Reading Roundup
16. Sarah Rees Brennan, Untold (Lynburn Legacy #2) -- so I read the first one and was unsold on... well, everything, mostly -- the main characters, the love story, the odd resemblance to the much stronger Demon's Lexicon. This one gave me an even weirder impression -- half the time it felt like I was reading Cassie Clare and half the time like I was reading SRB's Tumblr (and there was a random mahogany mention; oh dear, apparently my association for this word has been reset forever, even though that "plagiarism scandal" was ridiculous from start to finish). There are things I like about this series -- secondary characters, mostly, but they are sort of overwhelmed by the stuff I don't care about. And yet the result is very readable (like CC's books tend to be) -- I started reading Untold even though I was in the middle of like five other books, two of them themselves quick reads, and finished it in just a couple of days, so clearly I'm finding it enjoyable on some level. Spoilers from here!
Things I continue to like: The Montgomery siblings, including Angela's friendship with Kami. There were several aspects of Dealing with Angela's Sexuality that did not work for me (see below), but none of them pertained to Angela herself, or to Kami and Angela's friendship accommodating the revealtion. Rusty's big speech was rather over the top, but I find him quite charming and so don't really care. I also continue to like Kami's father, Jon Glass (and was especially touched and amused by his conversation with Kami about the "pathetic number of sons" he has), and Lillian Lynburn, and enjoyed the interaction between the two of them in this book.
Things I'm torn on: Ash. I find him a pretty intriguing character, actually! He reminds me a bit of (a much less interesting) Alan, and his relationship with his mother is something I would actually like to see more of. And the set up with Kami as his source now is pretty interesting, too. But I have all these reservations, and it took me a while to formulate why I think that is, and I think it's because it feels like Ash is being used by the narrative rather than treated with honest investment as a full-fledged character. There are glimpses of character there, and they are pretty interesting! But mostly it feels like Ash is just there in an auxiliary capacity -- the main romance "needs" a triangle vertex (and Rusty is too "cool older brother" to besmirch with opposition to the endgame pairing), the kid team needs a trained sorcerer to educate them, Jared needs a verbal (and occasionally literal) punching bag, etc., and Ash is there to serve as those things. And that annoys me, because Ash deserves better than that.
Things I'm not sold on but object to less than in the first book: Jared and Kami. Not romantically. Or individually as characters -- I actually liked Jared less in this book (see below), and continued to be vaguely irritated by Kami. But I did find their post-bond-break relationship more interesting than what we got in book 1, partly probably because I kept expecting SRB to subvert the fated soulbond love thing when I was reading Unspoken, based on an obviously incorrect impression I got from reading her LJ posts on the subject. But Kami finding that suddenly she is not as confident since she doesn't have built-in support from Jared now, and having to deal with that, was interesting, and I did like the way she found a new strength from the realization that she *could* go on by herself, despite everything going on with her family. And the emphasis on Jared being kind of nuts in the way he fixates on Kami, although I don't appreciate the romanticization of it. I did like this quote from him, though: "Because you are-- God, this is going to sound so stupid, I can never think of a way to say it -- you are precious. I can never think of how to describe the value you have to me, because all the words for value suggest that you belong to me, and you don't." And Jared giving Kami the burning branch because he realizes she'd "rather have a weapon than a rescue"
Things I don't like: The, uh, Jace-ification of Jared, which to me seems to have come out of nowhere. The love scenes/themes. A few of them were even hot, but I had the weirdest feeling I was reading someone else's book. SRB thanks some of the other YA authors for help with the romance, and I don't know if that's what I was feeling, but the descriptions of "worn cotton" and bodies tensing and whatnot just felt very repetitive and "standard", which I don't remember about the Demon's Noun books -- the romantic scenes were not my favorites there, either, but they at least felt much less generic. And the Jared-or-Ash-or-Jared mystery kissing scene was just ridiculous, even if the ridiculousness is lampshaded as something that only happens in Shakespearean comedies.
And on that note, Holly was one of the things I liked about the first book, but she felt like such an Object Lesson in this one, which really disappointed me. I didn't believe in her erratic behaviour, and had a hard time believing she wouldn't try to do more with her sorcerous powers given the desparate situation, but I suppose that resolution is being left for the end of the trilogy.
