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
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having read your excellent writeup of bdsm dragon thing, i'm... going to give the books a pass. i kind of found even the darker parts of earthrise books very jarring, due to hogarth's overall curtainfic prose, and getting even more there - nope. but maybe she'll return to other bits of this universe at some point!
(and that reminds me, i wanted to hunt up this novella you mentioned).
i found pretty much every other lerner romance, including the non-lemeston ones (there's a tailor/courtesan one and a wastrel/merchant's daughter arranged marriage one), sweet but not leaving a lasting impression on me; i think it's mostly the case of her id juuuuust a bit not aligning with mine, with exception of true pretenses where everything just clicked together. but she's still replaced milan as the author-to-check-out in my affections, so.
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icy had the best one-lines (and the most baffling romance).
Yes on both counts, LOL. And, I wasn't seeing the Icy/Kail you'd mentioned when I first read your reply, but by the end of the book I was finding that the most likely ship for both of those characters, too. (They have some nice moments together in the sequel, also.)
i'm... going to give the books a pass.
Yeah, while there's some interesting stuff there, I think you'd find the ratio of hurt/comfort skewed rather too much towards hurt. I'll report on the second book as well, if/when I read it, because I have a suspicion it might be less dark. The darkness was less weird to me here than in Earthrise, because it's not so out-of-the-blue and unremarked-on as there, but I can't say that I enjoyed it more -- I was just less baffled when it cropped up because I knew to expect it. I do hope she'll do something with other parts of this universe, and that the continuation of the story I'm most intrigued by -- the Eldritch homeworld coming out of its self-imposed exile -- happens somewhere other than in these darkfic books...
(You should totally read the novella! It is loanable on Kindle if that would be useful to you -- I can send you a link if you want? (IDK what exactly that does, but I hope it means some royalties for the author, vs just passing around copies.))
it's mostly the case of her id juuuuust a bit not aligning with mine, with exception of true pretenses where everything just clicked together.
Yeah, that's what I'm finding, too, and as always, there's this weird kind of frustration with that for me: But you could be writing exactly what I want to read, author! You've done it before! Why aren't you doing it MORE? I guess there's always hope that the stars will align again...
(The parent thing Lerner has got going in the Lemeston books is especially weird to me, because in True Pretenses, writing about siblings acting as parents, she has this wonderful nuance, fallibility and forgiveness, "we did our best but could have done better", but it seems like that's only reserved for protagonists? people who are not actually parents? Is it a POV thing, and if we got to see actually inside Rafe and Jamie's heads, they would be as traumatized and resentful of their upbringing as Nick and John are?
I do like Lerner's romance better than any non-fantasy romance I've ever read -- it's been the only one so far, out of Heyer and Milan, where I wanted to read more immediately upon finishing one book. So I guess she does still align better with my tastes than anyone, just... not as well as True Pretenses alone would suggest...
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i think rafe was pretty upset about his upbringing in-text, we just didn't pay too much attention to it because he was a whiny dick because, well, i personally liked ash much better :P but it might also be a generational thing, or a class thing, or who knows.
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I do think Rafe was upset in the text (and agree that I didn't pay too much attention because Ash was definitely my favorite), but I was willing to cut him some slack for storming off when he did because it is kinda a big revelation to spring on someone and I could see it hitting especially hard after the ingrained "us against the world" mentality. And, granted, Rafe had an impetus to come back, and who knows how long it would've taken him otherwise to get over his sulking, but I appreciated the "you don't turn your back on family even if you have complaints about how they raised you" message more than the "I can't deal with this, bye" resolutions with Nick and, to a lesser extent, with John. I mean, I'm assuming ultimately Nick and Lady Tassell will work things out, eventually, to some degree. But pretty clearly not any time soon...
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LOL, that is indeed an accurate description of this novella XD
Enjoy! :D
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