October Book Report
Oct. 31st, 2013 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kIt is Halloween, and as such I am in my bedroom with the lights off, snuggled under a duvet, cunningly in costume as a woman who is not at home. Bah Humbug. Hurrah.
So, book report time. I haven't read much this month, and I don't expect to read much next month either, as I will be participating in my own half-arsed version of NaNo, which is writing at least a little something every day. I usually crap out on or around November 3rd, but I really need to crack on with my![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
femslashex fic (I'm writing one of those pairings that I like in theory; lots of people seem to like it in theory, but I'm guessing the reason there's no extant fics for them is that it's really fucking hard to make work on paper) and I've other ideas that I've forbidden myself from working on until I get this dratted femslash fic in hand. So, hopefully...?
The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes
Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey
Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein
Lunatic Fringe - Allison Moon
I had actual, proper nightmares after reading The Shining Girls. Not that this is unusual, I am squeamish as fuck, but it's usually visual things that trigger them, I am much more sanguine about the written word and books almost never freak me out the same way. But, yes, proper waking up a in cold sweat nightmares after finishing this.
It's about this horrible man called Harper Curtis (well, sort of, mostly it's about the victim who got away and becomes obsessed with catching him; it's equal parts thriller, science fiction, and revenge fantasy) who discovers a house that opens onto different times and he travels through the 20th century murdering what he calls his shining girls, snuffing out their lives before they can fulfil their potential. The murders themselves were awful (hence the nightmares) but they didn't feel sexualised or prurient in the way that a lot of thrillers with male killers and female victims do to me. I also liked (well, perhaps liked is the wrong world) the sheer variety of women that Harper targets, lesbians and transexuals and older women, that's it not all twenty something blonde co-eds. In fact, I think the fact that I approached this as a sci-fi/fantasy novel rather than a thriller is why I enjoyed it more than a lot of reviewers did. It didn't bother me that the house was never really explained, because if you read a lot of genre fiction, well, of course there's a time travelling house, sometimes there just is.
That's me finished the Kushiel books, a series that I had to be slightly talked into reading, but I'm really, really glad I did. I've had a slightly non-great year, and I've hidden from many an oncoming panic attack in fantasy alternative queer France. So, yay.
I have to go with the majority here, and say that I found the Moirin trilogy the weakest of the three. Actually, having come to the end I have to say that I find the biggest problem with the final trilogy to be that it was a trilogy. There's enough material there for one, or maybe two slightly shorter books, but Carey seems to have locked herself into the trilogy format, which means you end up with a book like Naamah's Curse which, despite the fact that I read it about a month ago my brain has already erased and replaced with the summary: Moirin takes a ridiculously forced road trip around the Asian subcontinent, annoying me as she bores me.
Butkmo was right that Naamah's Blessing is at least as good as anything in the Imriel trilogy, and I was delighted to see this series that I've enjoyed so much end on a high note, but I'm also okay with Carey not revisiting the world of Terre d'Ange unless she's very seriously struck by inspiration.
One tiny niggle, even by the end I was still finding myself shipping Moirin/Jehanne more than Moirin/Bao, contrived and off screen character death or no. This was partly because I thought they had the most interesting dynamic in the Moirin trilogy, and partly because I thought that in this fantasyland filled with queerness, where it was totally acceptable to have a same-sex consort and adopt some heirs, it was a massive missed opportunity to have three really conventional heterosexual romances as the endgame pairings; but it really is a case of I quibble because I love.
Rose Under Fire is a companion novel to Code Name Verity, although if you haven't read Code Name Verity (and you should; come join me in my emotional devastation) it stands perfectly well alone. It's the story of Rose Justice, American, civilian transport pilot, and aspiring poet, who's captured by the Germans during WWII and spends a winter in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Whereas, for me, Code Name Verity was a read all in one go, stay up till half past three, sob like a child-thing, Rose Under Fire was more of a slow burn. Because of the concentration camp setting, it was very difficult to read in places. It'll still break your heart, it'll just do it in more low key, but no less soul destroying, way.
Anyway, both are books that I highly, highly recommend.
