Reading roundup, Babylon 5 favorite moments, and 'art'
Dec 9: Top 3 Babylon 5 moments (for egelantier)
I'm glad you asked specifically for 3, because any larger a number, and I wouldn't have been able to narrow it down.
1) The scene -- you know, THE scene -- from "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place"*. So this scene. I'm not really a visual media person, but when I first watched this scene, I remember just how much of a punch it was, in a way visual media doesn't really get to me -- like, "OMG, what did I just watch?" and "Can... can they really do that?" It is such a brilliant, brilliant scene. First of all, just the juxtaposition of the song (which I love) with the action off-station. It's so great, because the song is so jaunty and earwormy and everybody's clapping and having fun on B5, but the words, of course, are rather grim -- which is one thing I really love about spirituals/gospel songs. The match of the words to the action, the choreography of the action to the tune, the incredible tonal mismatch between the two -- I love just the sheer mechanics of this scene so much. But, of course, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that makes it even better. The video below doesn't show the setup with Londo's hologram, but it is SUCH a brilliant culmination of Londo's ark, both personal and, well, moral, and it's such a powerful culmination of G'Kar's ark, too, with him watching -- witnessing, without joining in -- and walking away at the end. (I listened to the clip a couple of times, and there kind of a neat cut-over to G'Kar as the song mentions Jesus for the only time.) Of course, I was focused on Refa and the Narns the first time around, but the more I watched this scene, the more I noticed about the background in the station parts, too -- there are some great little character moments happening, from Sheridan getting all into it, grinning like the giant dork he is, to Delenn and Lennier being very serious and earnest about this new spiritual experience they're getting to participate in -- it's adorable to have that there as well, layered with everything else. This scene!
* I just learned that apparently Bradbury has a short story called "And the Rock Cried Out"! (Both it and the song seem to be independent biblical references? IDK)
2) Vir's little wave. I don't think that one even needs to be explained, but it's SUCH a satisfying payoff. Morden the smug love-to-hate bastard gets his comeuppance, sweetheart Vir, Sam Gamgee-IN-SPACE gets his wish. Present-day Vir in that scene, the expression on his face is just amazing -- she satisfaction but also the way he still looks around before giving the wave, and the CONTRAST between early!Vir and this one, but also the continuity between them. There are many great things about B5's tight arc, and the careful way later things were seeded early on (I kept discovering them when rewatching season 1 and early season 2, and going "...oh"), but this is my favorite arc payoff within a single scene. But also just Vir ♥
3) I have a ton of other scenes I love, from funny ones (Londo complaining about the action figure or trying to teach Lennier to cheat at cards, G'Kar singing and "do not thump the book of G'Quan", Marcus being Marcus, Zathras) to poignant ones (G'Kar offering Londo his hand after the Centauri Emperor's visit, G'Kar throughout season 3, Garibaldi and Londo not having that drink) to epic ones (Delenn's "he is behind me, you are in front of me, if you value your lives, be somewhere else" speech) -- but I couldn't possibly pick a favorite from among them, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my third favorite had to be something else. So I'm maybe cheating a bit, but picking the Season 3 intro as my third scene. Because I get honest-to-god shivers when I hear that one, when Ivanova's voice says "It failed" and the jangling instrumental part starts.
**
Day 09 → talk about art this year
This is the easiest question of all, as I'm really not an art person. We didn't go to any art-tyupe museums in our summer travels this year, I think, though we did, of course, observe a lot of very beautiful architecture in Bamberg, Regensburg, Prague, etc. But the only intentional art thing we did this year was visit the Dali musuem/exhibition/collection/whatever at Monterey. Which was neat, if not entirely what I had expected it to be like.
It looks like other folks are talking about *their* art this year, but even if anything I do could by any stretch be described as 'art', I don't think any of it was this year: ikel89-prompted "fanart" of LOTR rodents was at the very end of 2015 and most if not all of these icons were, too. Oh, wait, there was one thing: I made graphics of my Raven Cycle poems in February.
