August books
It is so drizzly and foggy outside that I wish I could be in my bed curled up around a mug of cocoa, reading a book. Since I can't, here's a quick review of what I read this August.
Historical Fiction
Half a Crown by Jo Walton. In 1941, a small subgroup of the English government negotiated peace with Hitler. Now it's the 1960s. Japan has dropped atomic bombs on the Soviet Union, the US is isolationalist and utterly unconnected to world affairs, and the UK has been shipping undesirables overseas to German concentration camps for nearly two decades. It's a fascinating alternate history, and one that is made particularly chilling by how solidly Walton crafts it.
Carmichal was a mere Inspector from Scotland Yard in the first book of this trilogy, but he has progressed to head of the Watch (the British secret police, focused particularly on Jews and political dissidents). A thoughtful man of principles and deep loyalties, he has nevertheless made a series of compromises and betrayals over the years. While outwardly he is the most threatening man in Britain, in private he is focused on three things: keeping his lover, Jack, safe; creating a genteel life for his ward, Elivra Royston; and smuggling Jews out of the country to safety. But he cannot juggle all three at once forever. When Elivra is accidentally embroiled in a plot to depose the Prime Minister, she and Carmichal will be forced to sacrifice much that they held dear.
In each book of the Small Change series, the tone has darkened; by this, the final book in the trilogy, matters are grim enough that greeting someone with "So I hear you're a fascist" is not an insult, but a complimentary bit of small talk. An entire generation has been raised with horrific values: even Elvira, a kind girl with intentions toward Oxford, thinks nothing of throwing rotten fruit at Jews. Walton does such an excellent job of slowly but surely tightening the noose that when relief does come, it feels a bit unearned. As much as I wanted to, I simply could not believe the ending of this trilogy. This is a series that deserves four stars at least, for its impeccable, thoughtful worlbuilding, nuanced character portraits, and chilling plots. But I can't help but feel a bit let down by the end.
An Accomplished Woman by Jude Morgan. Lydia is that most beloved of Regency heroines, a woman past her "prime" but with a quick wit and an entertaining inner monologue. After turning down a marriage proposal in her youth, she has spent the last decade going to art exhibits, translating old texts, and in every way living a satisyfing life of the mind. But then her godmother asks her for a favor, and Lydia finds herself escourting a pretty young heiress around Bath. And though Phoebe is smart and has good taste in every other respect, her swains leave something to be desired...Luckily, Lydia's old friend the sarcastic and pessimistic Mr. Durrant is also in Bath at the time, and she keeps herself entertained through a merry battle of witticisms with him.
Lydia is a great character, fully realized and fleshed out. Her supporting cast is entertaining, each with their own motives and manner of speaking. Morgan's writing has an easy style and cleverness to it that I find refreshing after years of reading stilted dialog. The writing is a cross between Austen's character-insights and Heyer's frothy fun.
These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer. Justin Alistair is handsome, fashionable, and merciless. As the Duke of Avon in the mid-Eighteenth century, he has far more power and money than he really knows what to do with. An urchin's red hair catches his attention, and he buys the boy from his loutish older brother.
And thus begins the adventure of Leon, also known as Leonie, and her life with the duke. She has a sort of slavish devotion to him that is utterly inexplicable (and quite disturbs his friends), and he intends to use her to destroy his enemy, Saint-Vire. First she acts as his page, and when that masquerade wears thin, he commences a sort of My Fair Lady makeover and presents her to Society.
In most ways, These Old Shades falls into the usual Heyer tropes: the hero is saturnine, sarcastic, the best at everything, and has a hilariously unlikely nickname ("Satanas"); the heroine is the most sensible and cheerful girl ever, is the only one who thinks the hero has a heart-of-gold, acts younger than her years (Leonie acts so young, in fact, that she often seems closer to ten than her purported age of nineteen) and is absolutely beautiful; everyone is fascinated by the two love interests.
