media wednesday
Last night one of my friends held a clothing swap party - we had a potluck dinner and drank wine and then emptied our bags of "stuff that doesn't fit or you're sick of wearing" onto the living room floor, and we all tried on each other's clothes and took what we wanted, with the rest going to the thrift store. I'm pretty sure I ended up with about as many things as I brought! But yay new-to-me clothes. Anyway:
What I've recently finished reading:
A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham, which - I'm not sure why I didn't like this more than I did. It was too slow-moving for me, I think, and full of cool bits of worldbuilding that were touched on but never really explored, to my dismay. It was like things such as the andats and the poet school and the merchant life were all just window dressing rather than central to the story.
I liked Amat, but the other characters weren't as interesting to me. I was not a fan of the plot being set in motion by an abortion that the woman didn't realize was happening, and the people causing it not realizing it was unwanted. I was not a fan of the rest of the plot revolving around a love triangle that should have been an OT3.
BTW I got that one from the Tor.com eBook club, which has just announced its August free download: Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon. The blurb: "Eleven thousand years ago a god was born. Cursed into the body of a human, Acheron spent a lifetime of shame. However, his human death unleashed an unspeakable horror that almost destroyed the earth. Then, brought back against his will, Acheron became the sole defender of mankind.
Only it was never that simple. For centuries, he has fought for our survival and hidden a past he’ll do anything to keep concealed. Until a lone woman who refuses to be intimidated by him threatens his very existence.
Now his survival, and ours, hinges on hers and old enemies reawaken and unite to kill them both." https://ebookclub.tor.com/ to download before August 18th midnight ET, US and Canadian addresses only.
I also read an excellent short original-fic novel on AO3: The Crimson Solution by
yunitsa/
yunitsa, which was posted back in 2014, at which time I used the "mark for later" AO3 function and then forgot about it, as well as forgetting about the "mark for later" function until just recently, when I decided to look through what I had marked. I found this story, started reading, and (modulo typos) it's great! Really well constructed, fascinating worldbuilding presented in bits and pieces, and a delightful narrator. The tags include alchemy, pseudo-Victorian, giant slug, dragons, colonialism, and here's the summary: "Phoebe Bannister's marriage to the alchemist Charles Templer might have been the end of one sort of story. But in sharing a house with her husband and his partner, the brilliant and irascible Benjamin Cole, Phoebe soon finds herself caught up in the complex relationship between the two men - and in the search for the most dangerous product of the alchemist's art." Highly recommended!
And this afternoon I finally finished the audiobook of Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama. This YA book tells the parallel stories of the mermaid Syrenka, who in 1872 falls in love with a young Plymouth naturalist and chooses to become mortal so as to live with him - a choice which, of course, has a difficult and high price - and 17-year-old Hester, living in Plymouth 140 years later, who has sworn not to fall in love because the women in her family have inexplicably died after giving birth. Of course these stories are connected, and the reader is clued in through the narrative of the past long before Hester figures it out, which is a trope I love. (Not quite "unreliable narrator", but "narrator who doesn't have the facts the reader does.") In the first part of the book, the past-narrative is far more interesting than the present-narrative, but about 3/4 through, Hester's story takes an abrupt turn for higher stakes, which I thought was an excellent choice on the part of the author, and I found myself thoroughly engrossed. (Also, the ending involves another trope I adore, but it's a spoiler.)
The audiobook is read by Katherine Kellgren, who I fell in love with from her work on the Bloody Jack series, and she does an excellent job here, too.
What I'm reading now:
I've also begun The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell, and I'm enjoying it a lot. There's something that really appeals to me about a tale narrated by an adult looking back on his childhood, the combination of the naivete of the youth as mediated by the later understanding of the adult.
What I'm reading next:
I've got the next book of Cornwell's Saxon Stories for when I finish this one. When I finish the audiobook, I will catch up on the Underwood & Flinch episodes I haven't listened to yet.
What I'm watching now:
We have seen episodes 4 and 5 of season 2 of Westworld, and I loved the complex reveals in both of these! In particular, episode 5's ( skip spoiler) mirror-image Edo AU of the Sweetwater gunfight was brilliant, and delighted me no end - I actually started laughing out loud when "Paint it Black" started playing. That was just such a perfect scene - I recognized the beats and motions and poked B, saying, "Look! Look! It's the gunfight! They're stealing the safe!" Watching the "original" characters process it was fabulous, and unsurprisingly, Armistice/Hanaryo hit me LIKE A TON OF BRICKS and hey, it's a nominated pairing for
femslashex!
