Very belated reading roundup
I am so behind on reading, you guys... Partly it's work being crazy, but mostly it's the phone, quite honestly. Well, that, and feeling sort of adrift, fannishly -- nothing I've read recently has really grabbed me, and I haven't even managed to finish watching a movie since Moana, like 2 months ago. But I finally managed to scrape up a couple of books I've read, so I should set them down here before I forget about them entirely.
11. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye -- L's English Honors class was reading this, and, having never gotten any Morrison in school, I've long wanted to fill that gap, so this seemed like a good time to do it -- especially as I had someone to discuss it with, or consult about certain passages.
Well... that was incredibly depressing. One thing I wasn't expecting was the detatched, almost clinical quality of the main narrator's descriptions -- very incisive, but also very... well, surgical, I guess is a good word -- descriptions striking in their aptness but also a kind of scientific coldness, which, of course, contrasts very much with the passages from the POVs of the characters participating in the story. Some of the most striking passages and descriptions for me were the description of the split couch poisoning the feel of the whole house, "unquarreled evening", "he will not unrazor his lips until spring", and this: "Whatever portable plurality she found, she organized into neat lines, according to their size, shape, or gradation of color" -- about Mrs Breedlove as a child, which is such a great description of a phenomenon that I observed with L.
A thing that impressed me was the way most of the incredibly (and then some, in some cases) flawed characters who get their backstories still managed to come across as sympathetic, or if not sympathetic, at least not entirely hateful. The first character who really struck a note of sympathy with me was Geraldine (the 'nice colored lady' with the cat); that passage is just so sad... and if I were writing an essay about this book, it would be to compare and contrast Geraldine and Pauline, their attitude towards others in their comunity, their sexuality, and their displaced affections. Pauline was probably the character who grabbed me the most, following the lines quoted above; she is such a fascinating mix of self-awareness and denial, the character I most want to shake because she seems like the person in this whole sad drama who might have been able to change something for the better; I don't mean this in a sense of criticism of her as a character, but rather that's what makes her the character my thoughts came back to the most -- her decisions/lack thereof feel totally consistent, with the inevitability of tragedy, but just enough possibility that something may have been different to make it especially painful that it wasn't. The other character I found very interesting was Soaphead Church, with his misanthropy and love of things touched by humans and his letter lecturing God, and it is a testament to both Morrison's writing and the general fucked-uppedness of this book's plot that I found a child molester to be an almost sympathetic character... Cholly... yeah, no. I appreciated the weird rage and perverse tenderness of his POV, and I can see how his backstory trauma would lead to all kinds of dysfunction, but that's as far as I was able to go there; I don't think one is meant to feel anything beyond that for him, anyway.
One thing that occurred to me as I was reading the last part, which was an observation I shared with L: one of the very last passages is an extended "conversation" between Pecola, in front of her mirror, and a hallucination/figment of her imagination. One thing that really struck me in that was Pecola's continued querying about whether the hallucination-friend has seen eyes bluer than hers on anyone else. Of course, this ties into the title of the book, but the other thing it made me think of was the queen in the Snow White fairy tale with the "who's the fairest of them all?" chant. I wondered if that was an intentional reference, and if it is, of course there's a layer of irony to having the connotations of "fairest" and "Snow White" attached. (If I were writing an essay about beaty in The Bluest Eye, I would totally write about that, and call it "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" or something.)
And then there was a really long break. Oh god, it's been so long, I've almost forgotten I was capable of reading, or at least of finishing books. Because a lot of these were sitting half-read for ages as I started new ones and kept not really feeling it. But then ikel89 proposed a Vicous synch-read with cyanshadow and alenky_cveto4ek, and that was the kick I needed to get over whatever's been making me so scattered about reading lately (work, probably, but the phone's shiny distractions aren't helping) and actuallly finish something.
12. V.E.Schwab, Vicious -- so, huh. It would appears that my co-readers enjoyed this one more than I did, at least at the start, although I still found it fun. But from fannish osmosis, I had a sense that this was, like, a "nemeses in mutual obsession" story, or a supervillain origin story that's sympathetic to the supervillain, and so I went in expecting something like, IDK, AU Charles/Erik, I suppose, and it was... not that, at least for me. Which is to say, while there were things I liked and found charming and engaging about this book, the relationship between Victor and Eli was not one of them, or even Victor and Eli individually, really. (And I don't think it's just a case of fannish osmosis expectations; I feel like the book itself wants you to see Victor-Eli as this big thing, and it's just... not that epic? Not something I'd hang a story around, in this universe, basically, because there are more interesting things going on. And having THAT be the frame and driver for the story just kind of left me eh.
Because, as I said in the comments of ikel89's post, in order for a nemesis ship to work for me, the two people have to actually care about each other and about the thing that divides them, and I kind of wasn't feeling it. I do buy uni!Victor's fascination with Eli, wanting to catch the real him and understand what makes him tick and all that -- but it reminded me of Adam's obsession with Gansey in The Raven Boys, and that wasn't that compelling either -- I mean, it's a thing that happens, but I'm not particularly interested in reading about that thing. The origin story also didn't work for me AS an origin story, although I do like the worldbuilding implications a lot. Spoilers from here Because bored college kids doing self-destructive things, ostensibly FOR SCIENCE but really because they are bored college kids just kind of annoyed me as a motivation -- nothing is actually at stake before the transformation, and obviously they both survive, since it's shown in flashbacks, so nothing is at stake during, either. And as for after... that was a little better, the confrontation between Victor and Eli that lands Victor in jail, but it's very... prosaic, I guess. Not the stuff of nemesis-hood.
Eli is another thing that didn't work for me (or anyone else in our little synch-read group, it would appear). He's generally not a type of character I find interesting, but worse than that, SPOILERS FROM HERE! I feel like he is played too straight as a villain, cartoonish almost at the end. I think he could've been written as a proper Knight Templar, someone who genuinely believes he is scourging the earth of a plague for reasons that make sense to other people -- but instead we get someone whose motivation is, at best, that he's delusional, and at worst that he's a serial killer who's found a way to justify the killing to himself (which seems to be the case). He was so unsympathetic from almost the very beginning, it made the story feel really unbalanced, and actually made Victor's obsession with him reflect badly on Victor, too.
