May, reading
On my picture side, oblongs of dark green and blue stenciled themselves across a chaos of orange wildfire. Flames ate through the oblongs, sprouted tiny green vines with leaves shaped like tongues of flame. Okay. Witches. Science. I could put this together.
-- from Spirits that Walk in Shadow by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
I didn't read a lot of things last month, which is unusual for May. May is the month of having no time to read but reading lots anyway because I'm stressed, because I'm procrastinating, or because I've lost all sense of proportion.
Since I don't claim to have been any more saner than I usually am at this time of year, I'm not sure what the difference was? That I didn't spend so much time on public transport?
Hmmm.
* * *
M.K. Hobson's The Native Star is an alternate Western historical fantasy... or, in other words, steam-punk, but it amused me to see how many genres could apply. There's also romance, although not too much of it (in my incredibly subjective opinion).
Emily, an unmarried witch in a timber community, comes up with a slightly unethical solution (involving a love spell) for how she's going to support her ailing adoptive father, and things go awry.
But this is quickly overshadowed when an incident with the zombies at the mine leaves Emily with a curious magic-inhibiting rock embedded in her hand. Dreadnought Stanton, a pompous Warlock whom Emily has several reasons for disliking, insists on dragging her to the San Francisco so the Mirabilis Institute can investigate.
And then they end up fleeing for their lives. (Of course.)
I enjoyed their mad journey across the country. The world building is interesting, the magical systems are unusual, and the story is tense and engaging. Emily and Stanton aren't particularly deep people, but they're both opinionated; an amusingly volitile combination.
I still haven't bothered to read the sequel, but at the time, this was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to read.“Let’s get one thing straight.” Emily glared at Stanton. “I’m not going to San Francisco because I want to gawp at the gaslights and the tall buildings. And I’m not going because I want to be the toast-however briefly-of the magical community of San Francisco. I’m going because I made an awful mistake, and I have to fix it, and I can’t fix it with this … thing in my hand. I am going because Dag needs my help. That clear, Mr. Stanton?”
Stanton stared at her with distaste, as if her outburst came with an unpleasant smell attached.
“As window glass, Miss Edwards,” he said.
* * *
I've been wanting to read Spirits that Walk in Shadows for ages. Even since I stumbled upon it as a LibraryThing recommendation for young adult books about being at university, and I recognised the cover as a Dan Dos Santos (which meant I was prepared to overlook what I would otherwise consider a "yucky" cover).
Spirits that Walk in Shadows is not about university in the way I had hoped - it's about the first few days of college, before classes start - but that doesn't matter. Nor does it matter that it is the third book in Nina Kiriki Hoffman's Chapel Hollow trilogy.
Jaimie and Kim are room-mates. Jaimie comes from a large, eccentric magical family at Chapel Hollow and isn't really sure how the 'Outside' world works, but she's looking forward to finding out. Kim, an artist, is hoping to escape her inexplicable depression and the frequent bouts of tears which have plagued her in recent months.
Jaimie - with the help of Rugee, the salamander-shaped Presence who accompanied her from home - quickly realises that Kim's depression isn't normal. Along with Jaimie's cousins from the south (who sort of gate-crash), they embark on a quest to stop the force that is inducing Kim's misery for its own ends.
I really enjoyed this. Friendship! Teamwork! A magical, sentient animal-shaped being (aka, Rugee)! I'd love to read a sequel.“I want to make notes so I can think about this rationally.”
Jaimie, Harrison, and Josh stared at me.
Here I was, talking to witches about rational.
On my picture side, oblongs of dark green and blue stenciled themselves across a chaos of orange wildfire. Flames ate through the oblongs, sprouted tiny green vines with leaves shaped like tongues of flame. Okay. Witches. Science. I could put this together.
Having read the third book in the Chapel Hollow trilogy, the best thing seemed to be to read the others, in reverse order.
