Reading roundup of catching up
This reading roundup is way, way overdue, but anyway.
24. Seanan McGuire, An Artificial Night -- Spoilers I had a weird trajectory with this book. I started reading it and was really enjoying it (I think it was the domesticity, which is a nice counterbalance with the way the noir feel of these books often feels oppressive to me, unlike in lots of other urban fantasy detective genre books), and then just as Toby got to Blind Michael's lands I lost interest and put the book down for months. Then I picked it up again and found myself enjoying it a fair bit while also wondering why I don't care more about these books and the characters who populate them. And then I got to the end and was quite excited that there was the next book sitting on my to-read pile and I could start reading it right away. So, overall... mixed?
Part of the weird trajectory, I think, is that this one's less an attempt at a detective story and more just general creepiness/horror. I like detective stories a lot more than I like horror, BUT I think McGuire is better at writing horror than detective stories, so those two things balanced each other out. Because it's not really a detective story, I didn't have the problems with it that I had with the first two books, where Toby kept making really stupid calls and missing REALLY obvious things, which seriously compromised my suspension of disbelief.
I didn't care about the added worldbuilding of Blind Michael's lands and the mythical/dreamlike feel of them. I thought Toby's narration from under the depths of Blind Michael's magic was pretty well done -- but I still didn't care. The only worldbuilding type thing I did like was the application of Tam Lin, but I love that ballad so much you can pretty much stick it in anything and I'll be happy.
I thought the children-in-peril thing was pretty well done, especially the reactions of the kids, and the bit where Toby notices how the normally confident child of her friends is cringing and terrified was especially powerful for me; I also liked the little boy's appropriately toddler-logic reactions. I liked Raj and May, and I'm always happy to see Quentin and especially the Luidaeg.
The epic revelation with Luna and the kitsune girl was just kinda weird. Not saying it was, but to me it felt like in the first book we were introduced to a kitsune who wasn't Japanese and was surrounded by roses for some reason, and this book attempted to explain these facts, but it didn't feel organic, not like an a-ha! revelation but rather like a retcon.
25. Seanan McGuire, Late Eclipses -- Back to a mystery, Spoilers! only now with the explanation that Toby is drugged when she does stupid stuff, as opposed to Toby just being Toby. I enjoyed Tybalt and Raj in this, under the stress of the attack on the Court of Cats (though the kiss with Tybalt was way contrived), and Sylvester, in his grief, and Connor in the difficult position he was in. Speaking of Sylvester, I thought Toby was pretty unreasonable in his "waah, why didn't you tell me!" reaction (it reminded me of Harry Dresden's feakout over the revelation that McCoy was the Blackstaff, which is to say, chill, dude.) I did like Raysel's monologue and the (mad) reasoning behind her virulent hatred of Toby, but I'm ready for a new antagonist, you know? I was fairly satisfied with the closure with Manny, though, because I found his grudge against Toby fairly insane. Also, as per usual, I saw Oleander's secret identity coming from a mile off, without any knowledge of how Hobs never leave a place. The telegraphing of everything that's supposed to be a plot twist continues to be a weakness of this series of me... As for the big revelation that Toby is not who she thought she was and can shift her blood. OK? A bigger deal was made of it in-universe than I really felt as a reader. I don't know that I have much more to say about this one except that both sides of the love triangle seem to be ratcheting up...
I feel like I always have more complaints than likes in my responses to the Toby books, and that's not really fair.. It's not that I don't enjoy them -- I do! But I'm always wondering, in the back of my mind, why I'm not enjoying them more, and that's why, I think, my write-ups come out the way they do...
27. Kim Harrison, Black Magic Sanction -- Eh. Spoilers I liked all the parts with Trent, as per usual, and wish there had been more of them -- it was very nice to see (and for Rachel to remember) some of their backstory, and the revelation that one of Rachel's magic words was the name of Trent's horse. I was happy to see Lee again, and to have him both be competent and in charge in most circumstances -- and also utterly terrified whenever the subject of demons came up. I'd skipped the previous book or two, so Pierce was a new character to me, and I liked him well enough (especially his and Rachel's conversation about gravity and quantum mechanics and whatnot, which he was constrained to talk about in olden-days terms), even though the whole "will Rachel and he get together?" thing bored me (and the weird paragraph about the extra vagina muscles witches have or whatever... WTF was that, and why). I actually didn't mind Nick in the earlier books, but he was so clearly a no-good evil bad guy in this one, which was boring. Matalina's death was sad, and I liked Rachel and Pierce's visit to Jenks's house, and the pixie kids' confusion about whether or not they wanted Jenks to live on, because it was just so far outside their cultural expectations. I liked the whole thing with the fairies, Rachel not comfortable with killing them but not doing them any favors by calling back the spell, and I like Ceri being pissed at her for this, and the introduction of Sidereal, whom I'm curious to see more of, and the weird fairy-and-pixie antagonistic symbiosis. And I kind of even like Vivian, the coven's hitwoman. There was a bunch of metaphysical revelations that I didn't really care about and have probably mostly forgotten by now.
28. Patrick Rothfuss, Wise Man's Fear -- So, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but I'm not at all sure I'm convinced it's a good book. I think it's actually terribly self-indulgent... it's just that the ways in which it's terribly self-indulgent are mostly ways that appeal to me lots. Spoilers
First, it's chock-full of language geekery, which is one of my favorite things to encounter in fantasy -- Kvothe trying to learn Yllish (and the dual ownership wherein you also belong to your socks) (also, I wonder if his failure at learning sailors' knots is related to his difficulty with Yllish), figuring out Adem hand gestures and first learning Adem from Tempi, who didn't know any language Kvothe spoke particularly well, and coming to the conclusion that "a well-spoken senstence in Adem is like a spider-web, each strand with a meaning of its own" -- all this stuff was totally up my alley and therefore great. Also, other random language things, like the story that Elodin started a fight because someone kept saying "utilize" instead of "use", or Kvothe claiming that he and the Chronicler had fought over the subjunctive, and the Chancellor (who is a linguist) getting intrigued by the etymology of "ravel" as a slur for the Edema Ruh, or Simmon explaining that "vintage" technically only applies to wines from Vintas, and Kvothe wondering whether the Adem "tempa" (iron) may be related to "temper" (the verb), and the confusion between the literal and figurative "Watch my back" when Tempi says it to Kvothe before the bar brawl. Also, "sipquick" and "flit" are both awesome names for hummingbirds, better than any of the real words I know.
Non-language geekery, too: Kvothe's passion for chemistry, Basil getting busted to Stocks for adding water to acid, the Fishery having a patent process with royalties, using HF ("transporting agents that would move through your skin without leaving a mark, then quietly eat the calcium out of your bones"), "thaumic overfill"/slippage which seems to be a kind of magical friction (both the common thermal and the rare kinetic), the engineering discussion between Kilvin and Kvothe about the arrowcatch and failsafes (no, really, do you know how rarely you see engineering in fantasy books? real engineering and not just references to it?), Kvothe having to describe sympathy as "magic string" in Vintas, Faen ability to apparently manipulate the wave-particle duality of nature, Kvothe attempting to explain genetics to a woman who believes all reproduction is parthenogenesis, Kvothe correcting himself with regard to the gender of the tree he is addressing because it has blossoms -- NGL, the geerkery of these books and some of their characters is my favorite thing about this series. And not just cientific geekery, either -- like drugged!Kvothe speculating that "humor is rooted in social transfression. I can't transrgress because I can't figure out what would be socially unacceptable."
And besides in-universe geekery, there are also various geeky allusions. I spotted the "Edro!" one myself, of course (and had a "wait, seriously? Kvothe speaks Elven now?" reaction :P), but I might have missed the homage in Gran if I hadn't read about another fan pointing out how much the old village healer was like Mistress Weatherwax (homage or not, I loved her character, especially when she said "If you like, I can put in some arrowroot, too."
I also loved other aspects of the worldbuilding, like the different social mores Kvothe encounters -- attitudes about music and nudity (in Ademre), sex (in Ademre explicity -- especially when Penth brings him to some flowers because she thinks that's what barbarians are supposed to do, and when Tempi has no concept of "whore" ("a person men pay money to have sex with") except as a compliment -- and as alluded to in Modeg), the matriarchal nature of Ademre, the superstitions of Vintas, the way wealth and poverty look different in Ademre than Kvothe's usual point of reference, Celean (the Adem girl) not being able to accept a country in which women don't fight. Also, I don't know that this is really worldbuilding, but I wasn't sure where else to stick it -- I continue to enjoy Kvothe's grudge against poetry.
Of course, the University was my favorite part, because I love magic school stories, and Elodin being crazy was a lot of fun (especially the "Oh God whose rooms are these" incident, and his reading list which he hasn't read (but nevertheless stars and underlines and draws a sad face next to, although his class being called "Introduction to Not Being a Stupid Jackass" and "Quit grabbing at my tits" analogy were also fun), especially as Kvothe does realize, later, in Ademre, that there was a method to his madness. (I also quite like the idea of Naming being powered by the unconscious mind.) And I was amused to discover, after, that of course, even as tiny as the fandom is for this (at least English-speaking fandom, because there seems to be a lot of writing about it in Spanish), there exist not one but at least two fics about Elodin and Kvothe ending up naked on that roof. And Elodin was not the only Master whose presence I enjoyed, but also Kilvin and Elxa Dal (whom I always imagine as my Kinetics professor, actually) giving Kvothe a heart-to-heart talk ("Lord and lady, I was a mess at seventeen. My studies, trying to sort out my place in the world. Women..." (I would totally read Elxa Dal prequel fic, btw).
