Reading roundup, Loki, and meme
31. Freya Marske, A Marvelous Light -- this debut novel will be out in November, but meanwhile I got to read it in an ARC through a series of fortuitous connections (<333 at the chain of said connections: THANK YOU!) It was fun, and well done, but in a way that had me thinking of it as fanfic pretty much the whole time -- not a criticism, per se, but it did mean that it didn't leave much of a trace / I don't have as much to say as usual.
Since it's an ARC, I'll go a bit more into the premise than I usually do: the setting is Edwardian England with hidden magic. blurb level spoilers Robin, recently orphaned young noble lad in the civil service, stumbles upon the magical world through a bureaucratic mistake and ends up under a curse. He and his magical liaison, Edwin, have to work together to remove Robin's curse and eventually uncover a magical mystery. And, of course, they fall in love, because this is at least as much m/m paranormal romance as it is a historical fantasy. There is a non-romance side to the plot, and it sets up a series arc for what I assume will be a trilogy, but the strength and I think also the heart of the book are the romance beats.
The character work is definitely the strongest suit; the plot and setting are -- well, honestly, I can't think of a deeper/more fitting word than "fun" again -- but nothing that blew my mind. And even the characters were... familiar? not "derivative", they were definitely their own people, but my reaction to both of them was not "I love this guy!" (though I did like them both) but, "oh, he reminds me of [character X, Y, etc.]" I liked Robin, with his easy charm rooted in kindness and decency, his sporty interests and unexpected artistic eye, his relationship with sister Maud and the shared trauma of the parents who chased fame as philanthropists while neglecting their actual dependents. At first, courtesy of the historical British setting, he was reminding me of Ned from the Death by Silver books a bit (though in those, Ned is the magician of the couple, while Robin is the 'Muggle'), and when I was talking about Robin to Zoom Best Chat, I was referring to him as "the Damen one" (since Captive Prince is a shared reference point for us all).
Edwin I found less... attachable, but I did think he was an interesting character. The thing I liked best about Edwin is that his POV was believably that of a Ravenclaw nerd person whose mind works in taxonomies, organizing information, drawing connections in a way that felt really true to how my mind and the minds of other Edwin-minded people I know work, which is actually not at all always the case with nerdy characters in books. I don't know that I can explain it, but often the "booksmart" character stuff feels superficial -- they use jargon, they infodump as a shorthand to signal that they're nerds. Edwin, even when he was thinking about a situation where he was completely out of his depth, was thinking in a way that -- well, honestly, that a Ravenclaw Secondary would think: "He had the grinding, half-painful/half-wonderful sense that meant facts and precedents and logic were slowly finding one another in his mind, sliding into place, presenting a solution. [...] He was afraid to breathe in case he disturbed it." (and now I want to try to remember if there was a Serpentcast episode where the Serpents sorted their characters). And the climactic scene where FULL-BLOWN SPOILERS from here! he makes a decision at the crucial moment, faced with the older brother who's tormented him all his life: "He thought" I don't have to tell Walt anything. He thought: Walt will tear this house apart [etc. etc.] Edwin forced the churning flood to settle, and pulled his decision clear." Just, his thought processes were so neatly done, it was a pleasure to follow them and feel like, hey, this author gets how a mind like that works! (as a possessor of a similar sort of mind)
And there's an interesting thing going on with him and magic: his relationship to magic is one that I . His relationship to magic is one that I don't think I've seen before, actually -- one of expertise without much capability. When I brought this up to
ikel89, she did not find it as unusual, because it reminded her of sports anime -- the former champion who is an expert on the theory but is too old or injured to compete himself, which, fair enough! Regarding the magic -- what I mean is, Edwin is someone who is very academically into magic, he knows a lot, he can synthesize things in a way that others can't, but his personal abilities to do magic are very weak: not quite a Squib, but someone who needs to use an aid that most magic-users age out of as children, and I found that an interesting framework to work within (although he does get some vicarious power by the end). But at the character level, Edwin reminded me of others, too. Whyborne, from the Whyborne & Griffin books, for the magic and crappy family-of-origin life, but -- as I reassured
lunasariel A LOT less whiny than Whyborne. And this wouldn't have occurred to me on my own, but I was listening to the Serpentcast episode where they answered the question of which character type do they keep writing again and again, and Freya said Lymond -- a charming, bookish person, "but you can do plus or minus the charming and just have someone who is bookish and clever" -- and I was like, OH, I know this one! (Robin gets the charm, and I guess they kind of work as foils that way, because Edwin feels envious of Robin's skill with people.)
OK, so the dudes are nice on their own, if a bit... familiar. Their relationship was... a little arbitrary, to be honest -- like, I don't actually ship it, because this particular dynamic isn't interesting to me, but it's also not actively off-putting or anything -- it's just pleasant. I buy Edwin being attracted to Robin's bravery and kindness and strength, since the kindness especially seems in short supply both among the men of his family and what we've seen of his exes. And I can see Robin being attracted to Edwin's sharp mind and clever magical hands, and they go through a thing together, so I'm fine with it, but I feel no burning desire for them to be together; I don't feel like they particularly belong together, in some inexorable way. For all that, I did actually enjoy the romance beats -- starting out with mutual distrust and/or annoyance, bonding in adversity, working together. There was less pining than I'd expected, but I appreciated that the two of them actually talked to each other, and apologize when warranted and make up quickly instead of sulking miserably apart, and that there were no stupid misunderstandings. There are issues that come between them, and scenes like Edwin being unwilling to ask Robin to stay -- but Edwin is actually right about that, I think, even though Robin doesn't seem to think so. The sex was more explicit, and there was more of it, than I'd been expecting from a book marketed as fantasy vs paranormal romance, but this is definitely not a complaint. (The sex scene with the use of magic was particularly nicely done, I thought.)
I liked what we saw of some of the other characters, too -- the secretary Miss Morrissey, the old lady Flora Sutton, and I kind of liked Charlie, Edwin's brother in law, and was relieved he was not implicated in the evil plot shenanigans. Oh, and Jack Alston was intriguing; I assume we'll see more about him and his presumed-dead twin sister in the sequels (currently I'm thinking Elsie is the leader of the group Walt is part of, motivated by trying to restore her brother's magic, or share hers with him, something like that). And I was impressed with Freya's ability to make even tertiary characters memorable, and to quickly sketch in a character on introduction, like in this intro: "The only other woman was Trudie Davenport, the sharp-featured brunette with a da Vinci nose and an actress's high laugh, who even on ten seconds' acquaintance gave off the air of a marble set loose in a bowl -- always trying to return herself to the center of things" -- this is such a great little blurb! It both gives a neat, memorable impression of Trudie, AND it shows neat things about Robin's POV, the things he notices, the metaphors he uses, the type of person he is able to "diagnose" most accurately given the environment he grew up with.
The magical worldbuilding is pretty familiar. It feels like an Edwardian AU of Harry Potter, or maybe a magical AU of the Will Darling books -- solid but nothing special. I felt the same way about the magic, although I do like cradling as the externalization of magic, and the house magic we get in Sutton. I also had similar feelings about the plot. I can't say that I guessed every twist three steps ahead, but I was never surprised -- I think I just wasn't bothering to try to figure out the whodunit, because it never felt like the answer was going to be all that interesting. And it feels a bit like Robin's glimpses of the future were a little bit of a cheat for the plot, seeding things that would happen so the characters would have a reason to go and do the things that Robin saw happening. The setup for some kind of grander confrontation in the future is seeded, but sounds fairly generic at this point. There are some things more meaningful than a magical mystery in the book, and I appreciated them being there, and also being fairly light touch, but also don't feel like anything novel or profound is being said about the dismissive view of women in Edwardian England, in both mundane society and the magical one, with Miss Morrissey doing all the actual work for Gatling and Flora Sutton and her circle of women practitioners working a different sort of magic going completely overlooked. I didn't feel like it needed to be any more foregrounded at this point, but I assume more on that is coming in subsequent books, especially if it turns out Elsie Alston is involved as either antagonist or hidden ally, but for the time being it's just sort of there in the background, being a pleasant and expected component of the worldbuilding.
It feels like I was lukewarm on the book, but actually I wasn't -- I read it very fast and enjoyed it a lot. It's just not a very deep form of enjoyment. And yet, the writing is actually really lovely and really good, and really funny -- I took down a lot of quotes -- and I think you can't really tell that it's a debut novel, because everything is very elegant and hangs together very well. It's just not a particularly ambitious construction, compared to some other (messier but more audacious) first novels I've been reading recently. (I'm curious to see whether after this Freya will stick to formula or branch out into less familiar-feeling things...)
Quotes (there are a lot, because I really liked the writing):
"It was the resigned expression of someone on whom jokes were often played, and who knew he was expected to laugh afterwards even if they were more cruel than funny."
"He was in the mood to not talk with anyone and, as sometimes happened, felt perversely like surrounding himself with people to not-talk to."
"Charlie always liked people more once he'd explained something badly to them, and Bel just liked things that were Edwin's."
Robin, falling for Edwin: "A delicate, turbulent, Turner-sketch attractiveness that hit Robin like a clean hook to the jaw."
"How much do you know about natural science?"
"Er," said Robin.
"Gravity? Sir Isaac Newton?"
"The apple chap?"
Edwin visibly shredded his planned explanation into shorter words.
"Robin managed to dip his aching head beneath the surface of a doze, thoughts unspooling like a dropped roll of thread. Like grlowing string."
"He thought about how Edwin looked at [his ill mother], as though storing up grain for winter."
Robin thinking about Edwin: "You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I'd like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you."
"Edwin. Shut up," Robin suggested.
Edwin did, gratefully.
"It was a bad angle. It was a bad kiss. Edwin hadn't kissed anyone in years and it was like a language long unspoken. And then Robin's mouth was on his again, and all of a sudden the grammar of the thing fell into place."
"But he was entirely at sea in the etiquette. What came after sex and before sleep?"
"It promised all sorts of things that Edwin wasn't equipped to hear. He had the ludicrous urge to ask Robin to write them down; to bind them up and give them to him on paper."
"No matter what this was, fight or forgiveness or farewell, he wanted to be standing for it."
"[Edwin] and Hawthorn had bickered, but they'd had very few real fights. Edwin wanted any conflict to end as soon as possible; Jack seemed to want to live in a house built of low-grade needling and casual mockery."
Edwin, after the fight with Robin: "Body and mind: perfectly hale. There was nothing else about him, no other component to feel bruised beyond easy repair, and so rationality dictated that he could not feel that way."
"It felt as though every cell in his body had replaced itself over that span of days, silent and individually unnoticed, forming something the exact shape as the old edwin which nonetheless resonated at a different frequency."
"We are but feeble women," said Miss Morrissey. "Woe."
"Your sister is a magician," Robin said, pointing out what seemed the largest hole in this story [that Robin intimidated them into doing his bidding].
"Woe," said Mrs Kaur firmly.
Edwin: "He was tempted and tense and he was terrified of pain. But he'd found a line in himself, right where Billy's casual shrugs met the memory of Robin gasping on the lakeshore, and he wasn't going to cross it. It was a relief to know that the line was there."
"Robin's two contributions to the adventure thus far had been baroneting Edwin's suite number out of the concierge, and managing not to step through the subtle shimmer of the spell and plant his fist in Billy Byatt's freckled face."