Things I'm kind of baffled by: the PSAs. There are a couple of scenes that... well, you know, in the 90s cartoons where, in the last 30 seconds before the credits roll, after the last commercial break, He-Man or a G.I.Joe or one of the Ninja Turtles would come on screen and deliver a Very Important Message to the viewing audience about, like, stranger danger, or bullying, or "just say no to drugs", or fire safety? Like that. Delivered by the characters and dressed up in some nominal entertainment, but feeling very much like their point was the message and not the story. And they are worthwhile messages! Not objectifying lesbians, and bisexuality being a thing, and asking for consent being a good thing -- all good things! And in some cases they are even entertainingly delivered -- Kami retaliating for the objectification of her friend by telling Ash she was visualizing him with Jared, and Jared and Ash then both opting for Rusty instead was pretty amusing actually -- but they felt disruptive to the story, and just inelegant in how they were integrated. And, like, I had a hard time seeing Ash -- who is reserved and polite and charming the rest of the time -- making a comment like "Hot" upon learning about Angela and Holly -- that just felt like an OOC bit inserted to create a Teaching Moment to me (and kind of along the lines of my general complaint about Ash being treated in a very utilitarian fashion by the narrative).
A couple of other quotes I did enjoy:
Kami to Lillian: "I can never get enough of people looking down their noses at me. You do it beautifully. I wish you had two noses, so that you could look at me down both."
Kami to Ash: "I'm sorry about your dad. And to a lesser but still significant extent, I'm sorry about your mum."
I will read the third book, obviously, even though the cliffhanger ending does not touch me emotionally in the least. But this series makes me sad, because I was so impressed with Demon's Lexicon, and while I did not think the other two books quite equaled its audacity, I really liked the trilogy as a whole. And I enjoyed Team Human quite a lot, was emotionally engaged by it much more than I'd expected, and kept thinking about it for quite a while after. This series -- beyond the worthy-though-occasionally-clumsy representation efforts -- is really not giving me anything memorable or new, and I was expecting so much better... :(
17. Patricia Briggs, River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6) -- Well, it was bound to happen eventually, a Mercy book that just plain left me cold. This is the first one of the series that felt slow going for me and that I can't say I really enjoyed, though there were a handful of scenes that were not bad. I concede the series was overdue for a book that explicitly engaged with Mercy's Native American heritage, and I'm glad it looks like Briggs did a lot of research, but personally it didn't do much for me. Spoilers from here! I think a large part of that is that Adam and Mercy in wedded bliss is boring -- I enjoyed it when they were bickering and working out their boundaries, but there's not as much of that here. I missed the larger cast of characters -- some of my favorite scenes were the early ones with Stefan and the phone conversation with Jesse, for example, and the surprise wedding at the beginning, which was actually quite sweet, especially as I liked seeing Mercy's mother again. Of the new characters, the only one I really liked was Coyote himself, although I think I would've found the hawk-walker brothers fun, too, if they'd spent more time as humans. The one really interesting moment for me, from a character development perspective, was Mercy having to make the choice to let several people die, including children, to avoid jeopardizing Coyote's larger plan -- that's really the one memorable scene for me from the book. I'm not thrilled about Mercy's walking stick just being handed to Coyote as a way to avoid dealing with the fallout of quenching it in the River Devil's blood -- seems like a copout. Also, river otters as bad guys is not to my liking at all :P
18. Patricia Briggs, Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7) -- fortunately, this one was a return to the home team and adventure that I liked. Spoilers from here I liked seeing Mercy and Jesse together after the wedding. I liked Mercy working with Kyle and Stefan and Ben, and Tony showing up towards the end. I wasn't sure how I would feel about getting Adam's POV, but I enjoyed it, and it was neat to learn about his Slavic heritage (a Muscovite mother who left after the revolution). I liked meeting Tad properly (but missed having Zee around more), but my favorite new character is Thomas Hao, the San Francisco vampire (with his vanity plates reading "DAYTIME"), who I hope will be around some more in later books -- though the vampire politics angle did not interest me any more here than in whichever past books had them. I did also like Asil, the Moor, and the way he and Adam try their best not to antagonize each other as dominant wolves who are strangers but have to occupy the same space -- and Mercy's game of word one-upmanship with them was adorable. I also enjoyed the interaction between Adam and the mercenary leader. I like that Sylvia Sandoval and Gabriel are now reconciled, and with Mercy as well, because I like the Sandoval family. Oh, and I'm curious about the fallout from more of the mundanes now knowing about Mercy being able to turn into a coyote. (And on a random note, was happy to see that she's keeping in touch with the other walkers she met in River Marked.)