And I really like Sim and Wil, whom I would have liked to see more of, actually, but it was nice to get some additional bits about them, like Wilem being uneasy around blood, and Simmon studying Eld Vintic poetry with the Chancellor, and actually writing some Anglo-Saxon like verse for Fela (and that was also a nice way to slip in a definition of "caesura", which I didn't notice until I was leafing through again), and the fact that Sim's father was disappointed with him entering the University and he does not return home, or the way normally gentle Sim explodes when Kvothe defends the value of Mengele Gibea's research. And I really love the dynamic they have with Kvothe, watching over him while he fears a malfeasance attack, before he makes the gram, and Kvothe sticking up for Sim with Fela ("He's gentle, which people see as weak. And he's happy, which people see as stupid.") And on the other side of the river, Devi is awesome, and I wish there had been more of her, too, but I loved her besting Kvothe and "what makes you think you can do what even Elxa Dal couldn't? Why do you think htey expelled me? They feared a woman who could match a master by her second year".
I expected to stop enjoying the book once Kvothe left the University, and actually put it down for a couple of months at that point, but I needn't have worried. I also enjoyed reading about Kvothe essentially pulling cons (especially pretending to be a gossip-collecting bumpkin with Caudicus), and hanging out with Bredon (who, I still wonder what his deal is, and if he'll show up again), even the extended traipsing through the woods after bandits was not as bad as I'd feared, and I enjoyed his interactions with his little band, especially Marten and his woodcraft training tricks (and Kvothe thinking the training signs he'd left were real and thanking the gods for the search being over so quickly) and bets. And, of course, Kvothe "calling down lightning" was pretty spectacular.
There were a number of characters introduced in this outing whom I liked. I liked Alveron quite a lot, the way his undeniable wisdom and other positive qualities coexisted with rather prickly pride and ruthlessness, the way he talks about keepin Dagon close ("my mad dog on a short leash"). Also, during Kvothe's first interlude at Vintas I was pretty much convinced that Alveron and Stapes were long-term lovers -- the way Alveron refused to marry as a young man and was sort of hedgy about Meluan ("She is worthy of love, that is certain. And I have a fondness for her" in response to Kvothe's guess that he loved her), and Stapes' bone ring and his gratitude to Kvothe for saving Alveron's life ("I doubt you understand how much I'm in your debt") and said debt being "this lies outside my duty to the Maer", and Stapes addressing Alveron as "Rand", a diminutive (which Meluan, for instance, doesn't use, at least in front of Kvothe), and even the way Alveron reacts when discovering Stapes hiding a dead sipquick and had lied to him about it. Like another reader who commented on this, I wasn't sure this was as clearly signaled on Kvothe's second visit, but maybe they were just trying to keep a low profile with Meluan around...
Actually, I don't know if there's really something there, or if the way Rothfuss writes friendships makes them come over to me this way, or if fandom has simply rotted my brain, but for a while now I've also been wondering if Wilem is not sort of pining for Sim. There were a couple of lines that made me wonder, and there was also Wilem's reaction on discovering that Deoch of the Eolian likes men too: "I hadn't any knowledge of it. But small wonder he is a Basha [bi]. He is attractive enough." And, of course, Sim was completely oblivious under the same circumstances, so. And then Sim joking that "our backup plan was to stuff Wilem into a dress. Nobody wants that" and Wil's reaction being nodding and "Agreed." But, really, what made me think this was more than slash goggles was the conversation between Kvothe and Wil when they're walking home from Imre and Kvothe is talking about Denna and not wanting to ruin their friendship with 'fawning', and Wilem saying, "You would rather be close to her heart. You would rather be joyfully held in the circle of her arms. But you fear she will reject you. You fear she would laugh and you would look the fool. You are hardly the first to feel this way. There is no shame in it." And then Sim lamenting that "All I want is someone who likes me" (and Wil responding with, "I want a magical horse that fits in my pocket. And a ring of red amber that gives me power over demons. And an endless supply of cake." <3). Anyway, am I alone in seeing an unrequited thing between Wilem and Sim, which Wil isn't acting on because he knows Sim is as straight as they come and he'd rather not make it awkward?
(Oh, yeah, and I'm not sure if I would have picked up on Meluan being Kvothe's mother's sister (most likely) without having read some speculation on it, but I'm pretty sure that's the case.)
I also liked Vashet, how self-confident and no-nonsense she is, and the way Kvothe wears her down ("This was nothing. Once I jumped off a roof."), and the way she imitated Kvothe's speech ("I want to make good fight. With sword!"). I liked Shehyn and Penthe, too, and Celean, and I liked Kvothe's ordeal with the tree, it being easy for him to not show fear or doubt because he has an audience, and "Did you hear what Kvothe brought back from the sword tree? The things a barbarian cannot understand: silence and stillness. The heart of Ademre. What did he offer Sheyn? Willingness to bleed for the school." I thought that scene was marvelously, marvelously played, tying all sorts of things together, and was worth the diversion to Ademre by itself alone.
New characters and locales are great, but nothing can quite compare with Bast and the relationship that he and Kvothe have. I loved Bast's outrage over Kvothe's note, and especially loved the twist at the end, where it's revealed that Bast was the one who'd sent the soldiers/brigands to the inn, and how that, in retrospect, makes his freakout at Kvothe's state when he returns make perfect sense, and adds all these fascinating nuances and ironies to both Bast and Kvothe's reactions in the aftermath. I can't wait to see learn how the two of them met, and how Bast became so attached to him. I'm also liking the interaction between Bast and the Chronicler, from Bast freaking him out with a practical joke at the beginning to the Chronicler smacking him as an illustration of why Cthaeh-induced paralysis is dumb. And there are also these random bits of character development, quirks, like Bast hating beets, that were just wonderful.
I also liked a lot of the clever quotes:
Sim: "I don't like having to chew my liquor."
"It's not that bad," I said defensively. "In the small kingdoms women drink it when they're pregnant. Arwyl mentioned it in one of his lectures. [...] It has all sorts of trace nutrients."
"Kvothe, we don't judge you." Wilem lay his hand on my shoulder, his face concerned. "Sim and I don't mind that you're a pregnant Yllish woman."
Elodin and Kvothe speaking about Auri
Kvothe: She needs warmer clothes. And socks and shoes. And a blanket. etc.
Elodin: She wont' take them from me. I've left things out for her. She won't touch them. If I give them to you, will you pass them along?
Kvothe: In that case she also needs about twenty talents, a ruby the size of an egg, and a new set of engraving tools.
"'Good job, Ambrose,' Wilem said sarcastically. 'You caught him. He stole your fire.'"
"[Hespe] didn't scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry."
"Tempi began my true instruction in the Ketan. Fool that I was, I'd assumed he had already been teaching me. The truth was, he had merely been correcting my more horrifying mistakes because they irritated him. Much the same way I'd be tempted to tune someone's lute if they were playing off-key in the same room."
The Cthaeh: "Goodness boy, you're like a clear pool. I can see ten feet through you, and you're barely three feet deep."
Vashet, on Ademre: "But this land had little to give us, a place for our flocks to graze, stone, and endless wind. We could not find a way to sell the wind, so we sold our fierceness to the world."
Vashet: "But a leader is not a muscle. A leader is a mind." and "There is a great deal of difference between a penis and a heart" (She's got a way with one-liners, does Vashet.)
"It was the same scolding any child receives. Stay out of the neighbor's garden. Don't tease the Bentons' sheep. Don't play tag among the thousand spoinning knives of your people's sacred tree."
Shehyn: Your Ketan is poor. But were you to train yourself in proper fashion for a year, you would be Tempi's equal.
Kvothe: You flatter me.
Shehyn: I do not. I tell you your weakensses. You learn quickly. That leads to rash behaviour, and rashness is not of the Lethani.
Bast: Reshi. What happened?
Kvothe: Devan and I got into a bit of an argument about the proper use of the subjunctive mood. It got a little heated towards the end.
[...]
Chronicler: So. Subjunctive mood.
Kvothe: At best, it is a pointless thing. It needlessly complicates language. It offends me.
Crhonicler: Oh come now. The subjunctive is the heart of the hypothetical. In the right hands...
"He tp;d me tp leave [chemistry] class, calling me an irreverent dennerling with no respect for authority. I called him a pompous slipstick who had missed his true calling as a counting house scribe. In all fairness, we both had some valid points."
But.