*
This seems like a good time to do another reading roundup -- a fairly pathetic one, as it looks like I've only read two books since The Hanging Tree?? over a month ago???
73. Larry Correia, Monster Hunter Legion (MHI #4) -- back to Owen, and back to a book I didn't find very interesting, similar to book #1 but a bit better because at least the Big Bad is not some kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo, or at least mostly not. This one dragged for me, even though there were some bits I enjoyed. Spoilers! The idea of having the characters face down their fears from the past might've meant something if these were books I read with any emotional involvement, but, uh, I don't (does anyone?); without that, it just felt weirdly repetitive and pointless and phantom stakes -- the Nachtmar things were real enough to kill people, but not real-real, and so didn't actually matter. The few things I did like: the idea of Decision Week, the monster-based Manhattan Project-type WWII plans; getting to meet some of the international Hunters (I liked Klaus Lindemann, and also Earl's characterization of everyone into "assholes" and "all right"); Mosh getting haunted and working together with Holly (although I'm a bit apprehensive with where Holly's ark might be going, with all the ghost-talk of her wearing a mask and hiding her secrets and poisoning her body/blowing her money as a distraction). Random antagonists asking Mosh for his autograph or telling him how much they love his songs was pretty fun, too. And I like Ultimate Lawyer from PT; he was fun. My favorite thing about this book, though, was Management the dragon (although it took me an embarrassingly long time to connect what he was to "The Last Dragon" as the name of the casino).
I guessed Julie was pregnant pretty much from the start, when she was acting tired and Earl was acting weird, but that whole "must protect my unborn grandchild" thing was really annoying, especially when both Earl and Owen didn't tell Julie herself about it (I could sort of follow Owen's reasons, but it still didn't sit well with me). The Edward and Tanya Romeo-and-Julie / Orc-and-Elf thing was also pretty clear from the start, but fairly cute. The dead Hunters hanging out and waiting in the afterlife was a bit unexpected, although Mordechai foreshadows that quite clearly of course; IDK, it makes the stakes feel lower than they should, though. Of course, I was right about Jason Lococo being the guy Owen almost killed in pit fighting, but I had not anticipated at all just how spectacularly badly their first meeting would go; Jason's nightmare being Owen was kind of over the top, but that was an interesting way to deal with it. I also hadn't expected the conforntation between Owen and Mosh, or in general how Mosh was coping with things, but it seems like he will be joining MHI in some capacity now, at least for communications with the afterlife purposes. The central mystery was also pretty decent, and it was an interesting (and logical) touch to have the project/victim be someone who'd gone through the internment camps (I didn't twig onto the Mark Thirteen nickname, either). And while I found the manifestations of the Nachtmar pretty boring, I did like the glimpse at the king-alp's way of thinking, the way he talks to Owen about "teller of the world" and "harvesters of flesh", and of manifesting the nightmares as "telling [the people's] stories".
I find Stricken pretty boring as a bad guy, so I'm annoyed that he seems to be set as the mundane antagonist for good. Stark was decent as brief comic relief, and it is nice to see Myers still reluctantly working with the good guys in that enemy-of-my-enemy way. And it was neat to get some more hints about Franks' background -- he tells Owen that he "came over for the war" -- the Revolutionary war, among the Hessians fighting for the British, but switched sides because "Benjamin Franklin asked nice."
Anyway, I guess there are more things I actually enjoyed about this book than I'd thought, but they are kind of scattered across pages and pages of things I didn't really care about, unlike books 2 and 3, which felt tighter or at least more interesting to me personally.
Random things:
Trip takes his coffee with five sugars.
I like the way Owen's hearing loss (from shooting) and allergy to cigarette smoke is something that always turns up (though I'm assuming this is another self-insert thing, in this case I actually like them as character details).
