The most awesome thing about travelling, aside from the destinations tending to be filled with people that make me happy (because, apparently I am a traveller for visits vastly more than I am a traveller to see new things; I don’t think of that as a bad thing, because while I may eventually fail to see the world (but I may not! it remains to be seen (ha! I just got that)), I’m also pretty much guaranteed that every trip will be a good trip; but I digress), is that it leaves me with far more time to read than I have in my normal life. Mostly while sitting around in airports and on airplanes at way too early in the morning, it must be admitted, so I also use some of that time to sleep. Nevertheless, between long works hours, good things on TV, and moving (mostly moving, and I am so very, very ready to be done, I can tell you), I’m left with only wee amounts of time to read, usually at lunch or right before falling asleep. So that airport time is pretty awesome indeed.

As a result, I’ve already finished another, albeit short, book. It’s by Stephen Brust, so you’d think it would be Dzur, but I keep forgetting to look for it in the used bookstore, and I frankly have too many books in my pile to justify buying it new right now. (That’s probably not true, and I bet that as soon as I remember to go to Amazon and snag Lisey’s Story, I’ll get Dzur too. Or I could go back and reread the rest of that series first, but that seems unlikely right now too. So. It is a quandary. And man, can I not stay focussed today. My employer must be thrilled.) Anyway, what it actually is is Agyar.

It’s interesting. The eponymous John Agyar is writing the story out on a typewriter just for the sake of writing it. He has no particular audience when he starts, although he occasionally acquires one; mostly the ghost with whom he shares his house, an ex-slave named Jim. (I spent a fair amount of time wondering, incidentally, whether I’m meant to believe we’re referring to Huckleberry Finn’s Jim, here. Ultimately, I could not decide either way.) He is chronicling his short-term stay in suburban Collegiate-Anywhere, Ohio just for the sake of doing so. It’s not that he’s an unreliable narrator so much as that he doesn’t present information that he takes for granted, only information that is novel or exciting to himself. I don’t think I’m going too far, therefore, to say that there’s a fair amount of information that is left for the reader to unravel from context.

So, that’s how the story is presented. As for what it’s about? It’s a combination of murder mystery, love story, and study of unhealthy power relationships. Nearly every character is in some way despicable, and nearly every character has the hope of and chance for redemption. So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s populated by, y’know, actual people. Which is not as common as it could be in the fantasy/sci-fi section of any given bookstore. Plus, the story was interesting and the prose quite good, which is not as common as it could be in the general fiction section of any given bookstore. My point here is ‘yay’.