Peter's death felt weird... like I was meant to care about it a lot more than I did on the basis of how much he'd been around in the earlier books. At the same time, I understand why there needed to be a death, and there haven't been too many prominent and purely positive pack members -- the only other one is Warren, and I'm really glad he wasn't the one killed off, of course. Still, I felt like the whole thing about Peter being the Heart of the pack, and how as a submissive wolf it was especially everybody's duty to protect him, all that was played way up to make up for Peter's relative lack of prominence in past books to make his death hit harder, and that didn't work for me.
Still, the book was a very fun read overall. And now I've got a hold out on the new book that just came out (though it'll be a while, clearly, as I'm #63 on the waitlist or something)
Question, though -- at the beginning of the book, the fae [spoiler for... something, presumably?] have declared themselves apart and have retreated to the reservations/Underhill as a result of killing a fae-murderer released by the government because of connections. This sounds like something that would've happened in an actual story, but... which? Is there a short story set between River Marked and Frost Burned that deals with this or something? Or is this something that happens in the Alpha & Omega side series?
19. The Rift, part 1 (AtLA comics) -- I was happy that this seemed to be more like The Promise (which I had liked) than the rather disappointing The Search. Vague spoilers? Plenty of Toph, for one (and it's really noticeable that she's grown older from the show), Sokka getting to enjoy both meat and technology, some actual conflict within the Gaang, which is always more interesting than random quest-y traipsing about, without it getting int he way of them working together. And I like Satoru, who currently seems like a likely candidate for being Lin's father. Looking forward to the next part!
20. Dave Barry, You Can Date Boys When You're Forty -- I got this for my mother's birthday, and she enjoyed it, and my father apparently kept laughing multiple times per page. Now I've read it, too, and quite liked it. The chapters are not really connected, but my favorites were "Sopie, Stella, and the Bieber Plan" (about his teenage daughter and music), "Air Travelers' FAQ", and "What Women Want" (about Fifty Shades of Grey), and especially the children's book sub-section of "How to Become a Professional Author". There's also a chapter on his visit to Israel (with his wife -- who is Jewish -- and daughter), which was funny in places but also more serious/travelogue-y in others.
This also brings me to my first reading bingo (while the rodents, I may add, are only a couple of squares away from a blackout...)
- A book written by someone under thirty: Hyperbole And a Half
- A best-selling book: Iron Kissed and Silver Borne were both #1 on the NYT bestseller list according to Briggs's website.
A book published this year: The Rift, part I
- A funny book: Dave Barry (although I expect I will swap it out for Raising Steam or something once I read that -- I've got a hold out on it as well -- and put this under the number in title one)
P.S. Still greatly enjoying the question-a-day discussion in riversoflondon
Things I continue to like: The Montgomery siblings, including Angela's friendship with Kami. There were several aspects of Dealing with Angela's Sexuality that did not work for me (see below), but none of them pertained to Angela herself, or to Kami and Angela's friendship accommodating the revealtion. Rusty's big speech was rather over the top, but I find him quite charming and so don't really care. I also continue to like Kami's father, Jon Glass (and was especially touched and amused by his conversation with Kami about the "pathetic number of sons" he has), and Lillian Lynburn, and enjoyed the interaction between the two of them in this book.
Things I'm torn on: Ash. I find him a pretty intriguing character, actually! He reminds me a bit of (a much less interesting) Alan, and his relationship with his mother is something I would actually like to see more of. And the set up with Kami as his source now is pretty interesting, too. But I have all these reservations, and it took me a while to formulate why I think that is, and I think it's because it feels like Ash is being used by the narrative rather than treated with honest investment as a full-fledged character. There are glimpses of character there, and they are pretty interesting! But mostly it feels like Ash is just there in an auxiliary capacity -- the main romance "needs" a triangle vertex (and Rusty is too "cool older brother" to besmirch with opposition to the endgame pairing), the kid team needs a trained sorcerer to educate them, Jared needs a verbal (and occasionally literal) punching bag, etc., and Ash is there to serve as those things. And that annoys me, because Ash deserves better than that.
