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netgirl_y2kThe Queens of Innis Lear - Tessa Gratton
Down Girl: the logic of misogyny - Kate Manne
Only Human - Sylvain Neuvel
The Covert Captain - Jeannelle M. Ferreira
The Queens of Innis Lear is a female focused fantasy retelling of King Lear. Sounds right up my alley, right? Except whatever seed of promise it has quickly gets buried in tediously overwritten prose and at least three hundred unnecessary pages. Needed a good hack-and-slash editing.
Okay, reading Down Girl was my own fault. I'd seen something about the book somewhere and come away with the impression that it was for general audiences. It is not. And when I realised that instead of putting it down and seeking out something more my speed I ploughed on through hundreds of pages of moral philosophy. I don't disagree with anything Manne says about misogyny as the law enforcement arm of the patriarchy, but I also understand a lot better why Chidi Anagonye ended up in the Bad Place.
The law of diminishing returns is strong with The Themis Files. The first book in the series was outstanding, the second was fair-to-middling. By the time we get to Only Human... Oh, dear. The ending is unsatisfying, and the author has gotten locked into the format (which worked so well in book one!) of presenting everything in the form of interviews. Except by book three they're not interviews. They're just two characters who know each other well talking. Seriously, that's not an interview. It's a conversation. Stop it.
The Covert Captain is SO BAD, YOU GUYS. It's about a woman who's been disguised as a man in the army for years and when she returns to England she falls for her commanding officer's sister. And I am 100% the audience for a book with that plot, and if it were any good at all I would surely be reccing it to high heaven, but alas it is SO, SO BAD. It is bad on a technical word handling, sentence structure level. It is bad on a characterisation level; can we see how the fiancée got from freaking out that her intended is a woman to being totally cool with it? Does the character who spent 10+ years disguised as her dead brother have any thoughts about gender or identity? No, okay then. It is bad on a plot level; never mind dealing with the gender reveal because now here's a long lost brother! Never mind that! Now they've all got scarlet fever!
*insert obligatory whine about how shite f/f romances are here*
Down Girl: the logic of misogyny - Kate Manne
Only Human - Sylvain Neuvel
The Covert Captain - Jeannelle M. Ferreira
The Queens of Innis Lear is a female focused fantasy retelling of King Lear. Sounds right up my alley, right? Except whatever seed of promise it has quickly gets buried in tediously overwritten prose and at least three hundred unnecessary pages. Needed a good hack-and-slash editing.
Okay, reading Down Girl was my own fault. I'd seen something about the book somewhere and come away with the impression that it was for general audiences. It is not. And when I realised that instead of putting it down and seeking out something more my speed I ploughed on through hundreds of pages of moral philosophy. I don't disagree with anything Manne says about misogyny as the law enforcement arm of the patriarchy, but I also understand a lot better why Chidi Anagonye ended up in the Bad Place.
The law of diminishing returns is strong with The Themis Files. The first book in the series was outstanding, the second was fair-to-middling. By the time we get to Only Human... Oh, dear. The ending is unsatisfying, and the author has gotten locked into the format (which worked so well in book one!) of presenting everything in the form of interviews. Except by book three they're not interviews. They're just two characters who know each other well talking. Seriously, that's not an interview. It's a conversation. Stop it.
The Covert Captain is SO BAD, YOU GUYS. It's about a woman who's been disguised as a man in the army for years and when she returns to England she falls for her commanding officer's sister. And I am 100% the audience for a book with that plot, and if it were any good at all I would surely be reccing it to high heaven, but alas it is SO, SO BAD. It is bad on a technical word handling, sentence structure level. It is bad on a characterisation level; can we see how the fiancée got from freaking out that her intended is a woman to being totally cool with it? Does the character who spent 10+ years disguised as her dead brother have any thoughts about gender or identity? No, okay then. It is bad on a plot level; never mind dealing with the gender reveal because now here's a long lost brother! Never mind that! Now they've all got scarlet fever!
*insert obligatory whine about how shite f/f romances are here*
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 10:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 04:13 pm (UTC)I might read book two, which has more good than bad, but will give you an idea where the story is going and if it being locked into the interview format is going to annoy you.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 04:57 pm (UTC)Is The Covert Captain set in a past era? (Scarlet fever??) The plot sounds even more difficult in present times, and the ending has a kitchen-sink aspect that sounds problematic in any case.
Agree about f/f romances often being disappointing. Are they competing with my real-life standards instead of fantasy standards, maybe?
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 10:04 pm (UTC)The Covert Captain is a regency, yeah, and doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a bad and underwritten romance or a bad and unwritten historical novella.
I think f/f romances compare badly to het and m/m just by the law of large numbers. Het is everywhere, and m/m is more niche but has numbers as well as the likes of KJ Charles, whose books are hit and miss for me, but who knows how to construct both a sentence and a story. f/f has, well, The Covert Captain.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 09:52 pm (UTC)And, look, I'm as guilty as anyone of having lower standards when a book has f/f content, but not that low. NOT THAT LOW.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-01 02:58 pm (UTC)Why does everyone love it?
I try to keep my standards low with f/f, because there's so little of it and so much of it is bad, but really. There are limits.
Why does everyone love it?!!!
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 06:16 pm (UTC)never mind dealing with the gender reveal because now here's a long lost brother!
this feels like the plot of twelfth night - except that shakespeare though only so-so on plot was pretty good on a line level. alas, this sounds like a good idea, indeed.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 09:48 pm (UTC)Alas, I got stuck in the bad books vortex.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 09:13 pm (UTC)That's really interesting regarding The Covert Captain, because Sherwood Smith recommended it and I esteem her greatly, so I was seriously considering buying and reading it... I guess maybe not?
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 09:44 pm (UTC)re: The Covert Captain, normally with book reviews I am more than happy to say that tastes differ, and all opinions are valid, and one person's did not finish is another person's book of the year, but The Covert Captain is objectively bad on almost every conceivable level even before you get to that one scene of outrageous and never called out antisemitism, and I cannot in good conscience recommend it.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 10:28 pm (UTC)https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/978531.html
Here's the link to it, if you're interested. In any case, I definitely will not be getting to any books that aren't related to Uni any time soon, so I guess I'll forget about the book for now. Thanks for the quick reply! Btw, did you have any opinions on the fics I linked you back when you had those night shifts?