Live-action AtLA, part 1 + reading roundup
I watched the first half of the Netflix Avatar the Last Airbender live action adaptation. So far, I have to confess I don't understand the people hating on it. Is it as good as the original? Well, to be honest, season 1 of the original is also not its best part -- but I don't think it's as charming or engaging as season 1 of the cartoon. But it's a different medium, with episodes a different length, being produced 20 years later -- it makes sense for it to be different in a number of ways. I enjoyed most of the 4 hours I spent watching it so far (episode 1 did drag on a bit), and I do think some bits are actual enhancements to the canon (well, OK, one bit), while the rest is at worst a way to see a different pretty rendition of it -- costumes and critters and bending -- which has been worth the price of admission for me. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.
episode by episode SPOILERS frome here
Episode 1: Aang
OK, this did feel slow (and exposition heavy, yes), but on the whole, I liked it quite a lot!
I really liked the cold open with the Earth Kingdom spies -- well, mostly liked it; the only person in that scene who could act around his dialogue was Sozin, everyone else either got stupid lines or couldn't sell them. But I enjoyed the action-y opening, the bending effects -- the two styles really do look different and as they are in the show -- and that you get a subtle introduction to all the weird critters, too, with the pigeon/rat creatures. And I liked Sozin's grave, "we are only doing what we must" way of talking about the genocide he is planning. Then the episode went and ruined it by feeding you the same thing in a pure exposition dump (I just wrote "exposition dumb" in a Freudian slip). I did see that apparently the exposition in the first episode(s) was added because they found that viewers not familiar with the original show weren't able to follow it, but it's too bad. At least it was nice to get a glimpse of Kyoshi, Kuruk, Roku (from the back) and the other Avatars.
It's interesting that we're meeting Aang first in his home at the Air Nomad temple, rather than getting that backstory later in flashback -- I guess it's in keeping with the more serious tone I've heard this show is targeting to start with the genocide rather than the brother-sister bickering and penguin-sledding hijinks... I was prepared to cut the kid actor playing Aang a lot of slack, but actually he's not bad! He's adorable, and great in the scenes of wonder and teasing, and not cringe-y in the emotional scenes, which is all I ask of someone his age. The dialogue in these flashback scenes is quite stilted, but I liked Monk Gyatso despite that, and the look of things is great -- the tattooed arrows manage not to look ridiculous, ditto for the women's hair style, the sky bison look pretty cool (they are such improbable creatures), the airbending is neat (although it was weird to see Aang flying without his glider). I don't think we needed "I'm scared of responsibility! I'm scared of being alone!" delivered to camera (well, Appa). I don't actually mind the change that rather than Aang running away from responsibility he just went up for a flight to clear his head and think about the major revelation. I've heard that Aang's character is made more serious in the adaptation, and this wold be in line with that, but this specific change I think wouldn't change all that much in terms of guilt. I do hope it's not a symptom of a more fundamental change to his character. And as the dual tragic lines wrapped up -- Gyatso facing Sozin with the children behind him and Aang and Appa caught in the storm -- I was waiting to see what I would think of the Avatar effects and -- it was fine, I guess? Like, there's a certain level of unreality, but, well, that comes with the territory, I think.
OK, present day: Love the Water Tribe outfits, and Katara's hair loopies look pretty good, too. Sokka's lecture to the kids patrolling the wall is a little bit toned down from the original, but is still pretty funny. In general, I thought Sokka had just the right vibe to be both comic relief by being the butt of some jokes and the resident smartass and someone who is brave and admirable and grows into a proper leader eventually. He is my favorite of the original Gaang, so that's one of the most important things for this show to get right for me. Katara also seems fine; more subdued than original!Katara, but I'm hoping she can still sell being the team Heavy (until Toph comes along) down the line, as that is my favorite thing about Katara, and Sokka embracing her as the team Heavy ("~Water Tribe~") would be something I would miss a lot. On the Fire Nation side, Zuko and Iroh look perfect (OK, Zuko's scar is subtler than in the show, but I don't actually mind that), but the voices took some getting used to, since these are probably the two roles with the most distinctive original voices, but that aside, I like them both in their roles, and the dynamic between them.
Episode 2: Warriors
Momo looks a lot cuter as a photorealistic CGI critter! (I was not a big fan of him in the show) And ooh, Aang's air scooter makes an appearance!
Continuing to like the Fire Nation characters, now with the addition of Zhao, who is very much like his cartoon counterpart, and Fire Lord Ozai, who is looking fabulously like himself.
Kyoshi Warriors part of the storyline: I quite like the new addition of Suki's mother, both when she was primly trying to turf out the Gaang and when she was fighting Zhao's men, grey hair flying, and the warriors' outfits and face paint look great. Suki has always been one of my least favorite important characters, because I never had any strong sense from her of what she was like beyond her role -- I feel like I've actually gotten more from this version in one episode than from the cartoon's whole run. And she is very pretty! Along with the rest of the internet, I head the thing about Sokka's sexism being toned down and everyone being up in arms about it, but you know, based on this, I think it's not so much that it was diminished as made less over the top, which is fine by me -- the world has moved on and I do feel like this show if for a slightly older audience than the original, so I feel like the "let me show you how it's done, little lady" brand of sexism works better than "girls can't fight!" I do miss the implications of Sokka learning Kyoshi style techniques with the group, rather than a UST-charged one-on-one with Suki. But their chemistry was pretty cute, even though having that telegraphed so early might make the whole thing with Yue a bit weird. I had not been expecting shirtless Sokka with his hair down covering himself up like a shy maiden XD (he looks a lot better with his hair down -- the wolf's tail highlights something weird about his nose that I find distracting, even though his ACTING works for me very well. Also, I know there was the whole thing about how the actor (Ian Ousley) is "fake" Cherokee (registered with a tribe that is not federally recognized, as I understand it), and I'm not getting into that -- on the one hand, "pretendians" are absolutely a thing, but on the other hand, I know (of) people of Native American descent who weren't able to formally register with a tribe for various reasons -- but I will say, I do think Sokka to me looks significantly less Asian than everyone else in the cast, and I do find that a bit distracting. I'm enjoying his acting, though, which is ultimately the more important thing.
Episode 3: Omashu
OK, we're into a full remix territory at this point, huh?
Ooh, we are getting Azula early! I like this way of introducing her, as someone who can play a role and manipulate her enemies -- and of course as someone who will watch screaming people being burned alive by her father with a faint smile. And Ty Lee and Mai, too! They look very much the part. Mai is doing the bored monotone, but is not quite as impassive as the cartoon version, and Ty Lee is not quite as bubbly, but I think they're going to work for me.
OK, so, we are clearly dispensing with the episodic nature of most of the first season of the cartoon... which are definitely the skippable bits, and I have no problem with Katara just finding the waterbending scroll in her luggage rather than having to go through the silly pirates interlude, but I'm missing the random encounters with penguin sledding and sea-serpent surfing which show the kind of person Aang is in his free time... I can also understand transplanting some encounters to locations that already have to exist for bigger plot points, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the Mechanist has been transplanted to Omashu and given an official role rather than being a random tinkerer they run into along the way. But Aang doesn't get to have any fun! Even when someone gets to ride the delivery system in Omashu, it's for a dramatic plot reason and it's not Aang... And while the individual instances of Aang goofing off and, as cyanmnemosyne put it, the Gaang "derping around" in the first season are non-load-bearing, the cumulative absence of them is starting to affect the overall feel of the show for me -- the world feels smaller without the random encounters in it, the humor is subdued, and Aang feels less like himself. It's a good thing I'm seeing this purely as supplemental to the real canon.