"The sheer thrill of discovery had kept it [fear] at bay when watching the coin take shape. He'd half forgotten that they were here under duress, with no guarantee of safe exit."
"his fear had washed out of him. He'd never outgrow it entirely -- he'd frown up with it woven into his nerves, a spell cast on a sapling"
"He wanted to be worthy of the way Edwin was lowering himself into trust like water on the verge of over-hot."
I wonder if the balance of how much I loved the prose vs everything else is indicative of Freya's fanfic roots (and the fanficcy feeling of the book) -- the prose feels a couple of books further along than plot and setting, and what I liked about the characters were less intrinsic "I want to spend more time with this person!" feelings and more just how well realized I thought the characters were, how well their natures and thoughts were shown through the writing. Which, Freya's got thousands of words worth of experience doing those things, and less experience with original setting, and I feel like it's accepted practice for plot to be secondary to relationship in fic, even where the fic has a solid plot. But anyway, this was a very fun ride, and I'm looking forward to the sequels, and whatever else Freya writes next.
32. Tracy Deonn, Legendborn -- I had a very all-over-the-place trajectory with this book. Reading the prologue, I was thinking this would be a book where I made it to the self-imposed 50 pages for Hugo homework reading and quit, because the writing style full of sentence fragments to show emotion/mental state was not working for me. Thankfully the prose normalized a bit once we were out of the prologue, and I figured I would keep on reading, but I was still rolling my eyes at the clumsy infodumps and ridiculous worldbuilding and YA drama, and thinking how apparently I've gotten too old to read YA. But as the book wore on, I did find myself enjoying and even somewhat invested in certain aspects (well, primarily one aspect: Sel), and the ending got me -- I'm actually intrigued enough that I would probably pick up the sequel, if I came across it or had a reason to read it. I still don't think it's a particularly good book, and I feel like the more serious parts of it and the "YA urban fantasy" parts of it don't mesh together particularly well.
Maybe I will actually talk about the book by individual parts for that reason, because that seems to be how it fits in my brain.
The book opens with the protagonist/first person narrator, Bree, dealing with her grief upon losing her mother at sixteen. The mother died in a car accident, though Bree suspects foul play, and the events of the book are set in motion as she investigates the secret society she expects may be implicated in her mother's death. SPOILERS from here! One of the late-book twists I hadn't expected and liked was that, actually, her mother's death really is an accident. There IS magical stuff at play, but nobody killed Bree's mother, and the fact that there is no-one to blame is something Bree has to come to terms with -- that was pretty cool. The author's afterword and an interview I've come across all talk about how Deonn's loss of her own mother at a young age, and only later coming to accept and start to work through the trauma, was the genesis of this book, and there is a therapist character whom Bree talks to, who delivers a very earnest PSA about Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder (although the therapist character ALSO insists on meeting Bree at the campus cemetery and introduces her to magic outside the Arthurian Order stuff). While I respect the genesis of the story, and I really respect that there are no answers, no evil forces to blame to help Bree in coming to terms with her mother's death, having her be the After-Bree, the angry, distanced, bereaved person, for most of the book did not actually make for a very satisfying reading experience for me. I didn't have a good feel for what Bree was like, behind her wall of pain and anger, because we didn't really see any of the Before-Bree -- we heard about her a little, but nothing that made her a character I could latch onto. Her relationship with her father seemed really sweet! I liked the idea of her and Alice's friendship (although their nerdy banter felt unnatural and awkward to me), but it was all reaching back to a different person than who I was seeing on the page for most of the book. And besides that, what was there to Bree? That she was driven, unwilling to be pushed around? Sure, but even all that felt kind of situational. I read a whole book from her POV, and I can't say that I got any sense of her core. (I don't know if part of the problem was that the author was identifying with Bree so much, given their shared circumstances, that she forgot to give her an actual distinct character. Whatever the reason, I did not click with Bree, although she did get better by the end, one of the reasons I'm considering reading on.
The other serious thing the book is engaging with is racism, historical and modern-day, from flashbacks into memories of Bree's ancestors during chattel slavery to Bree having to deal with acquaintances touching her hair. These were some of the aspects where the book worked best for me -- I feel like this is where it was best able to bridge the epic/historical and mundane/YA worlds -- this was the actual thread of continuity. Some of the most poignant scenes for me were Bree looking at mounuments -- of the college, of the Order -- and feeling herself and her ancestors excluded from the narrative. The modern-day stuff felt a little... disconnected from the rest of the interactions, though. Maybe realistically so -- I wouldn't know -- but there were these scenes where secondary characters would Do a Racism, and Bree would have thoughts about it or tell them off, depending on the balance of power in the situation, and then the narrative would move on. It made sense with the cop who asked veiled questions about how she got into the program his son was trying for, or the dean implying Bree was unruly and her friend Alice Chen was passive, since Bree never interacts with either of them again, but one of the Order kids that Bree spends a bunch of time with is the one that touches Bree's hair without permission, prompting Bree to snap, "I'm not a petting zoo" and have a whole mini-lecture, but I can't even remember which of the girls this was, because it doesn't affect their future interactions in any way. Which may be totally realistic -- I am perfectly willing to believe that a Black girl with natural hair has to deal with this crap often enough that it doesn't even register who is doing it and that it's pointless to bear grudges against it. But it made the scene, which I otherwise appreciated, feel like it was just randomly plunked down there to have a "don't touch Black hair" PSA. That disonnectedness aside, I actually really liked the way Bree's hair was sort of a key little detail at various points throughout the book -- not, like, a plot point, but just there in her awareness a whole lot, from realizing it might get messed up since she's not sleeping on satin when she falls asleep next to Nick, to the ultimate form of self-care being setting several hours aside to wash her hair, to feeling and seeing the wind in her hair and Mariah's when they're having the memory walk experiences. (Note to self: apparently the official term is Afro-textured hair.)
A big problem I had with the early part of the book, especially, was the sheer YA-ness of it. I notice it's harder and harder for me to appreciate YA and teen romance, what with having teenagers of my own. And, OK, I have a kid about to head off to college, which probably explains why my reaction to Bree, her first weeks in college (at sixteen, no less!), spending all her time skulking about in search of magical mysteries, monsters, and assorted hot boys was, GO TO CLASS, CHILD! You are here to study, so OPEN YOUR BOOKS, do your homework, get some sleep, do the things you came here to do! I also don't understand some of the choices this book makes about ages and settings. Like, OK, I suppose it had to be set on a college campus so that Bree could run around unsupervised by her father, live in the dorms, etc. (and because Deonn wanted to, since UNC is her alma mater and she specifically wanted to set a story there). But I don't understand why she had to be 16 then -- she mostly acts a lot older, as do the other Early College kids, they hang out in a bar -- I actually kind of wondered if Bree and everyone was older in an earlier draft and she just decided to deage them for some reason? It is hard enough to take teenage romance seriously; it is WAY HARDER when the Epic Lovers are 16 and 17. Those are BABIES.
Speaking of teenage romance, I found Nick exceedingly bland, and his makeouts with Bree very pro forma. That said... I actually kind of ship Sel/Nick? Between Sel being bound to Nick by his Oath, Nick resenting Sel for the Merlins taking away his mother, from growing up in the same house to the power struggle over leadership with Nick's father out of the picture -- there's actually some stuff that appeals to me here! (The scene where Nick unrepentantly punches Sel, knowing Selwyn can't fight back, and Sel points that out, and Nick doesn't care? That was a RTMI scene.) And it's a really nice touch that Selwyn's crush on Nick is canonical, though he claims he's outgrown it (I have my doubts). I actually did also like the relationship between Sel and Bree. It's probably meant to be shippy in a love triangle way (10 out of 18 stories on AO3 are Sel/Bree, for example, with 5-6 each for Nick/Bree, Sel/Nick, and the OT3), but I actually just like them working together, pricklily but effectively. Anyway, I see I'm not alone in finding Selwyn the most interesting character. I mean, yes, he is a tortured orphan who has been taught that his power will eventually drive him mad, that's fandom catnip, obviously, but I also like his grumpy ways and occasional unexpected internet-meme-based utterances. It's kind of funny, when I got to the 80% mark, and Bree and Nick were being all lovey dovey, and we got confirmation of Selwyn being into Nick, and Bree and Sel continued to experience almost literal sparks, I was thinking, what is this, Merlin fanfic (which, I have only fandom osmosis experience of both canon and fanfic for Merlin, but it was pretty persistent osmosis for a while there) with Nick as Arthur, Sel as a Merlin who is Arthur's age-mate, and Bree as Gwen? But no, apparently it's a Arthur-Merlin-Lancelot love triangle, which is quite a bit more interesting.
Which, OK, let's talk about the Arthur thing. I actually don't understand WHY Arthur is a thing here. Deonn talks about it in the afterword and a Tor.com article I came across, and, like, I'm totally in agreement that all Arthuriana is fanfic and can be remixed to one's heart's content. I personally have no interest in Arthuriana, but I have no objections to people playing with it, and a Black girl as a reincarnation of Arthur is actually pretty awesome! My two problems with Arthuriana in this book come down to: 1) it doesn't feel like anything about the Arthur legend has anything to do with, well, any of the other stuff that's going on -- Rootcraft, secret societies in a US college, demons opening Gates -- I mean, not mytologically, although that, too, but, like thematically, so it just never stopped feeling random, and 2) none of it makes ANY sense XD I don't necessarily need magic and reincarnation and whatnot to make sense, but this book delivers so many infodumps about Lines and Lieges and Regents and Scions and Squires, and how the whole line of succession thing works, that my brain, presented with all this DATA, kept trying to make sense of it, which is not to the benefit of the book, because it does not actually make sense. Like, OK, Scions can be Called (so many Meaningful Capitals, omg kill me) between the ages of 16 and 22. But, like, what happens the rest of the time? These Lines don't seem to be having many, many children to ensure that at any time there is a Scion of each of the major Lines of the appropriate age -- it seems like before Nick, the Scion of Arthur was his father, and his grandfather before that (when Nick talks about "I never though I'd have to really deal with it, you know? Not really. My dad didn't. Granddad didn't."-- it doesn't seem like there were uncles/cousins/whatever between them). But if the Scion thing is just passing from parent to child, then you get a pattern where for every 20 years (a generation) you have an active (activatable) Scion for only 6 years -- not even a third of the time. Someone says something about "The Scion in each bloodline and the nine potentially eligible discendants in the line of succession behind them begin training as soon as they can walk" -- but where are these people? They don't seem to exist outside of this one sentence... (I feel like this was a worldbuilding hole she tried to paper over with some details added later, but it didn't mesh for me.) And what are the odds that all the lines would have Scions in the right age range at the given moment? This doesn't require thinking about, but all the random info dumped on page made me wonder about these things, and they just don't hold up to any kind of logical examination. (I'm not even going to ask why all these Scions of Arthur and the Round Table ended up in the US. The Percy Jackson books at least attempted to handwave it with the seat of democracy moving to the US or something; we didn't even get something like that here XD They just kind of drift and fetch up on the East Coast, we're told.)