Nick spends his summers helping his father run a general store / motel, and watching the visitors who come to the Lake. He longs to escape - not so much from the lake, but from his father store and his father's expectations. But the summer Willow and her family visit the lake, Nick makes some new friends and is forced to confront the truth about his unusual abilities.
Nick isn't your average 17 year old, but literature is full of stories about lonely teenagers with powers they don't understand; in this, he is not an uncommon protagonist.
What is unusual is that the most intense relationship in this book is a close friendship between two heterosexual boys. Oh, there's heterosexual romance - for both of them - but Nick falls into friendship the way other teenage protagonists fall in love. Admittedly it is a friendship complicated and deepened by magical matters, but even leaving that aside, it is still the most durable relationship to come out of this book. (But I guess all the relationships in this story are works in progress...)
I liked this; the world needs all the stories of friendship it can get.
The Silent Strength of Stones shares a few minor characters in common with Spirits that Walk in Shadows, but otherwise the only link to this trilogy is that Nick's new friends come from Chapel Hollow (post the events of The Thread that Binds the Bones, I think). So it stands on its own, very well.
It's a quiet, introspective hopeful YA novel which should be better known. I didn't enjoy it as much as Spirits that Walk in Shadows but I liked it more.
The Thread that Binds the Bones is strange. Seriously, almost surrealistically, strange. It's also not a YA novel.
Once I got beyond the strangeness of it, it was... interesting. It's the only Chapel Hollow book which is actually set in Chapel Hollow, and the events which occur are significant as the other two books are set in their aftermath. It also introduces Jaimie and her family - yay!
I can see why it would be sensible to read this book first, but if I hadn't, I mightn't have read the others. I appreciated it more as backstory than as a book in its own right... which is a bit unfair to The Thread that Binds the Bones, because it is a book in its own right. And it isn't its fault I wanted another YA novel.
* * *
Erin leaves behind Kentucky and her manipulative grandmother to go to college in New York. She's determined to support herself financially, major in English and become a romance novelist.
While she's left her past behind her, she doesn't see why she shouldn't fictionalise it and use it as inspiration for her writing. At least, not until someone from that past joins her creative writing class...
Jennifer Echols' Love Story is about watching, observing, voyeurism.Erin and Hunter have gone through high school watching each other but not talking; now they're still watching and trying to communicate through their stories.
They themselves are being watched doubly, in a sense - by their classmates, who read their stories, and by their friends (most of whom are also their classmates) who witness their social interactions. Everyone is trying to put the pieces together and no one has the full story.
There is something rather meta about this, not just because it is a romance about writing romance, but because romances are about watching: they involve the reader watching the romantic leads watch each other (and fall in love).
It's subtly effective, and makes what could be a silly, contrived scenario quite readable. As does that the romantic interest is caring... and there are horses. I mean, if it's going to be an escapist read, let's do it properly!
I also enjoyed Love Story because it is a YA story about university - specifically, about studying, creative writing, making friends and struggling for independence. I liked the extracts from stories Erin and Hunter write, and the discussions their creative writing class has.
And it's much more about relationships, and relating to people, than it is about physical attraction. That's my sort of romance story - more YA than romance, if that makes sense.“You never dealt with it back then. You’re trying to deal with it now. You’ve gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you’re studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe you can come back.”
* * *
I read The Onion Girl because Jilly was an interesting minor character in Trader. (I suspect that Oooh! Minor characters! They seem interesting! may be my reaction to de Lint's books in general. Unfortunately the internet won't answer my question as to whether there is a novel or short story about my the minor characters from The Onion Girl whom I'm most interested in.) I'm glad I knew in advance that it was dark, about characters with horrible, abusive pasts... because, whoa, it's dark, gritty and occasionally depressing. Even when all of that (in Jilly's case, at least) is contrasted by the incredibly supportive family of friends Jilly has now.
Charles de Lint's urban fantasy is interesting because it is so different to most of the recent (YA) urban fantasy I've read. But I find it more interesting than emotionally engaging (er, if that makes sense). I don't want to sit down and read a whole lot of them in one go.