Things I'm not sold on but object to less than in the first book: Jared and Kami. Not romantically. Or individually as characters -- I actually liked Jared less in this book (see below), and continued to be vaguely irritated by Kami. But I did find their post-bond-break relationship more interesting than what we got in book 1, partly probably because I kept expecting SRB to subvert the fated soulbond love thing when I was reading Unspoken, based on an obviously incorrect impression I got from reading her LJ posts on the subject. But Kami finding that suddenly she is not as confident since she doesn't have built-in support from Jared now, and having to deal with that, was interesting, and I did like the way she found a new strength from the realization that she *could* go on by herself, despite everything going on with her family. And the emphasis on Jared being kind of nuts in the way he fixates on Kami, although I don't appreciate the romanticization of it. I did like this quote from him, though: "Because you are-- God, this is going to sound so stupid, I can never think of a way to say it -- you are precious. I can never think of how to describe the value you have to me, because all the words for value suggest that you belong to me, and you don't." And Jared giving Kami the burning branch because he realizes she'd "rather have a weapon than a rescue"
Things I don't like: The, uh, Jace-ification of Jared, which to me seems to have come out of nowhere. The love scenes/themes. A few of them were even hot, but I had the weirdest feeling I was reading someone else's book. SRB thanks some of the other YA authors for help with the romance, and I don't know if that's what I was feeling, but the descriptions of "worn cotton" and bodies tensing and whatnot just felt very repetitive and "standard", which I don't remember about the Demon's Noun books -- the romantic scenes were not my favorites there, either, but they at least felt much less generic. And the Jared-or-Ash-or-Jared mystery kissing scene was just ridiculous, even if the ridiculousness is lampshaded as something that only happens in Shakespearean comedies.
And on that note, Holly was one of the things I liked about the first book, but she felt like such an Object Lesson in this one, which really disappointed me. I didn't believe in her erratic behaviour, and had a hard time believing she wouldn't try to do more with her sorcerous powers given the desparate situation, but I suppose that resolution is being left for the end of the trilogy.
Things I'm kind of baffled by: the PSAs. There are a couple of scenes that... well, you know, in the 90s cartoons where, in the last 30 seconds before the credits roll, after the last commercial break, He-Man or a G.I.Joe or one of the Ninja Turtles would come on screen and deliver a Very Important Message to the viewing audience about, like, stranger danger, or bullying, or "just say no to drugs", or fire safety? Like that. Delivered by the characters and dressed up in some nominal entertainment, but feeling very much like their point was the message and not the story. And they are worthwhile messages! Not objectifying lesbians, and bisexuality being a thing, and asking for consent being a good thing -- all good things! And in some cases they are even entertainingly delivered -- Kami retaliating for the objectification of her friend by telling Ash she was visualizing him with Jared, and Jared and Ash then both opting for Rusty instead was pretty amusing actually -- but they felt disruptive to the story, and just inelegant in how they were integrated. And, like, I had a hard time seeing Ash -- who is reserved and polite and charming the rest of the time -- making a comment like "Hot" upon learning about Angela and Holly -- that just felt like an OOC bit inserted to create a Teaching Moment to me (and kind of along the lines of my general complaint about Ash being treated in a very utilitarian fashion by the narrative).
A couple of other quotes I did enjoy:
Kami to Lillian: "I can never get enough of people looking down their noses at me. You do it beautifully. I wish you had two noses, so that you could look at me down both."
Kami to Ash: "I'm sorry about your dad. And to a lesser but still significant extent, I'm sorry about your mum."
I will read the third book, obviously, even though the cliffhanger ending does not touch me emotionally in the least. But this series makes me sad, because I was so impressed with Demon's Lexicon, and while I did not think the other two books quite equaled its audacity, I really liked the trilogy as a whole. And I enjoyed Team Human quite a lot, was emotionally engaged by it much more than I'd expected, and kept thinking about it for quite a while after. This series -- beyond the worthy-though-occasionally-clumsy representation efforts -- is really not giving me anything memorable or new, and I was expecting so much better... :(
