Reading and watching roundup
4. Rose Lerner, Listen to the Moon (Lively St Lemeston #3) -- so, this was an OK book for me, but it did drive home the realization that it was True Pretenses that was the (happy) fluke, nor Lerner's writing as a whole -- Sweet Disorder and this book were fine, enjoyable reads, and I even want to read more Lively St Lemeston books, because I've come to really enjoy the setting and care about some of the characters, but none but True Pretenses have really worked for me as romance, and both left me frustrated with the resolution.
I think... possibly it's on account of True Pretenses' leads both being orphans. spoilers for all 3 books, though mostly for this one Which is kind of ridiculous, but while Lerner writes beautiful, nuanced sibling relationships even outside that book (e.g. Helen and Phoebe in Sweet Disorder, and even the nascent sisterly relationship between Sukey and Julia here feels promising), the parent/child stuff is weirdly... I can't even say heavy-handed, because there is nuance in the set-up, but no nuance in the resolution, which is the thing that makes me so frustrated. I hated that Nick just walked away from Lady Tassell at the end of Sweet Disorder. Something pretty similar happens here with John and his father. I feel like the books clearly understand that the parent characters are fallible people in their own right, but the take-away seems to be just not to put up with their crap. Which, I'm definitely not saying Nick should've not married Phoebe because his mother was against it, or that John had to spend the rest of his life working as a butler at Tassell Hall so that his father would choose to retire -- of course not! But these are grown people (John is 40!), and they seem incapable of coming to some kind of balance with their parents. And I know it happens, of course, and there are cases when the healthiest thing one can do is walk away, and that's fine -- but this kind of dynamic is so far outside of my own experience or any experience I'm closely familiar with, and I find it really depressing besides. I also don't understand why parent issues need to feature so heavily / so darkly (in this case, Sukey's abandonment by her father, and John's domineering father).
There is a little bit of nuance, like I said -- I definitely got the sense that John's issues with his father were HIS issues, not necessarily an objective statement of his father's awfulness -- through Sukey's eyes, we saw the love of his parents for each other, and it seems like other servants have learned to deal with Mr Toogood Sr -- but most of what we get is from John's POV, and that's just no fun at all... Which was unfortunate, because I liked John, and I liked the other things he's struggling with -- his own critical nature, the way he sees the things that are wrong and itches to jump in to fix them (like reaching out to fix Nick's tie when he comes to visit, and wanting to brush Stephen's hair), and has to apply effort to pay compliments and to consult others (this miiiiight be somethingg I can empathize with :P).
I was also intrigued by certain aspects of John and Sukey's relationship -- him feeling self-conscious of the age difference both because he was worried about forcing her into the decision and because he thought he might look laugh-worthy next to a young wife, and also what kept me thinking of the two of them having different "love languages" (which is a silly but useful concept), with John clearly being someone who expresses affection by doing things for the people he loves, and Sukey valuing words of affection and spending time together more. But while that was interesting in terms of obstacles to the relationships (along with the two of them coming from pretty different classes, even though they're both kinds of servants), I never really felt like there was anything really bringing them together: they are people who are sort of thrown together by expediency, and they are physically attracted to each other, and they are both decent people who therefore try to do right by each other... and that's about it? Like, I don't underestimate the draw of the physical (even though it's clear John is not averse to liasons that don't end in marriage, and Sukey had been adamant she didn't want to get married), or the importance of being decent people, or the fact that neither of them is exactly in a position where they have a lot of choice... but that makes for a kind of bleak framework. It's an interesting thing to find in a romance book, maybe, but not enought to carry what is eseentially the plot of a book for me...
And while I had liked Sukey a lot in Sweet Disorder and was looking forward to a book with her as protagonist, it turned out that I didn't like her as a romantic lead as much as I had as a secondary plucky comic relief character. There were still things I did like about Sukey: her feelings about the Shakespeare play John took her to, the way she defended her boarding-house mistress's miserliness even when it had hurt her for years, even her feelings on housekeeping ("But she didn't know how to do anything properly, and he [John] didn't see the trying, only the failing"), and also her being a person who (thinks, at least that she) has a limited amount of caring in her ("Well, she only had so much kindness in her and she'd already wasted it on strangers") -- but I didn't enjoy spending time in her head the way I had with Lydia or even Phoebe. (Out of a sense of fairness, I will also mention that between liking Sukey in Sweet Disorder and reading this book, I stumbled on Rose Lerner's fancasting page and discovered that she headcanons Sukey as looking like Natalie Dormer, so that might have put me off her somewhat, too. But I think it was mostly the POV...)
I continue to like the way these books have a larger important cast of characters than just the couple. Here my favorite was Molly, the older maid who was shouldering all sorts of burdens because she felt she had to; her coming to John to take him up on the offer to talk the vicar into letting her learn to read was probably the emotional high point of the book for me. I also liked Mrs Khaleel, and continue to enjoy Lerner including non-Christian (and in this case also POC) characters in her settings, and letting then have stories of their own (even though it's definitely in the background here), and the snarky old vicar, Mr Summers. But while I liked them, I can't say that I felt attached to the household as an entity, and so John and Sukey returning to it, after turning down Tassell Hall, didn't feel like a reunion or a triumph, just like a thing that happened -- I guess I wasn't invested in it, the way I was in, say, Mr Moon's bakery in Sweet Disorder, or the Intelligencer. I was happy to see old Mrs Pengilly again (and to have her settled with a live-in maid at the end), and was glad that even the shrewish boarding-house mistress, Mrs Humphrey, got some human moments, like Sukey being grateful to her that she gave her a rattle when Sukey was reluctant to be left along with a man whose intentions she wasn't sure of.
It seems that every one of these Lively St Lemeston books has some hint of a kink -- it was foodplay and light bondage in Sweet Disorder, and role-playing in True Pretenses, which were not exactly a draw but didn't bother me either. Here, there's a fairly random scene where John and Sukey are talking about having a threesome, or watching each other with another person, and by the way, Sukey is apparently also bi, and the whole thing just sort of felt weirdly tacked on and out of the blue. I mean, there were other hints of a voyeuristic streak, but that had seemed more like a public sex kink, rather than wanting an actual additional participant? I can sort of see the former being tied to servants living so much of their lives with very little privacy, where it almost isn't a choice, so it felt thematically approrpiate, but the latter just puzzled me. Which, it's not like kinks need to have explanations or fit themes, even in fiction, but the threesome-fantasy scene just threw me out of the story.
The pacing is a little odd, because the marriage comes so early in the book, and so much of the emotional growth for the characters, separately and together, comes after it; I found that I had trouble remembering everything that happened, and even more trouble remembering the order of things, because the "beats" weren't where I expected them too, I guess.
I'd been hoping to see some news of Ash and Lydia in this book, since it's the third in the series, but a lot of it actually runs parallel to the events of True Pretenses, and there are only a few mentions of the Cahills. I did, at least, get a slightly more sympathetic view of Lady Tassell than in either of the previous books; although she is still sort of the bad guy, dismissing John and making it difficult for him to find another place over not tipping her off about Nick's attachment to Phoebe, we get fonder views of her from Stephen (the oldest son) and John himself, and I really liked the way she spoke about John's father -- they seem two people who understand each other, and care for each other, despite their difference in station, and I was glad they each had somebody like that. And the scene where she asks John to see the letter of recommendation written by Nick, because he hasn't written to her yet, was sad and poignant.
A couple of quotes:
"John had thought... hoped... he'd wanted to be someone Sukey could talk to, instead of who he'd always been: someone whose presence, while a necessary evil, was at least unobtrusive."
"That was the worst part. As he told her the story, he could imagine himself in his father's place, fancying himself an avenging angel of roast beef."
Anyway, while I still enjoyed the book overall and read it pretty quickly, I'm pretty clearly in diminishing returns territory with both Lerner and romance at this point, so I guess I ought to take a break.
5. M.C.A.Hogarth, Even the Wingless (Princes' Game #1) -- so this was a thing I read. It's a series set in the same space!Elves and space!furries universe as the fluffy-cookie-baking-grad-students and Firefly-with-furries series I read last year, but is the dark-and-edgy BDSM series, and... I wish she was focusing on a different aspect of the universe, because this was readable and occasionally even interesting, but the ratio of not-my-kink to things I actually want to read about was definitely not optimized for me.