But maybe one day I'll read another?
~ Herenya
-- from Spirits that Walk in Shadow by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
I didn't read a lot of things last month, which is unusual for May. May is the month of having no time to read but reading lots anyway because I'm stressed, because I'm procrastinating, or because I've lost all sense of proportion.
Since I don't claim to have been any more saner than I usually am at this time of year, I'm not sure what the difference was? That I didn't spend so much time on public transport?
Hmmm.
* * *
M.K. Hobson's The Native Star is an alternate Western historical fantasy... or, in other words, steam-punk, but it amused me to see how many genres could apply. There's also romance, although not too much of it (in my incredibly subjective opinion).
Emily, an unmarried witch in a timber community, comes up with a slightly unethical solution (involving a love spell) for how she's going to support her ailing adoptive father, and things go awry.
But this is quickly overshadowed when an incident with the zombies at the mine leaves Emily with a curious magic-inhibiting rock embedded in her hand. Dreadnought Stanton, a pompous Warlock whom Emily has several reasons for disliking, insists on dragging her to the San Francisco so the Mirabilis Institute can investigate.
And then they end up fleeing for their lives. (Of course.)
I enjoyed their mad journey across the country. The world building is interesting, the magical systems are unusual, and the story is tense and engaging. Emily and Stanton aren't particularly deep people, but they're both opinionated; an amusingly volitile combination.
I still haven't bothered to read the sequel, but at the time, this was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to read.“Let’s get one thing straight.” Emily glared at Stanton. “I’m not going to San Francisco because I want to gawp at the gaslights and the tall buildings. And I’m not going because I want to be the toast-however briefly-of the magical community of San Francisco. I’m going because I made an awful mistake, and I have to fix it, and I can’t fix it with this … thing in my hand. I am going because Dag needs my help. That clear, Mr. Stanton?”
Stanton stared at her with distaste, as if her outburst came with an unpleasant smell attached.
“As window glass, Miss Edwards,” he said.
* * *
I've been wanting to read Spirits that Walk in Shadows for ages. Even since I stumbled upon it as a LibraryThing recommendation for young adult books about being at university, and I recognised the cover as a Dan Dos Santos (which meant I was prepared to overlook what I would otherwise consider a "yucky" cover).
Spirits that Walk in Shadows is not about university in the way I had hoped - it's about the first few days of college, before classes start - but that doesn't matter. Nor does it matter that it is the third book in Nina Kiriki Hoffman's Chapel Hollow trilogy.
Jaimie and Kim are room-mates. Jaimie comes from a large, eccentric magical family at Chapel Hollow and isn't really sure how the 'Outside' world works, but she's looking forward to finding out. Kim, an artist, is hoping to escape her inexplicable depression and the frequent bouts of tears which have plagued her in recent months.
Jaimie - with the help of Rugee, the salamander-shaped Presence who accompanied her from home - quickly realises that Kim's depression isn't normal. Along with Jaimie's cousins from the south (who sort of gate-crash), they embark on a quest to stop the force that is inducing Kim's misery for its own ends.
I really enjoyed this. Friendship! Teamwork! A magical, sentient animal-shaped being (aka, Rugee)! I'd love to read a sequel.“I want to make notes so I can think about this rationally.”
Jaimie, Harrison, and Josh stared at me.
Here I was, talking to witches about rational.
On my picture side, oblongs of dark green and blue stenciled themselves across a chaos of orange wildfire. Flames ate through the oblongs, sprouted tiny green vines with leaves shaped like tongues of flame. Okay. Witches. Science. I could put this together.
Having read the third book in the Chapel Hollow trilogy, the best thing seemed to be to read the others, in reverse order.
Nick spends his summers helping his father run a general store / motel, and watching the visitors who come to the Lake. He longs to escape - not so much from the lake, but from his father store and his father's expectations. But the summer Willow and her family visit the lake, Nick makes some new friends and is forced to confront the truth about his unusual abilities.