The book is also self-indulgent in ways that don't appeal to me, where it's a lot harder for me to smile fondly at its flaws. The whole thing with Felurian was... uh. I actually didn't think the fairy sex was as bad as I had been expecting based on other people's reactions, but I also didn't think that section needed to be nearly as long as it was. I did kind of like the fact that Kvothe went after her not out of carnal lust (mostly) but because hers was the magic of singing, but then that aspect kind of got lost. And I thought the book was overly reliant on tell don't show when it came to her -- Kvothe kept talking about how she was the most beautiful woman in the world and marvelous and inhuman, but I didn't actually feel any of that. Bast is about a million times more fascinating and alien and dangerous and alluring while slumming in a village inn for a couple of pages than Felurian or anything she did over almost a hundred of them. (Although I will say that I liked the analogy that humans and Fae are different as "water and aldohol. In equal glasses they look the same. Both liquid. Both clear. Both we, after a fashion. But one will burn, the other will not. This has nothing to do with temperament or timing. These two things behave differently because they are profoundly, fundamentally not the same.")
There were two parts of that interlude that felt useful in any way -- Kvothe trying to recollect himself under Felurian's power (and the PTSD flashback to Tarbean that triggers it) and thus having some kind of breakthrough with Naming and the encounter with the Cthaeh (which was actually really creepy and well-written, with the dismembered butterflies and disembodied voice). All of the rest of it could have easily been dispensed with (he can get a magic cloak by some other means). Well, OK, he also got the story about the creation of the Faen realm and the way in which the moon connects them, but that could have also been accomplished by other means. And I was amused by Kvothe's failure to learn the Fae language, which was refreshing, and Felurian's various attempts to comfort him with strange fruits and singing birds and eggs that hatched and so on, because I felt a true sense of wonder in those paragraphs. But, really, it felt like a Rube Goldbergesque setup to get Kvothe laid, and, uh. Also, the rhyming thing? Lame. As was Felurian's lack of capitals. Whyyyy. And Kvothe's whole ruse with the song was the least believable yet. The whole thing just felt like it came from a much less accomplished book :/
The way Kvothe then instantly became a ladies man in the mortal realm was also kind of embarrassing. The thing with Losi was silly but at least provided a counterpoint to how Kvothe was before. I didn't mind his NSA sex with Vashet or the cute stuff with Penthe, but, really, we needed to hear all about the university girls all throwing themselves at him, and even Fela having a thing?
I'm also still generally unsold on Denna and Kvothe's relationship with her. I like it better if, as mauvais_pli mentioned it can be, it's simply read as a romantic friendship, and not anything more than that, regardless of how Kvothe would like it to read. I did like him "reading" her braid, and "I've waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are" (and the echo of the scene with Penth in Ademre there), and the scene where Kvothe realizes that Denna staying with the master who beats her is really not much different from him staying at university despite the whipping (or letting Vashet beat him, or jumping off the roof for Elodin), and their nighttime stroll through teh Alveron's gardens was sweet, but in general the relationship seems frustrating and stuck and cyclical, and I just don't really enjoy reading about that. And I felt like the fight about the song, when Kvothe ostensibly barely held himself back from calling Denna a whore to her face, came out of nowhere. Kvothe is prone to not shutting up when he shouldn't -- him mouthing off to Alveron about Meluan ("I think she rues the truth. A trouper's tongue has gotten her to bed more quickly than her sister") was believable to me, but his behaviour during the fight with Denna did not. (I did really enjoy the way Kvothe described pouring all of his feeling for Denna into his proxy courtship of Meluan.)
I'm also a bit >.> regarding Kvothe's execution of the false troupers and subsequent lecture to the townsfolk. It's not that I'm aghast that Kvothe would kill -- dispatching the bandits with sympathy was not that far different from physically killing a bunch of people with his hands (though I did like the fact that he seemed to be in shock when he dealt with the bandits and was sick afterwards, when burying the corpse). But he poisoned the false troupers' stew before he met the abducted girls or knew for a fact that they had harmed the rightful owners of the wagons. I don't think we're supposed to cheer him on wholeheartedly in his actions... at least I hope not. At the same time, I was kind of annoyed that Kvothe was the one who delivered the lecture to the townsfolk about what the girls had been through and how they should be treated, as opposed to someone who was local and female, one of the abducted girls themselves, or Gran.
I continue to not give any damns at all about the Chandrian or the Amyr or any of the mysteries associated with them. This stuff hasn't been too overwhelming so far, but I'm afraid it will become so in the next book, and meh.
Neither good nor bad but simply random observation:
Somebody called the Adem "Russian ninjas" and... uh? The Leithani reminded me strongly of the Tao (all that discussion of paths) and it certainly sounds like a martial art along the lines of Tai Chi, but where does one get Russian from that? The mere fact that the Adem have fair hair and light eyes? O.o
All in all, I did really enjoy the book and am looking forward to more. But I can also see why this isn't everybody's cup of tea.
Also, for my own future reference, TOR is hosting a reread/discussion
29. Tamora Pierce, Tortall and Other Lands -- short story collection. This was fine enough, although I found that I enjoyed the non-Tortall stories more than the other ones, probably just because of the variety.
Spoilers for individual stories
"Student of Ostriches" -- about Kylaia al Jmaa, the Shang Unicorn (whom I only very, very vaguely remember from the series). I've actually read it before, but had enjoyed it enough to reread. It's pretty charming.
"Elder Brother" -- the story about the apple tree turned into a man by the magical backlash of that time Numair turned, uh, that guy into an apple tree. Anyway, the apple tree guy just sort of blunders about until he meets "Fadal", a girl dressed as a boy so that she can enjoy some freedom in the religiously repressive... wherever they are, where women must be veiled. They rescue each other and then head for greener pastures together. It's pretty sweet.
"The Hidden Girl" -- works pretty well as a companion story to the previous one, almost a rebuttal of Fadala's choice to dress as a man to navigate the oppressive regime. The protagonist of this one is a girl who is the daughter of a traveling preacher who teaches a more inclusive version of the religion, and eventually she takes over his role by pretending to be an old lady. There's a meeting between the girl and "Fadal" (who she thinks is a boy at the time but learns the truth about later) where they talk about veils, and this girl talks about the veils being a source of strength, because she cannot be identified when she is veiled, and cannot be compared to her prettier mother/sisters/etc. It's an interesting view, but of course these are strength in a society that is repressive and dismissive of women, so, not quite a rousing defense. Anyway, an interesting story, and more nuanced than I was expecting, honestly.
"Nawat" -- Aly and Nawat Crow have triplets. There is a LOT of baby care stuff, which was fun for me to read but I think would be deeply boring to YA readers. One of the triplets, Nawat's favorite, turns out to have something wrong with her (I was expecting some kind of autism-spectrum disorder or something else non-neurotypical, but it turned out she was going to be a dwarf, which I thought was less interesting, but OK) and crow law requires an unhealthy hatchling to be culled (i.e. killed when young). Nawat was one of my favorite characters in the Trickster duology (which I didn't like very much, tbh), and it was neat to have a story from his POV. I still can't stand Aly, even if she did have the excuse of post-partum hormones and having three babies (but also a bunch of nannies and other helpers) in this one. But it was nice to read about Nawat...
"The Dragon's Tale" -- about Skysong/Kitten, Daine's dragon. I don't care about the caracter and I didn't care for the story the first time I read it, so I definitely had no desire to read it again.
"Lost" -- a story about a girl who is "mathematical genius" but is extremely shy because she's been emotionally abused by her hectoring father (who just happens to be a smuggler). In the acknowledgements for this story Pierce thanked those who encouraged her to writ eoutside of her comfort zone, and I thought the fact that writing about math was not her comfort zone showed pretty clearly. I did not believe in Adria being a mathematical genius, partly because very early on it talked about how she was having trouble with a new teacher in school because he was forcing her to write down all the intermediate steps and she couldn't do that. Now, I've known several mathematical-genius-level people who could immediately jump to the answer of a multi-step problem, but they were always able to show their work if they had to. Of course, it's different with savants, but Adria is not supposed to be a savant. Anyway, that kind of left me annoyed with Adria from the start, and her cringing continued to annoy me throughout the story. I did like the lady engineer and the old math teacher, though. But the darklings aren't cute to me, they're boring.
"Time of Proving" -- a very short little tale about a girl from a culture that values wilderness survival rescuing a minotaur scholar (a scholar who is a minotaur, not a scholar of minotaurs). It was OK, but I didn't feel like it had enough of a point to really be a story.
"Plain Magic" -- sacrificing a virgin to a dragon story-with-a-twist (nobody tells it without a twist anymore, of course). I liked Lindri the mysterious peddler woman, but I'd kept hoping she would turn out to be the dragon (the way she probably would in an Ursula LeGuin story), and she didn't, so I was left kind of disappointed.
"Mimic" -- about a baby dragon whom a girl nurses to health. I enjoyed it, the way it was told with a lot of love for all kinds of animals and a pleasant family dynamic, but it felt a bit too long.
"Huntress" -- my favorite story, I think, about a track star from a rough neighborhood transferring to a preppy school and encountering a gang of track kids who hunt local lowlives. There was more nuance in this story than I had expected, with the preppy gang preying mostly on people whom everyone was "good riddance" about (drug dealers and rapists), but definitely not being positive characters either, and the protagonist calling on the moon goddess for help, whose help turns out to be a lot more bloody than she had bargained for.