In one of the earlier books, somebody from MHI says something like, "The president is a Texan, he'll understand". We're pretty clearly into the Obama years now, because Franks says, "I've killed ogres smarter than this administration."
Quotes:
"But that was after we killed their god, Earl! Thjat's hard for a religion to bounce back from."
"Christianity seemed to do all right."
"That's because it didn't stick..."
Earl to Owen: "Julie stays outside. If it is a trap, I'm almost indestructinble and you're replaceable. If MHI lost her we'd be out of business in no time. She's the only one of us that can neogtiate a contract worth a damn."
Mosh: I don't want your pity!
Owen: Then stop being pathetic.
Mosh to Owen: "You can have your dead guy back now." (to the ghosts) "What? No... Why? Because I don't want to be a crazy person, okay..."
It seems universally acknowledged that book 5 (Nemesis) is the best, so I'm looking forward to reading that (to finish out the series? it seems to be the last of the original set, anyway). Oh, and thanks again for the book loan, bearshorty's dad! :)
74. Vale Aida (apparently dirtybinary), Elegy (Magpie Ballads, book 1 of 2) -- this was the book Awesome Friend Ali leant me thorough L, with the charming inscription: "Dear L's mom, I quite liked this book. It falls into some classic fantasy tropes, but overall it was pretty good. -Ali =)" That inscription may be my favorite thing about the book -- not because I disliked the book, just because I'm so cuted out. (My second favorite is the penciled in margin note, "The Empath revealed for Mance Rayder" XD) Anyway, the book is pretty good although in a way that felt rather unsatisfying to me. It's self-pub, and I think it falls into a sort of fanficcy trap where not enough work is on the page. Also, I have a suspicion that AFA leant it to me as a sort of gateway drug to the Lymond books, and in that case I wish she'd go and just lend me those, because I don't think this is the same caliber. (I haven't actually read the Lymond books, but I've read books where I've been told the characters are Expys of Lymond -- Diarmuid in the Fionavar Tapestry, Laurent in Captive Prince -- and I'm definitely intrigued.)
Sole paragraph with vague spoilers The thing is, apparently the thing that makes me like a character like that (when I have no prior investment) is them standing for something -- all that ruthless ingenuity harnessed to something greater. And with Savonn Silvertongue (yes, really), either there isn't anything like that, or the somewhat obscure narration doesn't reveal it, because I've read this book -- half of the full story, judging by the fact that part 2 (Swansong) is supposed to be the conclusion -- and I still haven't figured out why I should care. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy witty showboating lunatics a lot, and I enjoyed Savonn from that perspective. But at no point was I actually invested in him as anything more than a spectator. The other thing is, the whole thing is told through a series of rotating POVs, including Savonn himself, briefly, but the narration is sort of arch-omniscient, and so none of the characters stood out to me as distinct voices. As a result, I didn't care about any of the others, either, except a bit about Hiraen, perhaps, because I guess I'm conditioned to like the long-suffering best friend/straight man to people like that. This post implies that Iyone (Hiraen's blood sister and Savonn's twin-in-spirit), Emaris (Savonn's squire) and Shandei (Emaris's sister and presumably Iyone's love interest? I would not have figured out the latter without the cover blurb, tbh), and Hiraen are Savonn's co-protagonists, but the the scope is not nearly so broad. It feels like this book wants to be both an epic fantasy a la ASOIAF and wrap up the story in about 700 pages total, with the result that a) the worldbuilding felt sketchy (contributing to the fanficcy feel -- like, certain things felt like they'd only have the full impact if I already knew the worldbuilding, but without any way for me to know it. I'm actually a huge, huge fan of in media res worldbuilding, but it requires a lot of finesse, and it didn't work for me as done here), b) none of the characters felt fleshed out, and c) everything revolved around Savonn anyway. And Savonn was very entertaining in dialogue! And the convoluted love story wherein he and his lover (this is m/m romance) are not only on opposite sides of a brewing war but also have a personal vendetta against each other, but ALSO still love each other, but ALSO enjoy playing games with each other as a matter of course -- that was actually really interesting, and I enjoyed those parts. But everything that is NOT their dysfunctional romance felt much weaker and also kind of unjustified. /spoilers
The prose is rather purpler than I prefer, but pretty well done.