Lunatic Fringe I read basically because it was getting towards halloween and there are lesbian werewolves in it. Can I recommend that anyone interested in lesbian werewolves reads Jacqueline Carey's werewolf duology, and that no human with the ability to read ever reads Lunatic Fringe for any reason.
I was going to say that this is why you should always check whether books are self-published before you start them, but that's not fair, because I'm sure there are plenty of well-written, thoughtful, clever self-published books out there, it's just that this is none of them. There are so many things wrong with this. The pacing is fucked, if you promise me lesbian werewolves you damn well better not be beyond the halfway point before you go: oh, and by the by, there are werewolves. It's torturously overwritten to the point where it veers between painful and embarrassing to read. It's preachy as fuck; look, I'm all for having progressive themes in fiction, I think it's one of the things speculative fiction can do better than any other genre, but if you're stopping the action to have one of your characters give the dictionary of the kyriarchy (seriously, and what the actual fuck?) you need to tone it down several million notches at least until you hit the subtlety of a brick through a window.
So, yeah, it turns out there is a limit to the media I will consume for the sake of lesbians. Who knew?
So, book report time. I haven't read much this month, and I don't expect to read much next month either, as I will be participating in my own half-arsed version of NaNo, which is writing at least a little something every day. I usually crap out on or around November 3rd, but I really need to crack on with my
femslashex fic (I'm writing one of those pairings that I like in theory; lots of people seem to like it in theory, but I'm guessing the reason there's no extant fics for them is that it's really fucking hard to make work on paper) and I've other ideas that I've forbidden myself from working on until I get this dratted femslash fic in hand. So, hopefully...?The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes
Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey
Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein
Lunatic Fringe - Allison Moon
I had actual, proper nightmares after reading The Shining Girls. Not that this is unusual, I am squeamish as fuck, but it's usually visual things that trigger them, I am much more sanguine about the written word and books almost never freak me out the same way. But, yes, proper waking up a in cold sweat nightmares after finishing this.
It's about this horrible man called Harper Curtis (well, sort of, mostly it's about the victim who got away and becomes obsessed with catching him; it's equal parts thriller, science fiction, and revenge fantasy) who discovers a house that opens onto different times and he travels through the 20th century murdering what he calls his shining girls, snuffing out their lives before they can fulfil their potential. The murders themselves were awful (hence the nightmares) but they didn't feel sexualised or prurient in the way that a lot of thrillers with male killers and female victims do to me. I also liked (well, perhaps liked is the wrong world) the sheer variety of women that Harper targets, lesbians and transexuals and older women, that's it not all twenty something blonde co-eds. In fact, I think the fact that I approached this as a sci-fi/fantasy novel rather than a thriller is why I enjoyed it more than a lot of reviewers did. It didn't bother me that the house was never really explained, because if you read a lot of genre fiction, well, of course there's a time travelling house, sometimes there just is.
That's me finished the Kushiel books, a series that I had to be slightly talked into reading, but I'm really, really glad I did. I've had a slightly non-great year, and I've hidden from many an oncoming panic attack in fantasy alternative queer France. So, yay.
I have to go with the majority here, and say that I found the Moirin trilogy the weakest of the three. Actually, having come to the end I have to say that I find the biggest problem with the final trilogy to be that it was a trilogy. There's enough material there for one, or maybe two slightly shorter books, but Carey seems to have locked herself into the trilogy format, which means you end up with a book like Naamah's Curse which, despite the fact that I read it about a month ago my brain has already erased and replaced with the summary: Moirin takes a ridiculously forced road trip around the Asian subcontinent, annoying me as she bores me.
But
kmo was right that Naamah's Blessing is at least as good as anything in the Imriel trilogy, and I was delighted to see this series that I've enjoyed so much end on a high note, but I'm also okay with Carey not revisiting the world of Terre d'Ange unless she's very seriously struck by inspiration. One tiny niggle, even by the end I was still finding myself shipping Moirin/Jehanne more than Moirin/Bao, contrived and off screen character death or no. This was partly because I thought they had the most interesting dynamic in the Moirin trilogy, and partly because I thought that in this fantasyland filled with queerness, where it was totally acceptable to have a same-sex consort and adopt some heirs, it was a massive missed opportunity to have three really conventional heterosexual romances as the endgame pairings; but it really is a case of I quibble because I love.