"Testing" -- a non-fantasy and partially autobiographic story about a new den mother in a home for troubled girls -- apparently much like the girls Pierce had originally told the Song of the Lioness too, before she got it published. I liked the narrator's voice and all of the other girls had vivid personalities. The den mother, X-ray, was way too perfect at handling everything the girls threw at her, which made the story less compelling, but it was still fun, because of the girls.
The book also came with a teaser chapter from Mastiff, which I ought to remember is out now and try to read.
30. Game of Groans, by "George R.R. Washington" (but actually Alan Goldsher -- what an utterly lackluster parody. I'm not even sure the person who wrote this has read the books, though I guess he has seen the TV show. They seemed to think that repeating "mud" and "onions" constantly would automatically make the book funny, and everything else was on the 12-year-old boy level of humour. Silly names that don't really add anything to the parody, ridiculous reversals that I guess are supposed to be clever (like Tritone (~Tyrion) is a giant instead of a dwarf), and some added scenes that don't really do anything. Just, bleh. There were three things that actually made me smile in the entire book -- the crack about the TSA-like tactics of the Eyrie, a bit of citicism of Ned's actions (which I'm always up for), and one of Tritone's "yo mama" jokes (which the author didn't even make up). I kept reading to see if it would get any better, but no, it didn't.
31. Melissa Marr, Radiant Shadows -- it took me forever to get into this one. I started reading it, put it down, picked up Darkest Mercy (the last book in the series, which follows this one), put it down again for ages, then came back to it. It was OK, actually, but mostly about characters I really didn't care about. Spoilers!
Devlin is, perhaps, better as an idea than an actual character; at any rate, I found him boring. Ani was OK, but not really enough to hold my attention, and I thought her reaction to Tish's death was over too quickly (though maybe it just felt like that because of POV switches; which is the other thing that bugged me about this book -- it jumped POV, or at least seemed to, a couple of times). And I don't know what the whole deal with Rae was -- she was so boring!
So, I can't say I was the least bit invested in any of the three protagonists. And what was up with the threesome-with-ghost at the end there? O.o The thing I did like about this book was more Irial (he is my favorite character, and I think I remember him being the author's favorite, too?) and Iri/Niall interaction. Every time they were in a scene together, I was guarranteed to enjoy that scene, especially the dream scene where Niall sort of obliquely mutters that he is willing to do something if, in return, Rae leaves a path for Irial to enter his dreams. Those two!
Anyway, I think the cosmology of these is getting too convoluted and the writing can't really support it (I did like some of the juxtaposition of old-timey fairy talk with modern slang, but at other times it just sounded silly, like when Devlin was thinking about "having a relationship" XP). I am going to go on and read the conclusion, of course, but I kind of liked these better when there were fewer courts and random characters to keep track of.
33. Melissa Marr, Darkest Mercy -- I don't know that it would be fair to say that I'm disappointed with this book, but I had been hoping for more. Spoilers!One of the things that really impressed me about Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange was the way the endings were messy and bittersweet -- the protagonists had to work at things and keep working at them, and negotiate, and make sacrifices. I guess it makes sense that the conclusion would be all happy endings for everyone -- even if somewhat unexpected ones -- but that weakened the series for me.
Except when it comes to Iri -- I'm really happy he wasn't really dead, and that he and Niall and Leslie seem to get some kind of happily ever after, and he seems quite well suited to his new role as Discord. For a while, when Irial was possessing Niall's body, I was afraid that this, too, would end with the weird one-part-incorporeal threesome like Devlin/Ani/Rae, but was glad to see it wasn't the case.
The Court reversal with Keenan makes sense, and him giving up his immortality for Donia was suitably dramatic, but as soon as it became clear that Aislinn and Seth were going to get an unobstructed relationship, one where Ash would no longer have to negotiate between her duty to the court and what she wanted personally, I started caring a fair bit less. I did like certain aspects of this book -- Niall unbalanced by grief and the sealing of Faerie and Seth asserting himself as his balance, and the creepy inhumanity of the water fae, . But, also, a lot of this book was action-driven, and I don't think Marr is very good at writing action -- it doesn't flow as well and I have a tendency to skim then.
I expected to have more to say about this book than I do, which I guess is part of the disappointment...
34. Melissa Marr, Fairy Tales and Nightmares -- and then, because I was on a roll, I read the short stories collection, too. Most of the longer stories are Wicked Lovely-verse and share the same characters, and those are the ones I enjoyed most, but a couple are standalone, which varied in quality, IMO. Spoilers for the stories
"Winter's Kiss" -- a proto-Donia called Nesha and her were-polar-bear. Aiming for folktale, possibly with an environmental message, but not really hitting that.
"Transition" -- urban fantasy vampire story, actually a pretty decent one. Nothing groundbreaking, but it didn't bore me, the way a lot of vampire stuff does. Maybe because there was no attempt at making the vampires noble or good.
"Love Struck" -- a very cute urban fantasy story about a male selkie and a girl who doesn't do relationships falling in love. It avoids being shmoopy and had some of that flavor of the first Wicked Lovely book that I really liked, where the mortal heroine accepts the faerie world and its wonders but doesn't see why it should mean that she can't proceed with her life plan of going to college and so on.
"Old Habits" -- a chaptered novella set after Ink Exchange, dealing mostly with Irial and Niall, but also with Devlin and Sorcha, and so setting up the next two books. This collection really drove home that Iri and Niall is pretty much what I care about in this universe, because I really enjoyed this story and the other one that deals with them and Leslie. Things I liked about this story: Seth being uncomfortable with the feelings Niall, as Gancanagh, elicits in him, and the two of them talking about it; the fact that Irial and Sorcha apparently occasionally have fun together; Irial being fond of kids; Irial asking for the Summer Girl who had slept with Niall to come to him; this conversation:
Niall: "Why does that library look familiar?"
Irial: "Because a very long time ago, you wer ehappy in the courtyard of a building very like this one. [...] And I was feeling... a longing for such moments one day last century when a young architect was staring at his plans. I made a few suggestions to his designs."
Niall: "Is that to impress me?"
Irial: Well, as it took over a hundred years for you to notice, it obviously didn't."
and the scene in the end where Niall asserts his authority as the new Dark King over Irial, pushing him to his knees and ordering him to stay there and:
Irial: "I trust you with my life."
Niall: I know that. Now, try trusting me with my life."
OK, it's all deeply melodramatic, but with these guys, it works for me, oh so very well.
"Stopping Time" -- set after Fragile Eternity. Features Irial reading American Gods, drinking out of Niall's glass and extracting his cigarette case from Niall's pocket, and:
Irial: "You are my king. You could command me to stop seeing [Leslie]"
Niall: "What would you do?"
Irial: "Blind myself, if you were foolish enough to use those worlds."
It was good to see more of Leslie, too. I quite like Leslie, and I liked this look at how she's dealing with PTSD, and the reason she doesn't trust herself to stay with the Dark Court ("The person I would become in the court isn't the person who I want to be." "'I'll love you either way,' Niall promised. 'He would too.'" "I wouldn't.") So, yeah, I do like Leslie... although it's difficult for me to see her relationship with either Niall or Irial being as important to them as their relationship with each other -- which is so much more complicated and spans centuries.
"The Art of Waiting" -- um. I think this is meant to be profound, but I just found it pointless. At least it was short?
"Flesh for Comfort" -- really creepy story where creatures (goblins?) gnaw off chunks of a girl's flesh and lick her skin polished to make her pretty. Horror is so not my thing, but I thought this was the most powerful stand-alone story in the book.
"The Sleeping Girl and the Summer King" -- the faerie tale out of which the central premise of Wicked Lovely eventually grew. It's not bad, but I really do think urban fantasy is Marr's forte.
"Cotton Candy Skies" -- Rabbit finds an artist in Faerie who becomes his wife. I guess this was meant to be cute, but I found it boring. Though I'm glad to know that Rabbit is happy after the events of Radiant Shadows.
"Unexpected Family" -- set shortly after the main events of Darkest Mercy, Seth and Niall go on a roadtrip, talk through their issues, and Seth comes out as faery to his parents (and discovers some unexpected magic. Favorite bit was the scene where Irial calls Seth "Order Junior", and:
'Seth made a crude gesture.
"My plate's pretty full, boy, but I'll keep it in mind if I need a way to stir a little trouble with your beloved Summer Queen."'
Also, it was nice to see Irial and Niall actually together rather than pining/angsting/dancing around each other.
"Merely Mortal" -- set between the main events of Darkest Mercy and the epilogue, Donia and mortal Keenan take a holiday and end up on YouTube. I expected to find it boring, but it was actually quite cute, especially seeing Keenan having to operate within the human world for the first time without the aid of faery fakery.
Bonus: Fancasting for the series, which is pretty neat.
32. Ursula Vernon, No Such Things as Ghosts (Dragonbreath #5) - L said this one was one of her least favorites in the series, and I agree. Though it was still cute! Also Spoilers!, I wasn't expecting the ghost to be real, for some reason. Sea serpents, jackalopes, sentient potato salad and were-wieners, it's all good, but I was expecting a Scooby-Do kind of resolution with the ghost. I do really like Christiana, and love the fact that this book for kids mentions and explains Occam's Razor. And I do continue to like Danny's parents, and especially loved this line: "His father had grounded Danny immediately -- not, he said, for the bowling ball marks, but for insulting his intelligence with the elephant bit".