As I mentioned above, the central canonical romance is m/m (and Savonn has reflexive chemistry with everyone around him, including best friend Hiraen and the squire), and it looks like there's a f/f romance being set up as well (though like I also said, I wasn't feeling that one). There is also a secondary trans character, although if he's meant to be a more major player than just a name, ensemble filler, and representation, I haven't gotten to that yet.
I think, ultimately, what I feel about this book is this: The author definitely shows promise, and the central idea is really neat and enticing. But this feels like jumping into the deep end from the springboard of fanfiction (and yes, I'm totally mixing metaphors here), from an author who isn't quite ready to take on this level of complexity compellingly. I *am* intrigued by the plot, and would happily read the conclusion, though.
*
I also read a couple of short stories that don't count towards the numbers but that I want to write down:
KJ Charles, "Interlude with Tattoos" (set between the first two Charm of Magpies books) -- basically, porn with a few funny/cute character moments. The power dynamics in this relationships are still very much not my thing, but the progression of letters was cute, and I enjoyed the talk between Crane and Merrick.
Seanan McGuire, "In Sea-Salt Tears" -- a Luidaeg story, told from the POV of her lover. It was definitely interesting to get an inside look at how selkie communities work, which is indeed rather horrible, in the sense that in order to receive the benefits of faerie immortality, etc. someone close to them has to die, and those who don't have skins yet are in competition against their friends and relatives for the skins. So, after reading this story, I can clearly see why this is a punishment, grim justice. It was also interesting to read the story from Liz's POV, when 99999she doesn't know who "Annie" is or how she's connected to the selkies when I had that knowledge. And it was VERY interesting to get a glimpse, through 'Annie' at the memories of her chidhood, at Oberon as a father.
I'm glad you asked specifically for 3, because any larger a number, and I wouldn't have been able to narrow it down.
1) The scene -- you know, THE scene -- from "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place"*. So this scene. I'm not really a visual media person, but when I first watched this scene, I remember just how much of a punch it was, in a way visual media doesn't really get to me -- like, "OMG, what did I just watch?" and "Can... can they really do that?" It is such a brilliant, brilliant scene. First of all, just the juxtaposition of the song (which I love) with the action off-station. It's so great, because the song is so jaunty and earwormy and everybody's clapping and having fun on B5, but the words, of course, are rather grim -- which is one thing I really love about spirituals/gospel songs. The match of the words to the action, the choreography of the action to the tune, the incredible tonal mismatch between the two -- I love just the sheer mechanics of this scene so much. But, of course, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that makes it even better. The video below doesn't show the setup with Londo's hologram, but it is SUCH a brilliant culmination of Londo's ark, both personal and, well, moral, and it's such a powerful culmination of G'Kar's ark, too, with him watching -- witnessing, without joining in -- and walking away at the end. (I listened to the clip a couple of times, and there kind of a neat cut-over to G'Kar as the song mentions Jesus for the only time.) Of course, I was focused on Refa and the Narns the first time around, but the more I watched this scene, the more I noticed about the background in the station parts, too -- there are some great little character moments happening, from Sheridan getting all into it, grinning like the giant dork he is, to Delenn and Lennier being very serious and earnest about this new spiritual experience they're getting to participate in -- it's adorable to have that there as well, layered with everything else. This scene!