Also, I kept staring at the Mechanist trying to figure out why he looked familiar -- it's Abed XD He looks really weird in this wig and beard XD) I had liked Teo in the show and did not care for him here. Conversely, Jet is one of my least favorite characters in the original show, but I do like him better here, at least so far, and his crew. The actor gives him a bit more charm under the mop of hair. And the rest of his crew looks good, too. But Katara's time with them felt too rushed, and having both Jet and the Mechanist as part of the Omashu storyline makes the whole thing really complicated, so, I dunno. Jet is important to Katara's arc as well as themes of the show (sacrificing innocent people for "the greater good" is not a good thing, whether your idea of "the greater good" is prosperity under the Fire Nation banner or freedom), and the encounter with the Mechanist is important to Sokka's development, where he is allowed to explore his talents as something other than a warrior/leader, and be recognized for them, so both of those things were definitely not skippable, but I wish they hadn't all been crammed together like this.
The Aang/Zuko fight in the marketplace started off fun but went on too long for me (I definitely enjoyed Zuko getting smacked by a random woman for attacking a child), and I liked that Zuko managed to fight Aang without letting loose of his firebending but it was getting angry when he realized Aang had his notebook that led to his unmasking -- I'm really enjoying Zuko actor's facial expressions and body language and everything he is conveying through them. Iroh's "look, I'm a Firebender! right here!" moment was also fun. I wonder if this basically takes the place of Iroh being captured in the hot springs (in which case I'll be sad to see that hilarious interlude not included in the show...)
Also: MY CABBAGES! (it did not need to be this dramatic this time, but I definitely hope it's not the last time we are going to see the Cabbage Merchant. But also I had to grin at the Chekob's cabbages earlier in the episode XD)
Episode 4: Into the Dark
Ah, I see, Aang and Iroh get to have a moment talking to each other in prison. Iroh (and Iroh & Zuko) was definitely the emotional center of this episode for me. Zuko finally gets to fight against someone other than a kid or a bunch of kids, and by that point the Earth Kingdom captain was not someone one would be rooting for, though his anger and hatred was understandable. I do think it's good to get more of Iroh and Zuko's backstory earlier on (although I am confused by whether they are altering the timeline of Lu Ten's death, Zuko and Ozai's agni kai, etc. or I'm just having a harder time telling what age Zuko is supposed to be in the flashbacks...
They surely could have found someone better than this to play kid!Bumi XD though it does rather highlight how much better Aang's actor is, and the other young ones. I heard that Jay from US Ghosts was playing old King Bumi and was waiting to get to him. He is suitably mad! But I was surprised that this show decided to get over the suspense of who the old mad king is in a about 10 seconds. Also, Bumi needed to be more jacked for the final fight scene XD But I enjoyed the bending in the fight, and the appearance of the stone discs technique. I think Earthbending is my favorite of the four techniques (Fire being the other contender, but it's really gruesome in live action), so it was nice to get a lot of it here.
Speaking of bending, Katara picks up her water skin in this episode. And ice powers! Go, Katara! I liked her fuck-off to Jet, too ("That wasn't you. That was me.") -- I do hope this is signaling Katara's transformationinto the Gaang's best offensive fighter.
Even when Sokka used the literal phrase "secret tunnels" I was not expecting, well, the Secret Tunnel interlude, lol -- mostly because I remembered that being a Book 2 episode (note to self: "Cave of the Two Lovers") Also, wait, are Oma and Shu, the eponymous two lovers both women now? I mean, good for them, but I did have to rewind and watch it again to be sure that's what I was hearing. Sokka and Katara's fight and reconciliation was kind of mixed for me -- the yelling kind of came out of nowhere and seemed artificial, but the final scene where they clasp hands and apologize did work well for me.
And, relieved to see that "My cabbages" is going to be a running gag :)
Onward to the second half. I've heard the views both that this is when the show hits its stride (from someone whose tastes I often agree with but also someone who is only loosely familiar with the original show) and that this is where it goes off the rails, so... we'll see, I guess?
*
I've also continued to read things (amazing!):
2. Ben Aaronovitch, Winter's Gifts -- the Kim Reynolds novella which I hadn't been looking forward to because Kim is one of the few non-River characters in RoL I don't really care about. But it was no bad; better than I had been expecting. Kim's narrative voice worked OK for me, and I did not feel like the religion stuff was being laid on too thick. I did think there was a LOT of stuff about guns, but I suppose that might just be BA enjoying the chance to play around with them in the narrative when in the main series his cops don't carry guns. SPOILERS from here The romance with Bill felt pretty arbitrary and too sudden, but I don't think romance is BA's strong suit as a writer anyway. The action leaned more horror than I prefer, too, getting chased by monsters with some zombie characteristics -- honestly, that got tedious after a while, and it was during one of those interludes that I wandered away for some months. But the historical mystery aspect was enjoyable. And I liked the local genius loci / Native American spirit. This was the first RoL book set in at least the same country I live in, and almost nothing weird jumped out at me -- the one thing I noted down was Kim thinking "satnav" instead of "GPS", which is the typical US usage, but I could also see the FBI/military calling it satnav. Though I am pretty far from this fictional setting geographically, or the place where Kim was raised, so I wouldn't know if any local things got messed up. I do like that the US-set novella touches on Native American magic as well as the colonial magic (and that Jefferson and Franklin are the 'fathers' of American magic, based on Newtonian magic, of course), and I like the way the theme is treated -- that Scott Walker assumes the dangerous manifestations are the Native American spirit going for revenge, but actually it's the dead Virginian Gentlemen. So, all in all, a decent addition to the worldbuilding in this universe, and an enjoyable enough read, but one of my less favorite books in the series for sure.
3. Rebecca Fraimow, Lady Eve's Last Con -- read in ARC; the book comes out June 4, and I can't wait to be able to buy this as a present for people :D Because this was just FUN! I never know what to do with spoilers when it's an ARC, but I do have a whole thing written up with some spoilers (they are romcom level spoilers, but I don't want to spoil anyone's reading experience even with those), so I'll depart from my usual format and start off with a shorter, non-spoilery version of the write-up. But if you're reading this and you've already read the book, skip down to where the spoilery one starts -- the non-spoilery version is basically that but redacted.
Non-spoilery version:
I really enjoyed the vibe of the worldbuilding -- I hadn't consciously connected it to the Roaring Twenties aesthetic until I read some comments about it, but the VIBE came through loud and clear, and the examples of conspicuous consumption IN SPACE were just so fun! And even beyond the glitz, the way the setting has all these little everyday details that clearly situate it in a society that has accustomed itself to life in space. It's really fun to see those kinds of details turned loose on high society -- a really unique feel of prosperity on a relatively new frontier. But of course the prosperity is still seen through the eyes of someone who has experienced the scarcity and is sharply aware of the waste she is seeing and despises it. And even beyond the space stuff, there are these little offhand details mentioned that added up to a weird, vivid world -- skateboxing, klez-clubs, grav-dominos, wild-hand dreidel -- whatever all those things are (and yes, I did love the random Jewish references sprinkled in, in addition to the plot-relevant ones and Ruthi and Jules' heritage -- it's great to have both Jewish main characters and evidence of Jews-in-the-world, both insular and integrated). I hope this book gets a movie adaptation -- it would be so fun to see the plot play out against the backdrop of all this vibrant weirdness and glitz! Oh, and as part of the lived-in feeling, I loved the way Ruthi's similes and cliches reflect her sci-fi reality, too -- I love when setting and language and POV come together like that.