Let me try for a summary of sorts, sans spoilers but with content warnings, in case this is of interest to anyone on my flist: Space!Elf Lisinthir is seconded to the Alliance to serve as ambassador to the Chatcaava Empire (mammalian dragon-people with shape-shifting abilities they mostly don't seem to use, because assuming "lesser" forms is beneath them), after a dozen previous ambassadors end up dead or suffering nervous breakdowns because the Chatcaavans are Just That Terrible. The terribleness consists of regarding wingless alien species as non-persons (kind of curious what the Chatcaava think of the winged species like Phoenixae, but anyway), treating the (wingless) females of their own species as chattel and slaves, and settling things between the winged males -- the only ones considered worthy of notice -- via rape, maiming, and/or killing. As you may imagine, there is a ton of non-con (m/m and m/f), extremely dub-con, possibly even more creepy Stockholm Syndrome-y dub-con (both ordinary psychological and also possibly enhanced by Eldritch telepathy), very non-con bondage, sexual slavery, and (on a different but still somewhat disturbing note) drug abuse with physical consequences. And the Chatcaavans *are* sort of dragon-shaped, with talons and wings and long snouts and barbs in various places, so there's also quite a lot of xeno. The sex stuff isn't graphic/explicit, with the focus definitely being on the themes, but the themes are squicky enough on their own. The POV alternates between the Chatcaavan Slave Queen, who starts out thinking of herself as an unperson, debased and powerless, and Lisinthir, who feels duty-bound to participate in the savagery of the Chatcaavan court in order to save lives.
Talking about what I thought, with actual spoilers: I could do without most of the above, quite honestly, but there were some things I found interesting. There's some neat stuff done with the language of the Chatcaavans, where the "you" used to address aliens implies "wingless freak"; when addressing each other, the female Chatcaava make use of "you(/they)-our-better" to address males (or speak about them) and "this one" to describe themselves as unpersons; and their language seems to make use of titles/ranks exclusively rather than names -- all of this is pretty interesting, and integrated better into the prose than I would have expected. spoilers from here Lisinthir "going native" has some interesting aspects, and I do wonder if it's leading up to the idea that he's got some Chatcaava blood in him (since they are shape-shifters, that could be a thing). There is actually some fairly nice banter between Lisinthir and the Emperor, although it was hard for me to enjoy the banter once the non-con became a thing. I am theoretically intrigued by the growth arcs set up for both the Slave Queen and the Emperor, as well as Lisinthir's arc, but I'm skeptical I can be really sold on them, or that I would enjoy actually reading about it. I also quite liked Second, who seemed like a somewhat decent individual by Chatcaava standards, and wanted to know a bit more about his backstory and what the history between him and the Emperor is. /spoilers
I may read the sequel, because the Dreamhealers characters show up there, and I'm kinda curious to see how these two extremes will collide, but mostly I'm disappointed that this seems to be the Pelted series that's currently active (four books and counting, I think?), because these are not the aspects of that universe I want to immerse myself in... Having looked at the tags and ratings of the later books in the series, it's possible that they won't be as full of the things I didn't care for in this one...
6. T.Kingfisher (ursulav, Summer in Orcus -- this was put out serially by ursulav and can be read online for free still. I read the first chapter when she first put it out and fell in love with the beginning -- so much that I insisted on reading it to both the rodents and to B (Summer's overprotective mother made us all think of B's paranoia). The rest of the book didn't quite live up to that first chapter for me, but I did like it on the whole as an original fairy tale, and hope the rodents will read and enjoy it, too. (This was my first experience with T.Kingfisher outside of the short stories ursulav originally posted on her LJ, although I've been a longtime fan of her Dragonbreath books under the Vernon name.)
First, I should probably say that this book is written with the idea of creating a portal fantasy where the kid behaves like the kind of kid a lot of us were, where they have realistic skills and gaps in their adaptation to the world, rather than being improbably hailed as a savior or whatever. I've never been a huge portal fantasy fan, and even in the one portal fantasy that I did grow up on -- the Russian version of Wizard of Oz -- I preferred the books that mostly didn't have a portal component, or where it was the local goings on that were important, not what happened with the kid who found herself in Fairyland. So I'm probably less of a target audience for this, but still appreciate both the motivation and the execution, especially Spoilers! that Summer is both appreciative of the wonders of Orcus and occasionally wants to go home (and feels guilty for wanting to go home), but also wants to be able to come back.
Things I liked: Summer's special skill being soothing and reassuring to people who are (in various ways) more powerful than her, and the way smaller encounters along the way (the Clerk at Fen-town, e.g.) set that up for her final pacification of the Queen-in-Chains; the name, idea, and backstory of the Queen-in-Chains, as well as the way it is foreshadowed with the Forester (the thing with the wasps just trying to help their friend worked less well for me); Baba Yaga (which was a pleasant surprise); Summer's weasel companion (although I got a bit sick of him being described as doing everything like "a very small cat", and that he stayed with her after she came home; Glorious the wolf and Summer's relationship with him; the story about the antelope women and the ambiguous role the one in the story plays, and Summer's feelings about her; Grub being suitably freaky; a lot of the worldbuilding, which was just the mix of cozy and bizarre I've come to expect from ursulav -- Frog Tree and Mouse Tree and giant turtles and a city of cactus and herds of cottages pursued by house-hunters and scorpion-stars lighting up the sand and magical cheeses (prophetic or made out of platypus milk) and snail-carts and a Phoenix-Hedgehog (which reminded me of Gromyko's zhar-krys).
Things that didn't work for me as well: all the stuff with the Regency birds (I guess I just don't like Regency enough to find this part of it as amusing as it's meant to be), although I did like a hoopoe being one of the characters, because they are ridiculous; Zultan, ultimately, although I liked some aspects of his character, like the way he's at first always seen reading quietly on horseback; something about the shape of the story as fairy tale, I guess, that I can't put my finger on -- I'm not sure if it was theme or pacing or what, but for some reason it didn't feel like a satisfying conclusion.
Quotes:
Once upon a time there was a girl named Summer, whose mother loved her very very very much. || Her mother loved her so much that she was not allowed to play outside where someone might grab her, nor go away on sleepovers where there might be an accident or suspicious food. She was not allowed to go away to camp, where she might be squashed by a horse or bitten by diseased mosquitoes, and she most certainly was not allowed to go on the Ferris Wheel at the carnival because (her mother said) the people who maintain the machinery are lazy and not very educated and might get drunk and forget to put a bolt back on and the entire thing could come loose at any moment and fall down and kill everyone inside, and they should probably leave the carnival immediately before it happened. [...] Summer had never had a father, and wasn’t entirely sure what you did with one, and certainly her mother never had anything good to say about the one Summer didn’t have. But she sometimes thought that it would be nice to have a brother or a sister, not because she particularly liked other children but because it would have been nice to have somebody to share the burden of her mother’s love. If there had been two of them, maybe they could have taken turns. Surely her mother wouldn’t have the energy to keep barging in on both of them in the bathtub. || Unfortunately, there was only Summer.She didn’t want to hurt her mother. [...] During good times, her mother baked cookies and sang songs and showed her how to tie her shoes and helped her with her homework when it was hard (and sometimes when it wasn’t, which was a little bit annoying.) She just wanted her mother to love her a little bit less, like a normal person, so that she could go to camp and not have to leave the carnival early.
The birds with Summer's cheese sword (actually a large knife to cut cheese):
"The shape's a bit unusual."
"It's for cheese," said Summer.
The bird paused bfor an instant. "Are the cheeses very fierce in your world?"
Antelope woman on Zultan: "He wants the world to burn and I want to dance on the ashes, so he thinks that we are alike. But hate and chaos aren't the same thing."
"Did I save Orcus?" asked Summer.
[Baba Yaga] "Orcus never needed saving. You saved the Queen and your friends and made things generally more pleasant for most of the inhabitants."
Summer felt a deep relief at this. She could not have dealt with saving the world.
7. Patrick Weekes, The Palace Job -- I was really in the mood for some urban-feeling braincandy with action, humour, and ensemble hijinks, so when egelantier posted about this book, it seemed entirely relevant to my interests. And it very much was the kind of book I was in the mood for at the moment -- ridiculous, but surprisingly charming for all of the things I would normally regard as a flaw. And there are a lot of those. The characters are mostly ridiculous and not at all deep, the antagonists are Disney villain caliber (one coolly Evil and competent, the other comically evil and very, very incompetent, and one just sort of Evil by nature), the plots run on chutzpah (to use egelantier's very fitting word) and Rule of Cool rather than relying on any sort of logic, the worldbuilding consists of some magical mumbo-jumbo invoked whenever convenient and political allusions veiled so thinly they might as well be wearing a hospital paper gown, and the romance is as ubiquitous as it is extraneous and random... but somehow it all entertained rather than annoyed me?