The relationship between Justin and Leonie will always be a bit creepy: he's more than twice her age, he *bought* her, and he has very different moral standards for men than for women. Leonie herself is actually pretty charming, although I don't buy her characterization for a moment--there's no way someone can work on a farm and then a tavern for ~20 years and be so innocent and flaky. And I just don't understand why she's so devoted to him, nor do I understand when she turned from thinking of him as a protector to a lover. She makes comments about how men her age are too silly and foolish--but she's at least as silly as they are. But here is the saving grace of this book: there are other characters beyond Justin and Leonie. Not just the usual collection of silly women and amusing children, who serve to make the love interests look better, but married couples whose relationships to each other are delicately traced, a young rake who doesn't understand why his older brother has turned his biting wit against him, and the kindly Davenant, who is a gentle scholarly presence in the background. Their tangled interactions with each other kept me amused by the book long after I tired of the foregone love between Leonie and Justin. I hate the mid-eighteenth century, but there is one thing to be said for it--by setting her story there, Heyer is unable to lard her dialog with Regency slang. What a relief! As always with Heyer, there's a huge dose of classism in here--in fact, it's necessary to believe that peasants are cloddish and yearn for the earth, and nobles are delicate and intelligent, in order for the plot to make sense.
(I really disliked the plot of this book. Justin reaches a scandalous conclusion based on very threadbare evidence, then spends the entire book acting as though he is absolutely positive that it's true. It's only sheer luck that he's correct, and the easier and more probable solution to why Leonie resembles Saint-Vire is wrong. It just all felt frustratingly unlikely.)
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Hetertopia by Samuel R Delaney. I finally got around to reading Delaney! Stylistically, this felt close to the Heinlein that I've read, with lots of free love, gender bending, libertarianism, communal relationships, and non-Terran humans at odds with Earth. Plus lots and lots of infodumping--not a chapter went by without several pages of the classic sf "as you know Bob..." explanations. The concepts were interesting enough; the method of conveying them, deeply boring. I starting skimming them about halfway through this book.
The plot itself is thin: Bron is very self-absorbed but also dissatisfied with his life, and a chance encounter with a performance artist known as The Spike leads him to examine what he wants out of life. Watching him consistently just refuse to recognize what others tell him reminded me of the truth in Tiptree, particularly her "The Women Men Don't See". Delaney is assuredly aware of what an ass Bron is, but because Bron himself never realizes, and despite his periodic half-hearted attempts to change, never manages to stop being so completely selfish, I couldn't feel happy about this book. (Someone else has described the plot as " what do you do if you're the last of the mysoginists in a sexually liberated world?") Delaney has a lot of great concepts and ideas caught up in here, and when he's not infodumping about politics or space or logic, he's got an engaging writing style. But after reading through this, I mostly just felt dissatisfied.
The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K Le Guin. Victoria is an alien world, colonized through the blood and sweat of convicts and political dissidents. When the men of power push too far, a group dedicated to peace decides en masse to oppose them. A very interesting look at the good and bad aspects of pacifism as a way of life. I wish this was at least twice as long--the denoument felt rushed.
Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz. The first(ish) in the much-read, much-beloved Deryni fantasy series. I found the characters flat, the plot nearly nonexistent, and the writing style so hackneyed and cheesy that I almost choked laughing. The female characters (the few that there are) all simper and weep hysterically (save the Evil one, who simpers and tries to look sultry). The male characters are all the bestest swordsmen ever with lean bodies and catlike grace. The only characters of color are all Evil. etc. This book was published in the 70s, so I suppose it could have been worse, but I don't intend to torment myself by reading anything else by Kurtz.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. Once there was a woman who was heir to the throne of Sky. But she fell in love with a lowly hunter of the Darr nation, and abandoned her family and powerful destiny to live instead among people who hated and feared her. Her only child, Yeine, grows up as a Darr warrior, fierce and forthright. And then one day, her mother dies, and Yeine is summoned to the palace to meet the grandfather she's never met. He is the man who rules the universe...and possibly, the man who poisoned her mother.
The first few chapters are fantastic: we're immediately dropped into a world of complicated motivations and power plays. But the internecine squabbles for the throne fade into the background as Yeine tries to understand who murdered her mother, and what kind of woman her mother was, anyway. Was she the kind woman with egalitarian ideals and pacifistic manners--or the heir to the throne, who tortured peons for sport and used gods as her playthings? Meanwhile, Yeine has her own dealings with the gods. And as she struggles to survive in the palace of Sky, surrounded by relatives who want her dead and gods who want her to claim a lethal destiny, she begins to question her own identity, as well.