24. Seanan McGuire, An Artificial Night -- Spoilers I had a weird trajectory with this book. I started reading it and was really enjoying it (I think it was the domesticity, which is a nice counterbalance with the way the noir feel of these books often feels oppressive to me, unlike in lots of other urban fantasy detective genre books), and then just as Toby got to Blind Michael's lands I lost interest and put the book down for months. Then I picked it up again and found myself enjoying it a fair bit while also wondering why I don't care more about these books and the characters who populate them. And then I got to the end and was quite excited that there was the next book sitting on my to-read pile and I could start reading it right away. So, overall... mixed?
Part of the weird trajectory, I think, is that this one's less an attempt at a detective story and more just general creepiness/horror. I like detective stories a lot more than I like horror, BUT I think McGuire is better at writing horror than detective stories, so those two things balanced each other out. Because it's not really a detective story, I didn't have the problems with it that I had with the first two books, where Toby kept making really stupid calls and missing REALLY obvious things, which seriously compromised my suspension of disbelief.
I didn't care about the added worldbuilding of Blind Michael's lands and the mythical/dreamlike feel of them. I thought Toby's narration from under the depths of Blind Michael's magic was pretty well done -- but I still didn't care. The only worldbuilding type thing I did like was the application of Tam Lin, but I love that ballad so much you can pretty much stick it in anything and I'll be happy.
I thought the children-in-peril thing was pretty well done, especially the reactions of the kids, and the bit where Toby notices how the normally confident child of her friends is cringing and terrified was especially powerful for me; I also liked the little boy's appropriately toddler-logic reactions. I liked Raj and May, and I'm always happy to see Quentin and especially the Luidaeg.
The epic revelation with Luna and the kitsune girl was just kinda weird. Not saying it was, but to me it felt like in the first book we were introduced to a kitsune who wasn't Japanese and was surrounded by roses for some reason, and this book attempted to explain these facts, but it didn't feel organic, not like an a-ha! revelation but rather like a retcon.
25. Seanan McGuire, Late Eclipses -- Back to a mystery, Spoilers! only now with the explanation that Toby is drugged when she does stupid stuff, as opposed to Toby just being Toby. I enjoyed Tybalt and Raj in this, under the stress of the attack on the Court of Cats (though the kiss with Tybalt was way contrived), and Sylvester, in his grief, and Connor in the difficult position he was in. Speaking of Sylvester, I thought Toby was pretty unreasonable in his "waah, why didn't you tell me!" reaction (it reminded me of Harry Dresden's feakout over the revelation that McCoy was the Blackstaff, which is to say, chill, dude.) I did like Raysel's monologue and the (mad) reasoning behind her virulent hatred of Toby, but I'm ready for a new antagonist, you know? I was fairly satisfied with the closure with Manny, though, because I found his grudge against Toby fairly insane. Also, as per usual, I saw Oleander's secret identity coming from a mile off, without any knowledge of how Hobs never leave a place. The telegraphing of everything that's supposed to be a plot twist continues to be a weakness of this series of me... As for the big revelation that Toby is not who she thought she was and can shift her blood. OK? A bigger deal was made of it in-universe than I really felt as a reader. I don't know that I have much more to say about this one except that both sides of the love triangle seem to be ratcheting up...
I feel like I always have more complaints than likes in my responses to the Toby books, and that's not really fair.. It's not that I don't enjoy them -- I do! But I'm always wondering, in the back of my mind, why I'm not enjoying them more, and that's why, I think, my write-ups come out the way they do...
27. Kim Harrison, Black Magic Sanction -- Eh. Spoilers I liked all the parts with Trent, as per usual, and wish there had been more of them -- it was very nice to see (and for Rachel to remember) some of their backstory, and the revelation that one of Rachel's magic words was the name of Trent's horse. I was happy to see Lee again, and to have him both be competent and in charge in most circumstances -- and also utterly terrified whenever the subject of demons came up. I'd skipped the previous book or two, so Pierce was a new character to me, and I liked him well enough (especially his and Rachel's conversation about gravity and quantum mechanics and whatnot, which he was constrained to talk about in olden-days terms), even though the whole "will Rachel and he get together?" thing bored me (and the weird paragraph about the extra vagina muscles witches have or whatever... WTF was that, and why). I actually didn't mind Nick in the earlier books, but he was so clearly a no-good evil bad guy in this one, which was boring. Matalina's death was sad, and I liked Rachel and Pierce's visit to Jenks's house, and the pixie kids' confusion about whether or not they wanted Jenks to live on, because it was just so far outside their cultural expectations. I liked the whole thing with the fairies, Rachel not comfortable with killing them but not doing them any favors by calling back the spell, and I like Ceri being pissed at her for this, and the introduction of Sidereal, whom I'm curious to see more of, and the weird fairy-and-pixie antagonistic symbiosis. And I kind of even like Vivian, the coven's hitwoman. There was a bunch of metaphysical revelations that I didn't really care about and have probably mostly forgotten by now.
28. Patrick Rothfuss, Wise Man's Fear -- So, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but I'm not at all sure I'm convinced it's a good book. I think it's actually terribly self-indulgent... it's just that the ways in which it's terribly self-indulgent are mostly ways that appeal to me lots. Spoilers
First, it's chock-full of language geekery, which is one of my favorite things to encounter in fantasy -- Kvothe trying to learn Yllish (and the dual ownership wherein you also belong to your socks) (also, I wonder if his failure at learning sailors' knots is related to his difficulty with Yllish), figuring out Adem hand gestures and first learning Adem from Tempi, who didn't know any language Kvothe spoke particularly well, and coming to the conclusion that "a well-spoken senstence in Adem is like a spider-web, each strand with a meaning of its own" -- all this stuff was totally up my alley and therefore great. Also, other random language things, like the story that Elodin started a fight because someone kept saying "utilize" instead of "use", or Kvothe claiming that he and the Chronicler had fought over the subjunctive, and the Chancellor (who is a linguist) getting intrigued by the etymology of "ravel" as a slur for the Edema Ruh, or Simmon explaining that "vintage" technically only applies to wines from Vintas, and Kvothe wondering whether the Adem "tempa" (iron) may be related to "temper" (the verb), and the confusion between the literal and figurative "Watch my back" when Tempi says it to Kvothe before the bar brawl. Also, "sipquick" and "flit" are both awesome names for hummingbirds, better than any of the real words I know.
Non-language geekery, too: Kvothe's passion for chemistry, Basil getting busted to Stocks for adding water to acid, the Fishery having a patent process with royalties, using HF ("transporting agents that would move through your skin without leaving a mark, then quietly eat the calcium out of your bones"), "thaumic overfill"/slippage which seems to be a kind of magical friction (both the common thermal and the rare kinetic), the engineering discussion between Kilvin and Kvothe about the arrowcatch and failsafes (no, really, do you know how rarely you see engineering in fantasy books? real engineering and not just references to it?), Kvothe having to describe sympathy as "magic string" in Vintas, Faen ability to apparently manipulate the wave-particle duality of nature, Kvothe attempting to explain genetics to a woman who believes all reproduction is parthenogenesis, Kvothe correcting himself with regard to the gender of the tree he is addressing because it has blossoms -- NGL, the geerkery of these books and some of their characters is my favorite thing about this series. And not just cientific geekery, either -- like drugged!Kvothe speculating that "humor is rooted in social transfression. I can't transrgress because I can't figure out what would be socially unacceptable."
And besides in-universe geekery, there are also various geeky allusions. I spotted the "Edro!" one myself, of course (and had a "wait, seriously? Kvothe speaks Elven now?" reaction :P), but I might have missed the homage in Gran if I hadn't read about another fan pointing out how much the old village healer was like Mistress Weatherwax (homage or not, I loved her character, especially when she said "If you like, I can put in some arrowroot, too."
I also loved other aspects of the worldbuilding, like the different social mores Kvothe encounters -- attitudes about music and nudity (in Ademre), sex (in Ademre explicity -- especially when Penth brings him to some flowers because she thinks that's what barbarians are supposed to do, and when Tempi has no concept of "whore" ("a person men pay money to have sex with") except as a compliment -- and as alluded to in Modeg), the matriarchal nature of Ademre, the superstitions of Vintas, the way wealth and poverty look different in Ademre than Kvothe's usual point of reference, Celean (the Adem girl) not being able to accept a country in which women don't fight. Also, I don't know that this is really worldbuilding, but I wasn't sure where else to stick it -- I continue to enjoy Kvothe's grudge against poetry.
Of course, the University was my favorite part, because I love magic school stories, and Elodin being crazy was a lot of fun (especially the "Oh God whose rooms are these" incident, and his reading list which he hasn't read (but nevertheless stars and underlines and draws a sad face next to, although his class being called "Introduction to Not Being a Stupid Jackass" and "Quit grabbing at my tits" analogy were also fun), especially as Kvothe does realize, later, in Ademre, that there was a method to his madness. (I also quite like the idea of Naming being powered by the unconscious mind.) And I was amused to discover, after, that of course, even as tiny as the fandom is for this (at least English-speaking fandom, because there seems to be a lot of writing about it in Spanish), there exist not one but at least two fics about Elodin and Kvothe ending up naked on that roof. And Elodin was not the only Master whose presence I enjoyed, but also Kilvin and Elxa Dal (whom I always imagine as my Kinetics professor, actually) giving Kvothe a heart-to-heart talk ("Lord and lady, I was a mess at seventeen. My studies, trying to sort out my place in the world. Women..." (I would totally read Elxa Dal prequel fic, btw).
