Changing Vision

Just finished Changing Vision, the second book in Julie Czerneda's Web Shifters trilogy, as part of my campaign to clear multiple novels by the same author off my To Read Shelf. Picoreview: tight, cohesive story as always with Ms. Czerneda, and I am reminded once again that I do love her portrayals of her alien races. The Iftsen were particularly amusing.

I might have suffered a bit for it being so long since I read the first of this trilogy, Beholder's Eye, though. Mostly what I remembered from the first book was that the protagonist, Esen-alit-Quar, was an alien shapeshifter who established a deep friendship with the human Paul Ragem, and that they had no trace of romantic inclination. This holds true in the second book, which brings out several fun details that round out this universe of Ms. Czerneda's nicely.

For example, this book takes place 50 years after the first one does, and yet, Paul is still a vital, energetic man. Not precisely youthful, but not old either. He comes across as a man in his late thirties or forties, perhaps. And it's interesting to see that Ms. Czerneda's Humans clearly have longer lifespans, which reminds me of the Dunedain in Tolkien. ^^ From Paul's description (black-haired, gray-eyed), I could almost see dark-haired Viggo Mortensen playing him. I also liked that Paul is described as having established a family in the time since the first book--he's married and had children grow up by the time of this second novel.

However, there's no trace of his family on camera in the plot. His wife is a spacer, and apparently his children have become spacers as well. This is a point that intrigues me, because I have been wondering what this implies about what will happen with Paul's and Esen's relationship in the third book. Esen spends most of her time in non-Human forms in the story (and the forms she assumes are all beautifully described; I really love Ms. Czerneda's ability to come up with unique alien species), but a couple of times she does actually shift into Human form--and it turns out that while she is several hundred years older than Paul chronologically, if you go by relative ages she's actually much younger by her species' standards than he is. So when she takes on Human form, she's actually a kid, roughly 12 years old. And yet, she decides by the end of the book to start taking on Human form more often, because that form is special to Paul.

The third book, from what I've seen of Amazon reader comments, says Esen will be coming of age in that story. Which ought to have interesting effects if she goes into Human form at all. I'm not sure how I feel about this--half of me, the incurable romantic, really wants to see Paul and Esen's relationship take on love, and the other half of me, the half that thrives on things like the platonic relationship of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, is already protesting that Esen and Paul have a richly defined relationship already. I do trust Ms. Czerneda to handle it well either way, so I shall have to simply see what happens.

As for the plot in this book, aside from the Esen-Paul mileage: pretty tight plot all around, though some of the underlying details didn't quite come together for me, things involving why Paul and Esen left their comfortable refuge on a Fringe world in the first place and got themselves embroiled in a serious diplomatic dispute between two other species. I am not sure whether this was a result of the writing or me just not piecing stuff together well enough--there are a lot of details there about what Paul and people connected to him are doing behind the scenes, and they do start to come together at the end, but I feel a bit slow on the uptake processing it all. It might work better for me on a second read, where I can pay better attention to those details.

I also liked that the obsessive captain chasing after Esen through most of the book is not just an obsessive madman; Kearn has good, noble qualities that actually do come out in a crisis, which makes him a much more interesting character. His second-in-command Lefebvre, who has personal connections to Paul, is the same for different reasons. The one character who can be called a real villain of the story actually gets less camera time than either of them, and he's more of a stock madman type character; we never get into his head, so he makes less of an impact. And he's one of those details not quite coming together well enough for me.

I'll definitely read the third book, though. While this isn't up to the level of the superior A Thousand Words for Stranger, still an excellent read. ^^