world, quieter in tone and drive than the Miles books. Again, as in her first fantasy, we've got an older, heart-and-body wounded fellow as yin, but his yang is charming, young, bright in all meanings of the word. The realities of human life and the goshwow layers of world building (and no doubt crises to come) are highlighed with Bujoldian gracenotes: everyday humor thoroughly grounding flights of heroism, angst that never whines, grief that does not overwhelm the story, but reminds you that outside the firelight and the merry dancing, dark things do prowl.

This is the second of Bujold's new fantasy series, which began with The Sharing Knife: Beguilement. I do think that, while readers could probably pick up on the story, it would be far, far better to read Beguilement first. This book picks up hours after the last one ended. (I believe she wrote it to be one story, and the publishers split it to make more bux.) Because it opens from that point, anything I say about the story would be spoilerific, so what I will talk about is my reading experience. I love this story. Bujold has a knack for giving the reader an unlikely pair for hero and heroine--in this case a battle-hardened, grief-scarred man in his fifties, and an eighteen year old girl. But this heroines is no simpering flower: she's smart, capable, full of energy and knows her own mind. She's emotionally balanced--probably more than he is. She also has a vast curiosity about how the world works: she would never have been happy settling down to wifedom on the farm, though she would have done her duty without martyrdom, because she also finds satisfaction in the work of her hands, no matter how humble, and the people around her. But she's capable of more, and Dag seems the one to give her the world.

In this story, Bujold widens the lens on how this fascinating world works. She does not just give us terrifying monsters in order to keep the plot zippy, she hints at layers and depths below, or behind, those monsters, raising more and more questions about the development of history and culture, about how its magic works. About everything. And because it's Bujold, we know that future stories will depend on all these tantalizing hints, as the stakes build, the questions become more important.

Meanwhile the characterization is complex and involving, and overall there is that nifty, hard-to-define humor that I believe springs from a sense of grace. Terrible things can, and do, happen in Bujold's books, but they are never mean books. Compassion, sorrow, hard-won wisdom, infuse the humor with a lingering depth so that I spend days after I finish one of her books thinking it over, then retrieving it to reread passages. Like all her books, this isn't YA--or, could be read by anyone who doesn't mind the introduction of sex into a story--and questions of love, and how attraction can mess up adults' lives.

School of Fortune by Amanda Brown and Janice Weber is a complete change of pace. I am a sucker for funny romances, and have a weakness for rich protagonists. But I like it even bettter when stuck-up rich people get the quill stuck into their supposed superiority--and especially when the whole is done with a charming, witty voice, an exact eye, and a sense of grace and compassion. Mean funny is easier to do than sympathetic funny; these authors achieve the second one as they follow the adventures of Pippa Walker, daughter of the Texas Walker millions, who is slated in the Wedding of the Century to marry Lance Henderson and his family's Texas millions. But, despite the two potential mothers-in-law trying to out-general one another like Patton and Eisenhower, when the two finally get to the altar . . . well, let's just say that Pippa is soon out trying to go to school. She has to prove she can get a degree-any degree. She begins with traffic school, which turns out to be an utter disaster, no fault of her own, and after some rather more half-baked ideas, ends up at the Mountbatten-Savoy School of Household Management. Where, for what seemed perfectly good reasons at the time, she's in drag. Only . . . the guy she noticed on some of her earlier misadventures is there, as a valet. And some of her earlier family disasters show up like ghosts at the banquet...

I just loved this book. It's not a YA, for those who are particular about such issues. Sex is never graphic, but dealt with in (what I find) a charmingly casual way, and so at times is language, so this one might not be to the taste of more conservative readers, but otherwise, it's a delightful, chuckle-making summer read.

Goblin Hero, by Jim C. Hines: Okay, so there's a call out for a great hero to come and do some vastly needed heroic deed-work. What have you got? A runty goblin named Jig . . . A big, bone-headed goblin named Braf . . . A whiny goblin who wants to be a hero, even if she has to kill the runt to take his place . . . A wizened, crabby, nasty old goblin named Grell, who wields a mean crutch. . . and assorted hobgoblins, ogres, dragons, snakes, and other monsters--all of whom share one growing fear: the pixies.

Jig just wants to be left alone. Everyone else has motives for going on this quest that are not even remotely related to Right, Truth, the Path of Peace, or even Rank & Riches. Yet they have to band together, figure out how to cooperate despite their reasonable instincts to run, fight dirty, and betray everyone in sight when faced with danger. Hines crams the narrative with great visual and verbal jokes. If your Inner Kid still likes physical humor and gross stuff, you'll be laughing out loud as frequently as I did. But Hines doesn't confine himself to setting the characters up for bodily fluids splats, pratfalls, and nostril-probing expeditions. Such fantasy tends to run real thin even for hardcore cases (like most of my eighth graders) who never tire of fart jokes. Hines skillfully makes these characters sympathetic by getting inside their heads and then staying true to their paradigm. In their world, they are right, and reasonable. They are quite aware that handsome human adventurers want to kill them on sight, high and puissant types like elves utterly despise them, and everyone else is after their chitlins, and not in a good way. Hines makes us like the characters, so their stakes feel real. They matter to us. The stakes get spidier as the doughty adventurers discover what's behind all the mysterious killings, and the tension ratchets up. That's not easily done in funny fantasy. Hines manages it with skill and panache. Without forgetting his nose pick. Rumor has it there'll be a third Jig adventure. I sure hope so--I closed this book hoping for more visits from Jig and his world.