There are a LOT of scenes of fighting monsters, which I found boring and tended to skim. The monsters are not very interesting, and neither is the fighting. And speaking of plot, the pacing is crazy -- I never had a good sense of how much time had passed since the beginning, because the 6 weeks training and tournament schedule kept getting pulled in, and Bree seemed to be spending all her time with the Order or the therapist lady or getting healed from her injuries, leaving it unclear to me when she was, you know, doing her homework, or IDK, laundry, or anything else. Did everything take place in like two weeks? Oh, and Bree learning to fight with three types of weapons in the space of something like 48 hours was also a thing. Which, I don't even understand why the timeline had to be so compressed. You have the built-in timeframe of a college quarter/semester, why not use it? Why compress everything to such a ridiculous degree? It makes it hard to believe not only that Bree has learned to fight but also that she and William or Whitty or whoever are actual friends, rather than fairly recent acquaintances...
But I did like the twist ending, with the Scion of Arthur turning out to be Bree, and Nick turning out to be the Scion of Lancelot instead, on account of a historical Davis getting an enslaved woman, Bree's ancestor, with child, and said Davis's wife having an affair with the Scion of Lancelot and having a child from him. (This is all very soap opera, and yet still WAY LESS soap opera than parts of Harrow the Ninth, so.) I was also not expecting a bunch of people to die at the end; in fact, I'd spend the preceding chunk of the book kind of rolling my eyes at how everyone seems to conveniently survive their grave demon-inflicted injuries. I mean, what kills people and what barely slows them down is very arbitrary and plot-driven, but at least I now believe in the possibility that people *can* die. I *was* expecting Nick's father to turn out to be the bad guy, but was decently pleased with the way that played out.
Finally, on a completely random and very nitpicky note: what's with all the one syllable nicknames? Is this a Southern thing? Nick is as expected, I get Bree for Briana, I get why Selwyn gets shortened to Sel and why Fitz goes by Fitz. I know an Evan who goes by EvBut Tor (Victoria)? Sar (Sara)???
Between the YA romance and the piled-on fairly random worldbuilding and the demons and the hidden identities and OMG-actually-evil! father figures, I was getting some serious Shadowhunter (Mortal Instruments/Cassandra Clare) vibes (I see I'm not alone in that). Well, Clare's banter is way better, and Legendborn has some deeper things it's trying to say, but the Shadowhunter vibe made it harder for me to take it seriously. But it started out being far at the bottom of the Lodestar bunch for me and ended up kind of in the same pile as the other books (or at least as Elatsoe and Cemetery Boys), and overall I'm glad I read it -- it would not have happened without Hugo homework, because I never would've made it out of the prologue if I wasn't set on reading at least 50 pages.
33. T.Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking -- this was a present from
aome for New Year's (thanks again! ♥), which I started right away and then wandered away from, read some more during our spring break trip, and then returned to as part of my Lodestar reading. I hadn't been thinking of it that way until I was almost done, but I think I was basically only reading this book when L was around, since L is my baking companion, and also my Ursula Vernon-reading buddy. So that explains that -- I was wondering. But I also feel like part of the reason it's taken me over six months to read this short book, which is not how it usually goes with me and Ursula Vernon's books, is that I feel like, outside of the delightful (and wonderfully executed!) premise of a wizard with a sourdough starter familiar and baking-related powers, I don't feel like the book is doing much that I haven't seen Ursula Vernon do before.
Even before the afterword, I'd heard Vernon talk about how this book took a really long time to see the light of day, because editors weren't sure if it was a kid book or an adult book and how to calibrate the darkness in it to the audience, until suddenly in 2020 the book's time had come, because "suddenly everyone was into sourdough starters and distrusting the government." I don't know if it's the years of germination and (presumably) rewrites that made the pacing feel odd to me, but it does feel strange -- there are several stories that sort of flow into each other, from the discovery of the dead body, which seems like a mystery start, to SPOILERS from here Mona and Spindle's heist-type thing to infiltrate the palace and warn the Dutchess, to the siege story that the last third of the book becomes, but this progression did not feel particularly novel-shaped.
Also, I think this is the first time I've read Vernon writing first-person POV in anything but a short story, and while I enjoyed Mona's voice for the most part (especially her commitment to being a baker first and foremost, and her Very Serious Feelings about pastry), I don't know that first person was the best choice for what Vernon is trying to say: there's this repetition of 14-year-old Mona feeling like she was too young to deal with these things at 14, it shouldn't come down to her, and statements like "It's a strange way to feel when you're fourteen", and I just don't think teenagers think that way about being teenagers. The "a kid shouldn't have to solve these adult problems" refrain is similar to the one in Minor Mage, but the young protagonist is younger in that book, which I think makes it more plausible, but I also think the third-person POV helps. I was wondering if Mona was narrating it from a point later in life, actually, but from the last chapter it seems like it's really not much later, so it's not that... And speaking of kids book/adult book thing -- I kept forgetting this was published under Vernon's books-for-grown-ups Kingfisher pen name, because it feels more like a kidlit book to me, what with the mentions of poop during the garderobe climb and the overall feel of the story, with mostly-benevolent adults who, outside of people like traitors and scary assassins and the occasional mean people, are generally kind to Mona and Spindle and look out for them. I thought it was less surprising as a kid book than Summer in Orcus (which felt like something with the shape of a kidlit story but not the sensibilities of one) or Minor Mage (with its very creepy ghouls and the child protagonist actually killing someone). Basically, I agree with what Vernon says in the afterword about it being a darkish kids book after all, but I guess the explanation that it doesn't fit with her tradpub Ursula Vernon brand of funny urban dragons and badass hamster princesses makes sense.
I enjoyed the story well enough, but I don't know that reading the whole book gave me all that much more than the basic premise I already knew, a wizard of baking with a sourdough starter familiar (Bob the starter was great! I wish there had been more of him in the book, but Mona and he are apart for most of the story). I mean, I liked Mona's experiments with sympathetic magic as applied to dough, and the giant gingerbread golems were an awesome idea! And I didn't find it quite two-Tumblr-posts-worth-of-plot as I did Finna (the wormhole-IKEA novella), but it didn't feel like a novel's worth of a book, either. There *are* some interesting ideas it touches on -- Knackering Molly was really interesting, in both powers and backstory, and I loved that the Crowning Moment of Awesome (tragic as it is) belongs to her; the conversation Mona has with her Uncle, about the men forgotten by bureaucratic oversight who were turned into heroes of a siege so nobody would have to admit the error ("You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don't ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place"), was really great! I wish those had gotten more play. I was pleasantly surprised that at the end, after fighting together and all the recognition, Mona was still a little mad at the Dutchess for letting things in her city deteriorate to that point, and doesn't think much of her governing skills, but it didn't feel like it went anywhere. I think there's a grown-up book lurking beneath the surface of the book that got published, which has more about Knackering Molly and the convenience of heroes and less focus on crawling through poop, and I suspect I would've liked that book more. (I *did* like this book! I would've been very pleased with this book coming from a random author. But I guess I expect more of Vernon, and this wasn't quite up to the level of my favorites of hers.)
A couple of quotes:
Here is the most relatable-for-2020 sentence, just after Mona leaves the tower where she's been hiding from the Inquisitors: "Being out on the street again felt like my birthday. I was giddy. I wanted to laugh and dance and hug strangers."
I also liked Mona's food metaphors: "The sky looked like a raw egg, runny with streaks of red in it." "Arrows rained down, with a hiss like butter on the griddle, magnified a hundred times."
Hugo roundup: Lodestar -- 5/6. A Deadly Education (I didn't love it, I'm not even sure how much I liked it, but it definitely made me think about it more than the others), Defensive Baking (look, a middle-of-the-road Ursula Vernon is still a lot better than most books), Cemetery Boys (the parts I liked -- Julian -- mostly outweigh the parts I didn't), Elatsoe (I like what it's going for, but have no strong feelings about the book one way or another), Legendborn (I like a few of the things this is doing and respect several more, but I feel like whatever strengths this book has are undermined by its weaknesses/choices, and the whole just isn't very... good). I have them ranked like this, but actually the distance between my top pick and my bottom pick is not very wide this year, unlike some past years; none of these were books I loved unreservedly and wanted to shove at people, but these are all books I would rec-with-caveats to folks. (We'll see if Raybearer proves the same. I've read the first chapter or so and am enjoying it so far, but it has been recced to me with caveats of its own.)
**
I also read the Hugo nominated novelettes:
Sarah Pinsker, "Two Truths and a Lie" -- I liked it in the way I like Sarah Pinsker writing spec fic set in the real world -- I like the characters, the writing, the atmosphere (the show concept and the show itself were nicely creepy! the hoarder house situation was creepy!everything was creepy!). But it's horror, and I don't get the point of horror, like, whatever satisfaction reading horror gives people doesn't exist for me, so at the end of an enjoyable reading experience I was left with a "so what?" It's a good story, I enjoyed reading it, I'm glad it won the Nebula, I'll be happy if it wins the Hugo, because Sarah Pinsker should win lots of things, but I did not love this story.
A.T.Greenblatt, “Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super" -- I read this one second because I was intrigued by the title, but actually neither the format (episodic is truth in advertising) nor the story worked particularly well for me. A CPA with superpowers (who is valuable to the Super team as a CPA) was a neat setup to see, but other than that, I felt like the story didn't have anything new to say, and I didn't find Sam, or the setting, or anything that was happening, or the prose particularly interesting. It was pretty forgettable, I thought.
Naomi Kritzer, "Monster" -- like the Pinsker, and like usually happens to me with Kritzer's short fiction, this was a story I enjoyed reading -- I liked the prose, I liked spending time in Cecily's POV, I liked seeing this part of China that I knew nothing about and experiencing it through the first impressions of an observant but distracted stranger. I'm not sure if Cecily's non-neurotypical-ness was done plausibly, but it worked for me, and I liked that things like her sensory issues, backtracking to stop herself from overexplaining, etc. are present and influencing her life without the story ever needing to well on a diagnosis or label. I really liked Cecily's thought processes, where she isn't sure of how she's meant to react to something, or thinks her way through a new or uncomfortable situation, or assumes that if something interpersonal isn't working it's her fault by default before convincing herself otherwise ("What's wrong with me, I thought, and then I thought, there's nothing wrong with me. The problem here is him. He's acting like an asshole.") -- her POV felt really strong and grounded in a specific character, which I think I'd been missing in the reading I'd done just before (e.g. Legendborn). Spoilers I liked the flashbacks and the way they're interwoven with the action of the present day, the way the relationship with Andrew and his character is revealed. I don't think the plot really holds water, Cecily being able to find him, betray/kill him that easily, keep the serum out of the hands of the government, but verisimilitude is not the point, the point is thematic. And I thought the story hit the themes a bit too on the nose -- "Because that is what you do when your friend is a monster. [...] You don't defend them. You don't deny it. You do what you have to do." felt too didactic/preachy and the aside about "Please note, I'm not talking about eliminating neurodiversity from the population" when talking about eradicating diseases with gene editing (that felt more like an authorial aside than a Cecily aside). Anyway, so, I liked reading this story quite a lot, but I don't know that it really works for me as a story, which makes me a tad ambivalent about it. Quote: "I'd spent my whole life up to that point [college] as a fish out of water, leaping from jar to cup to puddle in a desperate bid to stay alive, and suddenly I'd found my way to the ocean. To water, to other fish, to the place I'd always belonged but never had been able to find." (I don't empathize with that, but it's a neat quote anyway.)