The characters are really fun! I loved Ruthi's narrative voice from the start, had a very strong sense of her as a character for all that she spent so much of the book playing a role, and absolutely felt the strength of her relationship with her sister. I liked Ruth's thrill-seeking side that comes out to play when she doesn't have to look out for her sister, her world-wise toughness and wryness, and the arc that she gets. I also liked Sol the love interest a lot, pretty much from her first appearance -- she definitely knows how to make a first impression! And I don't think I've met a female character like that before -- competent and debonaire "Don Juan" type, as Ruthi puts it. I was also surprised by how much I ended up... "liking" is the wrong word, but finding Esteban (the subject of Ruthi's con and revenge plot and Sol's younger brother) sympathetic. He IS oblivious and spoiled and self-centered and petulant -- but even in Ruthi's extremely cynical and adversarial narration, I felt sympathy for him and got a sense of his real passion. The dynamic between Ruthi and her sister is also great!
The plot was fun -- I mean it's a con/revenge plot, with bonus space mafia! And it's a light, zany plot, for the most part, but it also touches with a deft, delicate hand on serious things -- class differences and complex family dynamics and questions of identity, big things that are not treated facilely and are given the space to have nuance without bogging down the plot. But you also have setpieces that are just hilarious -- I laughed out loud several times. And of course the romance was also a big part of the plot. skygiants described this book as a rom-com, and that definitely felt like the vibe -- which I appreciate far more than angsty pining. This also had the antagonists-to-lovers thing that works for me really well in m/m relationships and that I've seen very little of with f/f, and, yep, apparently it works for me in f/f relationships, too. Loved Sol's grand chivalrous gestures and ridiculous cape, but also appreciated her less flashy, more vulnerable moments with Ruthi.
I keep using the word "fun" for this book, which feels kind of reductive, but the cool thing is -- the book doesn't feel shallow, for all that the plot goes zooming along and the dialogue is light and bantery. It's just... a good book with vivid characters, unusual blend of worldbuilding in the setting, and nuanced treatment of its characters and themes -- which ALSO happens to be just a blast.
**
now with SPOILERS!
I was looking up an older write-up and found a thread where I was talking about how I haven't come across any SFF that really worked for me as F/F romance, the way I have with M/M and het -- not that I've been looking on purpose -- I tend to seek out F/F less than either M/M or het in both fanfic and profic -- but I've been reading an awful lot of books that are advertised as "space lesbians", and none of them have really worked for me *as* F/F. Some of them I think are not meant to -- like, Some Desperate Glory does have canonical F/F in it, but it's much less important to the book than most other things. Gideon and Harrow in The Locked Tomb are into girls, but at least in the first two books that's not really the point. The Teixcalaan books also have F/F, but I'm not a fan. Over on the fantasy side, there's a little more success for me -- I enjoyed The Unspoken Name and liked both halves of the F/F relationship, but didn't really believe in the relationship itself. I liked Delly in A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, but found her love interest pretty bland, in a "well, if that's what Delly's into, I guess more power to her" way. I mention all this because here, finally, is genre F/F with some real chemistry behind it! I really liked both women, thought the chemistry between them was great throughout, and was rooting for a happy ending for them. Imagine that!
Everything about this book was fun, which made it a great read for a rainy February.
I really enjoyed the vibe of the worldbuilding -- I hadn't consciously connected it to the Roaring Twenties aesthetic until I read some comments about it, but the VIBE came through loud and clear, and the examples of conspicuous consumption IN SPACE were just so fun! -- the retro zero-G bar where the tables of honor are located vertically and patrons tether themselves in! anti-grav opera with floating, autonomously powered opera boxes! And even beyond the glitz, the way the setting has all these little everyday details that clearly situate it IN SPACE, in a society that has accustomed itself to life in space -- cocktails in juice boxes because of the potential for glitchy gravity on a satellite, "bubble skirts" fashion and hair salons with cycling gravity so you can see what your hair will look like at any occasion (ditto), "breathers" as combination functional safety equipment and fashion statement (and eventually, plot device, but it felt very natural by then). I love details like this, and a lot of SF settings don't bother with them, or the ones that do just lean into the grungy side of things, the scarcity angle of life in space (The Expanse does this pretty well, from even the one book I read and one season I watched) -- and it's really fun to see that turned loose on high society -- a really unique feel of prosperity on a relatively new frontier. But of course the prosperity is still seen through the eyes of someone who has experienced the scarcity and is sharply aware of the waste she is seeing and despises it. And even beyond the space stuff, there are these little offhand details mentioned that added up to a weird, vivid world -- skateboxing, klez-clubs (which I assume is Klezmer music), grav-dominos and wild-hand dreidel -- whatever all those things are (and yes, I did love the random Jewish references sprinkled in, in addition to the plot-relevant kosher ducks and Ruthi and Jules' heritage -- it's great to have both Jewish main characters and evidence of Jews-in-the-world, both insular and integrated. And I loved learning that "Sunrise, Sunset" is still a wedding staple <3) I hope this book gets a movie adaptation -- it would be so fun to see the plot play out against the backdrop of all this vibrant weirdness and glitz! Oh, and as part of the lived-in feeling, I loved the way Ruthi's similes and cliches reflect her sci-fi reality, too -- "between the airlock and the spacewalk", "as stubborn as a bot with bad orders", "meek as a mail-bot", "Alonso let out a sigh, like the rumble of a vacuum-bay door closing" -- I love when setting and language and POV come together like that.
The characters are really fun! I loved Ruthi's narrative voice from the start, had a very strong sense of her as a character for all that she spent so much of the book playing a role, and absolutely felt the strength of her relationship with her sister for all that they spend 90% of the book apart -- that is really neatly done! I liked Ruth's thrill-seeking side that comes out to play when she doesn't have to look out for her sister, her world-wise toughness and wryness, and the arc that she gets. And as I mentioned under worldbuilding, it's neat to get a sci-fi protatonist who is Jewish -- not in some tokenistic way or Most Jewish Ever so that no-one misses the point way, but in a messy and lived in way where her mother's Orthodox upbringing in Brooklyn is one more part of her assorted family baggage, but an important part, part of her overall background as a POC and someone who grew up off-planet and, like, spaceship urchin. I also liked Sol the love interest a lot, pretty much from her first appearance -- she definitely knows how to make a first impression! And I don't think I've met a female character like that before -- competent and debonaire "Don Juan" type, as Ruthi puts it, with a dark secret/hidden pain -- I tend to love male characters like this (say, Tony Stark, though the area of competence is different, and Sol seems to be a much nicer person), and it was nice to see that this would carry over to a female one. I was also surprised by how much I ended up... "liking" is the wrong word, but finding Esteban sympathetic. Because Ruthi certainly doesn't find him to be that when the book starts or when the book ends, really. Seeing him through Ruthi's eyes -- as a dumb mark to be fleeced, as the jerk who hurt her sister, as a spoiled little brother (because she can see that in his dynamic with Sol), as a "poor little rich boy" oblivious to his privilege, as the extremely dull man she has to tediously fawn over as part of her con is withering -- and he IS oblivious and spoiled and self-centered and petulant -- but even in Ruthi's extremely cynical and adversarial narration, I felt sympathy for him, got a sense of his real passion, dismissed by eveyone as pointless, his not particularly fun position in the family, and wanted him to get a happy ending going off to study dirt with someone who found him genuinely interesting rather than being willing to put up with him for his money (I personally am rooting for him to eventually get his head out of his ass, as Jules told him to, and reunite with Jules and their sprog as more mature people -- which Jules seems to have had that growth but we haven't seen that from Esteban yet, but I'm hoping). I generally like the "Happy For Now" open-ended ending -- it feels very fitting for the book -- but I do feel sad for Esteban, who appears to be stuck with a role he really couldn't care less about, in a family that doesn't listen to him or value him. I hope there's a way out for him, also. I did not have any real sense of Jules, besides as Ruthi's flighty little sister she had to take care of, until she showed up at Ruthi's hotel room at the 88% mark -- and I totally had not expected that, although it was a very elegant resolution to a bunch of plot and thematic things that I'd been wondering how they would get resolved -- and then she very quickly won me over by being both justifiably frustrated with Ruthi lying to her and going off to do stupid things on her own AND insistent on giving Ruthi shit in a gleefully younger-sibling way. The dynamic between them is great, and I loved that the last scene, the real emotional closure of the book, is between Ruthi and Jules; that chapter was poignant and funny in just the right measure/combination. It's a pretty tight cast; there were not a lot of other characters that Ruthi interacted with in detail, but I ended up liking what we saw of Louanne Hachi (Sol's ex and best friend), who was consistently pragmatic in both good and bad ways, and conummate professional lawyer lady Galaxy Khan, and was amused to learn that bitchy society girl Gaea St Clair was apparently actually really smart (having beaten Esteban on a test at least once).