And I think the reason is, it doesn't FEEL like a novel, it feels like a fantasy heist movie, or sitcom, and I'm much more willing to forgive movies/shows for things that don't make sense, out-of-nowhere romance, Evil So Evil villains, and so on. The reason it feels like a movie is, I think, partly the prose -- very little introspection, mostly action and dialogue, narration that's not quite objective 3rd but spends a lot of time near there -- and partly the pacing: I feel like the scene breaks are optimized for a visual medium. So, after a while, before I realized what was going on, my expectations just sort of adjusted, and I switched from really reading the book as a book and was just "watching" it through the medium of text -- and from that point on started enjoying it a lot more, as the things that had been bothering me earlier stopped bothering me. Which is a pretty neat trick! (I was also unsurprised to learn that the author hails from video games.) Spoilers from here
Anyway, because of the sitcom/action flick feel and general humorous lightness, the book feels very much like crackfic, but while I was boggling a bit at that at first, after a while it won me over and I just rolled with all the ridiculousness. Acrobat sex in a store awning? Sure, why not. Kail's weapon of choice being yo mama insults in all possible languages and against all comers? I started looking forward to those. (My favorite is: "We're trying to work here! Do I go down to where your mother works and push the sailors out of her bed?") Satyrs having a glowing magical horn like unicorns only not in the same spot (the astute reader is left to deduce where they have the horn)? Seems legit. (There is even a scene where, well, see for yourself: "He stood, letting his robe fall open, and his horn flared a blinding white as he smiled in naked lust at Ghylspwr [the hammer], who continued to struggle uselessly.") Loch distracting a guard while tied up by talkintg sultrily about how she is sweating in her dress and could he help her out? Yep, that happened. Newscasts in the form of puppet shows where the two parties are represented by a manticore and a griffon (there's a neat point made about how they're both essentially big cats) and moderated by a dragon, throwing candy out to the cheering public? At first that seemed like the most ludicrous idea ever, and, honestly, it still does, but by the end of the book I found it kind of charming. It's just ridiculousness piled on top of ridiculousness, but it kind of works? for some reason? IDK...
The characters are similarly cracky and over-the-top. There's Loch, who, it occurred to me partway through the book, may be Loch as an allusion to Locksley: she is very much a Robin Hood sort of figure, a betrayed soldier who returns to find her family lands taken over by a politician now in charge (who also happens to be the man who killed her family), and she assembles a band of merry men heist team to... well, it's complicated, but it's either steal back what's rightfully hers and/or take him down. Kail, who served under her in the war, is with her from the start; at first I was imagining them as a sort of role-swapped Zoe and Mal from Firefly, but it's not really like that. Anyway, much to my own surprise, Kail ended up being my favorite, for sheer entertainment value. I liked pretty much all the others, too, to various degrees -- Tern the mechanically gifted alchemis/safecracker, pacifist monk-acrobat Icy (who gets one of my favorite lines: '"Are we, in fact, Imperial agents?" Icy asked curiously. "If so, I will adopt the necessary patriotism."'), grouchy half-trained wizard Hessler, love-priestess turned death-priestess/envoy of the gods Desidora with her magic hammer. Dairy (whose nickname -- it's short for Rybindaris -- is indeed adorable; he is an orphan boy who was found in a barn, with cows, and has a Meaningful Birthmark -- well, possibly meaningful, the book kind of pokes fun at it) and the unicorn fairy with a penchant for virgins felt less like people even than the colorful cast of stock characters that the others are, but Hessler trying to protect Dairy was really cute. Oh, and then there's Justicar Pyvic, a good cop working in a corrupt system, who starts out chasing Loch and, naturally, falls for her and helps her, but he was mostly a collection of cop tropes, as far as I'm concerned. Then there are the villains: the sadistic crooked prison warden, the corrupt politician who tries to justify his actions as being for the good of the country where really he's just an ambitious coward, and a non-human entity from beyond who wants to destroy the world, or something. Yeah, it's that kind of book.
Besides Kail, my favorite character actually ended up being Silestin Senior (the zombie), who ended up being at least as much of a character as some of the principals, and unexpectedly sympathetic. And got an interesting line: "Finding out that the men who held the power fifty years ago -- ambitious, yes, but you've got to be ambitious to make any mark on the world -- have been replaced by pampered toads who make laws to stay busy." But I kind of tend to like ~resurrected military-minded ancestors in general. You wouldn't think there would be a whole class of characters like that which I could point to, but there actually is. And I kind of liked Akus the helpful thug, too, and was sorry when he got killed.
The plot is similarly, uh, low-key and nuanced, which I don't even say as a criticism. There's prison breaks! Chased along the underside of a floating city studded with crystals and elecrified rails! Invisible assassins! Sneaking into a party without an invitation, complete with tear-away dress! A vault with moving walls! Crosses and double-crosses and triple-crosses (so many crosses) -- I forget which cartoon had the two opponents pulling layers of disguises off each other, but it was a bit like that. There are people stepping out of the darkness behind Our Heroes and the sound of a sword leaving its sheathe at the most dramatic moment at the end of pretty much every chapter, and several "I knew it all along!" and "I was just WAITING for you to do that" moments, one of which includes the villain revealing the way to reverse his spell while gloating, which the hero had been waiting for him to do (another villain lifts his helmet visor to say "It is I!" in order to gloat properly, and that's how he's defeated). And the thing is, the book just embraces the ridiculousness of these things, and somehow instead of rolling my eyes at each new cliche (the villain is dangling off a cliff, and the heroine pulls him up, because That's the Difference Between You and Me, and then he stabs her in the back (not literally) before being stabbed himself (quite literally) by the ward he's been lying to all these years) -- I just sort of cheered at the dedication to playing as much as possible of the TV Tropes index as audaciously straight as possible. None of the motivations make too much sense, but the book moves quickly enough that I was not tempted to pause to examine them for logic. The pacing is crazy, with scene-hopping action montages where I could practically see the movie scene changes. The villains are just as smart, resourceful, prescient, and indestructible as the plot needs them to be -- until they aren't. None of it makes any sort of coherent sense, but it also totally doesn't matter, or at least it didn't to me.
There's something about the mix of gleefully embraced cliche, genre savviness, lampshading (e.g. Hessler growsing about prophecies: "Oh please. It's your standard false duality designed to draw gullible believers into a world of monochromoatic enemies and strip away any moral ambiguity -- usually utilized by the ruling government to bolster whatever policies it wishes to implement." and "prophecies, which were obviously propaganda promulgated by religious figures in order to reinforce the predominant morality of the time at the expense of the undereducated working class"), and a few moments that did actually catch me by surprise (I did not guess that Naria was the First Blade/unseen assassin, for instance, or anything more than the trapped pawn in need of rescue she presents herself as to Icy) that just combined into a fun read that felt both refreshing and cozy.
Same pretty much applies to the pair-(almost)-everyone "romances", which are sketched in via a few scenes (with mood music playing over the scene snippets, no doubt), although I found them less charming than the plot. Loch and Justical Pyvic pairing is predictable, though this book's zaniness is a poor match for the sort of noirish opposite-sides-of-the-law thing it attempts. Tern and Disedora have more chemistry together than Tern and Hessler (although I'm reading the sequel now, and Tern and Hessler are pretty cute once the book gets past the silly love triangle with clueless guy and needlessly jealous girl that dominated their book 1 "relationship"), and WAAAY more chemistry than Kail/Desidora, which might qualify as the randomest pairing if it wasn't for Icy and Naria (which I'm still not entirely sure whether it's meant to be a real pairing going forward or just a decoy one) -- but given the way everyone else is paired off, I'm guessing real? and a redemption arc for Naria? IDK. The one that worked for me least well (which, notice none of these really worked for me, as such) was the played-for-laughs unicorn fairy/prophesied champion Dairy (whom she is drawn to because he is a virgin). He is entirely clueless at first, which felt a bit ehhhh, but seems to be having the first stirrings of sexual awakening towards the end of the book, courtesy of Loch, and it becomes less skeevy, but yeah, romance is not a strong point of this book, because while ridiculous plot and ridiculous characters I can apparently suspend my disbelief for, ridiculous pairings are just kind of boring, at best.