Isabel Fall, "Helicopter Story" -- so, like many people, I imagine, I heard about this story originally via the controversy back in Jan 2020, but I hadn't read the story before it was taken down, and while I was able to find an archived copy when the Hugo nominations came out and I was surprised but pleased (out of a matter of principle, at that point) to see it on the ballot, I didn't read it right then, either, though I'd been curious to check it out for myself. A couple of days before I did read the story,
cyanshadow linked me to this long article on the aftermath (good article, but very sad), and I think reading that might have spurred me to go back to reading through the novelettes and "Helicopter Story" itself.
And I was surprised by how much I liked it. I was expecting to continue to support it on principle, but not to actually enjoy it, because a story about a person who "sexually identif[ies] as an attack helicopter" (even played straight/explored earnestly and/or subversively) did not sound like the kind of story I'd actually enjoy. And I didn't enjoy it precisely, but it's doing interesting things, at much more than the surface level (which I feel is kind of rare in short fiction, even awards shortlist short fiction, at least in the years I've been reading it), and I thought the prose was very strong (though I skimed the military jargon heavy bits, while appreciating them for the overall contribution to the unusual voice), and it was just really different from anything I've read recently, and that was neat and refreshing. I don't agree at all with the premise explored in the story (because I personally do not see gender as all that fundamental, while of course realizing that for some people it is), but I enjoyed stepping through the thorough exploration of that premise (from the couple of axioms about gender that it posits and then builds on) in a similar way I enjoy stepping through a Ted Chiang story, which also tends to be in a through-exploration-of-concept way.
So, yeah, I read the story thinking "this is really good" and "I think this might actually be going at the top of my ballot??", which I completely had not expected. And it makes me extra sad that, per the Vox article, it sounds like the author will not be publishing anymore (at least under that name, i.e. the name I would know to find her under). That definitely feels like a loss for the SFF community. That said, I do actually feel like the original title and opening line, which reference the "sexually identify as an attack helicopter" meme, which led to the controversy in the first place, were actually the weakest parts of the story for me. Like, I don't think engaging with the meme explicitly makes the story stronger -- the opening line is kind of disorienting, because it has to be corrected right away anyway. And I don't believe that anyone who read the entire story (in good faith) would think the story was written to troll, while I can see how the title and opening line alone would make someone think that (whereupon they should read the story before judging it, but, well, people).
Anyway, I'm glad the Hugos finally made me read this story, and I hope Isabel Fall, under this name or another, writes more SFF things and gets the recognition she deserves instead of the terrible experience with this debut. And I want to remember to nominate her for Astounding, when nominations come around (assuming she's eligible. I suppose she might have published under a different name before, which I'm assuming would make her ineligible?)
Meg Ellison, "The Pill" -- I found the beginning powerful, despite being one-note. I mean, a novelette is short enough that I could still enjoy it despite the one-note-ness, and I thought it melded the specfic, horror, and dystopia aspects pretty well. But the ending felt like kind of a left turn, and into things that worked less well for me. Like, I appreciate that it ends on an unexpectedly hopeful note, but tbh the ending felt tacked on rather than organic.
cahn had mentioned that the pacing of the story felt off, as if it was trying to cram a novel's worth of stuff into the novelette form, and maybe that's what I'm feeling, too -- I could perhaps buy the ending if it came after a novel's worth of experiences, rather than just sitting there, arbitrarily, at the end of a powerful and disturbing beginning.
Aliette de Bodard, "The Inaccessibility of Heaven" -- This has been the most enjoyable story by de Bodard for me yet, but that's actually a pretty low bar. I was reasonably intrigued by the setting, modern technology and angels and magic, but the focus on Fallen angels isn't really my thing. And the story presents itself as a mystery, but it didn't work for me as a mystery, because everything pivots on magical things which were not something that could be figured out from the information given. Possibly it would have felt like a fairer mystery if I were more familiar with this universe, but I suspect not. Anyway, in the absence of being able to enjoy it as a mystery, and without finding the themes or aethetic my thing, I derived what enjoyment I could from the characters. Sam and Cal did not do anything for me -- I dunno, maybe I would've known them and felt more for their relationship (??) if I'd read more of the series? But I did like Arvedai, the gang-boss Fallen angel, and might actually be interested in reading more things about him, if they exist.
Hugo roundup: novelette -- 6/6. Helicopter Story (well written and thought-provoking, and also, yes, fuck you, people forming Twitter mobs about a story without having read it or given the author the benefit of the doubt), Two Truths and a Lie (it does what it sets out to do very well, I just don't care about the thing it's doing), The Pill (would've been quite a bit higher on the list if not for the ending kind of dissipating the power of the story for me), Monster (enjoyable but flawed), Inaccessibility of Heaven (not bad, actually!), Burn (meh). The top 4 are all pretty close together for me. I think the Pinsker is probably objectively the best constructed story that best accomplishes the thing it sets out to do, it just suffers from not being a story I particularly want to read. The other three are doing things that are more interesting to me with lesser degrees of perfection, but I'm glad I read all of them. I have to say, overall, I'm impressed -- I didn't dislike any of these, which was not the case the previous two times I voted (first time I had two stories ranked below No Award, second time there was a story I did not get more than a page into). I dunno if novelettes are getting better or if I'm gaining some sort of tolerance for the form that I didn't have before, but I seem to be monotonically liking more of these every year, hm.
*
I continued to watch Loki weekly, though unlike the mindfuck of WandaVision, I didn't really feel like there was enough to say about it every week. Spoilers
I liked episode 3, where Loki and Slyvie hang out in the apocalypse. The YouTube channels I've been following liked it too, but it sounds like fandom-at-large had a lot of complaints? Anyway, the heart-to-heart was lovely and drunken Loki was adorable.
In contrast, episode 4 was a bit of a letdown after that, until the after-credits scene with the multiple Lokis. OK, so, from the third or fourth onward, I've been watching them spoiled, because I can't do the midnight thing mid-week and don't have the self-control to not watch spoilery videos, so it's very possible that episode 4 would've played very differently to me if I hadn't already known about Mobius and Loki getting pruned. But ah well.
Five was a lot of fun again. The different Lokis of course (the alligator, LOL), and the interaction between them:
Old Loki: So, why do you want to return to the TVA so badly?
Big Loki: Did you leave your glorious purpose there?
But the repetition of "glorious purpose" in this episode got a little old, and so Old Loki shouting it at the end did not really land for me. I liked everything else about that character and that scene, so that was a bit of a pity.
The finale, eh. I was one of those people who were meh on the finale. He Who Remains was fun at first, but I think there was a bit too much of him. I did like the revelation that Loki is now in a different universe, with the TVA under different control, but I do wish there had been something to make the story of the season feel more complete -- that wasn't a satisfying ending, it just kind of stopped.
*
Oh, right, and I've been wanting to pick up that "Frankenstein" fannish meme that's going around, so let's give it a shot:
1. What's changed about your fandom life in the last 365 days?
Let's see... In July 2020, I had recently finished watching Community, had read the first of the KJ Charles Will Darling books (in the intervening year, I've finished the trilogy, which was really fun to the finish), and completed the sync reads of Cyteen and Song for a New Day (funny that I'm currently in the middle of the next Pinsker novel) -- I was just coming out of a reading slump that had lasted since I lost my commute in early March.
I'm reading much more predictably now, having evolved a new routine for that over the last 365 days -- reading in bed and reading on my walks -- and instead of having finished like 13 books by July, I've finished 30. In the last 365 days of reading, I was disappointed by Peace Talks and thus still haven't cracked open Battle Ground; loved Silver in the Wood and was disappointed by the sequel; discovered a Jo Walton fiction book I actually loved (Among Others); read Natasha Pulley's The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, which I've just recently been discussing with
cafemassolit/
ikel89 and vicariously with
seriouslywhy/
alenky_cveto4ek, who just finished their sync read of it; participated in a really cool sync read of John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting and one for Winter's Orbit; read some Zen Cho I actually liked; the book of Warchild short stories finally came out and contained an absolutely glorious Cairo story which could've been written Just For Me; kept up with the Rivers of London series (via graphic novels and shorts) and caught up on the Tarot Sequence; discovered new authors C.M.Waggoner and K.A.Larkwood, whose books I really liked; and read rather a lot of Hugo homework, some of which I even really liked. I even read two unusual-for-me non-genre books, a cute romance and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. Probably most impactfully in quantitative terms, I finally caught up on Murderbot, after falling like 3 books behind over the last 3 years -- I read 4 Murderbot stories so far this year, and absolutely LOVED Network Effect.
In late July/August there was a big spike of Dragaera discussion between me and
sysann (and a couple of shorter discussions with other folks) when The Baron of Magister Valley came out. January through March were also Dragaera-heavy months, because Sys was completing an epic Character Roulette meme staffed ONLY by assorted Dragaerans. I'm really starting to miss the fandom again, now that I know Tsalmoth is written (though probably still about a year away...)
I finished the last season of The Good Place and binged my way through She-Ra, and actually managed to keep up with weekly TV for the first time in YEARS with WandaVision and Loki. After watching a total of 2 movies in 2020, I've already watched 6 this year, all at L's instigation. OK, 4 of them were animated, but still.
In contrast to the past two years I had done Yuletide, when I only posted a single story, I posted THREE things (two in the main collection, one in Madness), and also had the really cool experiences of a) getting a treat from a stranger and b) getting an assigned writer with whom I clicked so well that I had written a treat for them after being won over by their letter, and both of us figured out we were each other's writers -- that was a really lovely experience! This Yuletide treat was also my first time writing for a canon in a different language than I think about the canon -- that was odd, but I'm still really happy with the result. (I'm also thrilled that
ikel89 read the book and enjoyed it as much as she did.) Also, after a ~2 year dry spell of fannish poetry, I posted 3 new fannish poems to AO3, in 3 different fandoms (and a new form for fannish poetry for me, a ghazal), and reprised the trick-or-treat meme with some fannish limericks and a very special triolet. Oh, and there was also a Dragera acrostic for Sys for
fandomtrees.
I also made a lot more icons in the past year than the year previously.
I had already attended a couple of virtual cons (Flights of Foundry and Balticon) over a year ago -- both of which I attended for the second year, and actually got myself some Balticon swag this time, though it hasn't yet arrived, and continued to attend virtual cons whenever the opportunity to do so easily arose. The coolest con moment was when I got to attend a kaffeeklatsch with Sarah Pinsker during C'monfluence, and ask her some questions about "And Then There Were (N-One)" and Luce's background in Song for a New Day (the only previous -- live -- kaffeeklatsch I'd attended was with Ada Palmer, and I'd been much quieter in that one).
I don't think anything about my interaction with fandom has changed in the last 365 days, though. I haven't fallen out with any old fandoms, or gotten seriously into new ones, though I've read fic for several canons I've discovered in that time (Locked Tomb, Unspoken Name, Scholomance) and consumed other kinds of fanworks for She-Ra.
2. Your newest fandom.
I wouldn't call it a proper fandom, but the last new canon I picked up for which I had significant fannish discussions and consumed fanfic was Gideon the Ninth/Locked Tomb. I don't think I like it enough to consider it a fandom of mine -- I just find it intriguing. I did read some fic and look at fanart and watch vids, though, as well as have spent quite a while talking about it both in person and online, so maybe it counts.
