Nobody is more surprised than me that I actually enjoyed those
Well, not all of those but this entry featured a couple of books I started with not very high hopes and then ended up enjoying...well and a couple I hated so it's not quite a sign of the end-times.
Fantasy
Aliette de Bodard: Of Dragons, Feasts and Murder
The major nobody-is-more-surprised book. It's set in the Dominion of the Fallen universe where I made it through 5 chapters or so of book one before deciding that I didn't care for post-apocalyptic worlds, no matter how nice the words are with which they are described. Or how plentiful. But Dragons Feats and Murder is set far away from the Paris of Dominion, at the court of a Vietnamese-inspired empire that feels more fantasy than post-apocalypse. So we get:
He's a dragon prince who really loves books. His husband thinks that stabbing is a reasonable way to solve conflicts. Together they fight crime and are sarcastic. Also, the author uses a reasonable amount of words to describe things.
What can I say? My needs can be very simple. I'd definitely continue reading a spin-off series with those two but I have no intention of giving the main series a second try.
Heather Rose Jones: Floodtide
Aka nobody-is-more-surprised #2. It's the fourth book in the Alpennina series (lesbians and magic in a Ruritania-type country) and my judgement on the first three had been: Meh. A bit dull. Very dull. And I had no intention of picking up the fourth but Storybundle did a Pride month bundle, Floodtide was in it and...I clearly have self-destructive tendencies. Or so I thought but I quite enjoyed it. Mind you, I didn't love it but the book was definitely helped by the fact that it had an MC whom I quite liked and that she was the 1st person narrator of the story. The previous three all had multiple 3rd person narrators and never just the main couple but also various other characters who did exciting things like...accounting. Which didn't exactly make the pages fly by because it was so exciting.
But, just like in the previous book I was somewhat bothered by the fact that the characters don't set out to solve a problem they are presented with at the beginning of the book but...do stuff, do some other stuff, discover a problem and coincidentally it turns out that the stuff they've done previously can help with the solution. And that...just feels odd to read about? Perhaps if there was a strong background plot, I wouldn't feel as if I...well was reading just about people doing stuff. But the only thing going on in the background - the question who is going to inherit the throne of knockoff Ruritania - is also more a 'well, it would be nice if we knew but we don't so *shrug emoji*'
Ginn Hale: The Counterfeit Viscount
Another pride month story bundle book but one I just didn't care about. It's set in a Victorianesque world where demons are real, look mostly human, are hot and are more or less second class citizens and we follow some dude with a sad childhood and his demon boyfriend trying to solve the mystery of some disappeared demons. I vaguely cared about the mystery which is why read till the end but I cared neither about sad childhood nor hot demon.
Katharina Ushachov: Zarin Saltan (dnf)
A modern retelling of Pushkin's Tsar Saltan in which he isn't a tsar but the heir to a Germany-based Russian supermarket chain, she's a Slavic Studies student and they met on a dating show. It was not bad but it made me realise that when I say 'I like fairy tale retellings' I mean 'I enjoy something like Spinning Silver where Novik grabs random bits of fairy tales, mashes them together and adds some fun new stuff' and not 'I enjoy it when someone takes a story, gives all the characters first and last names, replaces Old Thing with Fitting Modern Equivalent but changes nothing more and the evil characters are still evil because they are evil and the poor not!princess is too stupid to live'
The Unicorn Anthology (dnf)
I got this because it was edited by Peter S. Beagle and admittedly he also wrote a very charming foreword in which he talks about becoming 'The Unicorn Guy' after writing The Last Unicorn and how he didn't enjoy it at first but once he fully realized how much the book meant for some people he came to really embrace it. I should have stopped after that foreword.
It's not an anthology of the 'let's ask authors to write something for this anthology' but of the 'let's grab a random selection of previously published stories that mention unicorns somewhere' and that's the first issue. There's, for example, a story about a potion that grants immortality. It's mentioned that it's made from unicorn-horns but the unicorns never appear in it and the story isn't about it at all.
The other issue is that even the stories that were about unicorns were...well bad. Several went down the "Unicorns can only be touched by virgins" road which I hate. Not only because it gave us these gems:
- Unicorn hunter buys twelve-year-old girl so she can attract unicorns for him. She does attract many unicorns for him, he kills them all and makes a lot of money. Then she's 16, she attracts the king of all unicorns, he kills that one too and they fuck because grooming is so romantic *hearty eyes"
- Unicorn dressage is a thing but unicorns only let themselves be ridden by virgins. Protagonist with showbiz mom rides first her girlfriend, then a unicorn then tells her showbiz mom to fuck off. While I appreciate the last bit, the first part implies that either lesbian sex isn't real sex or that all woman are always pure but no man ever is and I am uncomfortable with both of these morals.
Other stories included "Woman fucks unicorn and gets pregnant but the child dies and then she commits suicide or does she?" and "Noir story in which gritty (female) PI has to recover a magic item which turns out to be a demonic dildo made from a unicorn horn but she gets so distracted by femme fatale who first drugs gritty PI and then fucks her with the demonic dildo which opens a portal to hell? I think? But in the end, PI shoots femme fatale, recovers demonic dildo and returns it to female mob boss who gave her the job and who will presumably enjoy looking at the priceless artefact that is a demonic dildo in her free time."