Really, the only interesting thing about Eli was his relationship with Serena, and the balance of power there, the tightrope of control and suspended violence (the little scene where it became clear that Serena has been telling Eli "you will not kill me today" every day for the duration of their acquaintance was pretty chillingly neat... although you'd think it would occur to her to say "you will not kill me this month" or something -- unless the power of her orders has a half-life, I guess). Serena was *really* interesting in general, and much more of the kind of antagonist I wish Eli had been -- drawn to the dark side, obviously, having had natural tendencies in that direction before, but conflicted about how easy her "siren song" powers make everything, and therefore boring, relishing a little resistance, possibly to the point of a death wish, and conflicted about Sydney, too -- grieved by what she sees as the loss of her "real" sister, angry at the "thing" wearing Syd's body (as she believes), but ultimately someone who still feels the bond with her, and cannot destroy her. Serena pretty clearly had to die, being way too dangerous alive, but I do wish there'd been a bit more in the sense of closure, at least from Sydney's side (I do feel like we got Serena's side of the closure in the scene where she lets Syd go). Discussion with cyanshadow made me realize that I agree with her, and that it would've been much better, narratively, if Eli *had* been the one to kill Serena, or at least had been present; as it is, her death just sort of fizzles, without any of the people there with whom she has a personal or narrative connection...
I did like Victor using Odysseus's trick with the sirens (yes, yes, we get the significant nameing, you can stop now. But speaking of significant names, besides Serena, we also have Victor, of course (heh), and Eli's name presumably means "my god") -- altough one imagines it would've occurred to Eli, too... unless he really didn't want to break from her control/kill her.
Anyway, back to Eli and Victor. I feel like maybe part of my problem with their relationship is that it's too... foregrounded. Like, the book explicitly set out to be about the nemesis story, but kind of forgot to put in all the things that make a nemesis story compelling -- conflict that's generated by something other than the two people in question, or real plot, or people who can give rise to said conflict and plot. It's like the story hits the waystations and ~aesthetics~ of a nemesis story, but without any of the actual emotional beats, which makes it feel oddly hollow.
The flashback cast is ridiculously spare -- besides Eli and Victor, there are some students mentioned by names, one very tertiary professor, and Angie. Oh man, Angie! She is set up as a seemingly important character, someone both Victor and Eli care about (purportedly, anyway), and I liked how angry she was at Victor for blackmailing her into torturing him, and how angry she was going to be at Eli once she had a chance to talk to him about him becoming EO. There could've been some interesting fallout, but instead she is fridged by accident. I was thinking/hoping that there was going to be a reveal that she had actually survived and become an EO herself, or something, although those hopes dwindled as we got closer to the end of the book -- but instead she is barely even thought of again by either Eli or Victor.
Which is kind of the point, I suppose, because the book was at that point presenting the theory that coming back as EO leaves behind some humanity, the part that would care about stuff like that. As cyanshadow pointed out in her comments, it's not clear whether that's actually the case. Victor doesn't seem all that different, but again, as Cyan remarked, he's sort of been practicing to be an EO all his life, inferring what normal behavior is from others around him, because he doesn't actually feel very 'human' even before becoming EO. Eli certainly seems to have let go of something, and Serena's actions are well beyond normal morality also... but one gets the sense that they were kind of sociopathic even before the NDE, and becoming EO just removed the fear of consequences and gave them an expanded arsenal. Sydney seems fairly normal, for a kid who's been what she's been through? I was a little taken aback by just how bloodthirsty she is at the end, wanting to tip off Eli's prison-mates to his regenerative abilities so they can torture him for sport, but... he's tried to kill her twice, and killed her dog, and Victor, and tried to kill Mitch, and she thinks he killed Serena, too, so, I can't really blame her for being a tad bloody-minded about it. The other EOs we meet too briefly; blue-haired Beth seems fine, but we barely interact with her, and the ghost-ridden miner is kind of too far gone, but Dominic, when he is not in pain, seems like a normal person with normal empathy (he feels sorry for Syd's dead dog and not being able to save him, e.g.), from our limited exposure to him. So I think maybe Eli and Serena, who are the only people who seem to believe that EOs are evil/broken by definition, are extrapolating from themselves (their sociopathic selves), and it's not that becoming EO "broke" them, but it seems more likely that it uncovered a fault line that had always been there, and maybe let them widen it.
Speaking of EOs, that was one thing I really did like about the book. Not the term ExtraOrdinary, which I found ridiculous at the start and barely tolerable at the end, but the way they come about -- the near-death experience, and especially the way the specific power is the result of the person's thoughts during that trauma, from Serena demanding to survive/bargaining with death giving her the ability to impose her will on the world, Sydney's "come back" giving her the power to reanimate the dead, Dominic wanting to go away to a quiet place from the explosion giving him the ability to "walk the shadows", and so on. The powers themselves are mostly neat, too, and Victor's in particular is interesting -- I don't think I've read/seen anything with a "meta-human" with the power to contol pain. (And I also think it's neat and fitting that Victor's power comes from basically the most direct and pragmatic response to dying/pain -- although the exact circumstances probably are responsible for the ability to dial it up/dial it down.)
Beyond the central idea, though, there are a lot of things that don't make sense or are inconsistent -- why Serena's power seems to continue affecting someone who was dead and was brought back by Sydney, why Sydney has the ability to bring someone back more than once, apparently, if she tries hard enough -- and just in general the extent of her power, which seems able to regenerate removed organs...
This is probably as good a place as any to talk about Sydney, and Victor's strays, and just the characters in general. I liked her a lot -- I think she very nicely walks the line between "regular kid", "traumatized kid" and just generally interesting character. My favorite, though, was Mitch, with his chocolate milk and his "curse". The chemistry between Mitch and Victor, the paternal vibe between both Victor and Sydney and Mitch and Sydney were my favorite aspects of the book. I fell for both of the fakout Mitch deaths, but was very happy that neither of them was real... even though the climax ended up being SO bloodless, it was hardly even a climax at all. Well, not bloodless, there was actually rather a lot of blood, but in terms of emotional weight and consequence and all that. Anyway, I liked the supporting cast and all of their relationships, way more than I was interested in Victor and Eli.
I've gotten this far without talking about Victor, and that's because I find Victor... weird. He is actually the type of character I would normally even like -- very bright, driven, and sort of... on the edges of humanity, but with a very clear and honest understanding of his flaws and priorities. And that works for me, especially early on in his EO days, when he is figuring out his new normal. The way he relates to Sydney was nice, as I said. But other things just didn't work for me. Nothing about his obsession with Eli or anything that stemmed from it felt in any way real or interesting. The negative space poetry/parental abandonment issues or whatever the hell all that is supposed to be and other posturing just felt silly and not endearing to me. And there were some moments that I found jarring/made me wonder if they were in character -- like when Victor doesn't shoot the cop outside the bar -- not so much the act of not shooting, but his thoughts around it. It contrasts nicely with Eli shooting Mitch, but it feels too artificial.