If I apply the metric of "last fandom I got into enough to acquire an icon", that would be Blake's 7, and you know what, that feels right. In early 2020 I spent A LOT of time reading Blake's 7 fic, and I even rewatched some episodes, which is never a thing that I do, and I did spend rather a long time thinking about Avon and Servalan and Blake/Avon.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1153601.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
Since it's an ARC, I'll go a bit more into the premise than I usually do: the setting is Edwardian England with hidden magic. blurb level spoilers Robin, recently orphaned young noble lad in the civil service, stumbles upon the magical world through a bureaucratic mistake and ends up under a curse. He and his magical liaison, Edwin, have to work together to remove Robin's curse and eventually uncover a magical mystery. And, of course, they fall in love, because this is at least as much m/m paranormal romance as it is a historical fantasy. There is a non-romance side to the plot, and it sets up a series arc for what I assume will be a trilogy, but the strength and I think also the heart of the book are the romance beats.
The character work is definitely the strongest suit; the plot and setting are -- well, honestly, I can't think of a deeper/more fitting word than "fun" again -- but nothing that blew my mind. And even the characters were... familiar? not "derivative", they were definitely their own people, but my reaction to both of them was not "I love this guy!" (though I did like them both) but, "oh, he reminds me of [character X, Y, etc.]" I liked Robin, with his easy charm rooted in kindness and decency, his sporty interests and unexpected artistic eye, his relationship with sister Maud and the shared trauma of the parents who chased fame as philanthropists while neglecting their actual dependents. At first, courtesy of the historical British setting, he was reminding me of Ned from the Death by Silver books a bit (though in those, Ned is the magician of the couple, while Robin is the 'Muggle'), and when I was talking about Robin to Zoom Best Chat, I was referring to him as "the Damen one" (since Captive Prince is a shared reference point for us all).
Edwin I found less... attachable, but I did think he was an interesting character. The thing I liked best about Edwin is that his POV was believably that of a Ravenclaw nerd person whose mind works in taxonomies, organizing information, drawing connections in a way that felt really true to how my mind and the minds of other Edwin-minded people I know work, which is actually not at all always the case with nerdy characters in books. I don't know that I can explain it, but often the "booksmart" character stuff feels superficial -- they use jargon, they infodump as a shorthand to signal that they're nerds. Edwin, even when he was thinking about a situation where he was completely out of his depth, was thinking in a way that -- well, honestly, that a Ravenclaw Secondary would think: "He had the grinding, half-painful/half-wonderful sense that meant facts and precedents and logic were slowly finding one another in his mind, sliding into place, presenting a solution. [...] He was afraid to breathe in case he disturbed it." (and now I want to try to remember if there was a Serpentcast episode where the Serpents sorted their characters). And the climactic scene where FULL-BLOWN SPOILERS from here! he makes a decision at the crucial moment, faced with the older brother who's tormented him all his life: "He thought" I don't have to tell Walt anything. He thought: Walt will tear this house apart [etc. etc.] Edwin forced the churning flood to settle, and pulled his decision clear." Just, his thought processes were so neatly done, it was a pleasure to follow them and feel like, hey, this author gets how a mind like that works! (as a possessor of a similar sort of mind)
And there's an interesting thing going on with him and magic: his relationship to magic is one that I . His relationship to magic is one that I don't think I've seen before, actually -- one of expertise without much capability. When I brought this up to
ikel89, she did not find it as unusual, because it reminded her of sports anime -- the former champion who is an expert on the theory but is too old or injured to compete himself, which, fair enough! Regarding the magic -- what I mean is, Edwin is someone who is very academically into magic, he knows a lot, he can synthesize things in a way that others can't, but his personal abilities to do magic are very weak: not quite a Squib, but someone who needs to use an aid that most magic-users age out of as children, and I found that an interesting framework to work within (although he does get some vicarious power by the end). But at the character level, Edwin reminded me of others, too. Whyborne, from the Whyborne & Griffin books, for the magic and crappy family-of-origin life, but -- as I reassured
lunasariel A LOT less whiny than Whyborne. And this wouldn't have occurred to me on my own, but I was listening to the Serpentcast episode where they answered the question of which character type do they keep writing again and again, and Freya said Lymond -- a charming, bookish person, "but you can do plus or minus the charming and just have someone who is bookish and clever" -- and I was like, OH, I know this one! (Robin gets the charm, and I guess they kind of work as foils that way, because Edwin feels envious of Robin's skill with people.)
OK, so the dudes are nice on their own, if a bit... familiar. Their relationship was... a little arbitrary, to be honest -- like, I don't actually ship it, because this particular dynamic isn't interesting to me, but it's also not actively off-putting or anything -- it's just pleasant. I buy Edwin being attracted to Robin's bravery and kindness and strength, since the kindness especially seems in short supply both among the men of his family and what we've seen of his exes. And I can see Robin being attracted to Edwin's sharp mind and clever magical hands, and they go through a thing together, so I'm fine with it, but I feel no burning desire for them to be together; I don't feel like they particularly belong together, in some inexorable way. For all that, I did actually enjoy the romance beats -- starting out with mutual distrust and/or annoyance, bonding in adversity, working together. There was less pining than I'd expected, but I appreciated that the two of them actually talked to each other, and apologize when warranted and make up quickly instead of sulking miserably apart, and that there were no stupid misunderstandings. There are issues that come between them, and scenes like Edwin being unwilling to ask Robin to stay -- but Edwin is actually right about that, I think, even though Robin doesn't seem to think so. The sex was more explicit, and there was more of it, than I'd been expecting from a book marketed as fantasy vs paranormal romance, but this is definitely not a complaint. (The sex scene with the use of magic was particularly nicely done, I thought.)
I liked what we saw of some of the other characters, too -- the secretary Miss Morrissey, the old lady Flora Sutton, and I kind of liked Charlie, Edwin's brother in law, and was relieved he was not implicated in the evil plot shenanigans. Oh, and Jack Alston was intriguing; I assume we'll see more about him and his presumed-dead twin sister in the sequels (currently I'm thinking Elsie is the leader of the group Walt is part of, motivated by trying to restore her brother's magic, or share hers with him, something like that). And I was impressed with Freya's ability to make even tertiary characters memorable, and to quickly sketch in a character on introduction, like in this intro: "The only other woman was Trudie Davenport, the sharp-featured brunette with a da Vinci nose and an actress's high laugh, who even on ten seconds' acquaintance gave off the air of a marble set loose in a bowl -- always trying to return herself to the center of things" -- this is such a great little blurb! It both gives a neat, memorable impression of Trudie, AND it shows neat things about Robin's POV, the things he notices, the metaphors he uses, the type of person he is able to "diagnose" most accurately given the environment he grew up with.
The magical worldbuilding is pretty familiar. It feels like an Edwardian AU of Harry Potter, or maybe a magical AU of the Will Darling books -- solid but nothing special. I felt the same way about the magic, although I do like cradling as the externalization of magic, and the house magic we get in Sutton. I also had similar feelings about the plot. I can't say that I guessed every twist three steps ahead, but I was never surprised -- I think I just wasn't bothering to try to figure out the whodunit, because it never felt like the answer was going to be all that interesting. And it feels a bit like Robin's glimpses of the future were a little bit of a cheat for the plot, seeding things that would happen so the characters would have a reason to go and do the things that Robin saw happening. The setup for some kind of grander confrontation in the future is seeded, but sounds fairly generic at this point. There are some things more meaningful than a magical mystery in the book, and I appreciated them being there, and also being fairly light touch, but also don't feel like anything novel or profound is being said about the dismissive view of women in Edwardian England, in both mundane society and the magical one, with Miss Morrissey doing all the actual work for Gatling and Flora Sutton and her circle of women practitioners working a different sort of magic going completely overlooked. I didn't feel like it needed to be any more foregrounded at this point, but I assume more on that is coming in subsequent books, especially if it turns out Elsie Alston is involved as either antagonist or hidden ally, but for the time being it's just sort of there in the background, being a pleasant and expected component of the worldbuilding.
It feels like I was lukewarm on the book, but actually I wasn't -- I read it very fast and enjoyed it a lot. It's just not a very deep form of enjoyment. And yet, the writing is actually really lovely and really good, and really funny -- I took down a lot of quotes -- and I think you can't really tell that it's a debut novel, because everything is very elegant and hangs together very well. It's just not a particularly ambitious construction, compared to some other (messier but more audacious) first novels I've been reading recently. (I'm curious to see whether after this Freya will stick to formula or branch out into less familiar-feeling things...)
Quotes (there are a lot, because I really liked the writing):
"It was the resigned expression of someone on whom jokes were often played, and who knew he was expected to laugh afterwards even if they were more cruel than funny."
"He was in the mood to not talk with anyone and, as sometimes happened, felt perversely like surrounding himself with people to not-talk to."
"Charlie always liked people more once he'd explained something badly to them, and Bel just liked things that were Edwin's."
Robin, falling for Edwin: "A delicate, turbulent, Turner-sketch attractiveness that hit Robin like a clean hook to the jaw."
"How much do you know about natural science?"
"Er," said Robin.
"Gravity? Sir Isaac Newton?"
"The apple chap?"
Edwin visibly shredded his planned explanation into shorter words.
"Robin managed to dip his aching head beneath the surface of a doze, thoughts unspooling like a dropped roll of thread. Like grlowing string."
"He thought about how Edwin looked at [his ill mother], as though storing up grain for winter."
Robin thinking about Edwin: "You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I'd like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you."
"Edwin. Shut up," Robin suggested.
Edwin did, gratefully.
"It was a bad angle. It was a bad kiss. Edwin hadn't kissed anyone in years and it was like a language long unspoken. And then Robin's mouth was on his again, and all of a sudden the grammar of the thing fell into place."
"But he was entirely at sea in the etiquette. What came after sex and before sleep?"
"It promised all sorts of things that Edwin wasn't equipped to hear. He had the ludicrous urge to ask Robin to write them down; to bind them up and give them to him on paper."
"No matter what this was, fight or forgiveness or farewell, he wanted to be standing for it."
"[Edwin] and Hawthorn had bickered, but they'd had very few real fights. Edwin wanted any conflict to end as soon as possible; Jack seemed to want to live in a house built of low-grade needling and casual mockery."
Edwin, after the fight with Robin: "Body and mind: perfectly hale. There was nothing else about him, no other component to feel bruised beyond easy repair, and so rationality dictated that he could not feel that way."
"It felt as though every cell in his body had replaced itself over that span of days, silent and individually unnoticed, forming something the exact shape as the old edwin which nonetheless resonated at a different frequency."
"We are but feeble women," said Miss Morrissey. "Woe."
"Your sister is a magician," Robin said, pointing out what seemed the largest hole in this story [that Robin intimidated them into doing his bidding].
"Woe," said Mrs Kaur firmly.
Edwin: "He was tempted and tense and he was terrified of pain. But he'd found a line in himself, right where Billy's casual shrugs met the memory of Robin gasping on the lakeshore, and he wasn't going to cross it. It was a relief to know that the line was there."
"Robin's two contributions to the adventure thus far had been baroneting Edwin's suite number out of the concierge, and managing not to step through the subtle shimmer of the spell and plant his fist in Billy Byatt's freckled face."
"The sheer thrill of discovery had kept it [fear] at bay when watching the coin take shape. He'd half forgotten that they were here under duress, with no guarantee of safe exit."