And I really like Sim and Wil, whom I would have liked to see more of, actually, but it was nice to get some additional bits about them, like Wilem being uneasy around blood, and Simmon studying Eld Vintic poetry with the Chancellor, and actually writing some Anglo-Saxon like verse for Fela (and that was also a nice way to slip in a definition of "caesura", which I didn't notice until I was leafing through again), and the fact that Sim's father was disappointed with him entering the University and he does not return home, or the way normally gentle Sim explodes when Kvothe defends the value of Mengele Gibea's research. And I really love the dynamic they have with Kvothe, watching over him while he fears a malfeasance attack, before he makes the gram, and Kvothe sticking up for Sim with Fela ("He's gentle, which people see as weak. And he's happy, which people see as stupid.") And on the other side of the river, Devi is awesome, and I wish there had been more of her, too, but I loved her besting Kvothe and "what makes you think you can do what even Elxa Dal couldn't? Why do you think htey expelled me? They feared a woman who could match a master by her second year".
I expected to stop enjoying the book once Kvothe left the University, and actually put it down for a couple of months at that point, but I needn't have worried. I also enjoyed reading about Kvothe essentially pulling cons (especially pretending to be a gossip-collecting bumpkin with Caudicus), and hanging out with Bredon (who, I still wonder what his deal is, and if he'll show up again), even the extended traipsing through the woods after bandits was not as bad as I'd feared, and I enjoyed his interactions with his little band, especially Marten and his woodcraft training tricks (and Kvothe thinking the training signs he'd left were real and thanking the gods for the search being over so quickly) and bets. And, of course, Kvothe "calling down lightning" was pretty spectacular.
There were a number of characters introduced in this outing whom I liked. I liked Alveron quite a lot, the way his undeniable wisdom and other positive qualities coexisted with rather prickly pride and ruthlessness, the way he talks about keepin Dagon close ("my mad dog on a short leash"). Also, during Kvothe's first interlude at Vintas I was pretty much convinced that Alveron and Stapes were long-term lovers -- the way Alveron refused to marry as a young man and was sort of hedgy about Meluan ("She is worthy of love, that is certain. And I have a fondness for her" in response to Kvothe's guess that he loved her), and Stapes' bone ring and his gratitude to Kvothe for saving Alveron's life ("I doubt you understand how much I'm in your debt") and said debt being "this lies outside my duty to the Maer", and Stapes addressing Alveron as "Rand", a diminutive (which Meluan, for instance, doesn't use, at least in front of Kvothe), and even the way Alveron reacts when discovering Stapes hiding a dead sipquick and had lied to him about it. Like another reader who commented on this, I wasn't sure this was as clearly signaled on Kvothe's second visit, but maybe they were just trying to keep a low profile with Meluan around...
Actually, I don't know if there's really something there, or if the way Rothfuss writes friendships makes them come over to me this way, or if fandom has simply rotted my brain, but for a while now I've also been wondering if Wilem is not sort of pining for Sim. There were a couple of lines that made me wonder, and there was also Wilem's reaction on discovering that Deoch of the Eolian likes men too: "I hadn't any knowledge of it. But small wonder he is a Basha [bi]. He is attractive enough." And, of course, Sim was completely oblivious under the same circumstances, so. And then Sim joking that "our backup plan was to stuff Wilem into a dress. Nobody wants that" and Wil's reaction being nodding and "Agreed." But, really, what made me think this was more than slash goggles was the conversation between Kvothe and Wil when they're walking home from Imre and Kvothe is talking about Denna and not wanting to ruin their friendship with 'fawning', and Wilem saying, "You would rather be close to her heart. You would rather be joyfully held in the circle of her arms. But you fear she will reject you. You fear she would laugh and you would look the fool. You are hardly the first to feel this way. There is no shame in it." And then Sim lamenting that "All I want is someone who likes me" (and Wil responding with, "I want a magical horse that fits in my pocket. And a ring of red amber that gives me power over demons. And an endless supply of cake." <3). Anyway, am I alone in seeing an unrequited thing between Wilem and Sim, which Wil isn't acting on because he knows Sim is as straight as they come and he'd rather not make it awkward?
(Oh, yeah, and I'm not sure if I would have picked up on Meluan being Kvothe's mother's sister (most likely) without having read some speculation on it, but I'm pretty sure that's the case.)
I also liked Vashet, how self-confident and no-nonsense she is, and the way Kvothe wears her down ("This was nothing. Once I jumped off a roof."), and the way she imitated Kvothe's speech ("I want to make good fight. With sword!"). I liked Shehyn and Penthe, too, and Celean, and I liked Kvothe's ordeal with the tree, it being easy for him to not show fear or doubt because he has an audience, and "Did you hear what Kvothe brought back from the sword tree? The things a barbarian cannot understand: silence and stillness. The heart of Ademre. What did he offer Sheyn? Willingness to bleed for the school." I thought that scene was marvelously, marvelously played, tying all sorts of things together, and was worth the diversion to Ademre by itself alone.
New characters and locales are great, but nothing can quite compare with Bast and the relationship that he and Kvothe have. I loved Bast's outrage over Kvothe's note, and especially loved the twist at the end, where it's revealed that Bast was the one who'd sent the soldiers/brigands to the inn, and how that, in retrospect, makes his freakout at Kvothe's state when he returns make perfect sense, and adds all these fascinating nuances and ironies to both Bast and Kvothe's reactions in the aftermath. I can't wait to see learn how the two of them met, and how Bast became so attached to him. I'm also liking the interaction between Bast and the Chronicler, from Bast freaking him out with a practical joke at the beginning to the Chronicler smacking him as an illustration of why Cthaeh-induced paralysis is dumb. And there are also these random bits of character development, quirks, like Bast hating beets, that were just wonderful.
I also liked a lot of the clever quotes:
Sim: "I don't like having to chew my liquor."
"It's not that bad," I said defensively. "In the small kingdoms women drink it when they're pregnant. Arwyl mentioned it in one of his lectures. [...] It has all sorts of trace nutrients."
"Kvothe, we don't judge you." Wilem lay his hand on my shoulder, his face concerned. "Sim and I don't mind that you're a pregnant Yllish woman."
Elodin and Kvothe speaking about Auri
Kvothe: She needs warmer clothes. And socks and shoes. And a blanket. etc.
Elodin: She wont' take them from me. I've left things out for her. She won't touch them. If I give them to you, will you pass them along?
Kvothe: In that case she also needs about twenty talents, a ruby the size of an egg, and a new set of engraving tools.
"'Good job, Ambrose,' Wilem said sarcastically. 'You caught him. He stole your fire.'"
"[Hespe] didn't scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry."
"Tempi began my true instruction in the Ketan. Fool that I was, I'd assumed he had already been teaching me. The truth was, he had merely been correcting my more horrifying mistakes because they irritated him. Much the same way I'd be tempted to tune someone's lute if they were playing off-key in the same room."
The Cthaeh: "Goodness boy, you're like a clear pool. I can see ten feet through you, and you're barely three feet deep."
Vashet, on Ademre: "But this land had little to give us, a place for our flocks to graze, stone, and endless wind. We could not find a way to sell the wind, so we sold our fierceness to the world."
Vashet: "But a leader is not a muscle. A leader is a mind." and "There is a great deal of difference between a penis and a heart" (She's got a way with one-liners, does Vashet.)
"It was the same scolding any child receives. Stay out of the neighbor's garden. Don't tease the Bentons' sheep. Don't play tag among the thousand spoinning knives of your people's sacred tree."
Shehyn: Your Ketan is poor. But were you to train yourself in proper fashion for a year, you would be Tempi's equal.
Kvothe: You flatter me.
Shehyn: I do not. I tell you your weakensses. You learn quickly. That leads to rash behaviour, and rashness is not of the Lethani.
Bast: Reshi. What happened?
Kvothe: Devan and I got into a bit of an argument about the proper use of the subjunctive mood. It got a little heated towards the end.
[...]
Chronicler: So. Subjunctive mood.
Kvothe: At best, it is a pointless thing. It needlessly complicates language. It offends me.
Crhonicler: Oh come now. The subjunctive is the heart of the hypothetical. In the right hands...
"He tp;d me tp leave [chemistry] class, calling me an irreverent dennerling with no respect for authority. I called him a pompous slipstick who had missed his true calling as a counting house scribe. In all fairness, we both had some valid points."
But.