My co-readers found the climax/ending disappointing, and I kind of did, too, but it wasn't a letdown, because it was disappointing in the same way the rest of the Eli-and-Victor thing had been disappointing, from the very very beginning -- perfunctory and empty of emotion or meaning. Yes, look, they are still thinking of each other as "friends" while carving up each other! Amusing lines! Eli gets his comeuppance and lands, symmetrically, in jail, thanks to Victor essentially using his own powers against him, and meanwhile Victor has a sort of Jesus Christ moment (also symmetrically, since Eli had had his self-inflicted bloodletting earlier, from which he'd emerged with the conviction he was god's weapon against EOs) -- a lingering sacrificial death followed by resurrection. Eh. And in the final confrontation, with Serena out of the picture and both Sydney and Dominic on Victor's side, the deck is so stacked against Eli that it doesn't feel like there's any suspense of tension left, or anything impressive in the victory, beyond the cleverness of figuring out how to take down an invulnerable opponent (although I doubt that Eli could've recovered from, like, Victor stepping out of the shadows behind him and chopping his head off, say).
The writing is mostly fun, and easy-going. Mostly it was just there, but there are a couple of scenes where it worked for me really, really well -- foremost, Victor's second NDE, with Angie and "the dial went up". Nice and shiver-inducing! I'm not sure we needed the back-and-forward flashbacks (twice over), but the countdown to midnight worked for me to establish suspense (which the final lineup then immediately squandered, per above). And there are a lot of loose ends. The biggest one is Angie, which I've already talked about. Similarly, once cyanshadow suggested it, I really liked the idea that Victor had drawn the wrong conclusion from his little experiment with Dane and Serena's power actually was broken by death -- but that ended up going absolutely nowhere, either.
A couple of particularly amusing-to-me quotes:
Sydney: You're going to come back, right?
Victor: Of course I will. That's my favorite lighter.
Victor, upon being attacked in prison: "Is that a shiv? We didn't have those in isolation."
Mitch, thinking about Victor early on: "There were some poeple you had to stay away from, people who poisoned everything in reach. Then there were pepople you wanted to stick with, the ones with silver tongues and golden touches. And then, there were people you stood beside, because yit meant you weren't in their way."
I did enjoy the writing enough that I started A Darker Shade of Magic, which has now become one of the books I'm stuck in the middle of. Because I needed more.
13. C.B.Lee, Not Your Sidekick -- now this was really cute! And about the level of narrative complexity I can handle at the moment, I guess. I picked it up because cyanshadow had read it and it seemed cute, and then ikel89 sent a bunch of stuff my way, and there it was, sitting on my phone, within easy reach of the Kindle app...
This is one of the breed of new, earnest YA which takes great pains to be diverse in all ways, and that's really, really transparent, and a little on the nose, but it did a good job overall, and was funny and cute, so I found it easy to overlook the more pedantic or awkward moments. Jess, the protagonist, is second generation Asian-!American (it's not really America anymore, because we're talking a post-apocalyptic landscape, but for the purposes of Jess's life, it totally is, except meat is scarce and cars are self-driving), which is interesting enough in itself, but she's also half-Chinese/half-Vietnamese -- and I don't think I've ever seen a protagonist of mixed Asian heritage before. And it's neither just mentioned once for the sake of diversity nor the whole point of her character, but definitely a fundamental part of who she is as a person, and she struggles with the second-gen difficulties of not speaking the language well enough (or being assumed not to speak it at all), and the mxed-heritage difficulties of feeling not sufficiently either, and while those scenes definitely felt very deliberate and not as smoothly integrated into the rest of the book as I might have liked, they were scenes I appreciated having there. Jess is also bisexual, and the central romance (which is legitimately super cute) is with a girl. Her best friends are a Latina girl and a (Black? or at any rate POC) trans boy. (Her crush is Caucasian, so we do have that captured as well.) The earnestness shows itself in the way, early on, all the foods are Significant: Emma's Latino family serves her friends horchata! Jess's family eats bok choy and rice! Bells' family runs a Creole food restaurant! -- but after a while this eases off, and people eat "non-denominational" things like Tater Tots and spaghetti and whatnot. The discussion of LGBT issues was also a mix of pleasantly matter-of-fact and Very Deliberate: there are two separate conversations about pronoun usage, and everyone is very careful and thoughtful about this. Which I find a little didactic, but honestly bothered me less than similar things in Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, probably in large part because of the intended YA audience. But I still appreciated the natural, plot-integrated scenes, like Spoilers from here! Jess asking Bells if he's OK when he has to assume the appearance of (female) Captain Orion, much better than the Let's Talk About Pronoun Usage ones, but ultimately I don't mind having both. And, in addition to Jess and Abby being not straight, and Bells being trans, there are LGBT secondary characters, too, like Darryl (the president of the Rainbow Club), and presumably also Jess's little brother, with his crush on Bells. Anyway, the book embarked on a bunch of important and unusual things, and it achieved them decently, so, good job, book.
And there is earnest and deliberate acknowledgement and negotiation of some other things, too, smaller but not unimportant -- Abby trying to pronounce the name of Jess's robot (which is part of a Vietnamese phrase) and asking if she was doing it right, Abby apologizing for springing a sex scene on Jess in the story they're writing together and saying she should've confirmed with her it was OK first -- for those things, too, my feelings were a mix of "I see the lesson you're trying to teach there" (which is a negative reaction for me usually) and appreciation that the book was trying to engage with that. I don't think the scene where Abby teaches Jess to play volleyball and they have a talk about how everything, from writing to sports, is about practice rather than talent was necessary, though; that one just felt randomly tacked on for the sake of the message -- and felt especially weird in a book where one of the worldbuilding tenets is that the extent of superpowers is determined by inborn ability. Or maybe that WAS the point, that given the whole A/B/C-class powers breakdown, the author wanted a PSA about how in the real world your skills are limited only by your hard work, IDK.
The worldbuilding is not necessarily my particular cup of tea, but reminded me a lot of rachelmanija and sartorias's The Change books -- post-apocalyptic US with mutant powers (although the Change books' worldbuilding is more interesting, both stranger and cozier, and definitely a lot less like modern-day America). The big distinction from present-day, except for some half-hearted nods at superior technology and scarcity, is the existence of superheroes (and supervillains), with spoilers from here! some "Civil War"-type prehistory. A lot of that is tied up in plot, though, so I'll leave that for a bit later. The worldbuilding is definitely not the book's strongest suit: there are parts that make very little sense, like, why is old media not related to the superhero history forbidden? That seems to make no sense at all. Cell phone analogues (DEDs) have become omnipresent to the point where you can't leave the house without one (I did find it cute that one old-timer was nostalgic about real cellphones as pre-apocalyptic tech), but tests are apparently still taken on paper, on Scantrons, with smeary lead... And despite the scarcity of natural resources, paper notebooks still abound and Jess and Abby write a rough draft of a story on paper. (The former is there presumably to put in a plug for characters who are smart but not good test-takers, mayb due to a hidden learning disability, and the latter is so that the girls can compliment each other's handwriting. But both scenes threw me out of the story a little.)