Click to view* I just learned that apparently Bradbury has a short story called "And the Rock Cried Out"! (Both it and the song seem to be independent biblical references? IDK)
2) Vir's little wave. I don't think that one even needs to be explained, but it's SUCH a satisfying payoff. Morden the smug love-to-hate bastard gets his comeuppance, sweetheart Vir, Sam Gamgee-IN-SPACE gets his wish. Present-day Vir in that scene, the expression on his face is just amazing -- she satisfaction but also the way he still looks around before giving the wave, and the CONTRAST between early!Vir and this one, but also the continuity between them. There are many great things about B5's tight arc, and the careful way later things were seeded early on (I kept discovering them when rewatching season 1 and early season 2, and going "...oh"), but this is my favorite arc payoff within a single scene. But also just Vir ♥
3) I have a ton of other scenes I love, from funny ones (Londo complaining about the action figure or trying to teach Lennier to cheat at cards, G'Kar singing and "do not thump the book of G'Quan", Marcus being Marcus, Zathras) to poignant ones (G'Kar offering Londo his hand after the Centauri Emperor's visit, G'Kar throughout season 3, Garibaldi and Londo not having that drink) to epic ones (Delenn's "he is behind me, you are in front of me, if you value your lives, be somewhere else" speech) -- but I couldn't possibly pick a favorite from among them, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my third favorite had to be something else. So I'm maybe cheating a bit, but picking the Season 3 intro as my third scene. Because I get honest-to-god shivers when I hear that one, when Ivanova's voice says "It failed" and the jangling instrumental part starts.
**
Day 09 → talk about art this year
This is the easiest question of all, as I'm really not an art person. We didn't go to any art-tyupe museums in our summer travels this year, I think, though we did, of course, observe a lot of very beautiful architecture in Bamberg, Regensburg, Prague, etc. But the only intentional art thing we did this year was visit the Dali musuem/exhibition/collection/whatever at Monterey. Which was neat, if not entirely what I had expected it to be like.
It looks like other folks are talking about *their* art this year, but even if anything I do could by any stretch be described as 'art', I don't think any of it was this year: ikel89-prompted "fanart" of LOTR rodents was at the very end of 2015 and most if not all of these icons were, too. Oh, wait, there was one thing: I made graphics of my Raven Cycle poems in February.
*
This seems like a good time to do another reading roundup -- a fairly pathetic one, as it looks like I've only read two books since The Hanging Tree?? over a month ago???
73. Larry Correia, Monster Hunter Legion (MHI #4) -- back to Owen, and back to a book I didn't find very interesting, similar to book #1 but a bit better because at least the Big Bad is not some kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo, or at least mostly not. This one dragged for me, even though there were some bits I enjoyed. Spoilers! The idea of having the characters face down their fears from the past might've meant something if these were books I read with any emotional involvement, but, uh, I don't (does anyone?); without that, it just felt weirdly repetitive and pointless and phantom stakes -- the Nachtmar things were real enough to kill people, but not real-real, and so didn't actually matter. The few things I did like: the idea of Decision Week, the monster-based Manhattan Project-type WWII plans; getting to meet some of the international Hunters (I liked Klaus Lindemann, and also Earl's characterization of everyone into "assholes" and "all right"); Mosh getting haunted and working together with Holly (although I'm a bit apprehensive with where Holly's ark might be going, with all the ghost-talk of her wearing a mask and hiding her secrets and poisoning her body/blowing her money as a distraction). Random antagonists asking Mosh for his autograph or telling him how much they love his songs was pretty fun, too. And I like Ultimate Lawyer from PT; he was fun. My favorite thing about this book, though, was Management the dragon (although it took me an embarrassingly long time to connect what he was to "The Last Dragon" as the name of the casino).