The book is also self-indulgent in ways that don't appeal to me, where it's a lot harder for me to smile fondly at its flaws. The whole thing with Felurian was... uh. I actually didn't think the fairy sex was as bad as I had been expecting based on other people's reactions, but I also didn't think that section needed to be nearly as long as it was. I did kind of like the fact that Kvothe went after her not out of carnal lust (mostly) but because hers was the magic of singing, but then that aspect kind of got lost. And I thought the book was overly reliant on tell don't show when it came to her -- Kvothe kept talking about how she was the most beautiful woman in the world and marvelous and inhuman, but I didn't actually feel any of that. Bast is about a million times more fascinating and alien and dangerous and alluring while slumming in a village inn for a couple of pages than Felurian or anything she did over almost a hundred of them. (Although I will say that I liked the analogy that humans and Fae are different as "water and aldohol. In equal glasses they look the same. Both liquid. Both clear. Both we, after a fashion. But one will burn, the other will not. This has nothing to do with temperament or timing. These two things behave differently because they are profoundly, fundamentally not the same.")
There were two parts of that interlude that felt useful in any way -- Kvothe trying to recollect himself under Felurian's power (and the PTSD flashback to Tarbean that triggers it) and thus having some kind of breakthrough with Naming and the encounter with the Cthaeh (which was actually really creepy and well-written, with the dismembered butterflies and disembodied voice). All of the rest of it could have easily been dispensed with (he can get a magic cloak by some other means). Well, OK, he also got the story about the creation of the Faen realm and the way in which the moon connects them, but that could have also been accomplished by other means. And I was amused by Kvothe's failure to learn the Fae language, which was refreshing, and Felurian's various attempts to comfort him with strange fruits and singing birds and eggs that hatched and so on, because I felt a true sense of wonder in those paragraphs. But, really, it felt like a Rube Goldbergesque setup to get Kvothe laid, and, uh. Also, the rhyming thing? Lame. As was Felurian's lack of capitals. Whyyyy. And Kvothe's whole ruse with the song was the least believable yet. The whole thing just felt like it came from a much less accomplished book :/
The way Kvothe then instantly became a ladies man in the mortal realm was also kind of embarrassing. The thing with Losi was silly but at least provided a counterpoint to how Kvothe was before. I didn't mind his NSA sex with Vashet or the cute stuff with Penthe, but, really, we needed to hear all about the university girls all throwing themselves at him, and even Fela having a thing?
I'm also still generally unsold on Denna and Kvothe's relationship with her. I like it better if, as mauvais_pli mentioned it can be, it's simply read as a romantic friendship, and not anything more than that, regardless of how Kvothe would like it to read. I did like him "reading" her braid, and "I've waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are" (and the echo of the scene with Penth in Ademre there), and the scene where Kvothe realizes that Denna staying with the master who beats her is really not much different from him staying at university despite the whipping (or letting Vashet beat him, or jumping off the roof for Elodin), and their nighttime stroll through teh Alveron's gardens was sweet, but in general the relationship seems frustrating and stuck and cyclical, and I just don't really enjoy reading about that. And I felt like the fight about the song, when Kvothe ostensibly barely held himself back from calling Denna a whore to her face, came out of nowhere. Kvothe is prone to not shutting up when he shouldn't -- him mouthing off to Alveron about Meluan ("I think she rues the truth. A trouper's tongue has gotten her to bed more quickly than her sister") was believable to me, but his behaviour during the fight with Denna did not. (I did really enjoy the way Kvothe described pouring all of his feeling for Denna into his proxy courtship of Meluan.)
I'm also a bit >.> regarding Kvothe's execution of the false troupers and subsequent lecture to the townsfolk. It's not that I'm aghast that Kvothe would kill -- dispatching the bandits with sympathy was not that far different from physically killing a bunch of people with his hands (though I did like the fact that he seemed to be in shock when he dealt with the bandits and was sick afterwards, when burying the corpse). But he poisoned the false troupers' stew before he met the abducted girls or knew for a fact that they had harmed the rightful owners of the wagons. I don't think we're supposed to cheer him on wholeheartedly in his actions... at least I hope not. At the same time, I was kind of annoyed that Kvothe was the one who delivered the lecture to the townsfolk about what the girls had been through and how they should be treated, as opposed to someone who was local and female, one of the abducted girls themselves, or Gran.
I continue to not give any damns at all about the Chandrian or the Amyr or any of the mysteries associated with them. This stuff hasn't been too overwhelming so far, but I'm afraid it will become so in the next book, and meh.
Neither good nor bad but simply random observation:
Somebody called the Adem "Russian ninjas" and... uh? The Leithani reminded me strongly of the Tao (all that discussion of paths) and it certainly sounds like a martial art along the lines of Tai Chi, but where does one get Russian from that? The mere fact that the Adem have fair hair and light eyes? O.o
All in all, I did really enjoy the book and am looking forward to more. But I can also see why this isn't everybody's cup of tea.
Also, for my own future reference, TOR is hosting a reread/discussion
29. Tamora Pierce, Tortall and Other Lands -- short story collection. This was fine enough, although I found that I enjoyed the non-Tortall stories more than the other ones, probably just because of the variety.
Spoilers for individual stories
"Student of Ostriches" -- about Kylaia al Jmaa, the Shang Unicorn (whom I only very, very vaguely remember from the series). I've actually read it before, but had enjoyed it enough to reread. It's pretty charming.
"Elder Brother" -- the story about the apple tree turned into a man by the magical backlash of that time Numair turned, uh, that guy into an apple tree. Anyway, the apple tree guy just sort of blunders about until he meets "Fadal", a girl dressed as a boy so that she can enjoy some freedom in the religiously repressive... wherever they are, where women must be veiled. They rescue each other and then head for greener pastures together. It's pretty sweet.
"The Hidden Girl" -- works pretty well as a companion story to the previous one, almost a rebuttal of Fadala's choice to dress as a man to navigate the oppressive regime. The protagonist of this one is a girl who is the daughter of a traveling preacher who teaches a more inclusive version of the religion, and eventually she takes over his role by pretending to be an old lady. There's a meeting between the girl and "Fadal" (who she thinks is a boy at the time but learns the truth about later) where they talk about veils, and this girl talks about the veils being a source of strength, because she cannot be identified when she is veiled, and cannot be compared to her prettier mother/sisters/etc. It's an interesting view, but of course these are strength in a society that is repressive and dismissive of women, so, not quite a rousing defense. Anyway, an interesting story, and more nuanced than I was expecting, honestly.
"Nawat" -- Aly and Nawat Crow have triplets. There is a LOT of baby care stuff, which was fun for me to read but I think would be deeply boring to YA readers. One of the triplets, Nawat's favorite, turns out to have something wrong with her (I was expecting some kind of autism-spectrum disorder or something else non-neurotypical, but it turned out she was going to be a dwarf, which I thought was less interesting, but OK) and crow law requires an unhealthy hatchling to be culled (i.e. killed when young). Nawat was one of my favorite characters in the Trickster duology (which I didn't like very much, tbh), and it was neat to have a story from his POV. I still can't stand Aly, even if she did have the excuse of post-partum hormones and having three babies (but also a bunch of nannies and other helpers) in this one. But it was nice to read about Nawat...
"The Dragon's Tale" -- about Skysong/Kitten, Daine's dragon. I don't care about the caracter and I didn't care for the story the first time I read it, so I definitely had no desire to read it again.
"Lost" -- a story about a girl who is "mathematical genius" but is extremely shy because she's been emotionally abused by her hectoring father (who just happens to be a smuggler). In the acknowledgements for this story Pierce thanked those who encouraged her to writ eoutside of her comfort zone, and I thought the fact that writing about math was not her comfort zone showed pretty clearly. I did not believe in Adria being a mathematical genius, partly because very early on it talked about how she was having trouble with a new teacher in school because he was forcing her to write down all the intermediate steps and she couldn't do that. Now, I've known several mathematical-genius-level people who could immediately jump to the answer of a multi-step problem, but they were always able to show their work if they had to. Of course, it's different with savants, but Adria is not supposed to be a savant. Anyway, that kind of left me annoyed with Adria from the start, and her cringing continued to annoy me throughout the story. I did like the lady engineer and the old math teacher, though. But the darklings aren't cute to me, they're boring.
"Time of Proving" -- a very short little tale about a girl from a culture that values wilderness survival rescuing a minotaur scholar (a scholar who is a minotaur, not a scholar of minotaurs). It was OK, but I didn't feel like it had enough of a point to really be a story.
"Plain Magic" -- sacrificing a virgin to a dragon story-with-a-twist (nobody tells it without a twist anymore, of course). I liked Lindri the mysterious peddler woman, but I'd kept hoping she would turn out to be the dragon (the way she probably would in an Ursula LeGuin story), and she didn't, so I was left kind of disappointed.
"Mimic" -- about a baby dragon whom a girl nurses to health. I enjoyed it, the way it was told with a lot of love for all kinds of animals and a pleasant family dynamic, but it felt a bit too long.
"Huntress" -- my favorite story, I think, about a track star from a rough neighborhood transferring to a preppy school and encountering a gang of track kids who hunt local lowlives. There was more nuance in this story than I had expected, with the preppy gang preying mostly on people whom everyone was "good riddance" about (drug dealers and rapists), but definitely not being positive characters either, and the protagonist calling on the moon goddess for help, whose help turns out to be a lot more bloody than she had bargained for.
"Testing" -- a non-fantasy and partially autobiographic story about a new den mother in a home for troubled girls -- apparently much like the girls Pierce had originally told the Song of the Lioness too, before she got it published. I liked the narrator's voice and all of the other girls had vivid personalities. The den mother, X-ray, was way too perfect at handling everything the girls threw at her, which made the story less compelling, but it was still fun, because of the girls.
