March books
Yeah... I’m very behind on that whole “fifty books this year” thing, although I’m totally still gonna do it.
The A-Z of Punishment & Torture by Irene Thompson
This was not very good. I will admit I read it partly for kink inspiration and it had the bad manners to be about actual deadly torture that couldn’t be scaled down to enjoyable kink, so probably I’m being a bit unfair to it. I was also hoping for some interesting non-European forms of torture and didn’t really get it, but again that’s me expecting something the book never said it was about. And it did have some interesting facts in it, and I read it really quickly so it’s readable at least. Occasionally Thompson showed an enjoyable turn of phrase: when his wife discovered that the mistress was in town, she took the knife used to peel pineapples and put an end to his sexual activity forever.
But it bothered me. Thompson’s tone switched a lot - prurient, wry, disapproving, sympathetic - with no apparent reason beyond her whims. Plus at some points she seemed to be writing sort of from the perspective of whichever culture she was discussing at the time - “negress slave” is period-appropriate even if it made me do a double-take - except then she’d switch to this very outsider-y disapproving tone. It was, for instance, ‘At the Queen’s Pleasure’ that Queen Elizabeth I - Good Queen Bess - had her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, beheaded. But what can you expect of a Queen brought up with the family values of Henry VIII?
Between that and this:
It was America where the first prisons, or penitentaries (from penitent) were built, aimed at reforming law-breakers by depriving them of their liberty. Of course. the idea didn’t work, especially for hardened criminals
it all felt a bit Daily Fail at times. Ah yes, hardened criminals being criminal. We must lock them up forever or they’ll never learn.
And there was some stuff that was just fucked up. During the Apartheid Regime in South Africa, horrific pictures of ‘necklacing’ victims shocked the civilised world.
Um. Necklacing totally is horrific, but are you sure implying South Africa is UNCIVILISED is where you want to go?
In Arab countries, the ancient code of ‘an eye for an eye’ prevails over any judicial system and is fuelled by the clash of competing faiths.
If only Arabs weren’t so incapable of enforcing the rule of law.
The fabrication didn’t end there. Far from being the mother of five, as claimed, she was, in fact their father, Jerry Dean Michael.
Being trans is a LIE, guys. A filthy lie.
Thompson uses male pronouns after the reveal and reports that Michael was found later living as a woman, and then sent to an all-male prison to serve her sentence, without a trace of sympathy. Which would infuriate me less if she hadn’t put in editorial comment on people’s punishments elsewhere.
So yeah. Fun idea, but really not worth the rise in blood pressure.
Line and Orbit by Sunny Moraine and Lisa Soem
I really should’ve reviewed this loooong along. My dear
marbletables won it in a giveaway on Sunny Moraine (dynamicsymmetry) and gave it to me because she’d already bought the book. I am a lucky girl :D
It was not entirely to my taste, but pretty fabulous. It’s described as sci-fi but it felt more science fantasy to me, although that might just be my ignorance of sci-fi talking. In the far future, we have Adam, a genetically ‘perfected’ young rising star and closet case. He’s a shiny part of the Terran Protectorate, this universe’s resident imperialist humans set-up - until it comes out that he’s not genetically perfect at all. Something’s wrong and he’s dying. His company supposedly fixes it, but they also basically drain his accounts to do so, and someone so genetically fucked up can’t have a good job like his. Adam’s on his own. He buys a little spaceship and heads off.
And soon he meets Lachlan, a hotshot bisexual pilot with a snarky attitude and an enjoyment of space-weed and one-night-stands. Lachlan, needless to say, is the other half of the romance, and very good at it he is too. (I like Lachlan. Lachlan is super-hot. Tell me more about your agile hands, Pilot Guy.)
Lachlan’s one of the Bideshi, who are basically space-nomads; they left Earth back when everyone was getting big into genetic engineering all THIS IS A BAD IDEA BUT APPARENTLY YOU WON’T LISTEN and have been wandering around in sets of three massive spaceships ever since, occasionally meeting on this one planet for a three-day holiday/conference, ever since. Naturally the Protectorate considers them dirty thieves and generally awful, and there’s been at least one incidence of Protectorate soldiers massacring Bideshi.
Anyway. Sorry, this is turning into one of those retell-the-story reviews, but I do actually like the world-building and it’s appropriately important to the plot, so yeah. Basically - cool action, a sexy and enjoyably non-instant romance, and it gets properly scary at times. Also YMMV, but I thought it did pretty well with having the blond boy from another culture join the nomadic tribe without going to icky places. Adam’s genetic engineering makes him good at shooting but not better than people with actual experience, which also made me happy; and there’s a sweet trans guy and his extremely cool wife and this wicked female villain who is brilliantly Love To Hate and yeah. Good book. Very very suited to a lot of your tastes, I should think, dear flist - check it out.
