September reading
Brief notes, in the hope that it will force me to do longer write-ups soon:
Beth Bernobich, "Pig, Crane, Fox"(short fiction, online)
Charming teaser short story set in a Chinese technomagical city -- wireless phones run on magic, everyone seems to have a spirit companion. A kid has to save a princess -- well, really he has to earn some cash and make up with his mother after a big fight, but saving the princess happens along the way, except for the part where she can save herself. The voice is winning and so is the world building. Definitely got me more interested in the forthcoming related novel, Fox and Phoenix.
Elizabeth Bunce, Star-Crossed
I have been feeling really burned out on YA fantasy lately, but this brought me back. Digger, a thief on the run, gets mixed up with aristocratic politics and religious warfare. The world-building is incredibly solid on this, and I loved Digger -- she feels like someone who's lived rough, clever and bold and cautious of those with power. It reminds me a lot of the crossover adult/YA fantasy of the late 80s and 90s, Patricia Wrede and the like. Forthcoming sequel, but this one ends in a good place. To review.
A.S. Byatt, Ragnarok
Fairly straightforward retelling of the Ragnarok stories, interspersed with fictionalized autobiography. I wanted the frame to be more of a story, but clearly Byatt didn't. A minor work, but with many of her major virtues: the evocation of what it's like to read (surprisingly rare in fiction), the historical depth and sharp intelligence and vivid sensuality, both of the prose and the detail. A clear love for marine science, a delight in naming and categorizing. Via Netgalley, to review.
B.R. Collins, The Traitor Game
GoodReads' new recommendation engine recommended two books to me that I hadn't heard of (and already made up my mind to try or not to try), and this was one of them. Thumbs up, GoodReads! This is brilliant, an intense novel about friendship, bullying, betrayal, homophobia, damage obvious and subtle. Also, it has chapters that take place in the fantasy world the two main characters make up, very good quasi-historical Normans-Saxons sort of thing, very Rosemary Sutcliff. I love books within books. The chapters are very good just on their own, but they also reflect (refract?) aspects of the main narrative in fascinating ways. To review, because more people need to read it.
Gwen Hayes, Falling Under
Attempts to do something with the usual paranormal romance tropes (endless white girls in endless white nightgowns endlessly falling), but founders on an implausible style, stiff dialogue, and thin characterization.
Amy Lane, Keeping Promise Rock, Talker, Talker's Redemption
July and August brought me back to romance for the first time in years, thanks to Borders' going-out-of-business sales, and romance review sites got me to try m/m, which seems to be thriving online. Sadly, I haven't been able to find a reviewer whose taste accords with mine consistently, because most of the m/m I've tried has been awful.
Keeping Promise Rock is hugely popular, and I can see why: it's absorbing and sentimental. The sentimentality both engrosses me and makes me feel a little dirty after. Manipulated. The goopy happiness of the extended family feels more wish fulfillment than reality to me -- not that extended family/family of affinity can't work, but that there's so little friction except around one of the members being too afraid of abandonment and another being too perfect.
Talker and Talker's Redemption are about a jock (I guess? He really doesn't have many distinguishing characteristics) and a gay punk who wears a Mohawk and has tattooed half his body to cover up severe burns; he also has nervous tics and hums all the time. I like the treatment of disability, and Lane obviously has a theme about the need for extended family/support networks in addition to romantic partners, but again, too much sentimentality here, too much easiness in how things work out. Of course Talker is vindicated, or is going to be vindicated, publically; of course his martyrdom will become explicit and admired. Romance as a genre does a lot with wish fulfillment, but Lane is too indulgent for me. (Also, the dramactic climax involving Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" makes me cringe with embarassment, because it's too on-the-nose and also Talker is too young for me to quite buy that it would be the song he thinks of.)
Courtney Milan, Unclaimed
One of the authors I discovered in my recent romance binge. I keep liking her books better while reading them than I do afterward, I'm not sure why. This one is about a prostitute who plans to seduce a noted public virgin (he wrote a book about chastity for men) for reward money so she can get out of the life. Even in a novel with a prostitute heroine and a virgin hero, the hero ends up being more assertive and sexually confident than the heroine. Oh, romance novels. Some things about you I did not miss.