The plot was fun -- I mean it's a con/revenge plot, which was fun enough in itself, but then there's space mafia! satellite-level sabotage! dodging a hijackedself-driving car on a hoverbike! And it's a light, zany plot, for the most part, but it also touches with a deft, delicate hand on serious things -- class differences and complex family dynamics and questions of identity, big things that are not treated facilely and are given the space to have nuance without bogging down the plot. The whole kosher ducks as moral line in the sand plot point was a great example of that -- it's an inherently funny setup, that Sol is stuck with a warehouse full of frozen kosher ducks, which are difficult to ship because following shabbat rules is tricky in space travel -- especially funny when Ruthi started out thinking Sol had gotten mixed up in grim things like unregulated memory tech before learning the truth. But the ducks being a moral line for Ruthi because they're going to waste rather than riches being Robin Hooded to people who could use them more made a lot of sense to me as a character detail (though of course her having fallen for Sol didn't hurt, I'm sure), and Ruthi's visit to Gavriel Herschel, and how even though she is still being a con artist and playing a role, she is feeling more like herself in that setting and that role was something I found unexpectedly poignant. But you also have setpieces that are just hilarious -- I laughed out loud twice reading about "Evelyn"'s fancy dinner of multi-course foam with Esteban and their first kiss. And the final con, with Ruthi in a different disguise and Jules impersonating Ruthi in her wedding dress and double-crossing Alonso with the semi-witting help of the Hachi lawyer lady was suitably complex and tense and capitalized nicely on various previously seeded things, like Ruthi playing poker with Alonso as a kid, the sabotage lawsuit Louanne kept poking her about, and the fake valuation letter on Sol's debt. Excellent con, A+, would heist again.
And of course the romance was also a big part of the plot. skygiants described this book as a rom-com, and that definitely felt like the vibe -- which I appreciate far more than angsty pining. Around ch 10, when Ruthi tells Sol her real name, the romance started reminding me of Rose Lerner's excellent True Pretenses (which has the distinction of being the only non-genre romance book I read that I actually enjoyed as a romance) -- there are some obvious parallels, what with one of the leads being a Jewish con artist who is an older sib going through a rough patch with their younger sib, and both leads being older sibs in a way that's important to their identities and priorities. But also, a key thing for me was that despite one member of the couple being a con artist playing a role, the couple knew each other's secrets pretty early on in the book and could be honest with each other in a way they couldn't be with other people around them. A lot of the specifics are different of course, even aside from the genders and sexualities involved -- Sol and Lydia are very different personalities for starters -- but that intimacy and honesty in the middle of a con and the romantic leads having being elder, caretaker siblings in common were aspects that worked really well for me in both books. This also had the antagonists-to-lovers thing that works for me really well in m/m relationships and that I've seen very little of with f/f, and, yep, apparently it works for me in f/f relationships, too. Loved Sol's grand chivalrous gestures and ridiculous cape, but also appreciated her letting in Ruthi to see her secret with various justifications, and less flashy moments like covering for Ruthi popping an anti-rad pill at a family dinner. Really loved their banter, both before they got together and especially after, when it was laced with innuendo to traumatize poor Jules XD Explicit F/F sex is just not something I'm ever going to find hot, probably, but I did enjoy how very much themselves Ruthi and Sol were throughout -- still the banter, Ruthi's POV or Sol and awareness of little things like thinking of how annoying it will be to step on the buttons from Sol's jacket torn in a moment of passion, and this sense that she is partly thinking of their night together as a con, a ploy to keep Sol from being able to go get herself memory-wiped in the morning -- a con for Sol's own good. So I thoroughly enjoyed the relationship.
I keep using the word "fun" for this book, which feels kind of reductive, but the cool thing is -- the book doesn't feel shallow, for all that the plot goes zooming along and the dialogue is light and bantery. It's just... a good book with vivid characters, unusual blend of worldbuilding in the setting, and nuanced treatment of its characters and themes -- which ALSO happens to be just a blast. I read this in just a couple of days, liveblogging gleefully with cafemassolit who started a little later than me but finished even sooner. It's that kind of book! :D
Quotes:
"Esteban, so far as I could see, didn't dance with anyone else when I was off twirling around the floor with some Tom or Devere or Hikaru."
About Mr Alonso: "polite to widows and orphans when it wasn't in his job description to be otherwise"
Sol: "My brother's too polite to pry into other people's circumstances--" [...] that was a pretty generous way to characterize Esteban's tendency towards monologue, if you asked me."
"You had to love the third-generation rich -- the easy livers, the always-hads. They were always looking for a reason to think they were better than you, and it barely took any effort at all to get them to pick the wrong one."
"He had his sister's tall, lean lines, and the smug good health of someone whose genetics had always cooperated with the doctor's orders."
"Before he could finish explaining to me how I ought to've felt about the beach, Sol popped up behind him, grabbed him around the shoulders, and dunked him into the water.
Esteban rose up, sputtering. 'Sol! What was that for?'
"I'm teaching you about romance,' said Sol. 'Rule number one: if a lady's having a good time with you, you don't tell her she ought to be having a bad one.'"
"Jules would've loved Lorelei. I knew that. Maybe I could've loved it, too, if she was here. But she was out there, an ERB away, and I wasn't here to love anything."
"Nobody who owned [the warehouses] wanted to be seen visiting if they could help it. That would look a little too much like an admission that money sometimes involved work."
"You got a shipload of stranded orphans to show me after all?"
"You seem a bit stuck on on those orphans. Do you have parents, Miss Johnson?"
"You got me dead to rights," I said. "I'm just a poor girl all alone in the world. If only I'd had folks to bring me up proper, maybe I wouldn't have come to the straits I'm in."
"All right," said Sol, amiably enough, "you don't have to tell me." [...]
"I am telling you. We don't have'em."
The kiss with Esteban: "It took everything I had to prtend that that it was perfectly natural for me to sit limpidly gazing at him while he slid himself awkwardly round the velvet seat cushions, knocked a set of cocktail spears off the table, paused for an agonizing moment to decide he didn't need to retrieve them, and continued his slow advance. [...] Anyway, he finally managed to plant his mouth on mine. I was in the process of going tactically limp when we were interrupted by a bright light and a small but polite caugh. The pod had just slid back into the kitchen, and the insulated glass shelf was peeling back so the chef could bring us the eighth course of this interminable meal. [...] The chef maintained an admirable poker face as she whisked away the tiny half-eaten wasabi souffle and replaced it with an equally minuscule cantaloupe savory."
Esteban taking "Evelyn" to meet his father: "He'd managed to plaster a veneer of condescending matcho confidence over his usual filial petulance."
Sol: "There was a time, you know, when I was not exactly a New Monte hit either. My accent was wrong, my opinions were wrong, certainly my parentage was wrong."
Ruth: "And then you hit puberty, got a makeover montage and a hovercycle, and suddenly--"
Sol: "I did eventually learn how to exert some control over the kind of attention I received."
"If you got high enough on chemistry, it made you kind of lose your grip on basic mathematics"
"Modesty has never been one of my vices."