The book does, actually, have a plot, rather than just a collection of Diverse and Englightened characters (I may, once again, be side-eying Small, Angry Planet with that :P) -- actually, rather a lot of plot. I'm not sure how I feel about said plot, actually. On the one hand, I kind of liked the very cynical revelation that the superheroes are there to distract people with feel-good stories from what is actually going on, which is !America's involvement in foreign wars, while maintaining a cheerful "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" facade, with the heroes engaged in pointless posturing in fake battles (and taking steroids, apparently) and the villains being designated bad guys who actually have good points to make. On the other hand, Captain Orion is revealed to be SO cartoonishly evil (and racist! because being in charge of a government conspiracy to kidnap and experiment on people is not enough), that I found it even harder to take the book seriously after that point. And also found it hard to believe that nobody before Jess would've figured out the battles were fake, so I hope it's revealed in the next book that people do figure it out all the time, they just keep quiet about it/the government hushes it up.
I suppose the other flaw in the plot -- the romantic part of it -- could be said to be that Jess is SO TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS, it's hard to see her as an admirable sort of protagonist, but weirdly that didn't bother me much -- maybe because she was mostly clueless about her crush reciprocating her feelings, and I could buy an awkward teenager who's never dated before being deeply clueless about that. Plus I found Jess burbling merrily to "M" about how much she likes Abby and Abby then trying to send her Very Clear Signals pretty cute. And I guess Jess could be forgiven for not picking up on the Abby = M thing sooner because she is so flustered by Abby's presence early on, too. Anyway, that didn't bother me, and neither did Jess and Emma not figuring out sooner that Bells was the Chameleon, even when he messed up and left his hair a little longer than it should've been. (I'd also guessed that Bells was the elevator visitor to Monroe Industries, but definitely not that he was the tall red-haired woman who walked Jess from the bus on her first day.) Anyway, like I said above, I found the development of Jess and Abby's relationship really cute, and especially like the way it wasn't issuefic-y at all, beyond the added difficulty of having to figure out if the other person likes girls. And while the escape through the desert part of the book felt a bit random, I did like it as an opportunity for Jess to come into her own and actually save the day for a change.
Speaking of which... Jess's powers. That was one thing I did not guess ahead of time at all. I'm not sure if it was adequately foreshadowed and I just overlooked it (and don't care enough to reskim looking for that specifically; Jess'd mad organization skills ARE mentioned throughout, but I don't think that's the same thing), maybe because I was expecting/hoping that it would turn out that Jess didn't have superpowers -- and didn't need them to be a hero. Her having a "non-combat" power is not something I mind, and Emma ends up fulfilling the non-powered role on their little team... but it still went in a different direction, thematically, than I had been expecting.
There are a lot of unanswered questions and loose ends as of the end of the book, since there's a sequel (and presumably another book after that): Everybody being declared villains, of course, and still having to find and rescue Abby's father and all the other missing villains. The brewing plot with weaponized MonBots, which will presumably be significant. Claudia's estrangement/becoming totally brainwashed by Captain Orion/Percy Weasley-ness, which I wonder if it will lead to her seeing the error of her ways and coming back over to the side of her sister and her parents -- and also Claudia's taunt that Jess is the byproduct of an experiment and that their parents have been hiding something from her. Oh, and Abby's powers having disappeared/gone dormant, of course; that will have to be resolved, too.
Before I wrap up, I should also mention that while I found the main kids all pretty cute, one character I was really intrigued by was Jess's mother, with her refugee past, hiding her powers from the authorities in China to avoid conscription, not really buying into the superhero hype (unlike her husband) but going along with it because it's a steady living and you don't rock the boat -- the way she is smart and diligent, motivated in large part by the harsh experiences of her past and desire for safety, but unhesitatingly willing to do the right thing both to protect her daughter and once she knows what the government is actually condoning.
Quote:
Abby grins. "Am I gonna see, like, hearts doodled around my name anywhere?"
Jess snorts. "That's a different notebook."
Anyway, cute read, despite me having a number of mostly-minor complaints about it, and I'm looking forward to the sequel, which will be from Bells' POV (especially as he was my favorite character in this).
One last thing: As I mentioned above, I kept mentally comparing this book to Stranger/Hostage, because cozy post-apocalyptic YA with meta-humans and a lot of diversity. The Change books definitely feel more solid on the worldbuilding front, and are doing much more nuanced and complex things with characters -- there are no interestingly grey characters like the Prestons here (at least so far), or people with arcs like Kerry's, or any particularly difficult choices -- it's definitely more of a fluffy romance with a superhero-y background than a serious genre book. I may have actually enjoyed reading it more for all that, because of the low-stakes cuteness and ridiculousness (except that rats >>> Roombas). And it did whet my appetite for book 3 of the Change books, as it happened, so that timing was pretty good!
14. Dave Barry, Best State Ever -- I got this for my mother's birthday and then borrowed it back. Cute, fast read, though not as out-loud funny as his earlier books, and tinged with the same "getting old" melancholy that the recent ones have all had. My favorite bit was the crack at grapefruits and health food, but it was also fun reading about various Florida attractions. I've never been, but my parents visited the sponge place and told me about it, and I've heard/read about the Everglades from a number of people. As usual, the more somber chapters didn't work as well for me (the skunk-ape one, especially), but the Lock & Load one was hilarious.
As you can see, I'm a full month behind on reading per the 52 books a year goal. I'm in the middle of several currently -- A Darker Shade of Magic, Game of Kings (which I really need to finish before end of May so that L can give it back to Awesome Friend Ali), Ninefox Gambit, an Alex Verus book, and have just now started Norse Mythology, because clearly I need to be reading more books. /o\ Somebody make me finish these already!
Rivers of London has an audio short story out (only available in audio, here, on Audible, for free): "A Rare Book of Cunning Device". I'm not an audio book person, so I'd never heard Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Peter Grant before, which was one neat aspect of it (he doesn't sound like the Peter in my head, but he does sound neat). I definitely prefer reading with my eyes, though, and find it much easier to absorb what I read that way. So I don't have a whole lot to say about the story qua story, but there's an appearance by Postmartin, and an intriguing new character who knows Peter's mum, and the revelation of Peter's mum's name(s).
11. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye -- L's English Honors class was reading this, and, having never gotten any Morrison in school, I've long wanted to fill that gap, so this seemed like a good time to do it -- especially as I had someone to discuss it with, or consult about certain passages.
Well... that was incredibly depressing. One thing I wasn't expecting was the detatched, almost clinical quality of the main narrator's descriptions -- very incisive, but also very... well, surgical, I guess is a good word -- descriptions striking in their aptness but also a kind of scientific coldness, which, of course, contrasts very much with the passages from the POVs of the characters participating in the story. Some of the most striking passages and descriptions for me were the description of the split couch poisoning the feel of the whole house, "unquarreled evening", "he will not unrazor his lips until spring", and this: "Whatever portable plurality she found, she organized into neat lines, according to their size, shape, or gradation of color" -- about Mrs Breedlove as a child, which is such a great description of a phenomenon that I observed with L.
A thing that impressed me was the way most of the incredibly (and then some, in some cases) flawed characters who get their backstories still managed to come across as sympathetic, or if not sympathetic, at least not entirely hateful. The first character who really struck a note of sympathy with me was Geraldine (the 'nice colored lady' with the cat); that passage is just so sad... and if I were writing an essay about this book, it would be to compare and contrast Geraldine and Pauline, their attitude towards others in their comunity, their sexuality, and their displaced affections. Pauline was probably the character who grabbed me the most, following the lines quoted above; she is such a fascinating mix of self-awareness and denial, the character I most want to shake because she seems like the person in this whole sad drama who might have been able to change something for the better; I don't mean this in a sense of criticism of her as a character, but rather that's what makes her the character my thoughts came back to the most -- her decisions/lack thereof feel totally consistent, with the inevitability of tragedy, but just enough possibility that something may have been different to make it especially painful that it wasn't. The other character I found very interesting was Soaphead Church, with his misanthropy and love of things touched by humans and his letter lecturing God, and it is a testament to both Morrison's writing and the general fucked-uppedness of this book's plot that I found a child molester to be an almost sympathetic character... Cholly... yeah, no. I appreciated the weird rage and perverse tenderness of his POV, and I can see how his backstory trauma would lead to all kinds of dysfunction, but that's as far as I was able to go there; I don't think one is meant to feel anything beyond that for him, anyway.
One thing that occurred to me as I was reading the last part, which was an observation I shared with L: one of the very last passages is an extended "conversation" between Pecola, in front of her mirror, and a hallucination/figment of her imagination. One thing that really struck me in that was Pecola's continued querying about whether the hallucination-friend has seen eyes bluer than hers on anyone else. Of course, this ties into the title of the book, but the other thing it made me think of was the queen in the Snow White fairy tale with the "who's the fairest of them all?" chant. I wondered if that was an intentional reference, and if it is, of course there's a layer of irony to having the connotations of "fairest" and "Snow White" attached. (If I were writing an essay about beaty in The Bluest Eye, I would totally write about that, and call it "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" or something.)
And then there was a really long break. Oh god, it's been so long, I've almost forgotten I was capable of reading, or at least of finishing books. Because a lot of these were sitting half-read for ages as I started new ones and kept not really feeling it. But then ikel89 proposed a Vicous synch-read with cyanshadow and alenky_cveto4ek, and that was the kick I needed to get over whatever's been making me so scattered about reading lately (work, probably, but the phone's shiny distractions aren't helping) and actuallly finish something.
12. V.E.Schwab, Vicious -- so, huh. It would appears that my co-readers enjoyed this one more than I did, at least at the start, although I still found it fun. But from fannish osmosis, I had a sense that this was, like, a "nemeses in mutual obsession" story, or a supervillain origin story that's sympathetic to the supervillain, and so I went in expecting something like, IDK, AU Charles/Erik, I suppose, and it was... not that, at least for me. Which is to say, while there were things I liked and found charming and engaging about this book, the relationship between Victor and Eli was not one of them, or even Victor and Eli individually, really. (And I don't think it's just a case of fannish osmosis expectations; I feel like the book itself wants you to see Victor-Eli as this big thing, and it's just... not that epic? Not something I'd hang a story around, in this universe, basically, because there are more interesting things going on. And having THAT be the frame and driver for the story just kind of left me eh.
Because, as I said in the comments of ikel89's post, in order for a nemesis ship to work for me, the two people have to actually care about each other and about the thing that divides them, and I kind of wasn't feeling it. I do buy uni!Victor's fascination with Eli, wanting to catch the real him and understand what makes him tick and all that -- but it reminded me of Adam's obsession with Gansey in The Raven Boys, and that wasn't that compelling either -- I mean, it's a thing that happens, but I'm not particularly interested in reading about that thing. The origin story also didn't work for me AS an origin story, although I do like the worldbuilding implications a lot. Spoilers from here Because bored college kids doing self-destructive things, ostensibly FOR SCIENCE but really because they are bored college kids just kind of annoyed me as a motivation -- nothing is actually at stake before the transformation, and obviously they both survive, since it's shown in flashbacks, so nothing is at stake during, either. And as for after... that was a little better, the confrontation between Victor and Eli that lands Victor in jail, but it's very... prosaic, I guess. Not the stuff of nemesis-hood.
Eli is another thing that didn't work for me (or anyone else in our little synch-read group, it would appear). He's generally not a type of character I find interesting, but worse than that, SPOILERS FROM HERE! I feel like he is played too straight as a villain, cartoonish almost at the end. I think he could've been written as a proper Knight Templar, someone who genuinely believes he is scourging the earth of a plague for reasons that make sense to other people -- but instead we get someone whose motivation is, at best, that he's delusional, and at worst that he's a serial killer who's found a way to justify the killing to himself (which seems to be the case). He was so unsympathetic from almost the very beginning, it made the story feel really unbalanced, and actually made Victor's obsession with him reflect badly on Victor, too.