At this point, I skipped forward to read the Peter S. Beagle story that was also in the anthology and it was genuinely nice and nobody inserted any parts of the unicorn into anything which was very nice but overall it wasn't exactly overwhelming. Then I read the Patricia McKillip story (mainly because I thought I had previously enjoyed a YA trilogy by her but I later discovered that I had mixed her up with Tanith Lee) which was very forgettable and then I read two pages of Jane Yolen's story, who attentive readers of this journal might remember as the author of the Stalin dragon egg story. And then I went "Wait. You don't have to do this to yourself." and just quit.
Fake Dating Romances
Yup
Alexis Hall: Boyfriend Material
Luc has trust issues because his last boyfriend was an asshole and his dad is an even bigger asshole. Luc also lives in a sitcom. His friends-group consists of a gay couple where both guys are called James Royce and after they got married they are now both called James Royce-Royce. Another of his friends works for a publisher and whenever she appears she opens with "Something horrible happened at work today, I'm so getting fired" and then tells an amusing story about how the new Swedish bestseller they just acquired will be titled like the auto-reply for her out-of-office work e-mail. There's also a tiny angry lesbian who owns a truck.
His workplace is not better and I have no idea how any of his colleagues or his boss actually survive in the real world and while I found his friends group at least somewhat amusing, his colleagues were just annoying.
Anyway, for the contrivest of plot reasons he needs a fake boyfriend which ends up being Oliver who is also messed up but hides it better than Luc...at least at first. They fake date, then real feelings get involved but they mess up because both of them are so screwed up...and that's where my main troubles with this book were. Because on the one side there's over-the-top-sitcom and on the other, there's...unhealthy coping mechanisms due to an abusive childhood and jumping back and forth between those just doesn't work. More than once I rolled my eyes at Luc freaking out and sabotaging his relationship because ugh...so stupid...and then I remembered that in a silly sitcom that would be a stupid plot device but in a more realistic story it makes sense to act this way. So, in the end, the book didn't really work for me, even though I did laugh at a couple of jokes and even found the grand finale quite emotional.
Layla Reyne: Variable Onset (dnf)
Look. I read the blurb. It said that two dudes who happen to be into each other have to go undercover as a couple to catch a serial killer. I didn't expect high levels of gritty realism. I just wanted some fun...but I didn't get it because there's "low levels of realism" and there's "nobody thought for more than 0.2 seconds if the circumstances used to have the characters fake-makeout make even a tiny bit of sense".
The serial killer they are hunting targets couples. He abducts them, does nasty serial killer things to them for a while and then kills them after a certain amount of time. He's taken another couple and they estimate that they have another 30 hours so...they decide to pretend to be a couple in the hope that the serial killer targets them. After killing the other couple presumably because from the way he's described I did get the impression that setting up the special serial killer playground that is specifically targeted for each victim is going to need time. Besides...the couple that's currently missing is a straight couple and the previous victims we hear about were straight as well, so wouldn't it be better to try this undercover routine with one as well? Just in case the killer has a type?
Additionally, Lincoln, one half of the couple, hasn't been in the field in years (he teaches) and gets now thrown into it again, when what he seems to actually need is therapy...more than any of the characters on Criminal Minds and both of these grown men who went through the FBI academy can't stop thinking about their nether regions for long and get a hard-on every time they get into the personal space of the other dude because deep down (hihihi) they're still teenagers.
And the writing style was just...dull. Everything gets overexplained and the voices of the two were indistinguishable
Posh Murder
I will do us all a favour and mostly skim over the British Crime Library Classics that I till consume in far too high quantities: Murder in the Mill Race was another book for the "who would have that that I enjoy this" shelf because my previous experiences with the author (E. C. R. Lorac) had been underwhelming but this one had some nice descriptions of claustrophobic village life and a good mystery. Death in Captivity by Michael Gilbert was more spy thriller than murder mystery and Mary Kelly's The Christmas Egg featured criminal gangs (and a fairly unlikeable inspector) which is also not my thing. In The Body in the Dumb River, just about everybody was unlikeable and I just wanted it to be over.
Anthony Berkley: The Whychford Poisoning Case
A story based on the real life-case of Florence Maybrick who was accused of poisoning her husband (and found guilty) which just didn't quite work for me, not only because there's a *~*hilarious*~* scene in which the sleuth's best friend spanks a grown woman for being too feminist (:
No wait...I guess that could be the main reason why this didn't work for me.
Erica Ruth Neubauer: Murder at the Mena House
Jane Wunderly is Not Like The Other Girls. Other girls dress up in ridiculously revealing dresses to impress men like whores. Jane has no interest in men.