I haven't talked about the worldbuilding yet. That's because the worldbuilding is kind of "Hollywood's version of basically modern world but with MAGIC". There is a Republic, ruled out of a floating crystal-powered city by a suspiciously familiar two-party system, the evil leader of which actualfax has "a platform of making the Republic great again by protecting it from all enemies" (this book came out in 2012, which surprised me; it felt more in tune with the 2016-ish yearning for something outside the political establishment). The Republic seems to consist of a white majority and Urujar (black) minority with an unspecified oppressed past (which gets clarified at least a little bit more in the sequel), the result of which is a set of prejudices that end up being pretty congruent to what an American reader would recognize (racial slur, a villain making a crack about Urujar women in chains, suspicion of being criminals, "animalistic wanton ways", "too lazy to work, too hot-headed to steal", etc.). This is one thing the book does take seriously, with speeches from both Loch and her godfather, Cevirt (the first Urujar Voyant/~Senator), which make some points that stick out in the midst of the Looney Tunes plot, but not in a bad way. There's also the generically Oriental Empire which the Republic fought a war with (but the genericness felt sufficiently self-aware that I couldn't have a problem with it), some mention of Old Kingdoms beyond the sea (where they apparently speak French? there is some random French in this book, in service to one of Kail's yo mama insults, which is really weird when all the other foreign languages are clearly made up and brimming with apostrophes and Ys in cliche fantasy fashion), the ancients who left some powerful artefacts here and there, and a whole mess of magical creatures and constructs that were all sort of thrown in the blender. The fantasy aspects, more than anything else, reminded me of the Dungeons and Dragons movie (the scenery-chewing antagonist did, too) -- but, like, not in a bad way, surprisingly?
And, like, I know I've had a bunch of write-ups where I try to figure out why a book that, from a list of "ingredients", should've worked for me didn't work for me, but I think this might be the first time my write-up has been mostly about why a book DID work for me, despite a bunch of stuff that would've normally turned me off. Even as I was reading, I kept thinking about the book it kept reminding me of that hadn't worked for me -- Lindsay Buroker's Emperor's Edge (my write-up is here)-- and what the salient difference was. Spoilers for Emperor's Edge I reread what I'd written about that and clearly I had been right: my problem with Emperor's Edge was mostly that it didn't go BIG enough, didn't careen crazily enough, leaving too much time to wonder about the various things that didn't make much sense, which The Palace Job handily avoids. The Place Job's team is FAR more sitcom-y than the Emperor's Edge one, the world is explained even less, and the suspension of disbelief required is probably an order of magnitude higher, but by embracing the ridiculousness it pulled it off for me in a way Emperor's Edge did not. Although I do think one of the relevant differences is that The Palace Job's team is made up mostly of pros, and centered around a pro -- Amaranthe being both brilliant and an ingenue in Emperor's Edge just wasn't a good choice for a heist book, I think. And I do think another problem with Emperor's Edge for me was the "reverse harem" thing that's going on with Amaranthe and her all-male team, while this one had a nice (if a bit painstaking) gender balance, and also made a point of giving the lead a love interest outside the team.
Anyway, I enjoyed it enough that I'm already reading the sequel (which is continuing in the same ridiculous vein, fortunately).
*
Aaronovitch posted about a new Rivers of London novella which will be out in June! And it will have Kumar and Abigail in it! I do have the same question as everybody else, which is, will there be an ebook that won't be $40+. Seems like there will, in September, at least for the UK, which is encouraging. (Like another person who asked, I'm wondering if this will form the anchor for a book in which to collect all the random short stories that have appeared in special editions and so on. I hope that's the case!)
Brust tweeted that he's started writing a new Vlad book, though he doesn't know yet which one it is. With Vallista in the can (October!!!), that leaves only Lyorn, Tsalmoth, and Chreotha (as I assume Brust would know if this book was The Last Contract... but maybe not). So that's really exciting -- that there's a Vlad book coming out this year, a Paarfi book presumably undergoing edits or otherwise searching for a publication slot, and another Vlad book already in the works.
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As you can see, I've been falling behind on my book-a-week schedule, which is not uncommon in winter, but usually I have a bit of a head-start built up. I probably will catch up. But to maybe help spur me on in my reading, a few reading list/bingo type challenges I've been seeing around, which look different from ones I've already done:
Snagged from meathiel a while back,
Progress so far:
A book which takes place in winter -- Rose Point Holiday (it's a Christmas novel)
A debut novel -- The Palace Job
A book in a genre you don't normally read -- either Even the Wingless (darkfic) or Listen to the Moon/Sweet Disorder (non-paranormal romance) would work
An epistolary novel -- Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, fortuitously :)
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And from brutti_ma_buoni:
1. A Book Published this Year
Hopefully Vallista!
2. A Book You Can Finish in One Day
Either a graphic novel (e.g. Black Mould) or the RoL novella linked above.
3. A Book You Have Been Meaning to Read
Something from my list of in-progress series, probably, or maybe the Dellamonica, finally...
4. A Book Recommended by Your Local Librarian or Bookseller
I have plenty of recs from non-local librarians on my flist. And does "recommended for you by Amazon" count? :P (Sadly my local bookstore doesn't carry much SFF.)
5. A Book You Should Have Read in School
I have vague plans of reading The Bluest Eye, which L will be reading next in English. Or maybe finishing The Great Gatsby, having fallen off the wagon as L got too far ahead of me.
6. A Book Chosen For You by Your Spouse, Partner, Sibling, Child, or BFF
I should ask the rodents.
7. A Book Published Before You Were Born
I've been thinking of reading Machiavelli's The Prince for a while, and feeling more like it lately to keep up my Renaissance Lit cred with Awesome Friend Ali.
8. A Book That Was Banned at Some Point
Huh. I've read most of the ones that sound interesting to me among the "most frequently banned" books. The Bluest Eye would work for this also, as would The Great Gatsby. The Giver? More Saga?
9. A Book You Previously Abandoned
Candidates include Cast in Flame, and a bunch of things that aren't truly abandoned but are sitting at 30% on my Kindle, in some cases for years.
10. A Book You Own but Have Never Read
I have a couple of recentish gifts, or the Magnus Chase sequel... Or, ooh, Seraphine sequel. Or I guess any one of the bunch of freebies I downloaded on Kindle recently.
11. A Book that Intimidates You
Maybe the first Lymond book?
12. A Book You Have Read at Least Once
Since I don't tend to reread much, this will likely be a Vlad Taltos book. Phoenix, maybe? I was leafing through it the other day, and I miss it.
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While falling behind on reading, I have been watching things a bit:
Friday night B wanted us to watch In the Loop, which he's watched a couple of times because he enjoys listening to Malcolm Tucker/Peter Capaldi swear. Having watched the movie now, that's definitely an entertaining pastime! O got bored and wandered off (predictably), and L kept watching, but also sighed deeply to show she was bored whenever the scenes were anything that did not have to do with British people swearing creatively or otherwise insulting each other (which, yes, those were definitely the best parts). She was particularly taken with Malcolm's "F-star-star-cunt" 'censored' swearing XP Besides enjoying the swearing, I was mostly struck by thinking the American accents sounded weirdly fake to me -- especially considering the actors actually were American. Dunno what was up with that -- were they trying to sound more American? was it all in my head? Anyway, it was fun! B has never seen The Thick of It, it turns out, so now I'm debating whether I should point him at it or buy him a set for a present. It's too bad his birthday has just past, as that would've been an excellent occasion for it...
Then on Saturday I watched Storks with the rodents. I was skeptical, having seen the trailer with something, but L wanted to watch it, and reminded me that I'd ended up giggling through Penguins of Madagascar movie, which had looked similarly inane. It's not a bad comparison -- the movie was very strange, both in concept and actuality, but pretty funny in spots. I found Junior the stork more annoying than amusing, but Tulip was occasionally fun, and the baby was very cute. with spoilers! Early on, before the baby appeared, we mostly found funny the little birds Hunter the boss plays golf with/uses as desk toys, and we were happy that the little birds got their revenge in the end. I liked Nate, the kid who wanted a baby brother but seemed willing to settle for a baby sister with ninja skills (L: "that kid is way too self-aware"). And I found the scene where Junior gets flash-forwards of the little girl's life as he gives her up to the family rather touching, and the baby-delivering montage very nicely done in its diversity. The wolf pack which could transform into a wolf bridge, submarine, minivan, etc. occupied the place of the octopus bunch in the Penguins movie -- totally off the wall, but kinda hilarious because of the sheer strangeness (me: "How do they even come up with this stuff?" L: (with grim authority) "Drugs.") But the pigeon was the MOST ANNOYING character I think I've ever seen in any animated thing ever, uggggh. L kept thinking too hard about the plot and worldbuilding implications and weirding herself out with it, especially all the parts where Junior (the stork) and Tulip (the human girl) are acting like the (human) baby's parents; I definitely advise against that XP
And I have Arrival now, but L has decided she wants to watch it with me, so it won't be until the weekend...