Also, Lachlan. Very hot. Adam also hot, if you prefer the virginal blond boys.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/263757.html. Comment wherever you like :)
The A-Z of Punishment & Torture by Irene Thompson
This was not very good. I will admit I read it partly for kink inspiration and it had the bad manners to be about actual deadly torture that couldn’t be scaled down to enjoyable kink, so probably I’m being a bit unfair to it. I was also hoping for some interesting non-European forms of torture and didn’t really get it, but again that’s me expecting something the book never said it was about. And it did have some interesting facts in it, and I read it really quickly so it’s readable at least. Occasionally Thompson showed an enjoyable turn of phrase: when his wife discovered that the mistress was in town, she took the knife used to peel pineapples and put an end to his sexual activity forever.
But it bothered me. Thompson’s tone switched a lot - prurient, wry, disapproving, sympathetic - with no apparent reason beyond her whims. Plus at some points she seemed to be writing sort of from the perspective of whichever culture she was discussing at the time - “negress slave” is period-appropriate even if it made me do a double-take - except then she’d switch to this very outsider-y disapproving tone. It was, for instance, ‘At the Queen’s Pleasure’ that Queen Elizabeth I - Good Queen Bess - had her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, beheaded. But what can you expect of a Queen brought up with the family values of Henry VIII?
Between that and this:
It was America where the first prisons, or penitentaries (from penitent) were built, aimed at reforming law-breakers by depriving them of their liberty. Of course. the idea didn’t work, especially for hardened criminals
it all felt a bit Daily Fail at times. Ah yes, hardened criminals being criminal. We must lock them up forever or they’ll never learn.
And there was some stuff that was just fucked up. During the Apartheid Regime in South Africa, horrific pictures of ‘necklacing’ victims shocked the civilised world.
Um. Necklacing totally is horrific, but are you sure implying South Africa is UNCIVILISED is where you want to go?
In Arab countries, the ancient code of ‘an eye for an eye’ prevails over any judicial system and is fuelled by the clash of competing faiths.
If only Arabs weren’t so incapable of enforcing the rule of law.
The fabrication didn’t end there. Far from being the mother of five, as claimed, she was, in fact their father, Jerry Dean Michael.
Being trans is a LIE, guys. A filthy lie.
Thompson uses male pronouns after the reveal and reports that Michael was found later living as a woman, and then sent to an all-male prison to serve her sentence, without a trace of sympathy. Which would infuriate me less if she hadn’t put in editorial comment on people’s punishments elsewhere.
So yeah. Fun idea, but really not worth the rise in blood pressure.
Line and Orbit by Sunny Moraine and Lisa Soem
I really should’ve reviewed this loooong along. My dear
marbletables won it in a giveaway on Sunny Moraine (dynamicsymmetry) and gave it to me because she’d already bought the book. I am a lucky girl :D
It was not entirely to my taste, but pretty fabulous. It’s described as sci-fi but it felt more science fantasy to me, although that might just be my ignorance of sci-fi talking. In the far future, we have Adam, a genetically ‘perfected’ young rising star and closet case. He’s a shiny part of the Terran Protectorate, this universe’s resident imperialist humans set-up - until it comes out that he’s not genetically perfect at all. Something’s wrong and he’s dying. His company supposedly fixes it, but they also basically drain his accounts to do so, and someone so genetically fucked up can’t have a good job like his. Adam’s on his own. He buys a little spaceship and heads off.
And soon he meets Lachlan, a hotshot bisexual pilot with a snarky attitude and an enjoyment of space-weed and one-night-stands. Lachlan, needless to say, is the other half of the romance, and very good at it he is too. (I like Lachlan. Lachlan is super-hot. Tell me more about your agile hands, Pilot Guy.)
Lachlan’s one of the Bideshi, who are basically space-nomads; they left Earth back when everyone was getting big into genetic engineering all THIS IS A BAD IDEA BUT APPARENTLY YOU WON’T LISTEN and have been wandering around in sets of three massive spaceships ever since, occasionally meeting on this one planet for a three-day holiday/conference, ever since. Naturally the Protectorate considers them dirty thieves and generally awful, and there’s been at least one incidence of Protectorate soldiers massacring Bideshi.
Anyway. Sorry, this is turning into one of those retell-the-story reviews, but I do actually like the world-building and it’s appropriately important to the plot, so yeah. Basically - cool action, a sexy and enjoyably non-instant romance, and it gets properly scary at times. Also YMMV, but I thought it did pretty well with having the blond boy from another culture join the nomadic tribe without going to icky places. Adam’s genetic engineering makes him good at shooting but not better than people with actual experience, which also made me happy; and there’s a sweet trans guy and his extremely cool wife and this wicked female villain who is brilliantly Love To Hate and yeah. Good book. Very very suited to a lot of your tastes, I should think, dear flist - check it out.
Also, Lachlan. Very hot. Adam also hot, if you prefer the virginal blond boys.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/263757.html. Comment wherever you like :)