"his fear had washed out of him. He'd never outgrow it entirely -- he'd frown up with it woven into his nerves, a spell cast on a sapling"
"He wanted to be worthy of the way Edwin was lowering himself into trust like water on the verge of over-hot."
I wonder if the balance of how much I loved the prose vs everything else is indicative of Freya's fanfic roots (and the fanficcy feeling of the book) -- the prose feels a couple of books further along than plot and setting, and what I liked about the characters were less intrinsic "I want to spend more time with this person!" feelings and more just how well realized I thought the characters were, how well their natures and thoughts were shown through the writing. Which, Freya's got thousands of words worth of experience doing those things, and less experience with original setting, and I feel like it's accepted practice for plot to be secondary to relationship in fic, even where the fic has a solid plot. But anyway, this was a very fun ride, and I'm looking forward to the sequels, and whatever else Freya writes next.
32. Tracy Deonn, Legendborn -- I had a very all-over-the-place trajectory with this book. Reading the prologue, I was thinking this would be a book where I made it to the self-imposed 50 pages for Hugo homework reading and quit, because the writing style full of sentence fragments to show emotion/mental state was not working for me. Thankfully the prose normalized a bit once we were out of the prologue, and I figured I would keep on reading, but I was still rolling my eyes at the clumsy infodumps and ridiculous worldbuilding and YA drama, and thinking how apparently I've gotten too old to read YA. But as the book wore on, I did find myself enjoying and even somewhat invested in certain aspects (well, primarily one aspect: Sel), and the ending got me -- I'm actually intrigued enough that I would probably pick up the sequel, if I came across it or had a reason to read it. I still don't think it's a particularly good book, and I feel like the more serious parts of it and the "YA urban fantasy" parts of it don't mesh together particularly well.
Maybe I will actually talk about the book by individual parts for that reason, because that seems to be how it fits in my brain.
The book opens with the protagonist/first person narrator, Bree, dealing with her grief upon losing her mother at sixteen. The mother died in a car accident, though Bree suspects foul play, and the events of the book are set in motion as she investigates the secret society she expects may be implicated in her mother's death. SPOILERS from here! One of the late-book twists I hadn't expected and liked was that, actually, her mother's death really is an accident. There IS magical stuff at play, but nobody killed Bree's mother, and the fact that there is no-one to blame is something Bree has to come to terms with -- that was pretty cool. The author's afterword and an interview I've come across all talk about how Deonn's loss of her own mother at a young age, and only later coming to accept and start to work through the trauma, was the genesis of this book, and there is a therapist character whom Bree talks to, who delivers a very earnest PSA about Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder (although the therapist character ALSO insists on meeting Bree at the campus cemetery and introduces her to magic outside the Arthurian Order stuff). While I respect the genesis of the story, and I really respect that there are no answers, no evil forces to blame to help Bree in coming to terms with her mother's death, having her be the After-Bree, the angry, distanced, bereaved person, for most of the book did not actually make for a very satisfying reading experience for me. I didn't have a good feel for what Bree was like, behind her wall of pain and anger, because we didn't really see any of the Before-Bree -- we heard about her a little, but nothing that made her a character I could latch onto. Her relationship with her father seemed really sweet! I liked the idea of her and Alice's friendship (although their nerdy banter felt unnatural and awkward to me), but it was all reaching back to a different person than who I was seeing on the page for most of the book. And besides that, what was there to Bree? That she was driven, unwilling to be pushed around? Sure, but even all that felt kind of situational. I read a whole book from her POV, and I can't say that I got any sense of her core. (I don't know if part of the problem was that the author was identifying with Bree so much, given their shared circumstances, that she forgot to give her an actual distinct character. Whatever the reason, I did not click with Bree, although she did get better by the end, one of the reasons I'm considering reading on.
The other serious thing the book is engaging with is racism, historical and modern-day, from flashbacks into memories of Bree's ancestors during chattel slavery to Bree having to deal with acquaintances touching her hair. These were some of the aspects where the book worked best for me -- I feel like this is where it was best able to bridge the epic/historical and mundane/YA worlds -- this was the actual thread of continuity. Some of the most poignant scenes for me were Bree looking at mounuments -- of the college, of the Order -- and feeling herself and her ancestors excluded from the narrative. The modern-day stuff felt a little... disconnected from the rest of the interactions, though. Maybe realistically so -- I wouldn't know -- but there were these scenes where secondary characters would Do a Racism, and Bree would have thoughts about it or tell them off, depending on the balance of power in the situation, and then the narrative would move on. It made sense with the cop who asked veiled questions about how she got into the program his son was trying for, or the dean implying Bree was unruly and her friend Alice Chen was passive, since Bree never interacts with either of them again, but one of the Order kids that Bree spends a bunch of time with is the one that touches Bree's hair without permission, prompting Bree to snap, "I'm not a petting zoo" and have a whole mini-lecture, but I can't even remember which of the girls this was, because it doesn't affect their future interactions in any way. Which may be totally realistic -- I am perfectly willing to believe that a Black girl with natural hair has to deal with this crap often enough that it doesn't even register who is doing it and that it's pointless to bear grudges against it. But it made the scene, which I otherwise appreciated, feel like it was just randomly plunked down there to have a "don't touch Black hair" PSA. That disonnectedness aside, I actually really liked the way Bree's hair was sort of a key little detail at various points throughout the book -- not, like, a plot point, but just there in her awareness a whole lot, from realizing it might get messed up since she's not sleeping on satin when she falls asleep next to Nick, to the ultimate form of self-care being setting several hours aside to wash her hair, to feeling and seeing the wind in her hair and Mariah's when they're having the memory walk experiences. (Note to self: apparently the official term is Afro-textured hair.)
A big problem I had with the early part of the book, especially, was the sheer YA-ness of it. I notice it's harder and harder for me to appreciate YA and teen romance, what with having teenagers of my own. And, OK, I have a kid about to head off to college, which probably explains why my reaction to Bree, her first weeks in college (at sixteen, no less!), spending all her time skulking about in search of magical mysteries, monsters, and assorted hot boys was, GO TO CLASS, CHILD! You are here to study, so OPEN YOUR BOOKS, do your homework, get some sleep, do the things you came here to do! I also don't understand some of the choices this book makes about ages and settings. Like, OK, I suppose it had to be set on a college campus so that Bree could run around unsupervised by her father, live in the dorms, etc. (and because Deonn wanted to, since UNC is her alma mater and she specifically wanted to set a story there). But I don't understand why she had to be 16 then -- she mostly acts a lot older, as do the other Early College kids, they hang out in a bar -- I actually kind of wondered if Bree and everyone was older in an earlier draft and she just decided to deage them for some reason? It is hard enough to take teenage romance seriously; it is WAY HARDER when the Epic Lovers are 16 and 17. Those are BABIES.
Speaking of teenage romance, I found Nick exceedingly bland, and his makeouts with Bree very pro forma. That said... I actually kind of ship Sel/Nick? Between Sel being bound to Nick by his Oath, Nick resenting Sel for the Merlins taking away his mother, from growing up in the same house to the power struggle over leadership with Nick's father out of the picture -- there's actually some stuff that appeals to me here! (The scene where Nick unrepentantly punches Sel, knowing Selwyn can't fight back, and Sel points that out, and Nick doesn't care? That was a RTMI scene.) And it's a really nice touch that Selwyn's crush on Nick is canonical, though he claims he's outgrown it (I have my doubts). I actually did also like the relationship between Sel and Bree. It's probably meant to be shippy in a love triangle way (10 out of 18 stories on AO3 are Sel/Bree, for example, with 5-6 each for Nick/Bree, Sel/Nick, and the OT3), but I actually just like them working together, pricklily but effectively. Anyway, I see I'm not alone in finding Selwyn the most interesting character. I mean, yes, he is a tortured orphan who has been taught that his power will eventually drive him mad, that's fandom catnip, obviously, but I also like his grumpy ways and occasional unexpected internet-meme-based utterances. It's kind of funny, when I got to the 80% mark, and Bree and Nick were being all lovey dovey, and we got confirmation of Selwyn being into Nick, and Bree and Sel continued to experience almost literal sparks, I was thinking, what is this, Merlin fanfic (which, I have only fandom osmosis experience of both canon and fanfic for Merlin, but it was pretty persistent osmosis for a while there) with Nick as Arthur, Sel as a Merlin who is Arthur's age-mate, and Bree as Gwen? But no, apparently it's a Arthur-Merlin-Lancelot love triangle, which is quite a bit more interesting.
Which, OK, let's talk about the Arthur thing. I actually don't understand WHY Arthur is a thing here. Deonn talks about it in the afterword and a Tor.com article I came across, and, like, I'm totally in agreement that all Arthuriana is fanfic and can be remixed to one's heart's content. I personally have no interest in Arthuriana, but I have no objections to people playing with it, and a Black girl as a reincarnation of Arthur is actually pretty awesome! My two problems with Arthuriana in this book come down to: 1) it doesn't feel like anything about the Arthur legend has anything to do with, well, any of the other stuff that's going on -- Rootcraft, secret societies in a US college, demons opening Gates -- I mean, not mytologically, although that, too, but, like thematically, so it just never stopped feeling random, and 2) none of it makes ANY sense XD I don't necessarily need magic and reincarnation and whatnot to make sense, but this book delivers so many infodumps about Lines and Lieges and Regents and Scions and Squires, and how the whole line of succession thing works, that my brain, presented with all this DATA, kept trying to make sense of it, which is not to the benefit of the book, because it does not actually make sense. Like, OK, Scions can be Called (so many Meaningful Capitals, omg kill me) between the ages of 16 and 22. But, like, what happens the rest of the time? These Lines don't seem to be having many, many children to ensure that at any time there is a Scion of each of the major Lines of the appropriate age -- it seems like before Nick, the Scion of Arthur was his father, and his grandfather before that (when Nick talks about "I never though I'd have to really deal with it, you know? Not really. My dad didn't. Granddad didn't."-- it doesn't seem like there were uncles/cousins/whatever between them). But if the Scion thing is just passing from parent to child, then you get a pattern where for every 20 years (a generation) you have an active (activatable) Scion for only 6 years -- not even a third of the time. Someone says something about "The Scion in each bloodline and the nine potentially eligible discendants in the line of succession behind them begin training as soon as they can walk" -- but where are these people? They don't seem to exist outside of this one sentence... (I feel like this was a worldbuilding hole she tried to paper over with some details added later, but it didn't mesh for me.) And what are the odds that all the lines would have Scions in the right age range at the given moment? This doesn't require thinking about, but all the random info dumped on page made me wonder about these things, and they just don't hold up to any kind of logical examination. (I'm not even going to ask why all these Scions of Arthur and the Round Table ended up in the US. The Percy Jackson books at least attempted to handwave it with the seat of democracy moving to the US or something; we didn't even get something like that here XD They just kind of drift and fetch up on the East Coast, we're told.)
There are a LOT of scenes of fighting monsters, which I found boring and tended to skim. The monsters are not very interesting, and neither is the fighting. And speaking of plot, the pacing is crazy -- I never had a good sense of how much time had passed since the beginning, because the 6 weeks training and tournament schedule kept getting pulled in, and Bree seemed to be spending all her time with the Order or the therapist lady or getting healed from her injuries, leaving it unclear to me when she was, you know, doing her homework, or IDK, laundry, or anything else. Did everything take place in like two weeks? Oh, and Bree learning to fight with three types of weapons in the space of something like 48 hours was also a thing. Which, I don't even understand why the timeline had to be so compressed. You have the built-in timeframe of a college quarter/semester, why not use it? Why compress everything to such a ridiculous degree? It makes it hard to believe not only that Bree has learned to fight but also that she and William or Whitty or whoever are actual friends, rather than fairly recent acquaintances...