Really, the only interesting thing about Eli was his relationship with Serena, and the balance of power there, the tightrope of control and suspended violence (the little scene where it became clear that Serena has been telling Eli "you will not kill me today" every day for the duration of their acquaintance was pretty chillingly neat... although you'd think it would occur to her to say "you will not kill me this month" or something -- unless the power of her orders has a half-life, I guess). Serena was *really* interesting in general, and much more of the kind of antagonist I wish Eli had been -- drawn to the dark side, obviously, having had natural tendencies in that direction before, but conflicted about how easy her "siren song" powers make everything, and therefore boring, relishing a little resistance, possibly to the point of a death wish, and conflicted about Sydney, too -- grieved by what she sees as the loss of her "real" sister, angry at the "thing" wearing Syd's body (as she believes), but ultimately someone who still feels the bond with her, and cannot destroy her. Serena pretty clearly had to die, being way too dangerous alive, but I do wish there'd been a bit more in the sense of closure, at least from Sydney's side (I do feel like we got Serena's side of the closure in the scene where she lets Syd go). Discussion with cyanshadow made me realize that I agree with her, and that it would've been much better, narratively, if Eli *had* been the one to kill Serena, or at least had been present; as it is, her death just sort of fizzles, without any of the people there with whom she has a personal or narrative connection...
I did like Victor using Odysseus's trick with the sirens (yes, yes, we get the significant nameing, you can stop now. But speaking of significant names, besides Serena, we also have Victor, of course (heh), and Eli's name presumably means "my god") -- altough one imagines it would've occurred to Eli, too... unless he really didn't want to break from her control/kill her.
Anyway, back to Eli and Victor. I feel like maybe part of my problem with their relationship is that it's too... foregrounded. Like, the book explicitly set out to be about the nemesis story, but kind of forgot to put in all the things that make a nemesis story compelling -- conflict that's generated by something other than the two people in question, or real plot, or people who can give rise to said conflict and plot. It's like the story hits the waystations and ~aesthetics~ of a nemesis story, but without any of the actual emotional beats, which makes it feel oddly hollow.
The flashback cast is ridiculously spare -- besides Eli and Victor, there are some students mentioned by names, one very tertiary professor, and Angie. Oh man, Angie! She is set up as a seemingly important character, someone both Victor and Eli care about (purportedly, anyway), and I liked how angry she was at Victor for blackmailing her into torturing him, and how angry she was going to be at Eli once she had a chance to talk to him about him becoming EO. There could've been some interesting fallout, but instead she is fridged by accident. I was thinking/hoping that there was going to be a reveal that she had actually survived and become an EO herself, or something, although those hopes dwindled as we got closer to the end of the book -- but instead she is barely even thought of again by either Eli or Victor.
Which is kind of the point, I suppose, because the book was at that point presenting the theory that coming back as EO leaves behind some humanity, the part that would care about stuff like that. As cyanshadow pointed out in her comments, it's not clear whether that's actually the case. Victor doesn't seem all that different, but again, as Cyan remarked, he's sort of been practicing to be an EO all his life, inferring what normal behavior is from others around him, because he doesn't actually feel very 'human' even before becoming EO. Eli certainly seems to have let go of something, and Serena's actions are well beyond normal morality also... but one gets the sense that they were kind of sociopathic even before the NDE, and becoming EO just removed the fear of consequences and gave them an expanded arsenal. Sydney seems fairly normal, for a kid who's been what she's been through? I was a little taken aback by just how bloodthirsty she is at the end, wanting to tip off Eli's prison-mates to his regenerative abilities so they can torture him for sport, but... he's tried to kill her twice, and killed her dog, and Victor, and tried to kill Mitch, and she thinks he killed Serena, too, so, I can't really blame her for being a tad bloody-minded about it. The other EOs we meet too briefly; blue-haired Beth seems fine, but we barely interact with her, and the ghost-ridden miner is kind of too far gone, but Dominic, when he is not in pain, seems like a normal person with normal empathy (he feels sorry for Syd's dead dog and not being able to save him, e.g.), from our limited exposure to him. So I think maybe Eli and Serena, who are the only people who seem to believe that EOs are evil/broken by definition, are extrapolating from themselves (their sociopathic selves), and it's not that becoming EO "broke" them, but it seems more likely that it uncovered a fault line that had always been there, and maybe let them widen it.
Speaking of EOs, that was one thing I really did like about the book. Not the term ExtraOrdinary, which I found ridiculous at the start and barely tolerable at the end, but the way they come about -- the near-death experience, and especially the way the specific power is the result of the person's thoughts during that trauma, from Serena demanding to survive/bargaining with death giving her the ability to impose her will on the world, Sydney's "come back" giving her the power to reanimate the dead, Dominic wanting to go away to a quiet place from the explosion giving him the ability to "walk the shadows", and so on. The powers themselves are mostly neat, too, and Victor's in particular is interesting -- I don't think I've read/seen anything with a "meta-human" with the power to contol pain. (And I also think it's neat and fitting that Victor's power comes from basically the most direct and pragmatic response to dying/pain -- although the exact circumstances probably are responsible for the ability to dial it up/dial it down.)
Beyond the central idea, though, there are a lot of things that don't make sense or are inconsistent -- why Serena's power seems to continue affecting someone who was dead and was brought back by Sydney, why Sydney has the ability to bring someone back more than once, apparently, if she tries hard enough -- and just in general the extent of her power, which seems able to regenerate removed organs...
This is probably as good a place as any to talk about Sydney, and Victor's strays, and just the characters in general. I liked her a lot -- I think she very nicely walks the line between "regular kid", "traumatized kid" and just generally interesting character. My favorite, though, was Mitch, with his chocolate milk and his "curse". The chemistry between Mitch and Victor, the paternal vibe between both Victor and Sydney and Mitch and Sydney were my favorite aspects of the book. I fell for both of the fakout Mitch deaths, but was very happy that neither of them was real... even though the climax ended up being SO bloodless, it was hardly even a climax at all. Well, not bloodless, there was actually rather a lot of blood, but in terms of emotional weight and consequence and all that. Anyway, I liked the supporting cast and all of their relationships, way more than I was interested in Victor and Eli.
I've gotten this far without talking about Victor, and that's because I find Victor... weird. He is actually the type of character I would normally even like -- very bright, driven, and sort of... on the edges of humanity, but with a very clear and honest understanding of his flaws and priorities. And that works for me, especially early on in his EO days, when he is figuring out his new normal. The way he relates to Sydney was nice, as I said. But other things just didn't work for me. Nothing about his obsession with Eli or anything that stemmed from it felt in any way real or interesting. The negative space poetry/parental abandonment issues or whatever the hell all that is supposed to be and other posturing just felt silly and not endearing to me. And there were some moments that I found jarring/made me wonder if they were in character -- like when Victor doesn't shoot the cop outside the bar -- not so much the act of not shooting, but his thoughts around it. It contrasts nicely with Eli shooting Mitch, but it feels too artificial.