The drink at Ruthi's hen night: "it tasted like someone had tried to put out a chemical fire with cough syrup."
Jules: "Every time I had to eat my own cooking, I missed you."
"You hate my cooking," I said startled.
"Sure," said Jules. "It's terrible. But also, turns out, cooking for yourself is kind of hard."
"Funny thing about that, huh."
episode by episode SPOILERS frome here
Episode 1: Aang
OK, this did feel slow (and exposition heavy, yes), but on the whole, I liked it quite a lot!
I really liked the cold open with the Earth Kingdom spies -- well, mostly liked it; the only person in that scene who could act around his dialogue was Sozin, everyone else either got stupid lines or couldn't sell them. But I enjoyed the action-y opening, the bending effects -- the two styles really do look different and as they are in the show -- and that you get a subtle introduction to all the weird critters, too, with the pigeon/rat creatures. And I liked Sozin's grave, "we are only doing what we must" way of talking about the genocide he is planning. Then the episode went and ruined it by feeding you the same thing in a pure exposition dump (I just wrote "exposition dumb" in a Freudian slip). I did see that apparently the exposition in the first episode(s) was added because they found that viewers not familiar with the original show weren't able to follow it, but it's too bad. At least it was nice to get a glimpse of Kyoshi, Kuruk, Roku (from the back) and the other Avatars.
It's interesting that we're meeting Aang first in his home at the Air Nomad temple, rather than getting that backstory later in flashback -- I guess it's in keeping with the more serious tone I've heard this show is targeting to start with the genocide rather than the brother-sister bickering and penguin-sledding hijinks... I was prepared to cut the kid actor playing Aang a lot of slack, but actually he's not bad! He's adorable, and great in the scenes of wonder and teasing, and not cringe-y in the emotional scenes, which is all I ask of someone his age. The dialogue in these flashback scenes is quite stilted, but I liked Monk Gyatso despite that, and the look of things is great -- the tattooed arrows manage not to look ridiculous, ditto for the women's hair style, the sky bison look pretty cool (they are such improbable creatures), the airbending is neat (although it was weird to see Aang flying without his glider). I don't think we needed "I'm scared of responsibility! I'm scared of being alone!" delivered to camera (well, Appa). I don't actually mind the change that rather than Aang running away from responsibility he just went up for a flight to clear his head and think about the major revelation. I've heard that Aang's character is made more serious in the adaptation, and this wold be in line with that, but this specific change I think wouldn't change all that much in terms of guilt. I do hope it's not a symptom of a more fundamental change to his character. And as the dual tragic lines wrapped up -- Gyatso facing Sozin with the children behind him and Aang and Appa caught in the storm -- I was waiting to see what I would think of the Avatar effects and -- it was fine, I guess? Like, there's a certain level of unreality, but, well, that comes with the territory, I think.
OK, present day: Love the Water Tribe outfits, and Katara's hair loopies look pretty good, too. Sokka's lecture to the kids patrolling the wall is a little bit toned down from the original, but is still pretty funny. In general, I thought Sokka had just the right vibe to be both comic relief by being the butt of some jokes and the resident smartass and someone who is brave and admirable and grows into a proper leader eventually. He is my favorite of the original Gaang, so that's one of the most important things for this show to get right for me. Katara also seems fine; more subdued than original!Katara, but I'm hoping she can still sell being the team Heavy (until Toph comes along) down the line, as that is my favorite thing about Katara, and Sokka embracing her as the team Heavy ("~Water Tribe~") would be something I would miss a lot. On the Fire Nation side, Zuko and Iroh look perfect (OK, Zuko's scar is subtler than in the show, but I don't actually mind that), but the voices took some getting used to, since these are probably the two roles with the most distinctive original voices, but that aside, I like them both in their roles, and the dynamic between them.
Episode 2: Warriors
Momo looks a lot cuter as a photorealistic CGI critter! (I was not a big fan of him in the show) And ooh, Aang's air scooter makes an appearance!
Continuing to like the Fire Nation characters, now with the addition of Zhao, who is very much like his cartoon counterpart, and Fire Lord Ozai, who is looking fabulously like himself.
Kyoshi Warriors part of the storyline: I quite like the new addition of Suki's mother, both when she was primly trying to turf out the Gaang and when she was fighting Zhao's men, grey hair flying, and the warriors' outfits and face paint look great. Suki has always been one of my least favorite important characters, because I never had any strong sense from her of what she was like beyond her role -- I feel like I've actually gotten more from this version in one episode than from the cartoon's whole run. And she is very pretty! Along with the rest of the internet, I head the thing about Sokka's sexism being toned down and everyone being up in arms about it, but you know, based on this, I think it's not so much that it was diminished as made less over the top, which is fine by me -- the world has moved on and I do feel like this show if for a slightly older audience than the original, so I feel like the "let me show you how it's done, little lady" brand of sexism works better than "girls can't fight!" I do miss the implications of Sokka learning Kyoshi style techniques with the group, rather than a UST-charged one-on-one with Suki. But their chemistry was pretty cute, even though having that telegraphed so early might make the whole thing with Yue a bit weird. I had not been expecting shirtless Sokka with his hair down covering himself up like a shy maiden XD (he looks a lot better with his hair down -- the wolf's tail highlights something weird about his nose that I find distracting, even though his ACTING works for me very well. Also, I know there was the whole thing about how the actor (Ian Ousley) is "fake" Cherokee (registered with a tribe that is not federally recognized, as I understand it), and I'm not getting into that -- on the one hand, "pretendians" are absolutely a thing, but on the other hand, I know (of) people of Native American descent who weren't able to formally register with a tribe for various reasons -- but I will say, I do think Sokka to me looks significantly less Asian than everyone else in the cast, and I do find that a bit distracting. I'm enjoying his acting, though, which is ultimately the more important thing.
Episode 3: Omashu
OK, we're into a full remix territory at this point, huh?
Ooh, we are getting Azula early! I like this way of introducing her, as someone who can play a role and manipulate her enemies -- and of course as someone who will watch screaming people being burned alive by her father with a faint smile. And Ty Lee and Mai, too! They look very much the part. Mai is doing the bored monotone, but is not quite as impassive as the cartoon version, and Ty Lee is not quite as bubbly, but I think they're going to work for me.
OK, so, we are clearly dispensing with the episodic nature of most of the first season of the cartoon... which are definitely the skippable bits, and I have no problem with Katara just finding the waterbending scroll in her luggage rather than having to go through the silly pirates interlude, but I'm missing the random encounters with penguin sledding and sea-serpent surfing which show the kind of person Aang is in his free time... I can also understand transplanting some encounters to locations that already have to exist for bigger plot points, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the Mechanist has been transplanted to Omashu and given an official role rather than being a random tinkerer they run into along the way. But Aang doesn't get to have any fun! Even when someone gets to ride the delivery system in Omashu, it's for a dramatic plot reason and it's not Aang... And while the individual instances of Aang goofing off and, as cyanmnemosyne put it, the Gaang "derping around" in the first season are non-load-bearing, the cumulative absence of them is starting to affect the overall feel of the show for me -- the world feels smaller without the random encounters in it, the humor is subdued, and Aang feels less like himself. It's a good thing I'm seeing this purely as supplemental to the real canon.
Also, I kept staring at the Mechanist trying to figure out why he looked familiar -- it's Abed XD He looks really weird in this wig and beard XD) I had liked Teo in the show and did not care for him here. Conversely, Jet is one of my least favorite characters in the original show, but I do like him better here, at least so far, and his crew. The actor gives him a bit more charm under the mop of hair. And the rest of his crew looks good, too. But Katara's time with them felt too rushed, and having both Jet and the Mechanist as part of the Omashu storyline makes the whole thing really complicated, so, I dunno. Jet is important to Katara's arc as well as themes of the show (sacrificing innocent people for "the greater good" is not a good thing, whether your idea of "the greater good" is prosperity under the Fire Nation banner or freedom), and the encounter with the Mechanist is important to Sokka's development, where he is allowed to explore his talents as something other than a warrior/leader, and be recognized for them, so both of those things were definitely not skippable, but I wish they hadn't all been crammed together like this.
