Reading Wednesday, 5/15
What did you just finish reading?
Connie Wilkins & Steve Berman (eds.), Heiresses of Russ: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction: 2012
Disappointing. The only story I loved was Amal el-Mohtar's "To Follow the Waves" and balancing it out was a story I -- well, I didn't hate it, but I intensely disliked it: "Feedback" by Lindy Cameron. I loved "To Follow the Waves" when I first read it in Joselle Vanderhooft's Steam-powered and was glad to see it here; a dream-crafter falls in love with her own creation (the issues of consent here are handled well) . "Feedback" is cumbered by exposition-heavy dialogue in which the characters sound like encyclopedia entries, and the narrator is a bigot who feels justified in using ablist insults as long as the other person makes an ablist insult to her first (different disabilities). The story does not appear to question this. It also elides the same significant consent issues "To Follow the Waves" examines.
The rest of the stories are decent but unexceptional. I suspected that Wilkins' taste would not accord with mine when the other story she selected from Steam-Powered was S.L. Knapp's "Amphitrite," not Shweta Narayan's "The Padishah Begum's Reflections". I would recommend both last year's volume (also co-edited by Joselle Vanderhooft) or Steam-Powered 1-2 over this if you're looking for a strong collection of recent lesbian speculative fiction.
Laure Halse Anderson, Fever 1793
NB: The ebook version has horrible OCR errors.
In 1783, a yellow fever epidemic killed about a fifth of the population of Philadelphia, which at that time was the capitol of the United States, as well as one of its largest cities. An unknown but probably large percentage of the dead were probably killed by the treatment, rather than the disease; French physicians who'd emigrated from the West Indies advised rest and food, but Dr. Benjamin Rush, a prominent physician (also one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence), advised bloodletting and purging.
Fifteen-year-old Mattie Cook is too busy with planning expansions of her mother's coffee house and flirting with a neighbor's apprentice to pay much attention to the fever, until it becomes impossible for anyone in the city to ignore.
This is the weakest book I've read by Laurie Halse Anderson, not because it does anything particularly wrong, but because it has much less emotional force than I am used to from her. It probably doesn't help that I read her recent historical novels, Chains and Forge, first, because they are set around the same time period (ten or fifteen years earlier) and have a better sense of period style and a much more sophisticated take on racial relations. Fever 1783 devotes a lot of space to the heroic efforts of the Free African Society to nurse the sick and care for the survivors, but I think is too rosy about Mattie's relationship with her mother's black cook, Eliza. It's not that I don't believe Mattie could love Eliza or even take some of the steps she does later (I'm betting there are historical examples of the latter), but that I would not expect the personal affection and respect Mattie feels to make her immune to the racism of society. I would strongly recommend Chains over this -- it's about a black slave girl in New York during the American Revolution, it doesn't make any of the well-meaning white liberal mistakes I was terrified it would make, and it deals with disability in interesting ways. It is also has the emotional impact I expect from Anderson's work.
Noelle Adams, The Negotiated Marriage
Successful company CEO Luke asks Molly, an investigator specializing in corporate espionage cases, for a marriage of convenience; three years in, he suggests re-negotiating it to include sex, which of course leads to Feelings.
I love marriage of convenience stories, but if I'd realized this was the same author as Claire Kent, I wouldn't have bothered. It has the same problems: it describes problems, conflicts, and conversations in exposition that it should demonstrate in the narrative; the heroine's issues from an earlier relationship are stated over and over again, but not otherwise demonstrated until the very end. This one also suffers from an ex-boyfriend who shows up to cause dramatic realizations and jealousy at the end for no plausible reason, after having been in all of one scene earlier.
Kaori Yuki, Iiki no Ki (Devil from a Foreign Land), Vol. 1-2 (scanlations)
During the Meiji era (I think), an evil nobleman finds a boy in chains underneath a building knocked down by an earthquake. The nobleman's son, Garan, insists on rescuing the boy, who turns out to be called Sorato. Soon the nobleman brings home an orphan named Kiyora, whom he calls a priestess and betroths to Garan. Kiyora, Garan, and Sorato become best friends, but Sorato is troubled by strange dreams and the conviction that he is a monster. If this is sounding way too straightforward for a Kaori Yuki story, don't worry, that's just the first three pages. Also, I am trying to avoid spoilers.
This reads basically like Kaori Yuki decided to make Kira the lead of a series. I am totally behind this decision. Sadly, Sorato is not quite as pretty as Kira. I regret this decision.
I had completely forgotten how much fun Kaori Yuki recaps are. I may need to recap this. It would also help me keep track of all the characters and plot convolutions, which is even more difficult to do with Kaori Yuki series when they're still coming out than it is when you marathon them.
What are you currently reading?
Still going through Kerry Greenwood's Medea, which remains competent but uninspired.
Started Anna Cowan's Untamed partly because I liked her blog and partly because the reviews intrigued me. It is a hot mess with great promise, and the names are awful. (Lord BenRuin? Lady Marmotte? Seriously?)
What random book-related question is this?
Since I did not acquire any new books this week, I will just point with delight to the announcement that Rosemary Kirstein will be releasing the Steerswoman series as ebooks.