I guessed Julie was pregnant pretty much from the start, when she was acting tired and Earl was acting weird, but that whole "must protect my unborn grandchild" thing was really annoying, especially when both Earl and Owen didn't tell Julie herself about it (I could sort of follow Owen's reasons, but it still didn't sit well with me). The Edward and Tanya Romeo-and-Julie / Orc-and-Elf thing was also pretty clear from the start, but fairly cute. The dead Hunters hanging out and waiting in the afterlife was a bit unexpected, although Mordechai foreshadows that quite clearly of course; IDK, it makes the stakes feel lower than they should, though. Of course, I was right about Jason Lococo being the guy Owen almost killed in pit fighting, but I had not anticipated at all just how spectacularly badly their first meeting would go; Jason's nightmare being Owen was kind of over the top, but that was an interesting way to deal with it. I also hadn't expected the conforntation between Owen and Mosh, or in general how Mosh was coping with things, but it seems like he will be joining MHI in some capacity now, at least for communications with the afterlife purposes. The central mystery was also pretty decent, and it was an interesting (and logical) touch to have the project/victim be someone who'd gone through the internment camps (I didn't twig onto the Mark Thirteen nickname, either). And while I found the manifestations of the Nachtmar pretty boring, I did like the glimpse at the king-alp's way of thinking, the way he talks to Owen about "teller of the world" and "harvesters of flesh", and of manifesting the nightmares as "telling [the people's] stories".
I find Stricken pretty boring as a bad guy, so I'm annoyed that he seems to be set as the mundane antagonist for good. Stark was decent as brief comic relief, and it is nice to see Myers still reluctantly working with the good guys in that enemy-of-my-enemy way. And it was neat to get some more hints about Franks' background -- he tells Owen that he "came over for the war" -- the Revolutionary war, among the Hessians fighting for the British, but switched sides because "Benjamin Franklin asked nice."
Anyway, I guess there are more things I actually enjoyed about this book than I'd thought, but they are kind of scattered across pages and pages of things I didn't really care about, unlike books 2 and 3, which felt tighter or at least more interesting to me personally.
Random things:
Trip takes his coffee with five sugars.
I like the way Owen's hearing loss (from shooting) and allergy to cigarette smoke is something that always turns up (though I'm assuming this is another self-insert thing, in this case I actually like them as character details).
In one of the earlier books, somebody from MHI says something like, "The president is a Texan, he'll understand". We're pretty clearly into the Obama years now, because Franks says, "I've killed ogres smarter than this administration."
Quotes:
"But that was after we killed their god, Earl! Thjat's hard for a religion to bounce back from."
"Christianity seemed to do all right."
"That's because it didn't stick..."
Earl to Owen: "Julie stays outside. If it is a trap, I'm almost indestructinble and you're replaceable. If MHI lost her we'd be out of business in no time. She's the only one of us that can neogtiate a contract worth a damn."
Mosh: I don't want your pity!
Owen: Then stop being pathetic.
Mosh to Owen: "You can have your dead guy back now." (to the ghosts) "What? No... Why? Because I don't want to be a crazy person, okay..."
It seems universally acknowledged that book 5 (Nemesis) is the best, so I'm looking forward to reading that (to finish out the series? it seems to be the last of the original set, anyway). Oh, and thanks again for the book loan, bearshorty's dad! :)
74. Vale Aida (apparently dirtybinary), Elegy (Magpie Ballads, book 1 of 2) -- this was the book Awesome Friend Ali leant me thorough L, with the charming inscription: "Dear L's mom, I quite liked this book. It falls into some classic fantasy tropes, but overall it was pretty good. -Ali =)" That inscription may be my favorite thing about the book -- not because I disliked the book, just because I'm so cuted out. (My second favorite is the penciled in margin note, "The Empath revealed for Mance Rayder" XD) Anyway, the book is pretty good although in a way that felt rather unsatisfying to me. It's self-pub, and I think it falls into a sort of fanficcy trap where not enough work is on the page. Also, I have a suspicion that AFA leant it to me as a sort of gateway drug to the Lymond books, and in that case I wish she'd go and just lend me those, because I don't think this is the same caliber. (I haven't actually read the Lymond books, but I've read books where I've been told the characters are Expys of Lymond -- Diarmuid in the Fionavar Tapestry, Laurent in Captive Prince -- and I'm definitely intrigued.)