The hero is annoyingly perfect, but this still worked pretty well up until the end, when it went completely hearts-and-flowers in a completely unbelievable way. That's not exactly why it went so sour for me, though, although it definitely slumps in the end. Milan always has a point around three-quarters of the way through where the heroine finally explodes/asserts herself and the man goes away and then reflects and comes to the realization that she's right and he hasn't respected her opinions/independence enough. And this private reflection is clearly part of Milan's thematic point, but narratively and emotionally it's unsatisfying -- the major emotional rapprochement between the two effectively takes place with only one present.
Heroine's best friend could have used a LOT more fleshing out. Despite lip service to the power of female friendship, this doesn't pass the Bechdel test.
Via Netgalley, to review.
Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox
I love this so much. It does all sorts of metafictional things that usually annoy me, but here I thought they were playful and full of delight. The rants about the narrative use of the deaths of female characters could have come straight out of fandom. I don't know what the short story "My Daughter, the Racist" is doing in there, though. To review, if I can think of anything to say.
Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
I hurried up and caught up with Wintersmith so I could read this, because I heard a spoiler that a character I'd wanted to return for forever showed up. Pratchett is really good at women and girls, and it shows here; he points out power and vulnerability very deftly. I do like his determinedly common outlook (by which I mean he has no use for the aristocracy whatsoever, but is okay with them hanging around if they don't make nuisances of themselves). I liked this a lot, but for some reason the Tiffany Aching books aren't my favorites the way the Watch and the Witches books are, even though they should be.
Joselle Vanderhooft (ed.), Steam-Powered II: Lesbian Steampunk Stories
I don't want to post much on this until closer to the publication date. Like the previous volume, it shows underrepresented identities in all sorts of directions (seriously, I think each volume has more stories about Jews than I've ever seen in anthology that wasn't specifically about Judaism in literature) and doesn't hold to too tight a definition of steampunk, and in fact a few stories don't fit my personal sense of where the boundaries are. In fact I don't think my favorite story of the second collection is steampunk at all. Since I'm not particularly into steampunk, I don't mind this; I'm just as happy with lesbian sf and fantasy, which this provides in abundance. (I have to admit I am not only tired of gaslight London but also of zeppelins.) Manuscript copy via contributor, to review.
L.A. Witt, Rules of Engagement, "Rain," Nine-Tenths of the Law
More m/m, more dissatisfaction. Rules of Engagement has some of the hottest sex scenes I've ever read -- in fact, my favorites may actually be the kisses in the first couple of chapters, where the make-outs don't even get to orgasm. This is surprising, because usually I find erotica hottest in the context of characterization, and the love interest, Brandon, is really sparsely characterized and mostly seems to be the perfect, self-confident, accepting-of-narrator's-confusion-and-occasional-asshole-behavior guy; Dustin, the narrator, has a little more characterization, but not much.
I am really bothered about the focus on the bitchiness, manipulativeness, and emotional abusiveness of the two major women in Dustin's life, his (soon-to-be-)ex-wife and his mother. There are other women in the story who are fine, but the absolute Eeevil Horribleness of these two squicks me out. It's not that women can't be abusive or manipulative, it's that these women are absolute misogynistic caricatures. We never get a single thing good about either woman (even though Dustin claims he still loves his ex in some ways, and sometimes they had good times) and--this is what makes it so sketchy to me--Dustin never reacts to them in a childish or immature or emotional way when he's talking to them. It's not like abusive -- or even strained -- relationships bring out the best in most of us, you know? I know I'm not the only one among my friends who reverts to a bratty thirteen-year-old when having unhappy conversations with my parents. Dustin is just -- kind of perfect. Forebearing. And shows no major emotional damage from these relationships. Which all just emphasizes how these women are SO AWFUL so that the relationship with Brandon feels SO RIGHT.
But those kisses, man. I read them in the Amazon sample and had to get the book. Scorching.
"Rain" is a follow-up short story from Brandon's POV, and sadly he is just as boring from his own perspective as he is from Dustin's.
Nine-Tenths of the Law - The two cheated-on exes of a jerk hook up for a one-night revenge-sex stand, which extends into no-strings fuckbuddies, which extends into a relationship, only one of them has trust issues and the jerk tries to sabotage them. A little better on the plot and the characterization front, but still -- I could have used less sex and more characterization. Also, I object on principle to rough angry revenge sex not actually being rough or angry.
cups brewed at DW