Some books of march
Mercedes Lackey
The Serpent's Shadow
A nice little Snow White tale, with colonialism and suffragettes and British magic meeting Indian. It's fun, and I rather liked the heroine - and her hero. (And Lord Peter Wimsey, who was certainly not the reason I decided to loan the book in the first place)
George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings
Still awesome and Tyrion is still my absolute favourite. Actually, I've been a bad girl, spoiling myself, reading about the fifth book, and stumbled across some chapters, incl. one focusing of Tyrion - and now I want him to go team up with Daenerys, because his brain and her charisma (and pets) - oh, Westeros won't know what hit them. Only, I have two more books to get my dirt hands on before I can even legitimately look forward to the fifth...
Dorothy L. Sayers
Striding Folly
It's sort of bitter-sweet, reading the last stories about a fictional character you've come to love, isn't it? Alas. Mind you, they're fun - not hugely dramatic and great challenges, but nice. Wimsey as a father is nice, if maybe not quite pc, but, well, it was the 40's - I don't think they had invented the term yet.
Maria V. Snyder
Spy Glass
If I can just ignore my dislike of fantasy world's that seem to be too tiny (seriously - two countries? that's it?!) to be believable, then the trilogy this novel is the last part of is a very fine study of how a young woman gradually succumbs to a nasty case of something quite like Stockholm syndrome. I mean, how else can you describe a tale, where the happy ending is getting married to a guy who: a)was part of an organisation trying for a coup d'etat, b)was at the very least and accessory to your sister's murder, c)has repeatedly kidnapped and tortured you to the breaking point, d)did a bodyswap with the young man you where dating (not that he was worth keeping, not even bothering to give you a heads-up) and proceded to initiate a sexual relationsship with you. For starters. Probably didn't help that nobody believed the girl about the bodyswap once she found out, so she never got the support to get through the trauma of rape, doesn't even seem to get that it was rape (which is probably in character for the sheer fucked-up-ness of the situation, as does several other things too numerous to mention, but still). And of course, the point where she finally knowingly falls into his arms - that would be when she, after a prolonged period of magic-less-ness, has been turned into a magic-blood-junkie, mentally enslaved by an evil magician and scheduled to be married to a cult leader who will proceed to rape her until she gets pregnant on the morrow, while all her friends think her dead. Very romantic. By which of course I mean creepy.
Admittedly, the really creepy part? That nobody in the book seems to have a problem with the relationship - that the heroine's mother can be distracted by the fact that her daughter has just married a murdering, kidnapping, torturing, raping son-of-a-bitch by a promise of getting to arrange their wedding party, that the heroine's nice love interest bows out. And the really, really, really creepy part - that if you go out and read reviews of the books, then everybody is talking about how it's oh so romantic and no, that totally wasn't rape, and just. Creepy.
I don't get YA romance.
Jill Paton Walsh (with varying degrees of Dorothy L. Sayers)
Thrones, dominations, A Presumption of Death, The Attenbury Emeralds
I'm sorry to say that these authorized Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane sequels have failed to quite live up to the hype. I mean, they're okay stories, but, well, they just don't feel quite like Peter and Harriet. I wish I knew how much of TD was written by Sayers, but. I mean. Peter barely even sounds like himself and he's absent half the time anyway. I think my main issue is this, though - how to put it? - they are historical novels. By which I mean that the original stories by Sayers were contemporary. She and her readers knew the world she was writing about, and she was a child of her times. Walsh is writing historical novels with all the wisdom inparted by over half a century's distance. These three novels feel - artificial. Too politically correct, somehow, particularly when you just finished reading Striding Folly with its casual racism and no longer acceptable approach to raising children. I doubt any character in Walsh's novels would ever make a casual remark about England needing a Hitler, unless it was a foul villain. Also too soft - no drug-smugglers here, or other horrible things. This is a world of murders committed due to jealousy and people stealing gems. I hope she doesn't write any more. Also, because The Attenbury Emeralds really felt like a goodbuy. An end of an era. Very bittersweet. And I don't know about you, but one of the charms of these novels was their setting, that carefree 20's and 30's world that even the Depression couldn't touch.