My co-readers found the climax/ending disappointing, and I kind of did, too, but it wasn't a letdown, because it was disappointing in the same way the rest of the Eli-and-Victor thing had been disappointing, from the very very beginning -- perfunctory and empty of emotion or meaning. Yes, look, they are still thinking of each other as "friends" while carving up each other! Amusing lines! Eli gets his comeuppance and lands, symmetrically, in jail, thanks to Victor essentially using his own powers against him, and meanwhile Victor has a sort of Jesus Christ moment (also symmetrically, since Eli had had his self-inflicted bloodletting earlier, from which he'd emerged with the conviction he was god's weapon against EOs) -- a lingering sacrificial death followed by resurrection. Eh. And in the final confrontation, with Serena out of the picture and both Sydney and Dominic on Victor's side, the deck is so stacked against Eli that it doesn't feel like there's any suspense of tension left, or anything impressive in the victory, beyond the cleverness of figuring out how to take down an invulnerable opponent (although I doubt that Eli could've recovered from, like, Victor stepping out of the shadows behind him and chopping his head off, say).
The writing is mostly fun, and easy-going. Mostly it was just there, but there are a couple of scenes where it worked for me really, really well -- foremost, Victor's second NDE, with Angie and "the dial went up". Nice and shiver-inducing! I'm not sure we needed the back-and-forward flashbacks (twice over), but the countdown to midnight worked for me to establish suspense (which the final lineup then immediately squandered, per above). And there are a lot of loose ends. The biggest one is Angie, which I've already talked about. Similarly, once cyanshadow suggested it, I really liked the idea that Victor had drawn the wrong conclusion from his little experiment with Dane and Serena's power actually was broken by death -- but that ended up going absolutely nowhere, either.
A couple of particularly amusing-to-me quotes:
Sydney: You're going to come back, right?
Victor: Of course I will. That's my favorite lighter.
Victor, upon being attacked in prison: "Is that a shiv? We didn't have those in isolation."
Mitch, thinking about Victor early on: "There were some poeple you had to stay away from, people who poisoned everything in reach. Then there were pepople you wanted to stick with, the ones with silver tongues and golden touches. And then, there were people you stood beside, because yit meant you weren't in their way."
I did enjoy the writing enough that I started A Darker Shade of Magic, which has now become one of the books I'm stuck in the middle of. Because I needed more.
13. C.B.Lee, Not Your Sidekick -- now this was really cute! And about the level of narrative complexity I can handle at the moment, I guess. I picked it up because cyanshadow had read it and it seemed cute, and then ikel89 sent a bunch of stuff my way, and there it was, sitting on my phone, within easy reach of the Kindle app...
This is one of the breed of new, earnest YA which takes great pains to be diverse in all ways, and that's really, really transparent, and a little on the nose, but it did a good job overall, and was funny and cute, so I found it easy to overlook the more pedantic or awkward moments. Jess, the protagonist, is second generation Asian-!American (it's not really America anymore, because we're talking a post-apocalyptic landscape, but for the purposes of Jess's life, it totally is, except meat is scarce and cars are self-driving), which is interesting enough in itself, but she's also half-Chinese/half-Vietnamese -- and I don't think I've ever seen a protagonist of mixed Asian heritage before. And it's neither just mentioned once for the sake of diversity nor the whole point of her character, but definitely a fundamental part of who she is as a person, and she struggles with the second-gen difficulties of not speaking the language well enough (or being assumed not to speak it at all), and the mxed-heritage difficulties of feeling not sufficiently either, and while those scenes definitely felt very deliberate and not as smoothly integrated into the rest of the book as I might have liked, they were scenes I appreciated having there. Jess is also bisexual, and the central romance (which is legitimately super cute) is with a girl. Her best friends are a Latina girl and a (Black? or at any rate POC) trans boy. (Her crush is Caucasian, so we do have that captured as well.) The earnestness shows itself in the way, early on, all the foods are Significant: Emma's Latino family serves her friends horchata! Jess's family eats bok choy and rice! Bells' family runs a Creole food restaurant! -- but after a while this eases off, and people eat "non-denominational" things like Tater Tots and spaghetti and whatnot. The discussion of LGBT issues was also a mix of pleasantly matter-of-fact and Very Deliberate: there are two separate conversations about pronoun usage, and everyone is very careful and thoughtful about this. Which I find a little didactic, but honestly bothered me less than similar things in Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, probably in large part because of the intended YA audience. But I still appreciated the natural, plot-integrated scenes, like Spoilers from here! Jess asking Bells if he's OK when he has to assume the appearance of (female) Captain Orion, much better than the Let's Talk About Pronoun Usage ones, but ultimately I don't mind having both. And, in addition to Jess and Abby being not straight, and Bells being trans, there are LGBT secondary characters, too, like Darryl (the president of the Rainbow Club), and presumably also Jess's little brother, with his crush on Bells. Anyway, the book embarked on a bunch of important and unusual things, and it achieved them decently, so, good job, book.
And there is earnest and deliberate acknowledgement and negotiation of some other things, too, smaller but not unimportant -- Abby trying to pronounce the name of Jess's robot (which is part of a Vietnamese phrase) and asking if she was doing it right, Abby apologizing for springing a sex scene on Jess in the story they're writing together and saying she should've confirmed with her it was OK first -- for those things, too, my feelings were a mix of "I see the lesson you're trying to teach there" (which is a negative reaction for me usually) and appreciation that the book was trying to engage with that. I don't think the scene where Abby teaches Jess to play volleyball and they have a talk about how everything, from writing to sports, is about practice rather than talent was necessary, though; that one just felt randomly tacked on for the sake of the message -- and felt especially weird in a book where one of the worldbuilding tenets is that the extent of superpowers is determined by inborn ability. Or maybe that WAS the point, that given the whole A/B/C-class powers breakdown, the author wanted a PSA about how in the real world your skills are limited only by your hard work, IDK.
The worldbuilding is not necessarily my particular cup of tea, but reminded me a lot of rachelmanija and sartorias's The Change books -- post-apocalyptic US with mutant powers (although the Change books' worldbuilding is more interesting, both stranger and cozier, and definitely a lot less like modern-day America). The big distinction from present-day, except for some half-hearted nods at superior technology and scarcity, is the existence of superheroes (and supervillains), with spoilers from here! some "Civil War"-type prehistory. A lot of that is tied up in plot, though, so I'll leave that for a bit later. The worldbuilding is definitely not the book's strongest suit: there are parts that make very little sense, like, why is old media not related to the superhero history forbidden? That seems to make no sense at all. Cell phone analogues (DEDs) have become omnipresent to the point where you can't leave the house without one (I did find it cute that one old-timer was nostalgic about real cellphones as pre-apocalyptic tech), but tests are apparently still taken on paper, on Scantrons, with smeary lead... And despite the scarcity of natural resources, paper notebooks still abound and Jess and Abby write a rough draft of a story on paper. (The former is there presumably to put in a plug for characters who are smart but not good test-takers, mayb due to a hidden learning disability, and the latter is so that the girls can compliment each other's handwriting. But both scenes threw me out of the story a little.)