17. Patricia Briggs, River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6) -- Well, it was bound to happen eventually, a Mercy book that just plain left me cold. This is the first one of the series that felt slow going for me and that I can't say I really enjoyed, though there were a handful of scenes that were not bad. I concede the series was overdue for a book that explicitly engaged with Mercy's Native American heritage, and I'm glad it looks like Briggs did a lot of research, but personally it didn't do much for me. Spoilers from here! I think a large part of that is that Adam and Mercy in wedded bliss is boring -- I enjoyed it when they were bickering and working out their boundaries, but there's not as much of that here. I missed the larger cast of characters -- some of my favorite scenes were the early ones with Stefan and the phone conversation with Jesse, for example, and the surprise wedding at the beginning, which was actually quite sweet, especially as I liked seeing Mercy's mother again. Of the new characters, the only one I really liked was Coyote himself, although I think I would've found the hawk-walker brothers fun, too, if they'd spent more time as humans. The one really interesting moment for me, from a character development perspective, was Mercy having to make the choice to let several people die, including children, to avoid jeopardizing Coyote's larger plan -- that's really the one memorable scene for me from the book. I'm not thrilled about Mercy's walking stick just being handed to Coyote as a way to avoid dealing with the fallout of quenching it in the River Devil's blood -- seems like a copout. Also, river otters as bad guys is not to my liking at all :P
18. Patricia Briggs, Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7) -- fortunately, this one was a return to the home team and adventure that I liked. Spoilers from here I liked seeing Mercy and Jesse together after the wedding. I liked Mercy working with Kyle and Stefan and Ben, and Tony showing up towards the end. I wasn't sure how I would feel about getting Adam's POV, but I enjoyed it, and it was neat to learn about his Slavic heritage (a Muscovite mother who left after the revolution). I liked meeting Tad properly (but missed having Zee around more), but my favorite new character is Thomas Hao, the San Francisco vampire (with his vanity plates reading "DAYTIME"), who I hope will be around some more in later books -- though the vampire politics angle did not interest me any more here than in whichever past books had them. I did also like Asil, the Moor, and the way he and Adam try their best not to antagonize each other as dominant wolves who are strangers but have to occupy the same space -- and Mercy's game of word one-upmanship with them was adorable. I also enjoyed the interaction between Adam and the mercenary leader. I like that Sylvia Sandoval and Gabriel are now reconciled, and with Mercy as well, because I like the Sandoval family. Oh, and I'm curious about the fallout from more of the mundanes now knowing about Mercy being able to turn into a coyote. (And on a random note, was happy to see that she's keeping in touch with the other walkers she met in River Marked.)
Peter's death felt weird... like I was meant to care about it a lot more than I did on the basis of how much he'd been around in the earlier books. At the same time, I understand why there needed to be a death, and there haven't been too many prominent and purely positive pack members -- the only other one is Warren, and I'm really glad he wasn't the one killed off, of course. Still, I felt like the whole thing about Peter being the Heart of the pack, and how as a submissive wolf it was especially everybody's duty to protect him, all that was played way up to make up for Peter's relative lack of prominence in past books to make his death hit harder, and that didn't work for me.
Still, the book was a very fun read overall. And now I've got a hold out on the new book that just came out (though it'll be a while, clearly, as I'm #63 on the waitlist or something)
Question, though -- at the beginning of the book, the fae [spoiler for... something, presumably?] have declared themselves apart and have retreated to the reservations/Underhill as a result of killing a fae-murderer released by the government because of connections. This sounds like something that would've happened in an actual story, but... which? Is there a short story set between River Marked and Frost Burned that deals with this or something? Or is this something that happens in the Alpha & Omega side series?
19. The Rift, part 1 (AtLA comics) -- I was happy that this seemed to be more like The Promise (which I had liked) than the rather disappointing The Search. Vague spoilers? Plenty of Toph, for one (and it's really noticeable that she's grown older from the show), Sokka getting to enjoy both meat and technology, some actual conflict within the Gaang, which is always more interesting than random quest-y traipsing about, without it getting int he way of them working together. And I like Satoru, who currently seems like a likely candidate for being Lin's father. Looking forward to the next part!
20. Dave Barry, You Can Date Boys When You're Forty -- I got this for my mother's birthday, and she enjoyed it, and my father apparently kept laughing multiple times per page. Now I've read it, too, and quite liked it. The chapters are not really connected, but my favorites were "Sopie, Stella, and the Bieber Plan" (about his teenage daughter and music), "Air Travelers' FAQ", and "What Women Want" (about Fifty Shades of Grey), and especially the children's book sub-section of "How to Become a Professional Author". There's also a chapter on his visit to Israel (with his wife -- who is Jewish -- and daughter), which was funny in places but also more serious/travelogue-y in others.
This also brings me to my first reading bingo (while the rodents, I may add, are only a couple of squares away from a blackout...)
- A book written by someone under thirty: Hyperbole And a Half
- A best-selling book: Iron Kissed and Silver Borne were both #1 on the NYT bestseller list according to Briggs's website.
A book published this year: The Rift, part I
- A funny book: Dave Barry (although I expect I will swap it out for Raising Steam or something once I read that -- I've got a hold out on it as well -- and put this under the number in title one)
P.S. Still greatly enjoying the question-a-day discussion in riversoflondon