But I did like the twist ending, with the Scion of Arthur turning out to be Bree, and Nick turning out to be the Scion of Lancelot instead, on account of a historical Davis getting an enslaved woman, Bree's ancestor, with child, and said Davis's wife having an affair with the Scion of Lancelot and having a child from him. (This is all very soap opera, and yet still WAY LESS soap opera than parts of Harrow the Ninth, so.) I was also not expecting a bunch of people to die at the end; in fact, I'd spend the preceding chunk of the book kind of rolling my eyes at how everyone seems to conveniently survive their grave demon-inflicted injuries. I mean, what kills people and what barely slows them down is very arbitrary and plot-driven, but at least I now believe in the possibility that people *can* die. I *was* expecting Nick's father to turn out to be the bad guy, but was decently pleased with the way that played out.
Finally, on a completely random and very nitpicky note: what's with all the one syllable nicknames? Is this a Southern thing? Nick is as expected, I get Bree for Briana, I get why Selwyn gets shortened to Sel and why Fitz goes by Fitz. I know an Evan who goes by EvBut Tor (Victoria)? Sar (Sara)???
Between the YA romance and the piled-on fairly random worldbuilding and the demons and the hidden identities and OMG-actually-evil! father figures, I was getting some serious Shadowhunter (Mortal Instruments/Cassandra Clare) vibes (I see I'm not alone in that). Well, Clare's banter is way better, and Legendborn has some deeper things it's trying to say, but the Shadowhunter vibe made it harder for me to take it seriously. But it started out being far at the bottom of the Lodestar bunch for me and ended up kind of in the same pile as the other books (or at least as Elatsoe and Cemetery Boys), and overall I'm glad I read it -- it would not have happened without Hugo homework, because I never would've made it out of the prologue if I wasn't set on reading at least 50 pages.
33. T.Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking -- this was a present from
aome for New Year's (thanks again! ♥), which I started right away and then wandered away from, read some more during our spring break trip, and then returned to as part of my Lodestar reading. I hadn't been thinking of it that way until I was almost done, but I think I was basically only reading this book when L was around, since L is my baking companion, and also my Ursula Vernon-reading buddy. So that explains that -- I was wondering. But I also feel like part of the reason it's taken me over six months to read this short book, which is not how it usually goes with me and Ursula Vernon's books, is that I feel like, outside of the delightful (and wonderfully executed!) premise of a wizard with a sourdough starter familiar and baking-related powers, I don't feel like the book is doing much that I haven't seen Ursula Vernon do before.
Even before the afterword, I'd heard Vernon talk about how this book took a really long time to see the light of day, because editors weren't sure if it was a kid book or an adult book and how to calibrate the darkness in it to the audience, until suddenly in 2020 the book's time had come, because "suddenly everyone was into sourdough starters and distrusting the government." I don't know if it's the years of germination and (presumably) rewrites that made the pacing feel odd to me, but it does feel strange -- there are several stories that sort of flow into each other, from the discovery of the dead body, which seems like a mystery start, to SPOILERS from here Mona and Spindle's heist-type thing to infiltrate the palace and warn the Dutchess, to the siege story that the last third of the book becomes, but this progression did not feel particularly novel-shaped.
Also, I think this is the first time I've read Vernon writing first-person POV in anything but a short story, and while I enjoyed Mona's voice for the most part (especially her commitment to being a baker first and foremost, and her Very Serious Feelings about pastry), I don't know that first person was the best choice for what Vernon is trying to say: there's this repetition of 14-year-old Mona feeling like she was too young to deal with these things at 14, it shouldn't come down to her, and statements like "It's a strange way to feel when you're fourteen", and I just don't think teenagers think that way about being teenagers. The "a kid shouldn't have to solve these adult problems" refrain is similar to the one in Minor Mage, but the young protagonist is younger in that book, which I think makes it more plausible, but I also think the third-person POV helps. I was wondering if Mona was narrating it from a point later in life, actually, but from the last chapter it seems like it's really not much later, so it's not that... And speaking of kids book/adult book thing -- I kept forgetting this was published under Vernon's books-for-grown-ups Kingfisher pen name, because it feels more like a kidlit book to me, what with the mentions of poop during the garderobe climb and the overall feel of the story, with mostly-benevolent adults who, outside of people like traitors and scary assassins and the occasional mean people, are generally kind to Mona and Spindle and look out for them. I thought it was less surprising as a kid book than Summer in Orcus (which felt like something with the shape of a kidlit story but not the sensibilities of one) or Minor Mage (with its very creepy ghouls and the child protagonist actually killing someone). Basically, I agree with what Vernon says in the afterword about it being a darkish kids book after all, but I guess the explanation that it doesn't fit with her tradpub Ursula Vernon brand of funny urban dragons and badass hamster princesses makes sense.
I enjoyed the story well enough, but I don't know that reading the whole book gave me all that much more than the basic premise I already knew, a wizard of baking with a sourdough starter familiar (Bob the starter was great! I wish there had been more of him in the book, but Mona and he are apart for most of the story). I mean, I liked Mona's experiments with sympathetic magic as applied to dough, and the giant gingerbread golems were an awesome idea! And I didn't find it quite two-Tumblr-posts-worth-of-plot as I did Finna (the wormhole-IKEA novella), but it didn't feel like a novel's worth of a book, either. There *are* some interesting ideas it touches on -- Knackering Molly was really interesting, in both powers and backstory, and I loved that the Crowning Moment of Awesome (tragic as it is) belongs to her; the conversation Mona has with her Uncle, about the men forgotten by bureaucratic oversight who were turned into heroes of a siege so nobody would have to admit the error ("You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don't ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place"), was really great! I wish those had gotten more play. I was pleasantly surprised that at the end, after fighting together and all the recognition, Mona was still a little mad at the Dutchess for letting things in her city deteriorate to that point, and doesn't think much of her governing skills, but it didn't feel like it went anywhere. I think there's a grown-up book lurking beneath the surface of the book that got published, which has more about Knackering Molly and the convenience of heroes and less focus on crawling through poop, and I suspect I would've liked that book more. (I *did* like this book! I would've been very pleased with this book coming from a random author. But I guess I expect more of Vernon, and this wasn't quite up to the level of my favorites of hers.)
A couple of quotes:
Here is the most relatable-for-2020 sentence, just after Mona leaves the tower where she's been hiding from the Inquisitors: "Being out on the street again felt like my birthday. I was giddy. I wanted to laugh and dance and hug strangers."
I also liked Mona's food metaphors: "The sky looked like a raw egg, runny with streaks of red in it." "Arrows rained down, with a hiss like butter on the griddle, magnified a hundred times."
Hugo roundup: Lodestar -- 5/6. A Deadly Education (I didn't love it, I'm not even sure how much I liked it, but it definitely made me think about it more than the others), Defensive Baking (look, a middle-of-the-road Ursula Vernon is still a lot better than most books), Cemetery Boys (the parts I liked -- Julian -- mostly outweigh the parts I didn't), Elatsoe (I like what it's going for, but have no strong feelings about the book one way or another), Legendborn (I like a few of the things this is doing and respect several more, but I feel like whatever strengths this book has are undermined by its weaknesses/choices, and the whole just isn't very... good). I have them ranked like this, but actually the distance between my top pick and my bottom pick is not very wide this year, unlike some past years; none of these were books I loved unreservedly and wanted to shove at people, but these are all books I would rec-with-caveats to folks. (We'll see if Raybearer proves the same. I've read the first chapter or so and am enjoying it so far, but it has been recced to me with caveats of its own.)
**
I also read the Hugo nominated novelettes:
Sarah Pinsker, "Two Truths and a Lie" -- I liked it in the way I like Sarah Pinsker writing spec fic set in the real world -- I like the characters, the writing, the atmosphere (the show concept and the show itself were nicely creepy! the hoarder house situation was creepy!everything was creepy!). But it's horror, and I don't get the point of horror, like, whatever satisfaction reading horror gives people doesn't exist for me, so at the end of an enjoyable reading experience I was left with a "so what?" It's a good story, I enjoyed reading it, I'm glad it won the Nebula, I'll be happy if it wins the Hugo, because Sarah Pinsker should win lots of things, but I did not love this story.
A.T.Greenblatt, “Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super" -- I read this one second because I was intrigued by the title, but actually neither the format (episodic is truth in advertising) nor the story worked particularly well for me. A CPA with superpowers (who is valuable to the Super team as a CPA) was a neat setup to see, but other than that, I felt like the story didn't have anything new to say, and I didn't find Sam, or the setting, or anything that was happening, or the prose particularly interesting. It was pretty forgettable, I thought.
Naomi Kritzer, "Monster" -- like the Pinsker, and like usually happens to me with Kritzer's short fiction, this was a story I enjoyed reading -- I liked the prose, I liked spending time in Cecily's POV, I liked seeing this part of China that I knew nothing about and experiencing it through the first impressions of an observant but distracted stranger. I'm not sure if Cecily's non-neurotypical-ness was done plausibly, but it worked for me, and I liked that things like her sensory issues, backtracking to stop herself from overexplaining, etc. are present and influencing her life without the story ever needing to well on a diagnosis or label. I really liked Cecily's thought processes, where she isn't sure of how she's meant to react to something, or thinks her way through a new or uncomfortable situation, or assumes that if something interpersonal isn't working it's her fault by default before convincing herself otherwise ("What's wrong with me, I thought, and then I thought, there's nothing wrong with me. The problem here is him. He's acting like an asshole.") -- her POV felt really strong and grounded in a specific character, which I think I'd been missing in the reading I'd done just before (e.g. Legendborn). Spoilers I liked the flashbacks and the way they're interwoven with the action of the present day, the way the relationship with Andrew and his character is revealed. I don't think the plot really holds water, Cecily being able to find him, betray/kill him that easily, keep the serum out of the hands of the government, but verisimilitude is not the point, the point is thematic. And I thought the story hit the themes a bit too on the nose -- "Because that is what you do when your friend is a monster. [...] You don't defend them. You don't deny it. You do what you have to do." felt too didactic/preachy and the aside about "Please note, I'm not talking about eliminating neurodiversity from the population" when talking about eradicating diseases with gene editing (that felt more like an authorial aside than a Cecily aside). Anyway, so, I liked reading this story quite a lot, but I don't know that it really works for me as a story, which makes me a tad ambivalent about it. Quote: "I'd spent my whole life up to that point [college] as a fish out of water, leaping from jar to cup to puddle in a desperate bid to stay alive, and suddenly I'd found my way to the ocean. To water, to other fish, to the place I'd always belonged but never had been able to find." (I don't empathize with that, but it's a neat quote anyway.)
Isabel Fall, "Helicopter Story" -- so, like many people, I imagine, I heard about this story originally via the controversy back in Jan 2020, but I hadn't read the story before it was taken down, and while I was able to find an archived copy when the Hugo nominations came out and I was surprised but pleased (out of a matter of principle, at that point) to see it on the ballot, I didn't read it right then, either, though I'd been curious to check it out for myself. A couple of days before I did read the story,
cyanshadow linked me to this long article on the aftermath (good article, but very sad), and I think reading that might have spurred me to go back to reading through the novelettes and "Helicopter Story" itself.