Sole paragraph with vague spoilers The thing is, apparently the thing that makes me like a character like that (when I have no prior investment) is them standing for something -- all that ruthless ingenuity harnessed to something greater. And with Savonn Silvertongue (yes, really), either there isn't anything like that, or the somewhat obscure narration doesn't reveal it, because I've read this book -- half of the full story, judging by the fact that part 2 (Swansong) is supposed to be the conclusion -- and I still haven't figured out why I should care. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy witty showboating lunatics a lot, and I enjoyed Savonn from that perspective. But at no point was I actually invested in him as anything more than a spectator. The other thing is, the whole thing is told through a series of rotating POVs, including Savonn himself, briefly, but the narration is sort of arch-omniscient, and so none of the characters stood out to me as distinct voices. As a result, I didn't care about any of the others, either, except a bit about Hiraen, perhaps, because I guess I'm conditioned to like the long-suffering best friend/straight man to people like that. This post implies that Iyone (Hiraen's blood sister and Savonn's twin-in-spirit), Emaris (Savonn's squire) and Shandei (Emaris's sister and presumably Iyone's love interest? I would not have figured out the latter without the cover blurb, tbh), and Hiraen are Savonn's co-protagonists, but the the scope is not nearly so broad. It feels like this book wants to be both an epic fantasy a la ASOIAF and wrap up the story in about 700 pages total, with the result that a) the worldbuilding felt sketchy (contributing to the fanficcy feel -- like, certain things felt like they'd only have the full impact if I already knew the worldbuilding, but without any way for me to know it. I'm actually a huge, huge fan of in media res worldbuilding, but it requires a lot of finesse, and it didn't work for me as done here), b) none of the characters felt fleshed out, and c) everything revolved around Savonn anyway. And Savonn was very entertaining in dialogue! And the convoluted love story wherein he and his lover (this is m/m romance) are not only on opposite sides of a brewing war but also have a personal vendetta against each other, but ALSO still love each other, but ALSO enjoy playing games with each other as a matter of course -- that was actually really interesting, and I enjoyed those parts. But everything that is NOT their dysfunctional romance felt much weaker and also kind of unjustified. /spoilers
The prose is rather purpler than I prefer, but pretty well done.
As I mentioned above, the central canonical romance is m/m (and Savonn has reflexive chemistry with everyone around him, including best friend Hiraen and the squire), and it looks like there's a f/f romance being set up as well (though like I also said, I wasn't feeling that one). There is also a secondary trans character, although if he's meant to be a more major player than just a name, ensemble filler, and representation, I haven't gotten to that yet.
I think, ultimately, what I feel about this book is this: The author definitely shows promise, and the central idea is really neat and enticing. But this feels like jumping into the deep end from the springboard of fanfiction (and yes, I'm totally mixing metaphors here), from an author who isn't quite ready to take on this level of complexity compellingly. I *am* intrigued by the plot, and would happily read the conclusion, though.
*
I also read a couple of short stories that don't count towards the numbers but that I want to write down:
KJ Charles, "Interlude with Tattoos" (set between the first two Charm of Magpies books) -- basically, porn with a few funny/cute character moments. The power dynamics in this relationships are still very much not my thing, but the progression of letters was cute, and I enjoyed the talk between Crane and Merrick.
Seanan McGuire, "In Sea-Salt Tears" -- a Luidaeg story, told from the POV of her lover. It was definitely interesting to get an inside look at how selkie communities work, which is indeed rather horrible, in the sense that in order to receive the benefits of faerie immortality, etc. someone close to them has to die, and those who don't have skins yet are in competition against their friends and relatives for the skins. So, after reading this story, I can clearly see why this is a punishment, grim justice. It was also interesting to read the story from Liz's POV, when 99999she doesn't know who "Annie" is or how she's connected to the selkies when I had that knowledge. And it was VERY interesting to get a glimpse, through 'Annie' at the memories of her chidhood, at Oberon as a father.