I think... possibly it's on account of True Pretenses' leads both being orphans. spoilers for all 3 books, though mostly for this one Which is kind of ridiculous, but while Lerner writes beautiful, nuanced sibling relationships even outside that book (e.g. Helen and Phoebe in Sweet Disorder, and even the nascent sisterly relationship between Sukey and Julia here feels promising), the parent/child stuff is weirdly... I can't even say heavy-handed, because there is nuance in the set-up, but no nuance in the resolution, which is the thing that makes me so frustrated. I hated that Nick just walked away from Lady Tassell at the end of Sweet Disorder. Something pretty similar happens here with John and his father. I feel like the books clearly understand that the parent characters are fallible people in their own right, but the take-away seems to be just not to put up with their crap. Which, I'm definitely not saying Nick should've not married Phoebe because his mother was against it, or that John had to spend the rest of his life working as a butler at Tassell Hall so that his father would choose to retire -- of course not! But these are grown people (John is 40!), and they seem incapable of coming to some kind of balance with their parents. And I know it happens, of course, and there are cases when the healthiest thing one can do is walk away, and that's fine -- but this kind of dynamic is so far outside of my own experience or any experience I'm closely familiar with, and I find it really depressing besides. I also don't understand why parent issues need to feature so heavily / so darkly (in this case, Sukey's abandonment by her father, and John's domineering father).
There is a little bit of nuance, like I said -- I definitely got the sense that John's issues with his father were HIS issues, not necessarily an objective statement of his father's awfulness -- through Sukey's eyes, we saw the love of his parents for each other, and it seems like other servants have learned to deal with Mr Toogood Sr -- but most of what we get is from John's POV, and that's just no fun at all... Which was unfortunate, because I liked John, and I liked the other things he's struggling with -- his own critical nature, the way he sees the things that are wrong and itches to jump in to fix them (like reaching out to fix Nick's tie when he comes to visit, and wanting to brush Stephen's hair), and has to apply effort to pay compliments and to consult others (this miiiiight be somethingg I can empathize with :P).
I was also intrigued by certain aspects of John and Sukey's relationship -- him feeling self-conscious of the age difference both because he was worried about forcing her into the decision and because he thought he might look laugh-worthy next to a young wife, and also what kept me thinking of the two of them having different "love languages" (which is a silly but useful concept), with John clearly being someone who expresses affection by doing things for the people he loves, and Sukey valuing words of affection and spending time together more. But while that was interesting in terms of obstacles to the relationships (along with the two of them coming from pretty different classes, even though they're both kinds of servants), I never really felt like there was anything really bringing them together: they are people who are sort of thrown together by expediency, and they are physically attracted to each other, and they are both decent people who therefore try to do right by each other... and that's about it? Like, I don't underestimate the draw of the physical (even though it's clear John is not averse to liasons that don't end in marriage, and Sukey had been adamant she didn't want to get married), or the importance of being decent people, or the fact that neither of them is exactly in a position where they have a lot of choice... but that makes for a kind of bleak framework. It's an interesting thing to find in a romance book, maybe, but not enought to carry what is eseentially the plot of a book for me...
And while I had liked Sukey a lot in Sweet Disorder and was looking forward to a book with her as protagonist, it turned out that I didn't like her as a romantic lead as much as I had as a secondary plucky comic relief character. There were still things I did like about Sukey: her feelings about the Shakespeare play John took her to, the way she defended her boarding-house mistress's miserliness even when it had hurt her for years, even her feelings on housekeeping ("But she didn't know how to do anything properly, and he [John] didn't see the trying, only the failing"), and also her being a person who (thinks, at least that she) has a limited amount of caring in her ("Well, she only had so much kindness in her and she'd already wasted it on strangers") -- but I didn't enjoy spending time in her head the way I had with Lydia or even Phoebe. (Out of a sense of fairness, I will also mention that between liking Sukey in Sweet Disorder and reading this book, I stumbled on Rose Lerner's fancasting page and discovered that she headcanons Sukey as looking like Natalie Dormer, so that might have put me off her somewhat, too. But I think it was mostly the POV...)
I continue to like the way these books have a larger important cast of characters than just the couple. Here my favorite was Molly, the older maid who was shouldering all sorts of burdens because she felt she had to; her coming to John to take him up on the offer to talk the vicar into letting her learn to read was probably the emotional high point of the book for me. I also liked Mrs Khaleel, and continue to enjoy Lerner including non-Christian (and in this case also POC) characters in her settings, and letting then have stories of their own (even though it's definitely in the background here), and the snarky old vicar, Mr Summers. But while I liked them, I can't say that I felt attached to the household as an entity, and so John and Sukey returning to it, after turning down Tassell Hall, didn't feel like a reunion or a triumph, just like a thing that happened -- I guess I wasn't invested in it, the way I was in, say, Mr Moon's bakery in Sweet Disorder, or the Intelligencer. I was happy to see old Mrs Pengilly again (and to have her settled with a live-in maid at the end), and was glad that even the shrewish boarding-house mistress, Mrs Humphrey, got some human moments, like Sukey being grateful to her that she gave her a rattle when Sukey was reluctant to be left along with a man whose intentions she wasn't sure of.
It seems that every one of these Lively St Lemeston books has some hint of a kink -- it was foodplay and light bondage in Sweet Disorder, and role-playing in True Pretenses, which were not exactly a draw but didn't bother me either. Here, there's a fairly random scene where John and Sukey are talking about having a threesome, or watching each other with another person, and by the way, Sukey is apparently also bi, and the whole thing just sort of felt weirdly tacked on and out of the blue. I mean, there were other hints of a voyeuristic streak, but that had seemed more like a public sex kink, rather than wanting an actual additional participant? I can sort of see the former being tied to servants living so much of their lives with very little privacy, where it almost isn't a choice, so it felt thematically approrpiate, but the latter just puzzled me. Which, it's not like kinks need to have explanations or fit themes, even in fiction, but the threesome-fantasy scene just threw me out of the story.
The pacing is a little odd, because the marriage comes so early in the book, and so much of the emotional growth for the characters, separately and together, comes after it; I found that I had trouble remembering everything that happened, and even more trouble remembering the order of things, because the "beats" weren't where I expected them too, I guess.
I'd been hoping to see some news of Ash and Lydia in this book, since it's the third in the series, but a lot of it actually runs parallel to the events of True Pretenses, and there are only a few mentions of the Cahills. I did, at least, get a slightly more sympathetic view of Lady Tassell than in either of the previous books; although she is still sort of the bad guy, dismissing John and making it difficult for him to find another place over not tipping her off about Nick's attachment to Phoebe, we get fonder views of her from Stephen (the oldest son) and John himself, and I really liked the way she spoke about John's father -- they seem two people who understand each other, and care for each other, despite their difference in station, and I was glad they each had somebody like that. And the scene where she asks John to see the letter of recommendation written by Nick, because he hasn't written to her yet, was sad and poignant.
A couple of quotes:
"John had thought... hoped... he'd wanted to be someone Sukey could talk to, instead of who he'd always been: someone whose presence, while a necessary evil, was at least unobtrusive."
"That was the worst part. As he told her the story, he could imagine himself in his father's place, fancying himself an avenging angel of roast beef."
Anyway, while I still enjoyed the book overall and read it pretty quickly, I'm pretty clearly in diminishing returns territory with both Lerner and romance at this point, so I guess I ought to take a break.
5. M.C.A.Hogarth, Even the Wingless (Princes' Game #1) -- so this was a thing I read. It's a series set in the same space!Elves and space!furries universe as the fluffy-cookie-baking-grad-students and Firefly-with-furries series I read last year, but is the dark-and-edgy BDSM series, and... I wish she was focusing on a different aspect of the universe, because this was readable and occasionally even interesting, but the ratio of not-my-kink to things I actually want to read about was definitely not optimized for me.