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
What I've recently finished reading:
A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham, which - I'm not sure why I didn't like this more than I did. It was too slow-moving for me, I think, and full of cool bits of worldbuilding that were touched on but never really explored, to my dismay. It was like things such as the andats and the poet school and the merchant life were all just window dressing rather than central to the story.
I liked Amat, but the other characters weren't as interesting to me. I was not a fan of the plot being set in motion by an abortion that the woman didn't realize was happening, and the people causing it not realizing it was unwanted. I was not a fan of the rest of the plot revolving around a love triangle that should have been an OT3.
BTW I got that one from the Tor.com eBook club, which has just announced its August free download: Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon. The blurb: "Eleven thousand years ago a god was born. Cursed into the body of a human, Acheron spent a lifetime of shame. However, his human death unleashed an unspeakable horror that almost destroyed the earth. Then, brought back against his will, Acheron became the sole defender of mankind.
Only it was never that simple. For centuries, he has fought for our survival and hidden a past he’ll do anything to keep concealed. Until a lone woman who refuses to be intimidated by him threatens his very existence.
Now his survival, and ours, hinges on hers and old enemies reawaken and unite to kill them both." https://ebookclub.tor.com/ to download before August 18th midnight ET, US and Canadian addresses only.
I also read an excellent short original-fic novel on AO3: The Crimson Solution by
yunitsa/
yunitsa, which was posted back in 2014, at which time I used the "mark for later" AO3 function and then forgot about it, as well as forgetting about the "mark for later" function until just recently, when I decided to look through what I had marked. I found this story, started reading, and (modulo typos) it's great! Really well constructed, fascinating worldbuilding presented in bits and pieces, and a delightful narrator. The tags include alchemy, pseudo-Victorian, giant slug, dragons, colonialism, and here's the summary: "Phoebe Bannister's marriage to the alchemist Charles Templer might have been the end of one sort of story. But in sharing a house with her husband and his partner, the brilliant and irascible Benjamin Cole, Phoebe soon finds herself caught up in the complex relationship between the two men - and in the search for the most dangerous product of the alchemist's art." Highly recommended!
And this afternoon I finally finished the audiobook of Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama. This YA book tells the parallel stories of the mermaid Syrenka, who in 1872 falls in love with a young Plymouth naturalist and chooses to become mortal so as to live with him - a choice which, of course, has a difficult and high price - and 17-year-old Hester, living in Plymouth 140 years later, who has sworn not to fall in love because the women in her family have inexplicably died after giving birth. Of course these stories are connected, and the reader is clued in through the narrative of the past long before Hester figures it out, which is a trope I love. (Not quite "unreliable narrator", but "narrator who doesn't have the facts the reader does.") In the first part of the book, the past-narrative is far more interesting than the present-narrative, but about 3/4 through, Hester's story takes an abrupt turn for higher stakes, which I thought was an excellent choice on the part of the author, and I found myself thoroughly engrossed. (Also, the ending involves another trope I adore, but it's a spoiler.)
The audiobook is read by Katherine Kellgren, who I fell in love with from her work on the Bloody Jack series, and she does an excellent job here, too.
What I'm reading now:
I've also begun The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell, and I'm enjoying it a lot. There's something that really appeals to me about a tale narrated by an adult looking back on his childhood, the combination of the naivete of the youth as mediated by the later understanding of the adult.
What I'm reading next:
I've got the next book of Cornwell's Saxon Stories for when I finish this one. When I finish the audiobook, I will catch up on the Underwood & Flinch episodes I haven't listened to yet.
What I'm watching now:
We have seen episodes 4 and 5 of season 2 of Westworld, and I loved the complex reveals in both of these! In particular, episode 5's ( skip spoiler) mirror-image Edo AU of the Sweetwater gunfight was brilliant, and delighted me no end - I actually started laughing out loud when "Paint it Black" started playing. That was just such a perfect scene - I recognized the beats and motions and poked B, saying, "Look! Look! It's the gunfight! They're stealing the safe!" Watching the "original" characters process it was fabulous, and unsurprisingly, Armistice/Hanaryo hit me LIKE A TON OF BRICKS and hey, it's a nominated pairing for
femslashex!
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth