All roads lead toward the same blocked intersection
September book post!
All Men of Genius, Lev A.C. Rosen
I was genuinely excited to read this book. I should not have been. The premise was a recipe for unbridled awesome, and I am pretty sure Rosen just CHUCKED ALL THAT POTENTIAL OUT THE NEAREST WINDOW and said, "NOPE it is time somebody proved that you can fill a book with STEAMPUNK, MAD SCIENCE, CROSSDRESSING, SHAKESPEARE, and OSCAR WILDE and have ADA LOVELACE as a minor character and still make it STUPID AND UNINTERESTING"
The writing and dialogue are simply not good! The science is worse! The characters are boring and static! And there is just straight-up aggravating bullshit everywhere! Like, when girls get dumb teenage crushes, it's because they're stupid. When guys get dumb teenage crushes, THEY'RE MARRYING THAT CHICK, SHE JUST DOESN'T KNOW IT YET. Middle-aged women are stupid and fussy and need to get laid. If someone doesn't fall in love with you at first sight, pretend to be their friend until they change their mind, THIS WILL ALWAYS WORK. And at various points it seemed like Rosen was setting up some kind of OPPRESSION HIERARCHY, like. Gay white guy is more oppressed than straight white lady, but they are both less oppressed than a Jewish woman of color. Okay, now let's everybody sit around and think about how bad we have it in this cruel world. That is not interesting, and not how you do interesting characters, and what the fuck is this? Tumblr?
...There's one other irritating thing I haven't ranted about before, because I can't quite get it sorted out in my own head, but I'll give it a try now: after disguising herself as a dude for several months, the previously very unfeminine protagonist suddenly realizes that wearing uncomfortable dresses and makeup and being pretty is just SO MUCH EASIER AND MORE NATURAL THAN TRYING TO BE A MAN. I found this incredibly irksome because yo, trying to conform exactly to any gender stereotype is artificial as balls and takes a lot of effort, even if it's the one you were born into! One is not magically less bullshit than the other! And, I mean, I don't expect everyone to look at it that way, but wasn't this supposed to be feminist? "Women can do what guys do AS LONG AS THEY KEEP WEARING DRESSES AND DOING THEIR HAIR" is kind of NOT THAT. I wouldn't object if Violet had been girly all along, but she starts from a position of "being ladylike is bullshit." I'd think the more logical conclusion, after discovering that being a gentleman is also bullshit, would be "FUCK THE POLICE," not "oh, I suddenly discovered I enjoy being pretty after all, teehee."
Aaaaarrgh.
The Midnight Mayor, Kate Griffin
I liked this better than the first one (A Madness of Angels, which I read in January), and I liked the first one to begin with! It did take me a while to get back into, though - the descriptions are just SO DENSE. And to be honest, there's a part early on where he's talking to a fox that I found nearly unbearable. There has got to be some way of conveying the fragmented/doesn't-translate-into-human-words nature of animal thought that doesn't chew through my patience so rapidly.
BUT once things got rolling, it was neat as hell. The plot isn't as predictable as in A Madness of Angels, and the fight scenes and the magic remain clever and badass and generally cool as hell. Matthew is still a cool guy, the blue electric angels are still weirdly adorable, and - there's some elusive quality I can't quite put my finger on, that this book has way more of than the previous one did. It seems less... distant? It's easier to get invested in the characters, maybe? Dunno. It's good, though.
Also, way to use those arc words. GIVE ME BACK MY HAT, indeed.
Faces Under Water, Tanith Lee
WHAT A WEIRD BOOK...
Like. It's beautiful. But it's also weird and creepy and sometimes just gross. It is an aesthetic I can dig, most of the time. And I find it weirdly fascinating what a cipher the protagonist is for most of the story. There's this detached, kind of dreamlike "we don't know why this bro is doing what he's doing, and maybe he doesn't know either" quality, and then there are offhand mentions like OH ALSO HE HADN'T SLEPT IN DAYS or OH ALSO HE WAS ON HIS FOURTH BOTTLE OF WINE AT THIS POINT or WAS RUNNING A RIDICULOUS FEVER, which contributes to the general murkiness and disorientation. Annnnd also there's a crazy old guy who pays people to bring him dead bodies and his best friend is a magpie, so I'd probably stick around for that guy alone.
I didn't really buy the romance, but then, I almost never do. HE GETS WEIRDLY OBSESSED WITH HER AND THEY MEET IN PERSON AND HAVE SEX A BUNCH AND NOW THEY ARE TOTES LEGIT IN LOVE? I realize that in fiction one's meant to simply kind of assume these things, but I did not know this was supposed to be a romance! The signposts seemed more to me like "here are people having creepy sex and not caring about each other beyond HEY THERE CREEPY HOTNESS" Oh well. Also, while the villain's FIRST dramatic reveal at the climax was impressive as hell, he just... kept monologuing... and piling on successively more cartoonish HORRIBLE REVELATIONS rape rape murder murder &c.
But on an aesthetic level this book is so neat, guys.
Shade's Children, Garth Nix
SHADE YOU ARE SO FUCKING INTERESTING. ELLA AND DRUM ARE INVITED TOO.
Seriously, though. ...Seriously. I don't know what to say about this one, because I don't think I bothered forming opinions on anything other than how interesting Shade and Ella and sometimes Drum are.
Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
This is a really nifty kinda INTELLECTUAL THRILLER THING? I had some problems with it at first, because it's set in the Museum of Natural History, right, and many of the important characters are scientists, and there is this backdrop of REAL ACTUALFAX WELL-RESEARCHED SCIENCE. So the more fanciful stuff really sticks out. Yes okay I'm supposed to believe a well-respected evolutionary biologist advanced a new theory of evolution based on EXACTLY ONE trace fossil and devoted his life to that and wrote a bunch of books on it... and he's still respected afterward. Riiiiiight.
But once the action got started, and I managed to re-calibrate my expectations (probably not an issue non-science people will run into?), it was really cool! There is an incredibly quirky cast of characters and a prevailing philosophy of KNOWLEDGE IS THE MOST USEFUL WEAPON, and act 3 is INTENSE AS HELL. I think now that I have a better idea what to expect, I'll investigate the rest of the series! Because without that initial speed bump of IS THIS SCIENCE OR IS THIS NOT SCIENCE I would have had basically no complaints, and I want to see what other weird stuff the authors can come up with. Yeah.
I have to decide how I'm gonna prioritize my reading material for next month - I've currently got Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe and The Devil You Know by Mike Carey from the library, a friend traded me a bunch of Lovecraftian horror for my spare printer cable, and I also intend to re-read Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, because I can (maybe I'll be able to formulate a response other than FOAMY MOUTH GUY.gif this time! Seems unlikely, though). This is probably the best kind of dilemma to have. Fuck, I love books.
Oh, and I did manage to write aaaaaalmost every day in September. All dumb original oneshots, with the exception of one dumb Raffles fic. I'm gonna try to go for 100% completion in October. My Nanowrimo plans are up in the air but inclined toward "hahahaha hell no."
All Men of Genius, Lev A.C. Rosen
I was genuinely excited to read this book. I should not have been. The premise was a recipe for unbridled awesome, and I am pretty sure Rosen just CHUCKED ALL THAT POTENTIAL OUT THE NEAREST WINDOW and said, "NOPE it is time somebody proved that you can fill a book with STEAMPUNK, MAD SCIENCE, CROSSDRESSING, SHAKESPEARE, and OSCAR WILDE and have ADA LOVELACE as a minor character and still make it STUPID AND UNINTERESTING"
The writing and dialogue are simply not good! The science is worse! The characters are boring and static! And there is just straight-up aggravating bullshit everywhere! Like, when girls get dumb teenage crushes, it's because they're stupid. When guys get dumb teenage crushes, THEY'RE MARRYING THAT CHICK, SHE JUST DOESN'T KNOW IT YET. Middle-aged women are stupid and fussy and need to get laid. If someone doesn't fall in love with you at first sight, pretend to be their friend until they change their mind, THIS WILL ALWAYS WORK. And at various points it seemed like Rosen was setting up some kind of OPPRESSION HIERARCHY, like. Gay white guy is more oppressed than straight white lady, but they are both less oppressed than a Jewish woman of color. Okay, now let's everybody sit around and think about how bad we have it in this cruel world. That is not interesting, and not how you do interesting characters, and what the fuck is this? Tumblr?
...There's one other irritating thing I haven't ranted about before, because I can't quite get it sorted out in my own head, but I'll give it a try now: after disguising herself as a dude for several months, the previously very unfeminine protagonist suddenly realizes that wearing uncomfortable dresses and makeup and being pretty is just SO MUCH EASIER AND MORE NATURAL THAN TRYING TO BE A MAN. I found this incredibly irksome because yo, trying to conform exactly to any gender stereotype is artificial as balls and takes a lot of effort, even if it's the one you were born into! One is not magically less bullshit than the other! And, I mean, I don't expect everyone to look at it that way, but wasn't this supposed to be feminist? "Women can do what guys do AS LONG AS THEY KEEP WEARING DRESSES AND DOING THEIR HAIR" is kind of NOT THAT. I wouldn't object if Violet had been girly all along, but she starts from a position of "being ladylike is bullshit." I'd think the more logical conclusion, after discovering that being a gentleman is also bullshit, would be "FUCK THE POLICE," not "oh, I suddenly discovered I enjoy being pretty after all, teehee."