This is not the book I thought I was getting--I expected more external fights and fewer internal. But Jemisin's world building is fabulous (she has more ideas in one book than most writers have in their lifetime) and her characterization surefooted. I look forward to the next book in the trilogy.
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games introduced us to Katniss Everdeen, a doggedly loyal girl with a talent for archery and survival. Every year, children from the Districts were forced to kill each other in a filmed arena, to remind the viewers of the power of the Capital. Katniss was one of those unlucky children-and against all odds, she survived not one, but two stints in the arena. And not only did she survive, but her courage and kindness sparked a revolution. Now, the rebellion against the Capital is in full swing. The commanders are just waiting for one thing: Katniss herself.
This series is a great piece of science-fiction. It really feels like a future: the names are different but faintly recognizable to modern ears, the tech is advanced but not in a way that feels like magic, our current era is vaguely remembered but important only in the way we consider the Middle Ages to be (ie: something that shaped us, but not something to talk about every day). Too few sf writers think about society when they craft their stories, but Collins clearly has, in the way fashions in the Capital develop, in how District 13 view food hording as a terrible crime, in the importance the media has in the rebellion. In this series, Collins has created a grim world that is all too believable.
It's also great adventure story. Every page felt charged, as though anything might happen. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.
But more than anything, this is a story about the characters, and war's effect on humanity. This is actually a darker novel than the first two, because even the bright spots from previous books have been affected by the battle with the Capital. The battles Collins puts her characters through test their morals as well as their physical abilities. As the book progresses, the question becomes not simply whether the rebellion will succeed, but whether success is worth the price paid.
This book made me laugh out loud in places--we never forget that the characters are humans with warmth, humor, and families--and sob so hard I couldn't read the words on the page. Collins never lets the narrative or her characters take the easy way out. This is an incredible ending.
Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong. Hope's old friend Robyn recently lost her husband and is subsumed in grief. Hope is a half-chaos demon who works for the tabloids and the supernatural Council, but she drops everything to go stay with Robyn for a while. It turns out Robyn needs her help more than she ever expected--because Robyn's starlet client has just been murdered, and Robyn is the number one suspect. It's up to Hope, her werewolf boyfriend Karl, and a cop who can see ghosts to find the truth.
One annoying thing about listening to this book instead of reading it is that I couldn't skim, which is how I usually read Armstrong's novels. She restates practically everything, particularly in regards to characters' relationships with each other. Hope and Karl talk about their feelings in every single chapter; Robyn constantly thinks about how much she misses her dead husband; the book goes over how Robyn and Hope met and became bffs at least twice (though Robyn has never been mentioned before this book)...Even the action is talked over; every time someone does something, they ruminate on it and then talk about it with at least one other character. And then the *other* characters talk about it. It feels endless.
The plot itself is pretty light-weight, and I'm sick to death of Armstrong's need to make an opposite-gender True Love hottie for every character she introduces. But there's a certain fun to novels with a mix of adventure and interpersonal relations, so I'm sure I'll read more in this series.
One note: the voices the audiobook reader did were *awful*. All the women got breathy little girl voices, and all the men but Karl and Finn (the two male love interests, natch) had serious lisps. It was distracting.
Some Girls Bite by Chloe Neill. Merit is attacked one night, and a vampire saves her life by turning her. Now, instead of writing her dissertation, Merit has to deal with a whole new identity and a whole new set of problems.