The book also came with a teaser chapter from Mastiff, which I ought to remember is out now and try to read.
30. Game of Groans, by "George R.R. Washington" (but actually Alan Goldsher -- what an utterly lackluster parody. I'm not even sure the person who wrote this has read the books, though I guess he has seen the TV show. They seemed to think that repeating "mud" and "onions" constantly would automatically make the book funny, and everything else was on the 12-year-old boy level of humour. Silly names that don't really add anything to the parody, ridiculous reversals that I guess are supposed to be clever (like Tritone (~Tyrion) is a giant instead of a dwarf), and some added scenes that don't really do anything. Just, bleh. There were three things that actually made me smile in the entire book -- the crack about the TSA-like tactics of the Eyrie, a bit of citicism of Ned's actions (which I'm always up for), and one of Tritone's "yo mama" jokes (which the author didn't even make up). I kept reading to see if it would get any better, but no, it didn't.
31. Melissa Marr, Radiant Shadows -- it took me forever to get into this one. I started reading it, put it down, picked up Darkest Mercy (the last book in the series, which follows this one), put it down again for ages, then came back to it. It was OK, actually, but mostly about characters I really didn't care about. Spoilers!
Devlin is, perhaps, better as an idea than an actual character; at any rate, I found him boring. Ani was OK, but not really enough to hold my attention, and I thought her reaction to Tish's death was over too quickly (though maybe it just felt like that because of POV switches; which is the other thing that bugged me about this book -- it jumped POV, or at least seemed to, a couple of times). And I don't know what the whole deal with Rae was -- she was so boring!
So, I can't say I was the least bit invested in any of the three protagonists. And what was up with the threesome-with-ghost at the end there? O.o The thing I did like about this book was more Irial (he is my favorite character, and I think I remember him being the author's favorite, too?) and Iri/Niall interaction. Every time they were in a scene together, I was guarranteed to enjoy that scene, especially the dream scene where Niall sort of obliquely mutters that he is willing to do something if, in return, Rae leaves a path for Irial to enter his dreams. Those two!
Anyway, I think the cosmology of these is getting too convoluted and the writing can't really support it (I did like some of the juxtaposition of old-timey fairy talk with modern slang, but at other times it just sounded silly, like when Devlin was thinking about "having a relationship" XP). I am going to go on and read the conclusion, of course, but I kind of liked these better when there were fewer courts and random characters to keep track of.
33. Melissa Marr, Darkest Mercy -- I don't know that it would be fair to say that I'm disappointed with this book, but I had been hoping for more. Spoilers!One of the things that really impressed me about Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange was the way the endings were messy and bittersweet -- the protagonists had to work at things and keep working at them, and negotiate, and make sacrifices. I guess it makes sense that the conclusion would be all happy endings for everyone -- even if somewhat unexpected ones -- but that weakened the series for me.
Except when it comes to Iri -- I'm really happy he wasn't really dead, and that he and Niall and Leslie seem to get some kind of happily ever after, and he seems quite well suited to his new role as Discord. For a while, when Irial was possessing Niall's body, I was afraid that this, too, would end with the weird one-part-incorporeal threesome like Devlin/Ani/Rae, but was glad to see it wasn't the case.
The Court reversal with Keenan makes sense, and him giving up his immortality for Donia was suitably dramatic, but as soon as it became clear that Aislinn and Seth were going to get an unobstructed relationship, one where Ash would no longer have to negotiate between her duty to the court and what she wanted personally, I started caring a fair bit less. I did like certain aspects of this book -- Niall unbalanced by grief and the sealing of Faerie and Seth asserting himself as his balance, and the creepy inhumanity of the water fae, . But, also, a lot of this book was action-driven, and I don't think Marr is very good at writing action -- it doesn't flow as well and I have a tendency to skim then.
I expected to have more to say about this book than I do, which I guess is part of the disappointment...
34. Melissa Marr, Fairy Tales and Nightmares -- and then, because I was on a roll, I read the short stories collection, too. Most of the longer stories are Wicked Lovely-verse and share the same characters, and those are the ones I enjoyed most, but a couple are standalone, which varied in quality, IMO. Spoilers for the stories
"Winter's Kiss" -- a proto-Donia called Nesha and her were-polar-bear. Aiming for folktale, possibly with an environmental message, but not really hitting that.
"Transition" -- urban fantasy vampire story, actually a pretty decent one. Nothing groundbreaking, but it didn't bore me, the way a lot of vampire stuff does. Maybe because there was no attempt at making the vampires noble or good.
"Love Struck" -- a very cute urban fantasy story about a male selkie and a girl who doesn't do relationships falling in love. It avoids being shmoopy and had some of that flavor of the first Wicked Lovely book that I really liked, where the mortal heroine accepts the faerie world and its wonders but doesn't see why it should mean that she can't proceed with her life plan of going to college and so on.
"Old Habits" -- a chaptered novella set after Ink Exchange, dealing mostly with Irial and Niall, but also with Devlin and Sorcha, and so setting up the next two books. This collection really drove home that Iri and Niall is pretty much what I care about in this universe, because I really enjoyed this story and the other one that deals with them and Leslie. Things I liked about this story: Seth being uncomfortable with the feelings Niall, as Gancanagh, elicits in him, and the two of them talking about it; the fact that Irial and Sorcha apparently occasionally have fun together; Irial being fond of kids; Irial asking for the Summer Girl who had slept with Niall to come to him; this conversation:
Niall: "Why does that library look familiar?"
Irial: "Because a very long time ago, you wer ehappy in the courtyard of a building very like this one. [...] And I was feeling... a longing for such moments one day last century when a young architect was staring at his plans. I made a few suggestions to his designs."
Niall: "Is that to impress me?"
Irial: Well, as it took over a hundred years for you to notice, it obviously didn't."
and the scene in the end where Niall asserts his authority as the new Dark King over Irial, pushing him to his knees and ordering him to stay there and:
Irial: "I trust you with my life."
Niall: I know that. Now, try trusting me with my life."
OK, it's all deeply melodramatic, but with these guys, it works for me, oh so very well.
"Stopping Time" -- set after Fragile Eternity. Features Irial reading American Gods, drinking out of Niall's glass and extracting his cigarette case from Niall's pocket, and:
Irial: "You are my king. You could command me to stop seeing [Leslie]"
Niall: "What would you do?"
Irial: "Blind myself, if you were foolish enough to use those worlds."
It was good to see more of Leslie, too. I quite like Leslie, and I liked this look at how she's dealing with PTSD, and the reason she doesn't trust herself to stay with the Dark Court ("The person I would become in the court isn't the person who I want to be." "'I'll love you either way,' Niall promised. 'He would too.'" "I wouldn't.") So, yeah, I do like Leslie... although it's difficult for me to see her relationship with either Niall or Irial being as important to them as their relationship with each other -- which is so much more complicated and spans centuries.
"The Art of Waiting" -- um. I think this is meant to be profound, but I just found it pointless. At least it was short?
"Flesh for Comfort" -- really creepy story where creatures (goblins?) gnaw off chunks of a girl's flesh and lick her skin polished to make her pretty. Horror is so not my thing, but I thought this was the most powerful stand-alone story in the book.
"The Sleeping Girl and the Summer King" -- the faerie tale out of which the central premise of Wicked Lovely eventually grew. It's not bad, but I really do think urban fantasy is Marr's forte.
"Cotton Candy Skies" -- Rabbit finds an artist in Faerie who becomes his wife. I guess this was meant to be cute, but I found it boring. Though I'm glad to know that Rabbit is happy after the events of Radiant Shadows.
"Unexpected Family" -- set shortly after the main events of Darkest Mercy, Seth and Niall go on a roadtrip, talk through their issues, and Seth comes out as faery to his parents (and discovers some unexpected magic. Favorite bit was the scene where Irial calls Seth "Order Junior", and:
'Seth made a crude gesture.
"My plate's pretty full, boy, but I'll keep it in mind if I need a way to stir a little trouble with your beloved Summer Queen."'
Also, it was nice to see Irial and Niall actually together rather than pining/angsting/dancing around each other.
"Merely Mortal" -- set between the main events of Darkest Mercy and the epilogue, Donia and mortal Keenan take a holiday and end up on YouTube. I expected to find it boring, but it was actually quite cute, especially seeing Keenan having to operate within the human world for the first time without the aid of faery fakery.
Bonus: Fancasting for the series, which is pretty neat.
32. Ursula Vernon, No Such Things as Ghosts (Dragonbreath #5) - L said this one was one of her least favorites in the series, and I agree. Though it was still cute! Also Spoilers!, I wasn't expecting the ghost to be real, for some reason. Sea serpents, jackalopes, sentient potato salad and were-wieners, it's all good, but I was expecting a Scooby-Do kind of resolution with the ghost. I do really like Christiana, and love the fact that this book for kids mentions and explains Occam's Razor. And I do continue to like Danny's parents, and especially loved this line: "His father had grounded Danny immediately -- not, he said, for the bowling ball marks, but for insulting his intelligence with the elephant bit".