Aaaaarrgh.
The Midnight Mayor, Kate Griffin
I liked this better than the first one (A Madness of Angels, which I read in January), and I liked the first one to begin with! It did take me a while to get back into, though - the descriptions are just SO DENSE. And to be honest, there's a part early on where he's talking to a fox that I found nearly unbearable. There has got to be some way of conveying the fragmented/doesn't-translate-into-human-words nature of animal thought that doesn't chew through my patience so rapidly.
BUT once things got rolling, it was neat as hell. The plot isn't as predictable as in A Madness of Angels, and the fight scenes and the magic remain clever and badass and generally cool as hell. Matthew is still a cool guy, the blue electric angels are still weirdly adorable, and - there's some elusive quality I can't quite put my finger on, that this book has way more of than the previous one did. It seems less... distant? It's easier to get invested in the characters, maybe? Dunno. It's good, though.
Also, way to use those arc words. GIVE ME BACK MY HAT, indeed.
Faces Under Water, Tanith Lee
WHAT A WEIRD BOOK...
Like. It's beautiful. But it's also weird and creepy and sometimes just gross. It is an aesthetic I can dig, most of the time. And I find it weirdly fascinating what a cipher the protagonist is for most of the story. There's this detached, kind of dreamlike "we don't know why this bro is doing what he's doing, and maybe he doesn't know either" quality, and then there are offhand mentions like OH ALSO HE HADN'T SLEPT IN DAYS or OH ALSO HE WAS ON HIS FOURTH BOTTLE OF WINE AT THIS POINT or WAS RUNNING A RIDICULOUS FEVER, which contributes to the general murkiness and disorientation. Annnnd also there's a crazy old guy who pays people to bring him dead bodies and his best friend is a magpie, so I'd probably stick around for that guy alone.
I didn't really buy the romance, but then, I almost never do. HE GETS WEIRDLY OBSESSED WITH HER AND THEY MEET IN PERSON AND HAVE SEX A BUNCH AND NOW THEY ARE TOTES LEGIT IN LOVE? I realize that in fiction one's meant to simply kind of assume these things, but I did not know this was supposed to be a romance! The signposts seemed more to me like "here are people having creepy sex and not caring about each other beyond HEY THERE CREEPY HOTNESS" Oh well. Also, while the villain's FIRST dramatic reveal at the climax was impressive as hell, he just... kept monologuing... and piling on successively more cartoonish HORRIBLE REVELATIONS rape rape murder murder &c.
But on an aesthetic level this book is so neat, guys.
Shade's Children, Garth Nix
SHADE YOU ARE SO FUCKING INTERESTING. ELLA AND DRUM ARE INVITED TOO.
Seriously, though. ...Seriously. I don't know what to say about this one, because I don't think I bothered forming opinions on anything other than how interesting Shade and Ella and sometimes Drum are.
Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
This is a really nifty kinda INTELLECTUAL THRILLER THING? I had some problems with it at first, because it's set in the Museum of Natural History, right, and many of the important characters are scientists, and there is this backdrop of REAL ACTUALFAX WELL-RESEARCHED SCIENCE. So the more fanciful stuff really sticks out. Yes okay I'm supposed to believe a well-respected evolutionary biologist advanced a new theory of evolution based on EXACTLY ONE trace fossil and devoted his life to that and wrote a bunch of books on it... and he's still respected afterward. Riiiiiight.
But once the action got started, and I managed to re-calibrate my expectations (probably not an issue non-science people will run into?), it was really cool! There is an incredibly quirky cast of characters and a prevailing philosophy of KNOWLEDGE IS THE MOST USEFUL WEAPON, and act 3 is INTENSE AS HELL. I think now that I have a better idea what to expect, I'll investigate the rest of the series! Because without that initial speed bump of IS THIS SCIENCE OR IS THIS NOT SCIENCE I would have had basically no complaints, and I want to see what other weird stuff the authors can come up with. Yeah.
I have to decide how I'm gonna prioritize my reading material for next month - I've currently got Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe and The Devil You Know by Mike Carey from the library, a friend traded me a bunch of Lovecraftian horror for my spare printer cable, and I also intend to re-read Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, because I can (maybe I'll be able to formulate a response other than FOAMY MOUTH GUY.gif this time! Seems unlikely, though). This is probably the best kind of dilemma to have. Fuck, I love books.
Oh, and I did manage to write aaaaaalmost every day in September. All dumb original oneshots, with the exception of one dumb Raffles fic. I'm gonna try to go for 100% completion in October. My Nanowrimo plans are up in the air but inclined toward "hahahaha hell no."