This book should totally satisfy my id. Merit and I are both grad students living in the same neighborhood, with best friends with colored hair and a penchant for Buffy. She becomes the bestest vampire ever, all the boys want her, and all the girls are either her bestest friend or are jealous and evil. Her family is super rich but they don't understaaaaand her. She runs around in a black leather bustier carrying a magical katana, for goodness sake! It really does not get much more obviously focused on wish-fullfillment than this. Perhaps if I were fifteen, I'd have been able to dive straight in. But as it was, I just could not suspend my disbelief. Merit is supposedly super smart and loves English lit, but when she's forced to drop out of UofC (no vamp can attend), she just takes it. She doesn't petition the school, doesn't meet with her advisor, doesn't continue writing her diss...She's introduced to people who lived hundreds of years ago, and is too busy cataloguing their clothes (why do all vampires wear designer labels in all-black?) to wonder if they saw a play at the original Globe, or how they feel about language shifts, or what songs or folk legends they know that have been lost to history. I just plain don't buy her as someone who cares about literature (putting aside her absurdly vague claim that her focus is on "Arthurian legends"). I don't buy her as a character. And I don't buy her surroundings, either. Merit supposedly lives in Chicago, but there's no mention of public transportation, of the terrifying potholes, of the great and cheap Thai food, elotes on every corner...The majority of people who live in Chicago are non-white (and the neighborhood Merit lives in is actually mostly Mexican and Puerto Rican), yet every single character we meet in this book is white. Every single one. I think one of the vamps might be an Asian lady (based on her "uptilted eyes"), but that's it. And naturally, no one is queer.
And the vampires. Oh ye gods, the vampires. They live in what is basically a dorm. They even have a cafeteria. The hottest boy--er, vampire--has a crush on Merit, for no reason except that they have an instant "connection." They all speak modern English, complete with our current slang, even the ones who are over a thousand years old. They are all the most beautifulest things ever (their eye color, hair color, and clothes are described ad nauseum). They revealed themselves to the public a mere 8 months ago, but apparently this didn't shake up human society at all. The existence of supernaturals is accepted without protest or disbelief. No one seems to care. All sorts of supernatural creatures exist, from sorcerers to nymphs, but nobody *does* anything. Sometimes one vamp will pyschic message another, but that's about it. We meet nymphs of the Chicago River at one point, and they spend several pages catfighting over a boyfriend before making up over promises of pedicures. The big vamp betrayal is revealed when the evil vamp monologues for a number of pages about her Evil Plans. It's all so banal.
This book seems to have been churned out as quickly as possible to capitalize on the paranormal romance trend. Unfortunately for Neill, her book isn't good at providing paranormal adventure or romance.
Historical Fiction
Half a Crown by Jo Walton. In 1941, a small subgroup of the English government negotiated peace with Hitler. Now it's the 1960s. Japan has dropped atomic bombs on the Soviet Union, the US is isolationalist and utterly unconnected to world affairs, and the UK has been shipping undesirables overseas to German concentration camps for nearly two decades. It's a fascinating alternate history, and one that is made particularly chilling by how solidly Walton crafts it.
Carmichal was a mere Inspector from Scotland Yard in the first book of this trilogy, but he has progressed to head of the Watch (the British secret police, focused particularly on Jews and political dissidents). A thoughtful man of principles and deep loyalties, he has nevertheless made a series of compromises and betrayals over the years. While outwardly he is the most threatening man in Britain, in private he is focused on three things: keeping his lover, Jack, safe; creating a genteel life for his ward, Elivra Royston; and smuggling Jews out of the country to safety. But he cannot juggle all three at once forever. When Elivra is accidentally embroiled in a plot to depose the Prime Minister, she and Carmichal will be forced to sacrifice much that they held dear.
In each book of the Small Change series, the tone has darkened; by this, the final book in the trilogy, matters are grim enough that greeting someone with "So I hear you're a fascist" is not an insult, but a complimentary bit of small talk. An entire generation has been raised with horrific values: even Elvira, a kind girl with intentions toward Oxford, thinks nothing of throwing rotten fruit at Jews. Walton does such an excellent job of slowly but surely tightening the noose that when relief does come, it feels a bit unearned. As much as I wanted to, I simply could not believe the ending of this trilogy. This is a series that deserves four stars at least, for its impeccable, thoughtful worlbuilding, nuanced character portraits, and chilling plots. But I can't help but feel a bit let down by the end.