Let me try for a summary of sorts, sans spoilers but with content warnings, in case this is of interest to anyone on my flist: Space!Elf Lisinthir is seconded to the Alliance to serve as ambassador to the Chatcaava Empire (mammalian dragon-people with shape-shifting abilities they mostly don't seem to use, because assuming "lesser" forms is beneath them), after a dozen previous ambassadors end up dead or suffering nervous breakdowns because the Chatcaavans are Just That Terrible. The terribleness consists of regarding wingless alien species as non-persons (kind of curious what the Chatcaava think of the winged species like Phoenixae, but anyway), treating the (wingless) females of their own species as chattel and slaves, and settling things between the winged males -- the only ones considered worthy of notice -- via rape, maiming, and/or killing. As you may imagine, there is a ton of non-con (m/m and m/f), extremely dub-con, possibly even more creepy Stockholm Syndrome-y dub-con (both ordinary psychological and also possibly enhanced by Eldritch telepathy), very non-con bondage, sexual slavery, and (on a different but still somewhat disturbing note) drug abuse with physical consequences. And the Chatcaavans *are* sort of dragon-shaped, with talons and wings and long snouts and barbs in various places, so there's also quite a lot of xeno. The sex stuff isn't graphic/explicit, with the focus definitely being on the themes, but the themes are squicky enough on their own. The POV alternates between the Chatcaavan Slave Queen, who starts out thinking of herself as an unperson, debased and powerless, and Lisinthir, who feels duty-bound to participate in the savagery of the Chatcaavan court in order to save lives.
Talking about what I thought, with actual spoilers: I could do without most of the above, quite honestly, but there were some things I found interesting. There's some neat stuff done with the language of the Chatcaavans, where the "you" used to address aliens implies "wingless freak"; when addressing each other, the female Chatcaava make use of "you(/they)-our-better" to address males (or speak about them) and "this one" to describe themselves as unpersons; and their language seems to make use of titles/ranks exclusively rather than names -- all of this is pretty interesting, and integrated better into the prose than I would have expected. spoilers from here Lisinthir "going native" has some interesting aspects, and I do wonder if it's leading up to the idea that he's got some Chatcaava blood in him (since they are shape-shifters, that could be a thing). There is actually some fairly nice banter between Lisinthir and the Emperor, although it was hard for me to enjoy the banter once the non-con became a thing. I am theoretically intrigued by the growth arcs set up for both the Slave Queen and the Emperor, as well as Lisinthir's arc, but I'm skeptical I can be really sold on them, or that I would enjoy actually reading about it. I also quite liked Second, who seemed like a somewhat decent individual by Chatcaava standards, and wanted to know a bit more about his backstory and what the history between him and the Emperor is. /spoilers
I may read the sequel, because the Dreamhealers characters show up there, and I'm kinda curious to see how these two extremes will collide, but mostly I'm disappointed that this seems to be the Pelted series that's currently active (four books and counting, I think?), because these are not the aspects of that universe I want to immerse myself in... Having looked at the tags and ratings of the later books in the series, it's possible that they won't be as full of the things I didn't care for in this one...
6. T.Kingfisher (ursulav, Summer in Orcus -- this was put out serially by ursulav and can be read online for free still. I read the first chapter when she first put it out and fell in love with the beginning -- so much that I insisted on reading it to both the rodents and to B (Summer's overprotective mother made us all think of B's paranoia). The rest of the book didn't quite live up to that first chapter for me, but I did like it on the whole as an original fairy tale, and hope the rodents will read and enjoy it, too. (This was my first experience with T.Kingfisher outside of the short stories ursulav originally posted on her LJ, although I've been a longtime fan of her Dragonbreath books under the Vernon name.)
First, I should probably say that this book is written with the idea of creating a portal fantasy where the kid behaves like the kind of kid a lot of us were, where they have realistic skills and gaps in their adaptation to the world, rather than being improbably hailed as a savior or whatever. I've never been a huge portal fantasy fan, and even in the one portal fantasy that I did grow up on -- the Russian version of Wizard of Oz -- I preferred the books that mostly didn't have a portal component, or where it was the local goings on that were important, not what happened with the kid who found herself in Fairyland. So I'm probably less of a target audience for this, but still appreciate both the motivation and the execution, especially Spoilers! that Summer is both appreciative of the wonders of Orcus and occasionally wants to go home (and feels guilty for wanting to go home), but also wants to be able to come back.
Things I liked: Summer's special skill being soothing and reassuring to people who are (in various ways) more powerful than her, and the way smaller encounters along the way (the Clerk at Fen-town, e.g.) set that up for her final pacification of the Queen-in-Chains; the name, idea, and backstory of the Queen-in-Chains, as well as the way it is foreshadowed with the Forester (the thing with the wasps just trying to help their friend worked less well for me); Baba Yaga (which was a pleasant surprise); Summer's weasel companion (although I got a bit sick of him being described as doing everything like "a very small cat", and that he stayed with her after she came home; Glorious the wolf and Summer's relationship with him; the story about the antelope women and the ambiguous role the one in the story plays, and Summer's feelings about her; Grub being suitably freaky; a lot of the worldbuilding, which was just the mix of cozy and bizarre I've come to expect from ursulav -- Frog Tree and Mouse Tree and giant turtles and a city of cactus and herds of cottages pursued by house-hunters and scorpion-stars lighting up the sand and magical cheeses (prophetic or made out of platypus milk) and snail-carts and a Phoenix-Hedgehog (which reminded me of Gromyko's zhar-krys).
Things that didn't work for me as well: all the stuff with the Regency birds (I guess I just don't like Regency enough to find this part of it as amusing as it's meant to be), although I did like a hoopoe being one of the characters, because they are ridiculous; Zultan, ultimately, although I liked some aspects of his character, like the way he's at first always seen reading quietly on horseback; something about the shape of the story as fairy tale, I guess, that I can't put my finger on -- I'm not sure if it was theme or pacing or what, but for some reason it didn't feel like a satisfying conclusion.
Quotes:
Once upon a time there was a girl named Summer, whose mother loved her very very very much. || Her mother loved her so much that she was not allowed to play outside where someone might grab her, nor go away on sleepovers where there might be an accident or suspicious food. She was not allowed to go away to camp, where she might be squashed by a horse or bitten by diseased mosquitoes, and she most certainly was not allowed to go on the Ferris Wheel at the carnival because (her mother said) the people who maintain the machinery are lazy and not very educated and might get drunk and forget to put a bolt back on and the entire thing could come loose at any moment and fall down and kill everyone inside, and they should probably leave the carnival immediately before it happened. [...] Summer had never had a father, and wasn’t entirely sure what you did with one, and certainly her mother never had anything good to say about the one Summer didn’t have. But she sometimes thought that it would be nice to have a brother or a sister, not because she particularly liked other children but because it would have been nice to have somebody to share the burden of her mother’s love. If there had been two of them, maybe they could have taken turns. Surely her mother wouldn’t have the energy to keep barging in on both of them in the bathtub. || Unfortunately, there was only Summer.She didn’t want to hurt her mother. [...] During good times, her mother baked cookies and sang songs and showed her how to tie her shoes and helped her with her homework when it was hard (and sometimes when it wasn’t, which was a little bit annoying.) She just wanted her mother to love her a little bit less, like a normal person, so that she could go to camp and not have to leave the carnival early.
The birds with Summer's cheese sword (actually a large knife to cut cheese):
"The shape's a bit unusual."
"It's for cheese," said Summer.
The bird paused bfor an instant. "Are the cheeses very fierce in your world?"
Antelope woman on Zultan: "He wants the world to burn and I want to dance on the ashes, so he thinks that we are alike. But hate and chaos aren't the same thing."
"Did I save Orcus?" asked Summer.
[Baba Yaga] "Orcus never needed saving. You saved the Queen and your friends and made things generally more pleasant for most of the inhabitants."
Summer felt a deep relief at this. She could not have dealt with saving the world.
7. Patrick Weekes, The Palace Job -- I was really in the mood for some urban-feeling braincandy with action, humour, and ensemble hijinks, so when egelantier posted about this book, it seemed entirely relevant to my interests. And it very much was the kind of book I was in the mood for at the moment -- ridiculous, but surprisingly charming for all of the things I would normally regard as a flaw. And there are a lot of those. The characters are mostly ridiculous and not at all deep, the antagonists are Disney villain caliber (one coolly Evil and competent, the other comically evil and very, very incompetent, and one just sort of Evil by nature), the plots run on chutzpah (to use egelantier's very fitting word) and Rule of Cool rather than relying on any sort of logic, the worldbuilding consists of some magical mumbo-jumbo invoked whenever convenient and political allusions veiled so thinly they might as well be wearing a hospital paper gown, and the romance is as ubiquitous as it is extraneous and random... but somehow it all entertained rather than annoyed me?
