Weekly Wednesday Reading meme
What are you currently reading
Nothing at the moment.
What did you recently finish reading?
Finished No Humans Involved.
Swan Prince, a single volume manhwa by Bi that, as the title suggests, is a genderswapped adaptation of Swan Lake. It was cute, but pretty much fluffy shoujo fantasy romance.
All four volumes of Kaori Yuki's Ludwig Kakumei. If you just went "wait, isn't that her really weird fairy tale series where the hero has a collection of preserved women's corpses?," yes, yes it is. The first couple volumes are dark and weird and misogynistic and twisted even for Kaori Yuki, are pretty openly antagonistic towards the heroines of fairy tales, and the series appears to be KY's attempted to answer "are fairy tales princes really all secret necrophiliacs?" The collection of corpses and obsession with beautiful dead things is mostly in the first volume, is mentioned a bit in the second, and then abruptly disappears altogether, and the rest of the series calms down to normal KY levels of crack and weirdness and the stories are more darkly comic parodies. There are considerably more women with lasting roles than I'd initially thought, though they tend to be on the masochistic side (unless they have a healthy streak of sadism) and a lot of the last volume is "women run around shooting people and taking over kingdoms, Lui poses dramatically." The beginning is addictive in the trainwreck horror way, then the rest is more the addictive charming dementedness you expect from KY.
As an aside, KY's sidebars are usually hilarious, but I recommend skipping a lot of them here, as she tends to talk about how she didn't care for a lot of the heroines in fairy tales and was always curious about the princes, though they also reveal a LOT of research into obscure and early versions of various stories. The most memorable of the sidebars is when she's talking about "Cinderella" and said she decided to not include a scene because she thought it sounded too painful and dark for her.* If you've read KY before (or just read up on her), your jaw may have just figuratively hit the floor. Actually, if you read this series and no other KY stuff, there should still be jawdropping, because she has far worse than anything in "Cinderella" in this series, some of which she made up for herself.
*Presumably, she was referring to the stepmother and stepsisters being attacked by birds at the wedding, as the toe and ankle lopping off were mentioned.
By Loved Unveiled by Sabrina Jeffries, a reissue of a book from 1993 written as Deborah Martin. Set during 1661, the plot revolves around Our Heroine attempting to prove that her father was not involved in an attempt to assassinate the king, and believing that Our Hero, whose family owned her father's lands before the war, and who has returned to claim them, may be responsible. Our Hero, in turn, thinks she may be a spy sent by his dastardly uncle ("dastardly" is the only proper term), who is possibly a traitor, and who told everyone that Our Hero was dead for years so that he could run off with the family jewels. Lots of "I am very suspicious of you and think you may have committed treason, but boy are you hot" hijinks ensue. I generally enjoy romance novels (and fiction in general) set in this period, and I mostly enjoyed this. "Mostly" because...uhm...I DID mention that it was written in 1993, right? For the most part, it holds up well, but the hero is prone to being an alpha jerk, and way too sexually aggressive and there's a scene that borders on dubious consent. That said....err, worse is still being published now in that regard, and there was certainly far worse coming out at the time.
What do you think you'll read next?
Not sure. I have a few romance novels and Kelley Armstrong books checked out from the library.
Nothing at the moment.
What did you recently finish reading?
Finished No Humans Involved.
Swan Prince, a single volume manhwa by Bi that, as the title suggests, is a genderswapped adaptation of Swan Lake. It was cute, but pretty much fluffy shoujo fantasy romance.
All four volumes of Kaori Yuki's Ludwig Kakumei. If you just went "wait, isn't that her really weird fairy tale series where the hero has a collection of preserved women's corpses?," yes, yes it is. The first couple volumes are dark and weird and misogynistic and twisted even for Kaori Yuki, are pretty openly antagonistic towards the heroines of fairy tales, and the series appears to be KY's attempted to answer "are fairy tales princes really all secret necrophiliacs?" The collection of corpses and obsession with beautiful dead things is mostly in the first volume, is mentioned a bit in the second, and then abruptly disappears altogether, and the rest of the series calms down to normal KY levels of crack and weirdness and the stories are more darkly comic parodies. There are considerably more women with lasting roles than I'd initially thought, though they tend to be on the masochistic side (unless they have a healthy streak of sadism) and a lot of the last volume is "women run around shooting people and taking over kingdoms, Lui poses dramatically." The beginning is addictive in the trainwreck horror way, then the rest is more the addictive charming dementedness you expect from KY.
As an aside, KY's sidebars are usually hilarious, but I recommend skipping a lot of them here, as she tends to talk about how she didn't care for a lot of the heroines in fairy tales and was always curious about the princes, though they also reveal a LOT of research into obscure and early versions of various stories. The most memorable of the sidebars is when she's talking about "Cinderella" and said she decided to not include a scene because she thought it sounded too painful and dark for her.* If you've read KY before (or just read up on her), your jaw may have just figuratively hit the floor. Actually, if you read this series and no other KY stuff, there should still be jawdropping, because she has far worse than anything in "Cinderella" in this series, some of which she made up for herself.
*Presumably, she was referring to the stepmother and stepsisters being attacked by birds at the wedding, as the toe and ankle lopping off were mentioned.
By Loved Unveiled by Sabrina Jeffries, a reissue of a book from 1993 written as Deborah Martin. Set during 1661, the plot revolves around Our Heroine attempting to prove that her father was not involved in an attempt to assassinate the king, and believing that Our Hero, whose family owned her father's lands before the war, and who has returned to claim them, may be responsible. Our Hero, in turn, thinks she may be a spy sent by his dastardly uncle ("dastardly" is the only proper term), who is possibly a traitor, and who told everyone that Our Hero was dead for years so that he could run off with the family jewels. Lots of "I am very suspicious of you and think you may have committed treason, but boy are you hot" hijinks ensue. I generally enjoy romance novels (and fiction in general) set in this period, and I mostly enjoyed this. "Mostly" because...uhm...I DID mention that it was written in 1993, right? For the most part, it holds up well, but the hero is prone to being an alpha jerk, and way too sexually aggressive and there's a scene that borders on dubious consent. That said....err, worse is still being published now in that regard, and there was certainly far worse coming out at the time.
What do you think you'll read next?
Not sure. I have a few romance novels and Kelley Armstrong books checked out from the library.