The book does, actually, have a plot, rather than just a collection of Diverse and Englightened characters (I may, once again, be side-eying Small, Angry Planet with that :P) -- actually, rather a lot of plot. I'm not sure how I feel about said plot, actually. On the one hand, I kind of liked the very cynical revelation that the superheroes are there to distract people with feel-good stories from what is actually going on, which is !America's involvement in foreign wars, while maintaining a cheerful "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" facade, with the heroes engaged in pointless posturing in fake battles (and taking steroids, apparently) and the villains being designated bad guys who actually have good points to make. On the other hand, Captain Orion is revealed to be SO cartoonishly evil (and racist! because being in charge of a government conspiracy to kidnap and experiment on people is not enough), that I found it even harder to take the book seriously after that point. And also found it hard to believe that nobody before Jess would've figured out the battles were fake, so I hope it's revealed in the next book that people do figure it out all the time, they just keep quiet about it/the government hushes it up.
I suppose the other flaw in the plot -- the romantic part of it -- could be said to be that Jess is SO TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS, it's hard to see her as an admirable sort of protagonist, but weirdly that didn't bother me much -- maybe because she was mostly clueless about her crush reciprocating her feelings, and I could buy an awkward teenager who's never dated before being deeply clueless about that. Plus I found Jess burbling merrily to "M" about how much she likes Abby and Abby then trying to send her Very Clear Signals pretty cute. And I guess Jess could be forgiven for not picking up on the Abby = M thing sooner because she is so flustered by Abby's presence early on, too. Anyway, that didn't bother me, and neither did Jess and Emma not figuring out sooner that Bells was the Chameleon, even when he messed up and left his hair a little longer than it should've been. (I'd also guessed that Bells was the elevator visitor to Monroe Industries, but definitely not that he was the tall red-haired woman who walked Jess from the bus on her first day.) Anyway, like I said above, I found the development of Jess and Abby's relationship really cute, and especially like the way it wasn't issuefic-y at all, beyond the added difficulty of having to figure out if the other person likes girls. And while the escape through the desert part of the book felt a bit random, I did like it as an opportunity for Jess to come into her own and actually save the day for a change.
Speaking of which... Jess's powers. That was one thing I did not guess ahead of time at all. I'm not sure if it was adequately foreshadowed and I just overlooked it (and don't care enough to reskim looking for that specifically; Jess'd mad organization skills ARE mentioned throughout, but I don't think that's the same thing), maybe because I was expecting/hoping that it would turn out that Jess didn't have superpowers -- and didn't need them to be a hero. Her having a "non-combat" power is not something I mind, and Emma ends up fulfilling the non-powered role on their little team... but it still went in a different direction, thematically, than I had been expecting.
There are a lot of unanswered questions and loose ends as of the end of the book, since there's a sequel (and presumably another book after that): Everybody being declared villains, of course, and still having to find and rescue Abby's father and all the other missing villains. The brewing plot with weaponized MonBots, which will presumably be significant. Claudia's estrangement/becoming totally brainwashed by Captain Orion/Percy Weasley-ness, which I wonder if it will lead to her seeing the error of her ways and coming back over to the side of her sister and her parents -- and also Claudia's taunt that Jess is the byproduct of an experiment and that their parents have been hiding something from her. Oh, and Abby's powers having disappeared/gone dormant, of course; that will have to be resolved, too.
Before I wrap up, I should also mention that while I found the main kids all pretty cute, one character I was really intrigued by was Jess's mother, with her refugee past, hiding her powers from the authorities in China to avoid conscription, not really buying into the superhero hype (unlike her husband) but going along with it because it's a steady living and you don't rock the boat -- the way she is smart and diligent, motivated in large part by the harsh experiences of her past and desire for safety, but unhesitatingly willing to do the right thing both to protect her daughter and once she knows what the government is actually condoning.
Quote:
Abby grins. "Am I gonna see, like, hearts doodled around my name anywhere?"
Jess snorts. "That's a different notebook."
Anyway, cute read, despite me having a number of mostly-minor complaints about it, and I'm looking forward to the sequel, which will be from Bells' POV (especially as he was my favorite character in this).
One last thing: As I mentioned above, I kept mentally comparing this book to Stranger/Hostage, because cozy post-apocalyptic YA with meta-humans and a lot of diversity. The Change books definitely feel more solid on the worldbuilding front, and are doing much more nuanced and complex things with characters -- there are no interestingly grey characters like the Prestons here (at least so far), or people with arcs like Kerry's, or any particularly difficult choices -- it's definitely more of a fluffy romance with a superhero-y background than a serious genre book. I may have actually enjoyed reading it more for all that, because of the low-stakes cuteness and ridiculousness (except that rats >>> Roombas). And it did whet my appetite for book 3 of the Change books, as it happened, so that timing was pretty good!
14. Dave Barry, Best State Ever -- I got this for my mother's birthday and then borrowed it back. Cute, fast read, though not as out-loud funny as his earlier books, and tinged with the same "getting old" melancholy that the recent ones have all had. My favorite bit was the crack at grapefruits and health food, but it was also fun reading about various Florida attractions. I've never been, but my parents visited the sponge place and told me about it, and I've heard/read about the Everglades from a number of people. As usual, the more somber chapters didn't work as well for me (the skunk-ape one, especially), but the Lock & Load one was hilarious.
As you can see, I'm a full month behind on reading per the 52 books a year goal. I'm in the middle of several currently -- A Darker Shade of Magic, Game of Kings (which I really need to finish before end of May so that L can give it back to Awesome Friend Ali), Ninefox Gambit, an Alex Verus book, and have just now started Norse Mythology, because clearly I need to be reading more books. /o\ Somebody make me finish these already!
Rivers of London has an audio short story out (only available in audio, here, on Audible, for free): "A Rare Book of Cunning Device". I'm not an audio book person, so I'd never heard Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Peter Grant before, which was one neat aspect of it (he doesn't sound like the Peter in my head, but he does sound neat). I definitely prefer reading with my eyes, though, and find it much easier to absorb what I read that way. So I don't have a whole lot to say about the story qua story, but there's an appearance by Postmartin, and an intriguing new character who knows Peter's mum, and the revelation of Peter's mum's name(s).