And I think the reason is, it doesn't FEEL like a novel, it feels like a fantasy heist movie, or sitcom, and I'm much more willing to forgive movies/shows for things that don't make sense, out-of-nowhere romance, Evil So Evil villains, and so on. The reason it feels like a movie is, I think, partly the prose -- very little introspection, mostly action and dialogue, narration that's not quite objective 3rd but spends a lot of time near there -- and partly the pacing: I feel like the scene breaks are optimized for a visual medium. So, after a while, before I realized what was going on, my expectations just sort of adjusted, and I switched from really reading the book as a book and was just "watching" it through the medium of text -- and from that point on started enjoying it a lot more, as the things that had been bothering me earlier stopped bothering me. Which is a pretty neat trick! (I was also unsurprised to learn that the author hails from video games.) Spoilers from here
Anyway, because of the sitcom/action flick feel and general humorous lightness, the book feels very much like crackfic, but while I was boggling a bit at that at first, after a while it won me over and I just rolled with all the ridiculousness. Acrobat sex in a store awning? Sure, why not. Kail's weapon of choice being yo mama insults in all possible languages and against all comers? I started looking forward to those. (My favorite is: "We're trying to work here! Do I go down to where your mother works and push the sailors out of her bed?") Satyrs having a glowing magical horn like unicorns only not in the same spot (the astute reader is left to deduce where they have the horn)? Seems legit. (There is even a scene where, well, see for yourself: "He stood, letting his robe fall open, and his horn flared a blinding white as he smiled in naked lust at Ghylspwr [the hammer], who continued to struggle uselessly.") Loch distracting a guard while tied up by talkintg sultrily about how she is sweating in her dress and could he help her out? Yep, that happened. Newscasts in the form of puppet shows where the two parties are represented by a manticore and a griffon (there's a neat point made about how they're both essentially big cats) and moderated by a dragon, throwing candy out to the cheering public? At first that seemed like the most ludicrous idea ever, and, honestly, it still does, but by the end of the book I found it kind of charming. It's just ridiculousness piled on top of ridiculousness, but it kind of works? for some reason? IDK...
The characters are similarly cracky and over-the-top. There's Loch, who, it occurred to me partway through the book, may be Loch as an allusion to Locksley: she is very much a Robin Hood sort of figure, a betrayed soldier who returns to find her family lands taken over by a politician now in charge (who also happens to be the man who killed her family), and she assembles a band of merry men heist team to... well, it's complicated, but it's either steal back what's rightfully hers and/or take him down. Kail, who served under her in the war, is with her from the start; at first I was imagining them as a sort of role-swapped Zoe and Mal from Firefly, but it's not really like that. Anyway, much to my own surprise, Kail ended up being my favorite, for sheer entertainment value. I liked pretty much all the others, too, to various degrees -- Tern the mechanically gifted alchemis/safecracker, pacifist monk-acrobat Icy (who gets one of my favorite lines: '"Are we, in fact, Imperial agents?" Icy asked curiously. "If so, I will adopt the necessary patriotism."'), grouchy half-trained wizard Hessler, love-priestess turned death-priestess/envoy of the gods Desidora with her magic hammer. Dairy (whose nickname -- it's short for Rybindaris -- is indeed adorable; he is an orphan boy who was found in a barn, with cows, and has a Meaningful Birthmark -- well, possibly meaningful, the book kind of pokes fun at it) and the unicorn fairy with a penchant for virgins felt less like people even than the colorful cast of stock characters that the others are, but Hessler trying to protect Dairy was really cute. Oh, and then there's Justicar Pyvic, a good cop working in a corrupt system, who starts out chasing Loch and, naturally, falls for her and helps her, but he was mostly a collection of cop tropes, as far as I'm concerned. Then there are the villains: the sadistic crooked prison warden, the corrupt politician who tries to justify his actions as being for the good of the country where really he's just an ambitious coward, and a non-human entity from beyond who wants to destroy the world, or something. Yeah, it's that kind of book.
Besides Kail, my favorite character actually ended up being Silestin Senior (the zombie), who ended up being at least as much of a character as some of the principals, and unexpectedly sympathetic. And got an interesting line: "Finding out that the men who held the power fifty years ago -- ambitious, yes, but you've got to be ambitious to make any mark on the world -- have been replaced by pampered toads who make laws to stay busy." But I kind of tend to like ~resurrected military-minded ancestors in general. You wouldn't think there would be a whole class of characters like that which I could point to, but there actually is. And I kind of liked Akus the helpful thug, too, and was sorry when he got killed.
The plot is similarly, uh, low-key and nuanced, which I don't even say as a criticism. There's prison breaks! Chased along the underside of a floating city studded with crystals and elecrified rails! Invisible assassins! Sneaking into a party without an invitation, complete with tear-away dress! A vault with moving walls! Crosses and double-crosses and triple-crosses (so many crosses) -- I forget which cartoon had the two opponents pulling layers of disguises off each other, but it was a bit like that. There are people stepping out of the darkness behind Our Heroes and the sound of a sword leaving its sheathe at the most dramatic moment at the end of pretty much every chapter, and several "I knew it all along!" and "I was just WAITING for you to do that" moments, one of which includes the villain revealing the way to reverse his spell while gloating, which the hero had been waiting for him to do (another villain lifts his helmet visor to say "It is I!" in order to gloat properly, and that's how he's defeated). And the thing is, the book just embraces the ridiculousness of these things, and somehow instead of rolling my eyes at each new cliche (the villain is dangling off a cliff, and the heroine pulls him up, because That's the Difference Between You and Me, and then he stabs her in the back (not literally) before being stabbed himself (quite literally) by the ward he's been lying to all these years) -- I just sort of cheered at the dedication to playing as much as possible of the TV Tropes index as audaciously straight as possible. None of the motivations make too much sense, but the book moves quickly enough that I was not tempted to pause to examine them for logic. The pacing is crazy, with scene-hopping action montages where I could practically see the movie scene changes. The villains are just as smart, resourceful, prescient, and indestructible as the plot needs them to be -- until they aren't. None of it makes any sort of coherent sense, but it also totally doesn't matter, or at least it didn't to me.
There's something about the mix of gleefully embraced cliche, genre savviness, lampshading (e.g. Hessler growsing about prophecies: "Oh please. It's your standard false duality designed to draw gullible believers into a world of monochromoatic enemies and strip away any moral ambiguity -- usually utilized by the ruling government to bolster whatever policies it wishes to implement." and "prophecies, which were obviously propaganda promulgated by religious figures in order to reinforce the predominant morality of the time at the expense of the undereducated working class"), and a few moments that did actually catch me by surprise (I did not guess that Naria was the First Blade/unseen assassin, for instance, or anything more than the trapped pawn in need of rescue she presents herself as to Icy) that just combined into a fun read that felt both refreshing and cozy.
Same pretty much applies to the pair-(almost)-everyone "romances", which are sketched in via a few scenes (with mood music playing over the scene snippets, no doubt), although I found them less charming than the plot. Loch and Justical Pyvic pairing is predictable, though this book's zaniness is a poor match for the sort of noirish opposite-sides-of-the-law thing it attempts. Tern and Disedora have more chemistry together than Tern and Hessler (although I'm reading the sequel now, and Tern and Hessler are pretty cute once the book gets past the silly love triangle with clueless guy and needlessly jealous girl that dominated their book 1 "relationship"), and WAAAY more chemistry than Kail/Desidora, which might qualify as the randomest pairing if it wasn't for Icy and Naria (which I'm still not entirely sure whether it's meant to be a real pairing going forward or just a decoy one) -- but given the way everyone else is paired off, I'm guessing real? and a redemption arc for Naria? IDK. The one that worked for me least well (which, notice none of these really worked for me, as such) was the played-for-laughs unicorn fairy/prophesied champion Dairy (whom she is drawn to because he is a virgin). He is entirely clueless at first, which felt a bit ehhhh, but seems to be having the first stirrings of sexual awakening towards the end of the book, courtesy of Loch, and it becomes less skeevy, but yeah, romance is not a strong point of this book, because while ridiculous plot and ridiculous characters I can apparently suspend my disbelief for, ridiculous pairings are just kind of boring, at best.