Nick isn't your average 17 year old, but literature is full of stories about lonely teenagers with powers they don't understand; in this, he is not an uncommon protagonist.
What is unusual is that the most intense relationship in this book is a close friendship between two heterosexual boys. Oh, there's heterosexual romance - for both of them - but Nick falls into friendship the way other teenage protagonists fall in love. Admittedly it is a friendship complicated and deepened by magical matters, but even leaving that aside, it is still the most durable relationship to come out of this book. (But I guess all the relationships in this story are works in progress...)
I liked this; the world needs all the stories of friendship it can get.
The Silent Strength of Stones shares a few minor characters in common with Spirits that Walk in Shadows, but otherwise the only link to this trilogy is that Nick's new friends come from Chapel Hollow (post the events of The Thread that Binds the Bones, I think). So it stands on its own, very well.
It's a quiet, introspective hopeful YA novel which should be better known. I didn't enjoy it as much as Spirits that Walk in Shadows but I liked it more.
The Thread that Binds the Bones is strange. Seriously, almost surrealistically, strange. It's also not a YA novel.
Once I got beyond the strangeness of it, it was... interesting. It's the only Chapel Hollow book which is actually set in Chapel Hollow, and the events which occur are significant as the other two books are set in their aftermath. It also introduces Jaimie and her family - yay!
I can see why it would be sensible to read this book first, but if I hadn't, I mightn't have read the others. I appreciated it more as backstory than as a book in its own right... which is a bit unfair to The Thread that Binds the Bones, because it is a book in its own right. And it isn't its fault I wanted another YA novel.
* * *
Erin leaves behind Kentucky and her manipulative grandmother to go to college in New York. She's determined to support herself financially, major in English and become a romance novelist.
While she's left her past behind her, she doesn't see why she shouldn't fictionalise it and use it as inspiration for her writing. At least, not until someone from that past joins her creative writing class...
Jennifer Echols' Love Story is about watching, observing, voyeurism.Erin and Hunter have gone through high school watching each other but not talking; now they're still watching and trying to communicate through their stories.
They themselves are being watched doubly, in a sense - by their classmates, who read their stories, and by their friends (most of whom are also their classmates) who witness their social interactions. Everyone is trying to put the pieces together and no one has the full story.
There is something rather meta about this, not just because it is a romance about writing romance, but because romances are about watching: they involve the reader watching the romantic leads watch each other (and fall in love).
It's subtly effective, and makes what could be a silly, contrived scenario quite readable. As does that the romantic interest is caring... and there are horses. I mean, if it's going to be an escapist read, let's do it properly!
I also enjoyed Love Story because it is a YA story about university - specifically, about studying, creative writing, making friends and struggling for independence. I liked the extracts from stories Erin and Hunter write, and the discussions their creative writing class has.
And it's much more about relationships, and relating to people, than it is about physical attraction. That's my sort of romance story - more YA than romance, if that makes sense.“You never dealt with it back then. You’re trying to deal with it now. You’ve gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you’re studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe you can come back.”
* * *
I read The Onion Girl because Jilly was an interesting minor character in Trader. (I suspect that Oooh! Minor characters! They seem interesting! may be my reaction to de Lint's books in general. Unfortunately the internet won't answer my question as to whether there is a novel or short story about my the minor characters from The Onion Girl whom I'm most interested in.) I'm glad I knew in advance that it was dark, about characters with horrible, abusive pasts... because, whoa, it's dark, gritty and occasionally depressing. Even when all of that (in Jilly's case, at least) is contrasted by the incredibly supportive family of friends Jilly has now.
Charles de Lint's urban fantasy is interesting because it is so different to most of the recent (YA) urban fantasy I've read. But I find it more interesting than emotionally engaging (er, if that makes sense). I don't want to sit down and read a whole lot of them in one go.
But maybe one day I'll read another?
~ Herenya