An Accomplished Woman by Jude Morgan. Lydia is that most beloved of Regency heroines, a woman past her "prime" but with a quick wit and an entertaining inner monologue. After turning down a marriage proposal in her youth, she has spent the last decade going to art exhibits, translating old texts, and in every way living a satisyfing life of the mind. But then her godmother asks her for a favor, and Lydia finds herself escourting a pretty young heiress around Bath. And though Phoebe is smart and has good taste in every other respect, her swains leave something to be desired...Luckily, Lydia's old friend the sarcastic and pessimistic Mr. Durrant is also in Bath at the time, and she keeps herself entertained through a merry battle of witticisms with him.
Lydia is a great character, fully realized and fleshed out. Her supporting cast is entertaining, each with their own motives and manner of speaking. Morgan's writing has an easy style and cleverness to it that I find refreshing after years of reading stilted dialog. The writing is a cross between Austen's character-insights and Heyer's frothy fun.
These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer. Justin Alistair is handsome, fashionable, and merciless. As the Duke of Avon in the mid-Eighteenth century, he has far more power and money than he really knows what to do with. An urchin's red hair catches his attention, and he buys the boy from his loutish older brother.
And thus begins the adventure of Leon, also known as Leonie, and her life with the duke. She has a sort of slavish devotion to him that is utterly inexplicable (and quite disturbs his friends), and he intends to use her to destroy his enemy, Saint-Vire. First she acts as his page, and when that masquerade wears thin, he commences a sort of My Fair Lady makeover and presents her to Society.
In most ways, These Old Shades falls into the usual Heyer tropes: the hero is saturnine, sarcastic, the best at everything, and has a hilariously unlikely nickname ("Satanas"); the heroine is the most sensible and cheerful girl ever, is the only one who thinks the hero has a heart-of-gold, acts younger than her years (Leonie acts so young, in fact, that she often seems closer to ten than her purported age of nineteen) and is absolutely beautiful; everyone is fascinated by the two love interests.
The relationship between Justin and Leonie will always be a bit creepy: he's more than twice her age, he *bought* her, and he has very different moral standards for men than for women. Leonie herself is actually pretty charming, although I don't buy her characterization for a moment--there's no way someone can work on a farm and then a tavern for ~20 years and be so innocent and flaky. And I just don't understand why she's so devoted to him, nor do I understand when she turned from thinking of him as a protector to a lover. She makes comments about how men her age are too silly and foolish--but she's at least as silly as they are. But here is the saving grace of this book: there are other characters beyond Justin and Leonie. Not just the usual collection of silly women and amusing children, who serve to make the love interests look better, but married couples whose relationships to each other are delicately traced, a young rake who doesn't understand why his older brother has turned his biting wit against him, and the kindly Davenant, who is a gentle scholarly presence in the background. Their tangled interactions with each other kept me amused by the book long after I tired of the foregone love between Leonie and Justin. I hate the mid-eighteenth century, but there is one thing to be said for it--by setting her story there, Heyer is unable to lard her dialog with Regency slang. What a relief! As always with Heyer, there's a huge dose of classism in here--in fact, it's necessary to believe that peasants are cloddish and yearn for the earth, and nobles are delicate and intelligent, in order for the plot to make sense.
(I really disliked the plot of this book. Justin reaches a scandalous conclusion based on very threadbare evidence, then spends the entire book acting as though he is absolutely positive that it's true. It's only sheer luck that he's correct, and the easier and more probable solution to why Leonie resembles Saint-Vire is wrong. It just all felt frustratingly unlikely.)
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Hetertopia by Samuel R Delaney. I finally got around to reading Delaney! Stylistically, this felt close to the Heinlein that I've read, with lots of free love, gender bending, libertarianism, communal relationships, and non-Terran humans at odds with Earth. Plus lots and lots of infodumping--not a chapter went by without several pages of the classic sf "as you know Bob..." explanations. The concepts were interesting enough; the method of conveying them, deeply boring. I starting skimming them about halfway through this book.