Except for Mr. Redvers. I mean he doesn’t even tell her his first name, quite obviously lies to her or at least evades her questions but that doesn’t stop Jane from swooning about him while still insisting that she doesn’t need no men. Can we just stop with that? Either give me a character who says she has no interest in relationships and then sticks to it or one who says “Yeah. I want to marry (again) but I don’t want the first guy my overenthusiastic relatives who all think a woman without a man is worthless throw at me. I want to marry someone I actually care about.” In historicals that would still be unusual enough and would not give us the moral of “Actually, everyone wants a relationship and all those who say they don’t, just haven’t realized it, yet.”
So, no, I wasn’t a fan of the setup of the blossoming romance. Especially since, as mentioned, I saw no reason why she should even trust him…And if possible I was even less a fan of the mystery. I admit I’m already not the biggest fan of “Sleuth starts sleuthing because they/someone close to them is a suspect” but that wasn’t even a particularly well-done variety of that trope. It never feels like the inspector is really serious about his suspicions. He barely plays a part in the novel and the most threatening thing he does is ask her not to leave the hotel for a while. That leaves us with the “Sleuth starts sleuthing because they totally know better than the stupid police” trope, except that you could even argue that it’s not Jane doing the sleuthing but her mouth. Without her agreement. Yes, the phrase “And before I could stop myself I found myself saying X” gets overused in this book. Oh and what she finds herself saying is usually stuff she strictly speaking shouldn’t know and occasionally she does it while being alone with the suspect. Yes, Jane is one of the people you find pictured in the dictionary next to “Too Stupid Too Live”. But she still somehow survives…and solves everything thanks to a string of ridiculous coincidences. Because that what sleuths in bad cozy mysteries always do.
Andrea Maria Schenkel: Tannöd (The Murder Farm)
Another loosely based on true events story. This time on the Hinterkaifeck murders. A few years ago (OK, a lot of years ago I think) that book was been quite a bestseller in Germany but I never got round reading it and now I saw it in the library. While the original murders happened shortly after WW1, Tannöd is set in the 1950s because that way we can add some nazis, since All Serious Literature Needs Nazis. How else do you know it's serious? Anyway, this book is very serious. And dull.
JB Lawless: Tod in der Bibliothek (Death in the Library)
This book cleverly disguised itself as classic/cozy crime novel but it really isn't. The inspector is sad and misanthropic and thinks about his relationship with his father a lot. The victim is a catholic priest who has been castrated post-mortem which means the shocking reveal at the end is shocking to 0% of all readers.
Every single woman throws herself at the feet of the misanthropic inspector who has a complicated relationship with his father because what else are women supposed to do?
Oh, and the entire story is told from the POV of the misanthropic inspector who has a complicated relationship with his father with two exceptions:
In one chapter we watch the 16-year-old daughter of one of the suspects pour gin over her legs, order the village-idiot to lick it up, think about how disgusting the village idiot is, think about Bugs Bunny and then orgasms.
~~~Quizshow theme tune~~~
How exactly is that scene relevant for this book?
a) It turns out that Bugs Bunny was the killer
b) the orgasm gives her psychic powers and she sees whodunit
c) it has less than zero relevance for the plot
Answers on a postcard, please.
Another chapter is a flashback from the POV of the paedophile priest (I am very sorry if I now spoiled the book for you...no I'm not) and we learn things about altar candles we never wanted to know. And of course, we also didn't need that scene to understand the resolution. But hey! This book is dark and edgy (:
Non-Fiction
Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing
A piece of narrative non-fiction about the Northern Ireland conflict. Which means it doesn't set out to describe what happens from A to Z but tells interlocking and overlapping stories, mainly about the abduction and disappearance of Jean McConville and two biographies of IRA-Terrorists - Brendan Hughes and Dolores Price - who both were unhappy about the results of the peace deal. But you also get bits and pieces of other stories (a lot of Gerry Adams but also others). On occasions, I thought I could have done with fewer details about all the minor players and while I understand that a completely chronological approach wouldn't have worked, a couple of times I thought "this is a bit too much from the...fiction playbook?" By that, I mean that some chapters ended with quite major revelations and then the next started with something like "So last time we talked about Hughes he was in prison, let's see where he is now".
But overall, that didn't stop me from...well enjoying the book inasmuch as you can enjoy something with that topic. As said it isn't a chronological history of the Troubles but by choosing those specific stories we still end up with something that starts in the 1950s and goes all the way until the 2000s when McConville's remains were discovered (and then a bit further). I think it should even work quite well as...introductory reading since it pretty much assumes no prior knowledge about anything that happened during the troubles.
David Mitchell: Back Story
David Mitchell the Comedian. Not David Mitchell the author of Cloud Atlas. It's comedian-David-Mitchell's autobiography
Look
Somehow my apocalypse comfort watching ended up mostly getting back into British Comedy/Comedy panel shows and it reminded me of my deep love for David Mitchell, his nerdiness and his beautiful rants.
And then I came to the conclusion that listening to his autobiography would probably be enjoyable. And it turned out that listening to him being slightly confused by the fact that people care about his private life at all, going on about how amazing Olivia Coleman is and spending an entire chapter talking about how much he loves his wife did spark joy.
Click to view