The Aang/Zuko fight in the marketplace started off fun but went on too long for me (I definitely enjoyed Zuko getting smacked by a random woman for attacking a child), and I liked that Zuko managed to fight Aang without letting loose of his firebending but it was getting angry when he realized Aang had his notebook that led to his unmasking -- I'm really enjoying Zuko actor's facial expressions and body language and everything he is conveying through them. Iroh's "look, I'm a Firebender! right here!" moment was also fun. I wonder if this basically takes the place of Iroh being captured in the hot springs (in which case I'll be sad to see that hilarious interlude not included in the show...)
Also: MY CABBAGES! (it did not need to be this dramatic this time, but I definitely hope it's not the last time we are going to see the Cabbage Merchant. But also I had to grin at the Chekob's cabbages earlier in the episode XD)
Episode 4: Into the Dark
Ah, I see, Aang and Iroh get to have a moment talking to each other in prison. Iroh (and Iroh & Zuko) was definitely the emotional center of this episode for me. Zuko finally gets to fight against someone other than a kid or a bunch of kids, and by that point the Earth Kingdom captain was not someone one would be rooting for, though his anger and hatred was understandable. I do think it's good to get more of Iroh and Zuko's backstory earlier on (although I am confused by whether they are altering the timeline of Lu Ten's death, Zuko and Ozai's agni kai, etc. or I'm just having a harder time telling what age Zuko is supposed to be in the flashbacks...
They surely could have found someone better than this to play kid!Bumi XD though it does rather highlight how much better Aang's actor is, and the other young ones. I heard that Jay from US Ghosts was playing old King Bumi and was waiting to get to him. He is suitably mad! But I was surprised that this show decided to get over the suspense of who the old mad king is in a about 10 seconds. Also, Bumi needed to be more jacked for the final fight scene XD But I enjoyed the bending in the fight, and the appearance of the stone discs technique. I think Earthbending is my favorite of the four techniques (Fire being the other contender, but it's really gruesome in live action), so it was nice to get a lot of it here.
Speaking of bending, Katara picks up her water skin in this episode. And ice powers! Go, Katara! I liked her fuck-off to Jet, too ("That wasn't you. That was me.") -- I do hope this is signaling Katara's transformationinto the Gaang's best offensive fighter.
Even when Sokka used the literal phrase "secret tunnels" I was not expecting, well, the Secret Tunnel interlude, lol -- mostly because I remembered that being a Book 2 episode (note to self: "Cave of the Two Lovers") Also, wait, are Oma and Shu, the eponymous two lovers both women now? I mean, good for them, but I did have to rewind and watch it again to be sure that's what I was hearing. Sokka and Katara's fight and reconciliation was kind of mixed for me -- the yelling kind of came out of nowhere and seemed artificial, but the final scene where they clasp hands and apologize did work well for me.
And, relieved to see that "My cabbages" is going to be a running gag :)
Onward to the second half. I've heard the views both that this is when the show hits its stride (from someone whose tastes I often agree with but also someone who is only loosely familiar with the original show) and that this is where it goes off the rails, so... we'll see, I guess?
*
I've also continued to read things (amazing!):
2. Ben Aaronovitch, Winter's Gifts -- the Kim Reynolds novella which I hadn't been looking forward to because Kim is one of the few non-River characters in RoL I don't really care about. But it was no bad; better than I had been expecting. Kim's narrative voice worked OK for me, and I did not feel like the religion stuff was being laid on too thick. I did think there was a LOT of stuff about guns, but I suppose that might just be BA enjoying the chance to play around with them in the narrative when in the main series his cops don't carry guns. SPOILERS from here The romance with Bill felt pretty arbitrary and too sudden, but I don't think romance is BA's strong suit as a writer anyway. The action leaned more horror than I prefer, too, getting chased by monsters with some zombie characteristics -- honestly, that got tedious after a while, and it was during one of those interludes that I wandered away for some months. But the historical mystery aspect was enjoyable. And I liked the local genius loci / Native American spirit. This was the first RoL book set in at least the same country I live in, and almost nothing weird jumped out at me -- the one thing I noted down was Kim thinking "satnav" instead of "GPS", which is the typical US usage, but I could also see the FBI/military calling it satnav. Though I am pretty far from this fictional setting geographically, or the place where Kim was raised, so I wouldn't know if any local things got messed up. I do like that the US-set novella touches on Native American magic as well as the colonial magic (and that Jefferson and Franklin are the 'fathers' of American magic, based on Newtonian magic, of course), and I like the way the theme is treated -- that Scott Walker assumes the dangerous manifestations are the Native American spirit going for revenge, but actually it's the dead Virginian Gentlemen. So, all in all, a decent addition to the worldbuilding in this universe, and an enjoyable enough read, but one of my less favorite books in the series for sure.
3. Rebecca Fraimow, Lady Eve's Last Con -- read in ARC; the book comes out June 4, and I can't wait to be able to buy this as a present for people :D Because this was just FUN! I never know what to do with spoilers when it's an ARC, but I do have a whole thing written up with some spoilers (they are romcom level spoilers, but I don't want to spoil anyone's reading experience even with those), so I'll depart from my usual format and start off with a shorter, non-spoilery version of the write-up. But if you're reading this and you've already read the book, skip down to where the spoilery one starts -- the non-spoilery version is basically that but redacted.
Non-spoilery version:
I really enjoyed the vibe of the worldbuilding -- I hadn't consciously connected it to the Roaring Twenties aesthetic until I read some comments about it, but the VIBE came through loud and clear, and the examples of conspicuous consumption IN SPACE were just so fun! And even beyond the glitz, the way the setting has all these little everyday details that clearly situate it in a society that has accustomed itself to life in space. It's really fun to see those kinds of details turned loose on high society -- a really unique feel of prosperity on a relatively new frontier. But of course the prosperity is still seen through the eyes of someone who has experienced the scarcity and is sharply aware of the waste she is seeing and despises it. And even beyond the space stuff, there are these little offhand details mentioned that added up to a weird, vivid world -- skateboxing, klez-clubs, grav-dominos, wild-hand dreidel -- whatever all those things are (and yes, I did love the random Jewish references sprinkled in, in addition to the plot-relevant ones and Ruthi and Jules' heritage -- it's great to have both Jewish main characters and evidence of Jews-in-the-world, both insular and integrated). I hope this book gets a movie adaptation -- it would be so fun to see the plot play out against the backdrop of all this vibrant weirdness and glitz! Oh, and as part of the lived-in feeling, I loved the way Ruthi's similes and cliches reflect her sci-fi reality, too -- I love when setting and language and POV come together like that.
The characters are really fun! I loved Ruthi's narrative voice from the start, had a very strong sense of her as a character for all that she spent so much of the book playing a role, and absolutely felt the strength of her relationship with her sister. I liked Ruth's thrill-seeking side that comes out to play when she doesn't have to look out for her sister, her world-wise toughness and wryness, and the arc that she gets. I also liked Sol the love interest a lot, pretty much from her first appearance -- she definitely knows how to make a first impression! And I don't think I've met a female character like that before -- competent and debonaire "Don Juan" type, as Ruthi puts it. I was also surprised by how much I ended up... "liking" is the wrong word, but finding Esteban (the subject of Ruthi's con and revenge plot and Sol's younger brother) sympathetic. He IS oblivious and spoiled and self-centered and petulant -- but even in Ruthi's extremely cynical and adversarial narration, I felt sympathy for him and got a sense of his real passion. The dynamic between Ruthi and her sister is also great!