Oh, wait, that's a lie, I got Untamed from Netgalley, which is why I will review it when I am done.
cups brewed at DW
Connie Wilkins & Steve Berman (eds.), Heiresses of Russ: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction: 2012
Disappointing. The only story I loved was Amal el-Mohtar's "To Follow the Waves" and balancing it out was a story I -- well, I didn't hate it, but I intensely disliked it: "Feedback" by Lindy Cameron. I loved "To Follow the Waves" when I first read it in Joselle Vanderhooft's Steam-powered and was glad to see it here; a dream-crafter falls in love with her own creation (the issues of consent here are handled well) . "Feedback" is cumbered by exposition-heavy dialogue in which the characters sound like encyclopedia entries, and the narrator is a bigot who feels justified in using ablist insults as long as the other person makes an ablist insult to her first (different disabilities). The story does not appear to question this. It also elides the same significant consent issues "To Follow the Waves" examines.
The rest of the stories are decent but unexceptional. I suspected that Wilkins' taste would not accord with mine when the other story she selected from Steam-Powered was S.L. Knapp's "Amphitrite," not Shweta Narayan's "The Padishah Begum's Reflections". I would recommend both last year's volume (also co-edited by Joselle Vanderhooft) or Steam-Powered 1-2 over this if you're looking for a strong collection of recent lesbian speculative fiction.
Laure Halse Anderson, Fever 1793
NB: The ebook version has horrible OCR errors.
In 1783, a yellow fever epidemic killed about a fifth of the population of Philadelphia, which at that time was the capitol of the United States, as well as one of its largest cities. An unknown but probably large percentage of the dead were probably killed by the treatment, rather than the disease; French physicians who'd emigrated from the West Indies advised rest and food, but Dr. Benjamin Rush, a prominent physician (also one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence), advised bloodletting and purging.
Fifteen-year-old Mattie Cook is too busy with planning expansions of her mother's coffee house and flirting with a neighbor's apprentice to pay much attention to the fever, until it becomes impossible for anyone in the city to ignore.
This is the weakest book I've read by Laurie Halse Anderson, not because it does anything particularly wrong, but because it has much less emotional force than I am used to from her. It probably doesn't help that I read her recent historical novels, Chains and Forge, first, because they are set around the same time period (ten or fifteen years earlier) and have a better sense of period style and a much more sophisticated take on racial relations. Fever 1783 devotes a lot of space to the heroic efforts of the Free African Society to nurse the sick and care for the survivors, but I think is too rosy about Mattie's relationship with her mother's black cook, Eliza. It's not that I don't believe Mattie could love Eliza or even take some of the steps she does later (I'm betting there are historical examples of the latter), but that I would not expect the personal affection and respect Mattie feels to make her immune to the racism of society. I would strongly recommend Chains over this -- it's about a black slave girl in New York during the American Revolution, it doesn't make any of the well-meaning white liberal mistakes I was terrified it would make, and it deals with disability in interesting ways. It is also has the emotional impact I expect from Anderson's work.
Noelle Adams, The Negotiated Marriage
Successful company CEO Luke asks Molly, an investigator specializing in corporate espionage cases, for a marriage of convenience; three years in, he suggests re-negotiating it to include sex, which of course leads to Feelings.
I love marriage of convenience stories, but if I'd realized this was the same author as Claire Kent, I wouldn't have bothered. It has the same problems: it describes problems, conflicts, and conversations in exposition that it should demonstrate in the narrative; the heroine's issues from an earlier relationship are stated over and over again, but not otherwise demonstrated until the very end. This one also suffers from an ex-boyfriend who shows up to cause dramatic realizations and jealousy at the end for no plausible reason, after having been in all of one scene earlier.
Kaori Yuki, Iiki no Ki (Devil from a Foreign Land), Vol. 1-2 (scanlations)
During the Meiji era (I think), an evil nobleman finds a boy in chains underneath a building knocked down by an earthquake. The nobleman's son, Garan, insists on rescuing the boy, who turns out to be called Sorato. Soon the nobleman brings home an orphan named Kiyora, whom he calls a priestess and betroths to Garan. Kiyora, Garan, and Sorato become best friends, but Sorato is troubled by strange dreams and the conviction that he is a monster. If this is sounding way too straightforward for a Kaori Yuki story, don't worry, that's just the first three pages. Also, I am trying to avoid spoilers.
This reads basically like Kaori Yuki decided to make Kira the lead of a series. I am totally behind this decision. Sadly, Sorato is not quite as pretty as Kira. I regret this decision.
I had completely forgotten how much fun Kaori Yuki recaps are. I may need to recap this. It would also help me keep track of all the characters and plot convolutions, which is even more difficult to do with Kaori Yuki series when they're still coming out than it is when you marathon them.
What are you currently reading?
Still going through Kerry Greenwood's Medea, which remains competent but uninspired.
Started Anna Cowan's Untamed partly because I liked her blog and partly because the reviews intrigued me. It is a hot mess with great promise, and the names are awful. (Lord BenRuin? Lady Marmotte? Seriously?)
What random book-related question is this?
Since I did not acquire any new books this week, I will just point with delight to the announcement that Rosemary Kirstein will be releasing the Steerswoman series as ebooks.
Oh, wait, that's a lie, I got Untamed from Netgalley, which is why I will review it when I am done.
cups brewed at DW