I haven't talked about the worldbuilding yet. That's because the worldbuilding is kind of "Hollywood's version of basically modern world but with MAGIC". There is a Republic, ruled out of a floating crystal-powered city by a suspiciously familiar two-party system, the evil leader of which actualfax has "a platform of making the Republic great again by protecting it from all enemies" (this book came out in 2012, which surprised me; it felt more in tune with the 2016-ish yearning for something outside the political establishment). The Republic seems to consist of a white majority and Urujar (black) minority with an unspecified oppressed past (which gets clarified at least a little bit more in the sequel), the result of which is a set of prejudices that end up being pretty congruent to what an American reader would recognize (racial slur, a villain making a crack about Urujar women in chains, suspicion of being criminals, "animalistic wanton ways", "too lazy to work, too hot-headed to steal", etc.). This is one thing the book does take seriously, with speeches from both Loch and her godfather, Cevirt (the first Urujar Voyant/~Senator), which make some points that stick out in the midst of the Looney Tunes plot, but not in a bad way. There's also the generically Oriental Empire which the Republic fought a war with (but the genericness felt sufficiently self-aware that I couldn't have a problem with it), some mention of Old Kingdoms beyond the sea (where they apparently speak French? there is some random French in this book, in service to one of Kail's yo mama insults, which is really weird when all the other foreign languages are clearly made up and brimming with apostrophes and Ys in cliche fantasy fashion), the ancients who left some powerful artefacts here and there, and a whole mess of magical creatures and constructs that were all sort of thrown in the blender. The fantasy aspects, more than anything else, reminded me of the Dungeons and Dragons movie (the scenery-chewing antagonist did, too) -- but, like, not in a bad way, surprisingly?
And, like, I know I've had a bunch of write-ups where I try to figure out why a book that, from a list of "ingredients", should've worked for me didn't work for me, but I think this might be the first time my write-up has been mostly about why a book DID work for me, despite a bunch of stuff that would've normally turned me off. Even as I was reading, I kept thinking about the book it kept reminding me of that hadn't worked for me -- Lindsay Buroker's Emperor's Edge (my write-up is here)-- and what the salient difference was. Spoilers for Emperor's Edge I reread what I'd written about that and clearly I had been right: my problem with Emperor's Edge was mostly that it didn't go BIG enough, didn't careen crazily enough, leaving too much time to wonder about the various things that didn't make much sense, which The Palace Job handily avoids. The Place Job's team is FAR more sitcom-y than the Emperor's Edge one, the world is explained even less, and the suspension of disbelief required is probably an order of magnitude higher, but by embracing the ridiculousness it pulled it off for me in a way Emperor's Edge did not. Although I do think one of the relevant differences is that The Palace Job's team is made up mostly of pros, and centered around a pro -- Amaranthe being both brilliant and an ingenue in Emperor's Edge just wasn't a good choice for a heist book, I think. And I do think another problem with Emperor's Edge for me was the "reverse harem" thing that's going on with Amaranthe and her all-male team, while this one had a nice (if a bit painstaking) gender balance, and also made a point of giving the lead a love interest outside the team.
Anyway, I enjoyed it enough that I'm already reading the sequel (which is continuing in the same ridiculous vein, fortunately).
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Aaronovitch posted about a new Rivers of London novella which will be out in June! And it will have Kumar and Abigail in it! I do have the same question as everybody else, which is, will there be an ebook that won't be $40+. Seems like there will, in September, at least for the UK, which is encouraging. (Like another person who asked, I'm wondering if this will form the anchor for a book in which to collect all the random short stories that have appeared in special editions and so on. I hope that's the case!)
Brust tweeted that he's started writing a new Vlad book, though he doesn't know yet which one it is. With Vallista in the can (October!!!), that leaves only Lyorn, Tsalmoth, and Chreotha (as I assume Brust would know if this book was The Last Contract... but maybe not). So that's really exciting -- that there's a Vlad book coming out this year, a Paarfi book presumably undergoing edits or otherwise searching for a publication slot, and another Vlad book already in the works.
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As you can see, I've been falling behind on my book-a-week schedule, which is not uncommon in winter, but usually I have a bit of a head-start built up. I probably will catch up. But to maybe help spur me on in my reading, a few reading list/bingo type challenges I've been seeing around, which look different from ones I've already done:
Snagged from meathiel a while back,
Progress so far:
A book which takes place in winter -- Rose Point Holiday (it's a Christmas novel)
A debut novel -- The Palace Job
A book in a genre you don't normally read -- either Even the Wingless (darkfic) or Listen to the Moon/Sweet Disorder (non-paranormal romance) would work
An epistolary novel -- Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, fortuitously :)
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And from brutti_ma_buoni:
1. A Book Published this Year
Hopefully Vallista!
2. A Book You Can Finish in One Day
Either a graphic novel (e.g. Black Mould) or the RoL novella linked above.
3. A Book You Have Been Meaning to Read
Something from my list of in-progress series, probably, or maybe the Dellamonica, finally...
4. A Book Recommended by Your Local Librarian or Bookseller
I have plenty of recs from non-local librarians on my flist. And does "recommended for you by Amazon" count? :P (Sadly my local bookstore doesn't carry much SFF.)
5. A Book You Should Have Read in School
I have vague plans of reading The Bluest Eye, which L will be reading next in English. Or maybe finishing The Great Gatsby, having fallen off the wagon as L got too far ahead of me.
6. A Book Chosen For You by Your Spouse, Partner, Sibling, Child, or BFF
I should ask the rodents.
7. A Book Published Before You Were Born
I've been thinking of reading Machiavelli's The Prince for a while, and feeling more like it lately to keep up my Renaissance Lit cred with Awesome Friend Ali.
8. A Book That Was Banned at Some Point
Huh. I've read most of the ones that sound interesting to me among the "most frequently banned" books. The Bluest Eye would work for this also, as would The Great Gatsby. The Giver? More Saga?
9. A Book You Previously Abandoned
Candidates include Cast in Flame, and a bunch of things that aren't truly abandoned but are sitting at 30% on my Kindle, in some cases for years.
10. A Book You Own but Have Never Read
I have a couple of recentish gifts, or the Magnus Chase sequel... Or, ooh, Seraphine sequel. Or I guess any one of the bunch of freebies I downloaded on Kindle recently.
11. A Book that Intimidates You
Maybe the first Lymond book?
12. A Book You Have Read at Least Once
Since I don't tend to reread much, this will likely be a Vlad Taltos book. Phoenix, maybe? I was leafing through it the other day, and I miss it.
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While falling behind on reading, I have been watching things a bit:
Friday night B wanted us to watch In the Loop, which he's watched a couple of times because he enjoys listening to Malcolm Tucker/Peter Capaldi swear. Having watched the movie now, that's definitely an entertaining pastime! O got bored and wandered off (predictably), and L kept watching, but also sighed deeply to show she was bored whenever the scenes were anything that did not have to do with British people swearing creatively or otherwise insulting each other (which, yes, those were definitely the best parts). She was particularly taken with Malcolm's "F-star-star-cunt" 'censored' swearing XP Besides enjoying the swearing, I was mostly struck by thinking the American accents sounded weirdly fake to me -- especially considering the actors actually were American. Dunno what was up with that -- were they trying to sound more American? was it all in my head? Anyway, it was fun! B has never seen The Thick of It, it turns out, so now I'm debating whether I should point him at it or buy him a set for a present. It's too bad his birthday has just past, as that would've been an excellent occasion for it...
Then on Saturday I watched Storks with the rodents. I was skeptical, having seen the trailer with something, but L wanted to watch it, and reminded me that I'd ended up giggling through Penguins of Madagascar movie, which had looked similarly inane. It's not a bad comparison -- the movie was very strange, both in concept and actuality, but pretty funny in spots. I found Junior the stork more annoying than amusing, but Tulip was occasionally fun, and the baby was very cute. with spoilers! Early on, before the baby appeared, we mostly found funny the little birds Hunter the boss plays golf with/uses as desk toys, and we were happy that the little birds got their revenge in the end. I liked Nate, the kid who wanted a baby brother but seemed willing to settle for a baby sister with ninja skills (L: "that kid is way too self-aware"). And I found the scene where Junior gets flash-forwards of the little girl's life as he gives her up to the family rather touching, and the baby-delivering montage very nicely done in its diversity. The wolf pack which could transform into a wolf bridge, submarine, minivan, etc. occupied the place of the octopus bunch in the Penguins movie -- totally off the wall, but kinda hilarious because of the sheer strangeness (me: "How do they even come up with this stuff?" L: (with grim authority) "Drugs.") But the pigeon was the MOST ANNOYING character I think I've ever seen in any animated thing ever, uggggh. L kept thinking too hard about the plot and worldbuilding implications and weirding herself out with it, especially all the parts where Junior (the stork) and Tulip (the human girl) are acting like the (human) baby's parents; I definitely advise against that XP
And I have Arrival now, but L has decided she wants to watch it with me, so it won't be until the weekend...