The plot was fun -- I mean it's a con/revenge plot, with bonus space mafia! And it's a light, zany plot, for the most part, but it also touches with a deft, delicate hand on serious things -- class differences and complex family dynamics and questions of identity, big things that are not treated facilely and are given the space to have nuance without bogging down the plot. But you also have setpieces that are just hilarious -- I laughed out loud several times. And of course the romance was also a big part of the plot. skygiants described this book as a rom-com, and that definitely felt like the vibe -- which I appreciate far more than angsty pining. This also had the antagonists-to-lovers thing that works for me really well in m/m relationships and that I've seen very little of with f/f, and, yep, apparently it works for me in f/f relationships, too. Loved Sol's grand chivalrous gestures and ridiculous cape, but also appreciated her less flashy, more vulnerable moments with Ruthi.
I keep using the word "fun" for this book, which feels kind of reductive, but the cool thing is -- the book doesn't feel shallow, for all that the plot goes zooming along and the dialogue is light and bantery. It's just... a good book with vivid characters, unusual blend of worldbuilding in the setting, and nuanced treatment of its characters and themes -- which ALSO happens to be just a blast.
**
now with SPOILERS!
I was looking up an older write-up and found a thread where I was talking about how I haven't come across any SFF that really worked for me as F/F romance, the way I have with M/M and het -- not that I've been looking on purpose -- I tend to seek out F/F less than either M/M or het in both fanfic and profic -- but I've been reading an awful lot of books that are advertised as "space lesbians", and none of them have really worked for me *as* F/F. Some of them I think are not meant to -- like, Some Desperate Glory does have canonical F/F in it, but it's much less important to the book than most other things. Gideon and Harrow in The Locked Tomb are into girls, but at least in the first two books that's not really the point. The Teixcalaan books also have F/F, but I'm not a fan. Over on the fantasy side, there's a little more success for me -- I enjoyed The Unspoken Name and liked both halves of the F/F relationship, but didn't really believe in the relationship itself. I liked Delly in A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry, but found her love interest pretty bland, in a "well, if that's what Delly's into, I guess more power to her" way. I mention all this because here, finally, is genre F/F with some real chemistry behind it! I really liked both women, thought the chemistry between them was great throughout, and was rooting for a happy ending for them. Imagine that!
Everything about this book was fun, which made it a great read for a rainy February.
I really enjoyed the vibe of the worldbuilding -- I hadn't consciously connected it to the Roaring Twenties aesthetic until I read some comments about it, but the VIBE came through loud and clear, and the examples of conspicuous consumption IN SPACE were just so fun! -- the retro zero-G bar where the tables of honor are located vertically and patrons tether themselves in! anti-grav opera with floating, autonomously powered opera boxes! And even beyond the glitz, the way the setting has all these little everyday details that clearly situate it IN SPACE, in a society that has accustomed itself to life in space -- cocktails in juice boxes because of the potential for glitchy gravity on a satellite, "bubble skirts" fashion and hair salons with cycling gravity so you can see what your hair will look like at any occasion (ditto), "breathers" as combination functional safety equipment and fashion statement (and eventually, plot device, but it felt very natural by then). I love details like this, and a lot of SF settings don't bother with them, or the ones that do just lean into the grungy side of things, the scarcity angle of life in space (The Expanse does this pretty well, from even the one book I read and one season I watched) -- and it's really fun to see that turned loose on high society -- a really unique feel of prosperity on a relatively new frontier. But of course the prosperity is still seen through the eyes of someone who has experienced the scarcity and is sharply aware of the waste she is seeing and despises it. And even beyond the space stuff, there are these little offhand details mentioned that added up to a weird, vivid world -- skateboxing, klez-clubs (which I assume is Klezmer music), grav-dominos and wild-hand dreidel -- whatever all those things are (and yes, I did love the random Jewish references sprinkled in, in addition to the plot-relevant kosher ducks and Ruthi and Jules' heritage -- it's great to have both Jewish main characters and evidence of Jews-in-the-world, both insular and integrated. And I loved learning that "Sunrise, Sunset" is still a wedding staple <3) I hope this book gets a movie adaptation -- it would be so fun to see the plot play out against the backdrop of all this vibrant weirdness and glitz! Oh, and as part of the lived-in feeling, I loved the way Ruthi's similes and cliches reflect her sci-fi reality, too -- "between the airlock and the spacewalk", "as stubborn as a bot with bad orders", "meek as a mail-bot", "Alonso let out a sigh, like the rumble of a vacuum-bay door closing" -- I love when setting and language and POV come together like that.
The characters are really fun! I loved Ruthi's narrative voice from the start, had a very strong sense of her as a character for all that she spent so much of the book playing a role, and absolutely felt the strength of her relationship with her sister for all that they spend 90% of the book apart -- that is really neatly done! I liked Ruth's thrill-seeking side that comes out to play when she doesn't have to look out for her sister, her world-wise toughness and wryness, and the arc that she gets. And as I mentioned under worldbuilding, it's neat to get a sci-fi protatonist who is Jewish -- not in some tokenistic way or Most Jewish Ever so that no-one misses the point way, but in a messy and lived in way where her mother's Orthodox upbringing in Brooklyn is one more part of her assorted family baggage, but an important part, part of her overall background as a POC and someone who grew up off-planet and, like, spaceship urchin. I also liked Sol the love interest a lot, pretty much from her first appearance -- she definitely knows how to make a first impression! And I don't think I've met a female character like that before -- competent and debonaire "Don Juan" type, as Ruthi puts it, with a dark secret/hidden pain -- I tend to love male characters like this (say, Tony Stark, though the area of competence is different, and Sol seems to be a much nicer person), and it was nice to see that this would carry over to a female one. I was also surprised by how much I ended up... "liking" is the wrong word, but finding Esteban sympathetic. Because Ruthi certainly doesn't find him to be that when the book starts or when the book ends, really. Seeing him through Ruthi's eyes -- as a dumb mark to be fleeced, as the jerk who hurt her sister, as a spoiled little brother (because she can see that in his dynamic with Sol), as a "poor little rich boy" oblivious to his privilege, as the extremely dull man she has to tediously fawn over as part of her con is withering -- and he IS oblivious and spoiled and self-centered and petulant -- but even in Ruthi's extremely cynical and adversarial narration, I felt sympathy for him, got a sense of his real passion, dismissed by eveyone as pointless, his not particularly fun position in the family, and wanted him to get a happy ending going off to study dirt with someone who found him genuinely interesting rather than being willing to put up with him for his money (I personally am rooting for him to eventually get his head out of his ass, as Jules told him to, and reunite with Jules and their sprog as more mature people -- which Jules seems to have had that growth but we haven't seen that from Esteban yet, but I'm hoping). I generally like the "Happy For Now" open-ended ending -- it feels very fitting for the book -- but I do feel sad for Esteban, who appears to be stuck with a role he really couldn't care less about, in a family that doesn't listen to him or value him. I hope there's a way out for him, also. I did not have any real sense of Jules, besides as Ruthi's flighty little sister she had to take care of, until she showed up at Ruthi's hotel room at the 88% mark -- and I totally had not expected that, although it was a very elegant resolution to a bunch of plot and thematic things that I'd been wondering how they would get resolved -- and then she very quickly won me over by being both justifiably frustrated with Ruthi lying to her and going off to do stupid things on her own AND insistent on giving Ruthi shit in a gleefully younger-sibling way. The dynamic between them is great, and I loved that the last scene, the real emotional closure of the book, is between Ruthi and Jules; that chapter was poignant and funny in just the right measure/combination. It's a pretty tight cast; there were not a lot of other characters that Ruthi interacted with in detail, but I ended up liking what we saw of Louanne Hachi (Sol's ex and best friend), who was consistently pragmatic in both good and bad ways, and conummate professional lawyer lady Galaxy Khan, and was amused to learn that bitchy society girl Gaea St Clair was apparently actually really smart (having beaten Esteban on a test at least once).