Rose Under Fire is a companion novel to Code Name Verity, although if you haven't read Code Name Verity (and you should; come join me in my emotional devastation) it stands perfectly well alone. It's the story of Rose Justice, American, civilian transport pilot, and aspiring poet, who's captured by the Germans during WWII and spends a winter in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Whereas, for me, Code Name Verity was a read all in one go, stay up till half past three, sob like a child-thing, Rose Under Fire was more of a slow burn. Because of the concentration camp setting, it was very difficult to read in places. It'll still break your heart, it'll just do it in more low key, but no less soul destroying, way.
Anyway, both are books that I highly, highly recommend.
Lunatic Fringe I read basically because it was getting towards halloween and there are lesbian werewolves in it. Can I recommend that anyone interested in lesbian werewolves reads Jacqueline Carey's werewolf duology, and that no human with the ability to read ever reads Lunatic Fringe for any reason.
I was going to say that this is why you should always check whether books are self-published before you start them, but that's not fair, because I'm sure there are plenty of well-written, thoughtful, clever self-published books out there, it's just that this is none of them. There are so many things wrong with this. The pacing is fucked, if you promise me lesbian werewolves you damn well better not be beyond the halfway point before you go: oh, and by the by, there are werewolves. It's torturously overwritten to the point where it veers between painful and embarrassing to read. It's preachy as fuck; look, I'm all for having progressive themes in fiction, I think it's one of the things speculative fiction can do better than any other genre, but if you're stopping the action to have one of your characters give the dictionary of the kyriarchy (seriously, and what the actual fuck?) you need to tone it down several million notches at least until you hit the subtlety of a brick through a window.
So, yeah, it turns out there is a limit to the media I will consume for the sake of lesbians. Who knew?
no subject
Date: 2013-11-01 07:50 pm (UTC)i'm glad i didn't lead you astray about Namaah's Blessing. the first two were beneath even my lowered expectations, so it was almost a pleasant surprise to have the last one finish strong. i don't know why, but that scene where Moirin drinks Mexican hot chocolate with House Shahrizai is inexplicably perfect for me....because that is House Shahrizai in a nutshell right there. i wasn't too happy with how Jehanne gets brought back as a ghost and how Moirin seems to remember her as this perfect woman. one of the best things about Jehanne was how very flawed she was- probably the most 3-dimensional character in the trilogy to me. and i'm not sure whether that is supposed to be sloppy writing on Carey's part or Moirin romanticizing Jehanne or somewhere in the middle.
i hear you on Carey's decision to go for straightness. who does she think her audience is exactly? does she really think people wouldn't read her books if there was an f/f endgame pairing? i mean, the straight folks who are her fans probably wouldn't stop reading given that they have already put up with lots of kinkiness and queerness in the Kushielverse. she also said that initially she had planned to release Santa Olivia under a pseudonym- whether that's because of the femslash pairing or dystopian setting, i don't know. it's unfortunate that Carey or her publishers seem to think a same sex romance would mess with her brand. her current series Agent of Hel is very het. i've only read the first- it's fun and campy. i liked it better than Moirin's books but not as much as Phedre's or Santa Olivia.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 04:03 pm (UTC)Exactly. Especially by the end of the Kushielverse, where presumably people have been reading them over years and thousands upon thousands of pages. It's funny, although I'm more fannish about the Kushiel books (better world-building, more to delve into as a fan) the Santa Olivia books hit my id much more directly.
Yes, Jehanne was very, I dunno, flat during her turn as a ghost (I was half-expecting it to turn out to be some sort of demon using her image to trick Moirin) and you're right that along with Balthasar Shahrizai Jehanne was one of the more 3-dimensional characters in the trilogy.
I don't know, there were things that I liked in the Moirin trilogy (Jehanne, Balthasar, the Moirin/Jehanne romance, D'Angelines consorting with demons, the fanatical Yeshuities in Vralia threatening Terre D'Ange) but mostly they just served to make it clear how much I'd have preferred to have been reading a series of books about those things.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 03:44 pm (UTC)In my defence, I'm reading a really good book and I don't want to put it down to write.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-04 10:52 pm (UTC)