The plot itself is thin: Bron is very self-absorbed but also dissatisfied with his life, and a chance encounter with a performance artist known as The Spike leads him to examine what he wants out of life. Watching him consistently just refuse to recognize what others tell him reminded me of the truth in Tiptree, particularly her "The Women Men Don't See". Delaney is assuredly aware of what an ass Bron is, but because Bron himself never realizes, and despite his periodic half-hearted attempts to change, never manages to stop being so completely selfish, I couldn't feel happy about this book. (Someone else has described the plot as " what do you do if you're the last of the mysoginists in a sexually liberated world?") Delaney has a lot of great concepts and ideas caught up in here, and when he's not infodumping about politics or space or logic, he's got an engaging writing style. But after reading through this, I mostly just felt dissatisfied.
The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K Le Guin. Victoria is an alien world, colonized through the blood and sweat of convicts and political dissidents. When the men of power push too far, a group dedicated to peace decides en masse to oppose them. A very interesting look at the good and bad aspects of pacifism as a way of life. I wish this was at least twice as long--the denoument felt rushed.
Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz. The first(ish) in the much-read, much-beloved Deryni fantasy series. I found the characters flat, the plot nearly nonexistent, and the writing style so hackneyed and cheesy that I almost choked laughing. The female characters (the few that there are) all simper and weep hysterically (save the Evil one, who simpers and tries to look sultry). The male characters are all the bestest swordsmen ever with lean bodies and catlike grace. The only characters of color are all Evil. etc. This book was published in the 70s, so I suppose it could have been worse, but I don't intend to torment myself by reading anything else by Kurtz.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. Once there was a woman who was heir to the throne of Sky. But she fell in love with a lowly hunter of the Darr nation, and abandoned her family and powerful destiny to live instead among people who hated and feared her. Her only child, Yeine, grows up as a Darr warrior, fierce and forthright. And then one day, her mother dies, and Yeine is summoned to the palace to meet the grandfather she's never met. He is the man who rules the universe...and possibly, the man who poisoned her mother.
The first few chapters are fantastic: we're immediately dropped into a world of complicated motivations and power plays. But the internecine squabbles for the throne fade into the background as Yeine tries to understand who murdered her mother, and what kind of woman her mother was, anyway. Was she the kind woman with egalitarian ideals and pacifistic manners--or the heir to the throne, who tortured peons for sport and used gods as her playthings? Meanwhile, Yeine has her own dealings with the gods. And as she struggles to survive in the palace of Sky, surrounded by relatives who want her dead and gods who want her to claim a lethal destiny, she begins to question her own identity, as well.
This is not the book I thought I was getting--I expected more external fights and fewer internal. But Jemisin's world building is fabulous (she has more ideas in one book than most writers have in their lifetime) and her characterization surefooted. I look forward to the next book in the trilogy.
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games introduced us to Katniss Everdeen, a doggedly loyal girl with a talent for archery and survival. Every year, children from the Districts were forced to kill each other in a filmed arena, to remind the viewers of the power of the Capital. Katniss was one of those unlucky children-and against all odds, she survived not one, but two stints in the arena. And not only did she survive, but her courage and kindness sparked a revolution. Now, the rebellion against the Capital is in full swing. The commanders are just waiting for one thing: Katniss herself.
This series is a great piece of science-fiction. It really feels like a future: the names are different but faintly recognizable to modern ears, the tech is advanced but not in a way that feels like magic, our current era is vaguely remembered but important only in the way we consider the Middle Ages to be (ie: something that shaped us, but not something to talk about every day). Too few sf writers think about society when they craft their stories, but Collins clearly has, in the way fashions in the Capital develop, in how District 13 view food hording as a terrible crime, in the importance the media has in the rebellion. In this series, Collins has created a grim world that is all too believable.
It's also great adventure story. Every page felt charged, as though anything might happen. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.
But more than anything, this is a story about the characters, and war's effect on humanity. This is actually a darker novel than the first two, because even the bright spots from previous books have been affected by the battle with the Capital. The battles Collins puts her characters through test their morals as well as their physical abilities. As the book progresses, the question becomes not simply whether the rebellion will succeed, but whether success is worth the price paid.
This book made me laugh out loud in places--we never forget that the characters are humans with warmth, humor, and families--and sob so hard I couldn't read the words on the page. Collins never lets the narrative or her characters take the easy way out. This is an incredible ending.
Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong. Hope's old friend Robyn recently lost her husband and is subsumed in grief. Hope is a half-chaos demon who works for the tabloids and the supernatural Council, but she drops everything to go stay with Robyn for a while. It turns out Robyn needs her help more than she ever expected--because Robyn's starlet client has just been murdered, and Robyn is the number one suspect. It's up to Hope, her werewolf boyfriend Karl, and a cop who can see ghosts to find the truth.
One annoying thing about listening to this book instead of reading it is that I couldn't skim, which is how I usually read Armstrong's novels. She restates practically everything, particularly in regards to characters' relationships with each other. Hope and Karl talk about their feelings in every single chapter; Robyn constantly thinks about how much she misses her dead husband; the book goes over how Robyn and Hope met and became bffs at least twice (though Robyn has never been mentioned before this book)...Even the action is talked over; every time someone does something, they ruminate on it and then talk about it with at least one other character. And then the *other* characters talk about it. It feels endless.
The plot itself is pretty light-weight, and I'm sick to death of Armstrong's need to make an opposite-gender True Love hottie for every character she introduces. But there's a certain fun to novels with a mix of adventure and interpersonal relations, so I'm sure I'll read more in this series.
One note: the voices the audiobook reader did were *awful*. All the women got breathy little girl voices, and all the men but Karl and Finn (the two male love interests, natch) had serious lisps. It was distracting.
Some Girls Bite by Chloe Neill. Merit is attacked one night, and a vampire saves her life by turning her. Now, instead of writing her dissertation, Merit has to deal with a whole new identity and a whole new set of problems.
This book should totally satisfy my id. Merit and I are both grad students living in the same neighborhood, with best friends with colored hair and a penchant for Buffy. She becomes the bestest vampire ever, all the boys want her, and all the girls are either her bestest friend or are jealous and evil. Her family is super rich but they don't understaaaaand her. She runs around in a black leather bustier carrying a magical katana, for goodness sake! It really does not get much more obviously focused on wish-fullfillment than this. Perhaps if I were fifteen, I'd have been able to dive straight in. But as it was, I just could not suspend my disbelief. Merit is supposedly super smart and loves English lit, but when she's forced to drop out of UofC (no vamp can attend), she just takes it. She doesn't petition the school, doesn't meet with her advisor, doesn't continue writing her diss...She's introduced to people who lived hundreds of years ago, and is too busy cataloguing their clothes (why do all vampires wear designer labels in all-black?) to wonder if they saw a play at the original Globe, or how they feel about language shifts, or what songs or folk legends they know that have been lost to history. I just plain don't buy her as someone who cares about literature (putting aside her absurdly vague claim that her focus is on "Arthurian legends"). I don't buy her as a character. And I don't buy her surroundings, either. Merit supposedly lives in Chicago, but there's no mention of public transportation, of the terrifying potholes, of the great and cheap Thai food, elotes on every corner...The majority of people who live in Chicago are non-white (and the neighborhood Merit lives in is actually mostly Mexican and Puerto Rican), yet every single character we meet in this book is white. Every single one. I think one of the vamps might be an Asian lady (based on her "uptilted eyes"), but that's it. And naturally, no one is queer.
And the vampires. Oh ye gods, the vampires. They live in what is basically a dorm. They even have a cafeteria. The hottest boy--er, vampire--has a crush on Merit, for no reason except that they have an instant "connection." They all speak modern English, complete with our current slang, even the ones who are over a thousand years old. They are all the most beautifulest things ever (their eye color, hair color, and clothes are described ad nauseum). They revealed themselves to the public a mere 8 months ago, but apparently this didn't shake up human society at all. The existence of supernaturals is accepted without protest or disbelief. No one seems to care. All sorts of supernatural creatures exist, from sorcerers to nymphs, but nobody *does* anything. Sometimes one vamp will pyschic message another, but that's about it. We meet nymphs of the Chicago River at one point, and they spend several pages catfighting over a boyfriend before making up over promises of pedicures. The big vamp betrayal is revealed when the evil vamp monologues for a number of pages about her Evil Plans. It's all so banal.
This book seems to have been churned out as quickly as possible to capitalize on the paranormal romance trend. Unfortunately for Neill, her book isn't good at providing paranormal adventure or romance.