Books I bought on others' recommendations
Megan Lindholm, Harpy’s Flight: I don’t have much to add to oyceter’s summary, except that Lindholm (aka Robin Hobb) shows off, even in a very short book, her ability to make contending perspectives comprehensible. The heroine’s in-laws have disturbing beliefs, but they’re understandable in context, and the heroine takes those beliefs seriously for good reason. When she rejects the in-laws, it’s not because they’re black hats, even though “creepy” is definitely a good word for them.
Rosemary Kirstein, The Steerswoman’s Road: Coffeeandink reviewed this volume (containing two books, The Steerswoman and The Outskirter’s Secret) a long time ago, and I just got around to it. Her review discusses the overall premise, though I don’t consider it particularly spoilery. Rowan is a steerswoman, whose job it is to find new knowledge and to answer any question put to her; refuse her questions in return, and no steerswoman will help you, which is a grave disadvantage in her frontier society. She investigates some mysterious jewels with the help of an Outskirter, Bel, a “barbarian” whose focus on honor and raiding is reasonably standard for the genre but who’s enough of an interesting individual - being female, for one thing! - that she isn’t just a type. And when we get to know other Outskirters later, Bel really comes into her own. Rowan and Bel get in trouble with the wizards who control magic and who refuse to share their knowledge with steerswomen; this leads to adventures. The two books do interesting worldbuilding, but the story is incomplete, and I will probably pick up the third and fourth volumes to see what happens.
Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear, A Companion to Wolves: Very hard to beat runpunkrun’s review (conclusion: “Read this if you like: violence, borderline bestiality, hurt/comfort, gay vikings, trolls, giant wolves who can read your mind, daddy issues”). My take: Pern -dragons +wolves -Thread +trolls, plus “bondmates have sex when their bonded animals mate, and by the way they’re all guys because only guys can be warriors; also the mating involves multiple partners” is plot-critical rather than what I always thought was an embarrassed afterthought on McCaffrey’s part w/r/t green dragons. This is very much man-against-the-elements, where “elements” are trolls; though the characters disagree about things, they are living so marginally that they all understand they need each other to survive, and also the wolf-pack’s politics dominates the bonded folks’ behavior, so there’s not much of the human politics that I enjoy so much in Monette’s other work. I couldn’t keep the names straight, and I wasn’t as interested in these uniformly well-meaning guys as I am in the world of Mélusine, but (a) the beefcake cover is not false advertising and there is a good deal of man-on-man action that avoids the ever-distressing question of what to call male genitalia by not using any noun at all, but is otherwise pretty detailed, and (b) the worldbuilding was competent.
Rosemary Kirstein, The Steerswoman’s Road: Coffeeandink reviewed this volume (containing two books, The Steerswoman and The Outskirter’s Secret) a long time ago, and I just got around to it. Her review discusses the overall premise, though I don’t consider it particularly spoilery. Rowan is a steerswoman, whose job it is to find new knowledge and to answer any question put to her; refuse her questions in return, and no steerswoman will help you, which is a grave disadvantage in her frontier society. She investigates some mysterious jewels with the help of an Outskirter, Bel, a “barbarian” whose focus on honor and raiding is reasonably standard for the genre but who’s enough of an interesting individual - being female, for one thing! - that she isn’t just a type. And when we get to know other Outskirters later, Bel really comes into her own. Rowan and Bel get in trouble with the wizards who control magic and who refuse to share their knowledge with steerswomen; this leads to adventures. The two books do interesting worldbuilding, but the story is incomplete, and I will probably pick up the third and fourth volumes to see what happens.
Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear, A Companion to Wolves: Very hard to beat runpunkrun’s review (conclusion: “Read this if you like: violence, borderline bestiality, hurt/comfort, gay vikings, trolls, giant wolves who can read your mind, daddy issues”). My take: Pern -dragons +wolves -Thread +trolls, plus “bondmates have sex when their bonded animals mate, and by the way they’re all guys because only guys can be warriors; also the mating involves multiple partners” is plot-critical rather than what I always thought was an embarrassed afterthought on McCaffrey’s part w/r/t green dragons. This is very much man-against-the-elements, where “elements” are trolls; though the characters disagree about things, they are living so marginally that they all understand they need each other to survive, and also the wolf-pack’s politics dominates the bonded folks’ behavior, so there’s not much of the human politics that I enjoy so much in Monette’s other work. I couldn’t keep the names straight, and I wasn’t as interested in these uniformly well-meaning guys as I am in the world of Mélusine, but (a) the beefcake cover is not false advertising and there is a good deal of man-on-man action that avoids the ever-distressing question of what to call male genitalia by not using any noun at all, but is otherwise pretty detailed, and (b) the worldbuilding was competent.