Already posted on my LJ. Thought I’d repost it here so it looks all official:

I’m at Wiscon with all the peeps (Kelly, Gwenda, Christopher, Gavin, Richard, Barb, etc. etc. etc.) and I have lots to write about and pix to share (whenever I can get beyond lazy and upload them), but I really want to talk about Nicola Griffith’s Always. And not just because I got to meet Nicola and her partner, the talented Kelly Eskridge, yesterday (and was totally starstruck stupid) but because I finished it the day before we got on the plane and was completely knocked on my ass.

[spoilers ahead! for The Blue Place and Stay]
First of all, you really need to read The Blue Place and Stay to get to Always not simply because they’re the books that come first. These books, although they contain fascinating, complex plots and stories, are really all about Aud (rhymes with cloud) Torvingen, the filthy rich daughter of a Norwegian diplomat (to the UK) who lives in Atlanta, is an ex-cop and has a world-view different from just about any other character I’ve ever read. Like any good strong character, Aud doesn’t give much of herself away, so you’ll need all of the information you can get, which is why I recommend reading the first two books before you take on Always.

What’s most striking about Aud is her relationship to violence. For Aud violence is a tool, a fact of life, and a potentiality underlying all human interaction always waiting to manifest itself. And Aud is not afraid of or particularly remorseful about using that tool when it suits her purposes — not always in self-defense. It’s refreshing, particularly when so much fiction (particularly involving strong women) seems to be so squeamish or at least highly ambivalent about it — glorying in it one moment only to whine about it later. Or worse, to apologize.

I have to admit that I was a bit worried about Always. Series tend to either get better or worse and Aud was in a particularly difficult place after Stay. Stay seemed to be more about Aud putting herself back together after Julia’s death at the end of The Blue Place and I have to admit that I actually ended up getting impatient with the complex plot, looking for more of Aud’s internal struggle. Then again, Aud is a woman of action and the satisfaction of destroying a predator was much more therapeutic for our hero(ine) than years/pages of introspection.

Maybe that’s why I found Always to be so compelling and ultimately satisfying. Because it’s fucking Aud all the way — she’s back! Yes, there’s the usual intricate plotting complete with parallel (in space not in time) story lines one involving Seattle real estate and an indie production company and the other that delves into the events around a self-defense class Aud taught in Atlanta, but I read these books for Aud and she’s back to her old, terrifyingly cool and competent self. Aud is so much more than the “noir hero” praised by the critics. She’s fascinating and complex and fleshed out in so many dimensions you’d need a dozen string theories to describe them all. Cool and calculating, constantly assessing her environment with the mind of someone used to power and violence, she’s also capable of deep, conflicting, and potentially debilitating emotion. In other words, unlike so many superheroes, she’s not infallible. Aud can read the body down to subtleties of scent and pupil size for signs of weakness or violent intent, she can take down a skilled attacker twice her own body weight, but she is utterly helpless and defenseless in the complicated realm of emotion relying (and sometimes stumbling over) her few (or one) trusted friends and family to help guide her through.

Okay, enough of my gushing about Aud (did I mention that she’s a gorgeous, icy, six foot tall blonde goddess of war?), I also wanted to gush a bit about the writing. This is one of those books/series in which everything comes together miraculously. Nicola Griffith’s spare, efficient prose with its clean lines is the perfect literary complement to Aud. It’s as if her sentences are Aud’s very DNA — it’s Aud from the dual story lines working their parallel ways to their climax all the way down to the carefully chosen words and phrases stripped of any unnecessary clutter. It all works together seamlessly to completely knock you out — and you didn’t even see it coming. Of course.

Literary gushing aside, this is one of those books that will toss you out of your comfortable head space in the best way possible. I find myself thinking about scenes from Always at the oddest times and wondering how Aud would view particular situations and not simply the most obvious moments of danger. I pay more attention to the subtleties of human interaction and, more importantly, my own body. Aud (and Nicola) are telling us more than a story about real estate and even more than a love story. It’s about a completely different understanding of the way the world works and how we’ve been shaped by it. How our reactions and actions are pre-programmed into us by a system that has anything but our best interests in mind. It’s something I thought I understood in a conscious way, but Nicola somehow through words and paper makes me understand it viscerally. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this book left me feeling like I’d been tagged by a right hook from Aud herself — seeing stars and looking at the world with eyes wide open, ready for more.