Total number of books and comics read this month: 22
Currently reading: Julian May's Intervention and Romantikkens Verden
The Serpent's Shadow
A nice little Snow White tale, with colonialism and suffragettes and British magic meeting Indian. It's fun, and I rather liked the heroine - and her hero. (And Lord Peter Wimsey, who was certainly not the reason I decided to loan the book in the first place)
George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings
Still awesome and Tyrion is still my absolute favourite. Actually, I've been a bad girl, spoiling myself, reading about the fifth book, and stumbled across some chapters, incl. one focusing of Tyrion - and now I want him to go team up with Daenerys, because his brain and her charisma (and pets) - oh, Westeros won't know what hit them. Only, I have two more books to get my dirt hands on before I can even legitimately look forward to the fifth...
Dorothy L. Sayers
Striding Folly
It's sort of bitter-sweet, reading the last stories about a fictional character you've come to love, isn't it? Alas. Mind you, they're fun - not hugely dramatic and great challenges, but nice. Wimsey as a father is nice, if maybe not quite pc, but, well, it was the 40's - I don't think they had invented the term yet.
Maria V. Snyder
Spy Glass
If I can just ignore my dislike of fantasy world's that seem to be too tiny (seriously - two countries? that's it?!) to be believable, then the trilogy this novel is the last part of is a very fine study of how a young woman gradually succumbs to a nasty case of something quite like Stockholm syndrome. I mean, how else can you describe a tale, where the happy ending is getting married to a guy who: a)was part of an organisation trying for a coup d'etat, b)was at the very least and accessory to your sister's murder, c)has repeatedly kidnapped and tortured you to the breaking point, d)did a bodyswap with the young man you where dating (not that he was worth keeping, not even bothering to give you a heads-up) and proceded to initiate a sexual relationsship with you. For starters. Probably didn't help that nobody believed the girl about the bodyswap once she found out, so she never got the support to get through the trauma of rape, doesn't even seem to get that it was rape (which is probably in character for the sheer fucked-up-ness of the situation, as does several other things too numerous to mention, but still). And of course, the point where she finally knowingly falls into his arms - that would be when she, after a prolonged period of magic-less-ness, has been turned into a magic-blood-junkie, mentally enslaved by an evil magician and scheduled to be married to a cult leader who will proceed to rape her until she gets pregnant on the morrow, while all her friends think her dead. Very romantic. By which of course I mean creepy.
Admittedly, the really creepy part? That nobody in the book seems to have a problem with the relationship - that the heroine's mother can be distracted by the fact that her daughter has just married a murdering, kidnapping, torturing, raping son-of-a-bitch by a promise of getting to arrange their wedding party, that the heroine's nice love interest bows out. And the really, really, really creepy part - that if you go out and read reviews of the books, then everybody is talking about how it's oh so romantic and no, that totally wasn't rape, and just. Creepy.
I don't get YA romance.
Jill Paton Walsh (with varying degrees of Dorothy L. Sayers)
Thrones, dominations, A Presumption of Death, The Attenbury Emeralds
I'm sorry to say that these authorized Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane sequels have failed to quite live up to the hype. I mean, they're okay stories, but, well, they just don't feel quite like Peter and Harriet. I wish I knew how much of TD was written by Sayers, but. I mean. Peter barely even sounds like himself and he's absent half the time anyway. I think my main issue is this, though - how to put it? - they are historical novels. By which I mean that the original stories by Sayers were contemporary. She and her readers knew the world she was writing about, and she was a child of her times. Walsh is writing historical novels with all the wisdom inparted by over half a century's distance. These three novels feel - artificial. Too politically correct, somehow, particularly when you just finished reading Striding Folly with its casual racism and no longer acceptable approach to raising children. I doubt any character in Walsh's novels would ever make a casual remark about England needing a Hitler, unless it was a foul villain. Also too soft - no drug-smugglers here, or other horrible things. This is a world of murders committed due to jealousy and people stealing gems. I hope she doesn't write any more. Also, because The Attenbury Emeralds really felt like a goodbuy. An end of an era. Very bittersweet. And I don't know about you, but one of the charms of these novels was their setting, that carefree 20's and 30's world that even the Depression couldn't touch.
Total number of books and comics read this month: 22
Currently reading: Julian May's Intervention and Romantikkens Verden