And I was surprised by how much I liked it. I was expecting to continue to support it on principle, but not to actually enjoy it, because a story about a person who "sexually identif[ies] as an attack helicopter" (even played straight/explored earnestly and/or subversively) did not sound like the kind of story I'd actually enjoy. And I didn't enjoy it precisely, but it's doing interesting things, at much more than the surface level (which I feel is kind of rare in short fiction, even awards shortlist short fiction, at least in the years I've been reading it), and I thought the prose was very strong (though I skimed the military jargon heavy bits, while appreciating them for the overall contribution to the unusual voice), and it was just really different from anything I've read recently, and that was neat and refreshing. I don't agree at all with the premise explored in the story (because I personally do not see gender as all that fundamental, while of course realizing that for some people it is), but I enjoyed stepping through the thorough exploration of that premise (from the couple of axioms about gender that it posits and then builds on) in a similar way I enjoy stepping through a Ted Chiang story, which also tends to be in a through-exploration-of-concept way.
So, yeah, I read the story thinking "this is really good" and "I think this might actually be going at the top of my ballot??", which I completely had not expected. And it makes me extra sad that, per the Vox article, it sounds like the author will not be publishing anymore (at least under that name, i.e. the name I would know to find her under). That definitely feels like a loss for the SFF community. That said, I do actually feel like the original title and opening line, which reference the "sexually identify as an attack helicopter" meme, which led to the controversy in the first place, were actually the weakest parts of the story for me. Like, I don't think engaging with the meme explicitly makes the story stronger -- the opening line is kind of disorienting, because it has to be corrected right away anyway. And I don't believe that anyone who read the entire story (in good faith) would think the story was written to troll, while I can see how the title and opening line alone would make someone think that (whereupon they should read the story before judging it, but, well, people).
Anyway, I'm glad the Hugos finally made me read this story, and I hope Isabel Fall, under this name or another, writes more SFF things and gets the recognition she deserves instead of the terrible experience with this debut. And I want to remember to nominate her for Astounding, when nominations come around (assuming she's eligible. I suppose she might have published under a different name before, which I'm assuming would make her ineligible?)
Meg Ellison, "The Pill" -- I found the beginning powerful, despite being one-note. I mean, a novelette is short enough that I could still enjoy it despite the one-note-ness, and I thought it melded the specfic, horror, and dystopia aspects pretty well. But the ending felt like kind of a left turn, and into things that worked less well for me. Like, I appreciate that it ends on an unexpectedly hopeful note, but tbh the ending felt tacked on rather than organic.
cahn had mentioned that the pacing of the story felt off, as if it was trying to cram a novel's worth of stuff into the novelette form, and maybe that's what I'm feeling, too -- I could perhaps buy the ending if it came after a novel's worth of experiences, rather than just sitting there, arbitrarily, at the end of a powerful and disturbing beginning.
Aliette de Bodard, "The Inaccessibility of Heaven" -- This has been the most enjoyable story by de Bodard for me yet, but that's actually a pretty low bar. I was reasonably intrigued by the setting, modern technology and angels and magic, but the focus on Fallen angels isn't really my thing. And the story presents itself as a mystery, but it didn't work for me as a mystery, because everything pivots on magical things which were not something that could be figured out from the information given. Possibly it would have felt like a fairer mystery if I were more familiar with this universe, but I suspect not. Anyway, in the absence of being able to enjoy it as a mystery, and without finding the themes or aethetic my thing, I derived what enjoyment I could from the characters. Sam and Cal did not do anything for me -- I dunno, maybe I would've known them and felt more for their relationship (??) if I'd read more of the series? But I did like Arvedai, the gang-boss Fallen angel, and might actually be interested in reading more things about him, if they exist.
Hugo roundup: novelette -- 6/6. Helicopter Story (well written and thought-provoking, and also, yes, fuck you, people forming Twitter mobs about a story without having read it or given the author the benefit of the doubt), Two Truths and a Lie (it does what it sets out to do very well, I just don't care about the thing it's doing), The Pill (would've been quite a bit higher on the list if not for the ending kind of dissipating the power of the story for me), Monster (enjoyable but flawed), Inaccessibility of Heaven (not bad, actually!), Burn (meh). The top 4 are all pretty close together for me. I think the Pinsker is probably objectively the best constructed story that best accomplishes the thing it sets out to do, it just suffers from not being a story I particularly want to read. The other three are doing things that are more interesting to me with lesser degrees of perfection, but I'm glad I read all of them. I have to say, overall, I'm impressed -- I didn't dislike any of these, which was not the case the previous two times I voted (first time I had two stories ranked below No Award, second time there was a story I did not get more than a page into). I dunno if novelettes are getting better or if I'm gaining some sort of tolerance for the form that I didn't have before, but I seem to be monotonically liking more of these every year, hm.
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I continued to watch Loki weekly, though unlike the mindfuck of WandaVision, I didn't really feel like there was enough to say about it every week. Spoilers
I liked episode 3, where Loki and Slyvie hang out in the apocalypse. The YouTube channels I've been following liked it too, but it sounds like fandom-at-large had a lot of complaints? Anyway, the heart-to-heart was lovely and drunken Loki was adorable.
In contrast, episode 4 was a bit of a letdown after that, until the after-credits scene with the multiple Lokis. OK, so, from the third or fourth onward, I've been watching them spoiled, because I can't do the midnight thing mid-week and don't have the self-control to not watch spoilery videos, so it's very possible that episode 4 would've played very differently to me if I hadn't already known about Mobius and Loki getting pruned. But ah well.
Five was a lot of fun again. The different Lokis of course (the alligator, LOL), and the interaction between them:
Old Loki: So, why do you want to return to the TVA so badly?
Big Loki: Did you leave your glorious purpose there?
But the repetition of "glorious purpose" in this episode got a little old, and so Old Loki shouting it at the end did not really land for me. I liked everything else about that character and that scene, so that was a bit of a pity.
The finale, eh. I was one of those people who were meh on the finale. He Who Remains was fun at first, but I think there was a bit too much of him. I did like the revelation that Loki is now in a different universe, with the TVA under different control, but I do wish there had been something to make the story of the season feel more complete -- that wasn't a satisfying ending, it just kind of stopped.
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Oh, right, and I've been wanting to pick up that "Frankenstein" fannish meme that's going around, so let's give it a shot:
1. What's changed about your fandom life in the last 365 days?
Let's see... In July 2020, I had recently finished watching Community, had read the first of the KJ Charles Will Darling books (in the intervening year, I've finished the trilogy, which was really fun to the finish), and completed the sync reads of Cyteen and Song for a New Day (funny that I'm currently in the middle of the next Pinsker novel) -- I was just coming out of a reading slump that had lasted since I lost my commute in early March.
I'm reading much more predictably now, having evolved a new routine for that over the last 365 days -- reading in bed and reading on my walks -- and instead of having finished like 13 books by July, I've finished 30. In the last 365 days of reading, I was disappointed by Peace Talks and thus still haven't cracked open Battle Ground; loved Silver in the Wood and was disappointed by the sequel; discovered a Jo Walton fiction book I actually loved (Among Others); read Natasha Pulley's The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, which I've just recently been discussing with
cafemassolit/
ikel89 and vicariously with
seriouslywhy/
alenky_cveto4ek, who just finished their sync read of it; participated in a really cool sync read of John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting and one for Winter's Orbit; read some Zen Cho I actually liked; the book of Warchild short stories finally came out and contained an absolutely glorious Cairo story which could've been written Just For Me; kept up with the Rivers of London series (via graphic novels and shorts) and caught up on the Tarot Sequence; discovered new authors C.M.Waggoner and K.A.Larkwood, whose books I really liked; and read rather a lot of Hugo homework, some of which I even really liked. I even read two unusual-for-me non-genre books, a cute romance and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. Probably most impactfully in quantitative terms, I finally caught up on Murderbot, after falling like 3 books behind over the last 3 years -- I read 4 Murderbot stories so far this year, and absolutely LOVED Network Effect.
In late July/August there was a big spike of Dragaera discussion between me and
sysann (and a couple of shorter discussions with other folks) when The Baron of Magister Valley came out. January through March were also Dragaera-heavy months, because Sys was completing an epic Character Roulette meme staffed ONLY by assorted Dragaerans. I'm really starting to miss the fandom again, now that I know Tsalmoth is written (though probably still about a year away...)
I finished the last season of The Good Place and binged my way through She-Ra, and actually managed to keep up with weekly TV for the first time in YEARS with WandaVision and Loki. After watching a total of 2 movies in 2020, I've already watched 6 this year, all at L's instigation. OK, 4 of them were animated, but still.
In contrast to the past two years I had done Yuletide, when I only posted a single story, I posted THREE things (two in the main collection, one in Madness), and also had the really cool experiences of a) getting a treat from a stranger and b) getting an assigned writer with whom I clicked so well that I had written a treat for them after being won over by their letter, and both of us figured out we were each other's writers -- that was a really lovely experience! This Yuletide treat was also my first time writing for a canon in a different language than I think about the canon -- that was odd, but I'm still really happy with the result. (I'm also thrilled that
ikel89 read the book and enjoyed it as much as she did.) Also, after a ~2 year dry spell of fannish poetry, I posted 3 new fannish poems to AO3, in 3 different fandoms (and a new form for fannish poetry for me, a ghazal), and reprised the trick-or-treat meme with some fannish limericks and a very special triolet. Oh, and there was also a Dragera acrostic for Sys for
fandomtrees.
I also made a lot more icons in the past year than the year previously.
I had already attended a couple of virtual cons (Flights of Foundry and Balticon) over a year ago -- both of which I attended for the second year, and actually got myself some Balticon swag this time, though it hasn't yet arrived, and continued to attend virtual cons whenever the opportunity to do so easily arose. The coolest con moment was when I got to attend a kaffeeklatsch with Sarah Pinsker during C'monfluence, and ask her some questions about "And Then There Were (N-One)" and Luce's background in Song for a New Day (the only previous -- live -- kaffeeklatsch I'd attended was with Ada Palmer, and I'd been much quieter in that one).
I don't think anything about my interaction with fandom has changed in the last 365 days, though. I haven't fallen out with any old fandoms, or gotten seriously into new ones, though I've read fic for several canons I've discovered in that time (Locked Tomb, Unspoken Name, Scholomance) and consumed other kinds of fanworks for She-Ra.
2. Your newest fandom.
I wouldn't call it a proper fandom, but the last new canon I picked up for which I had significant fannish discussions and consumed fanfic was Gideon the Ninth/Locked Tomb. I don't think I like it enough to consider it a fandom of mine -- I just find it intriguing. I did read some fic and look at fanart and watch vids, though, as well as have spent quite a while talking about it both in person and online, so maybe it counts.
If I apply the metric of "last fandom I got into enough to acquire an icon", that would be Blake's 7, and you know what, that feels right. In early 2020 I spent A LOT of time reading Blake's 7 fic, and I even rewatched some episodes, which is never a thing that I do, and I did spend rather a long time thinking about Avon and Servalan and Blake/Avon.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1153601.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).