The plot was fun -- I mean it's a con/revenge plot, which was fun enough in itself, but then there's space mafia! satellite-level sabotage! dodging a hijackedself-driving car on a hoverbike! And it's a light, zany plot, for the most part, but it also touches with a deft, delicate hand on serious things -- class differences and complex family dynamics and questions of identity, big things that are not treated facilely and are given the space to have nuance without bogging down the plot. The whole kosher ducks as moral line in the sand plot point was a great example of that -- it's an inherently funny setup, that Sol is stuck with a warehouse full of frozen kosher ducks, which are difficult to ship because following shabbat rules is tricky in space travel -- especially funny when Ruthi started out thinking Sol had gotten mixed up in grim things like unregulated memory tech before learning the truth. But the ducks being a moral line for Ruthi because they're going to waste rather than riches being Robin Hooded to people who could use them more made a lot of sense to me as a character detail (though of course her having fallen for Sol didn't hurt, I'm sure), and Ruthi's visit to Gavriel Herschel, and how even though she is still being a con artist and playing a role, she is feeling more like herself in that setting and that role was something I found unexpectedly poignant. But you also have setpieces that are just hilarious -- I laughed out loud twice reading about "Evelyn"'s fancy dinner of multi-course foam with Esteban and their first kiss. And the final con, with Ruthi in a different disguise and Jules impersonating Ruthi in her wedding dress and double-crossing Alonso with the semi-witting help of the Hachi lawyer lady was suitably complex and tense and capitalized nicely on various previously seeded things, like Ruthi playing poker with Alonso as a kid, the sabotage lawsuit Louanne kept poking her about, and the fake valuation letter on Sol's debt. Excellent con, A+, would heist again.
And of course the romance was also a big part of the plot. skygiants described this book as a rom-com, and that definitely felt like the vibe -- which I appreciate far more than angsty pining. Around ch 10, when Ruthi tells Sol her real name, the romance started reminding me of Rose Lerner's excellent True Pretenses (which has the distinction of being the only non-genre romance book I read that I actually enjoyed as a romance) -- there are some obvious parallels, what with one of the leads being a Jewish con artist who is an older sib going through a rough patch with their younger sib, and both leads being older sibs in a way that's important to their identities and priorities. But also, a key thing for me was that despite one member of the couple being a con artist playing a role, the couple knew each other's secrets pretty early on in the book and could be honest with each other in a way they couldn't be with other people around them. A lot of the specifics are different of course, even aside from the genders and sexualities involved -- Sol and Lydia are very different personalities for starters -- but that intimacy and honesty in the middle of a con and the romantic leads having being elder, caretaker siblings in common were aspects that worked really well for me in both books. This also had the antagonists-to-lovers thing that works for me really well in m/m relationships and that I've seen very little of with f/f, and, yep, apparently it works for me in f/f relationships, too. Loved Sol's grand chivalrous gestures and ridiculous cape, but also appreciated her letting in Ruthi to see her secret with various justifications, and less flashy moments like covering for Ruthi popping an anti-rad pill at a family dinner. Really loved their banter, both before they got together and especially after, when it was laced with innuendo to traumatize poor Jules XD Explicit F/F sex is just not something I'm ever going to find hot, probably, but I did enjoy how very much themselves Ruthi and Sol were throughout -- still the banter, Ruthi's POV or Sol and awareness of little things like thinking of how annoying it will be to step on the buttons from Sol's jacket torn in a moment of passion, and this sense that she is partly thinking of their night together as a con, a ploy to keep Sol from being able to go get herself memory-wiped in the morning -- a con for Sol's own good. So I thoroughly enjoyed the relationship.
I keep using the word "fun" for this book, which feels kind of reductive, but the cool thing is -- the book doesn't feel shallow, for all that the plot goes zooming along and the dialogue is light and bantery. It's just... a good book with vivid characters, unusual blend of worldbuilding in the setting, and nuanced treatment of its characters and themes -- which ALSO happens to be just a blast. I read this in just a couple of days, liveblogging gleefully with cafemassolit who started a little later than me but finished even sooner. It's that kind of book! :D
Quotes:
"Esteban, so far as I could see, didn't dance with anyone else when I was off twirling around the floor with some Tom or Devere or Hikaru."
About Mr Alonso: "polite to widows and orphans when it wasn't in his job description to be otherwise"
Sol: "My brother's too polite to pry into other people's circumstances--" [...] that was a pretty generous way to characterize Esteban's tendency towards monologue, if you asked me."
"You had to love the third-generation rich -- the easy livers, the always-hads. They were always looking for a reason to think they were better than you, and it barely took any effort at all to get them to pick the wrong one."
"He had his sister's tall, lean lines, and the smug good health of someone whose genetics had always cooperated with the doctor's orders."
"Before he could finish explaining to me how I ought to've felt about the beach, Sol popped up behind him, grabbed him around the shoulders, and dunked him into the water.
Esteban rose up, sputtering. 'Sol! What was that for?'
"I'm teaching you about romance,' said Sol. 'Rule number one: if a lady's having a good time with you, you don't tell her she ought to be having a bad one.'"
"Jules would've loved Lorelei. I knew that. Maybe I could've loved it, too, if she was here. But she was out there, an ERB away, and I wasn't here to love anything."
"Nobody who owned [the warehouses] wanted to be seen visiting if they could help it. That would look a little too much like an admission that money sometimes involved work."
"You got a shipload of stranded orphans to show me after all?"
"You seem a bit stuck on on those orphans. Do you have parents, Miss Johnson?"
"You got me dead to rights," I said. "I'm just a poor girl all alone in the world. If only I'd had folks to bring me up proper, maybe I wouldn't have come to the straits I'm in."
"All right," said Sol, amiably enough, "you don't have to tell me." [...]
"I am telling you. We don't have'em."
The kiss with Esteban: "It took everything I had to prtend that that it was perfectly natural for me to sit limpidly gazing at him while he slid himself awkwardly round the velvet seat cushions, knocked a set of cocktail spears off the table, paused for an agonizing moment to decide he didn't need to retrieve them, and continued his slow advance. [...] Anyway, he finally managed to plant his mouth on mine. I was in the process of going tactically limp when we were interrupted by a bright light and a small but polite caugh. The pod had just slid back into the kitchen, and the insulated glass shelf was peeling back so the chef could bring us the eighth course of this interminable meal. [...] The chef maintained an admirable poker face as she whisked away the tiny half-eaten wasabi souffle and replaced it with an equally minuscule cantaloupe savory."
Esteban taking "Evelyn" to meet his father: "He'd managed to plaster a veneer of condescending matcho confidence over his usual filial petulance."
Sol: "There was a time, you know, when I was not exactly a New Monte hit either. My accent was wrong, my opinions were wrong, certainly my parentage was wrong."
Ruth: "And then you hit puberty, got a makeover montage and a hovercycle, and suddenly--"
Sol: "I did eventually learn how to exert some control over the kind of attention I received."
"If you got high enough on chemistry, it made you kind of lose your grip on basic mathematics"
"Modesty has never been one of my vices."
The drink at Ruthi's hen night: "it tasted like someone had tried to put out a chemical fire with cough syrup."
Jules: "Every time I had to eat my own cooking, I missed you."
"You hate my cooking," I said startled.
"Sure," said Jules. "It's terrible. But also, turns out, cooking for yourself is kind of hard."
"Funny thing about that, huh."