Fiction
Kaitlin Sage Patterson, The Diminished: Vi is diminished, which means she’s the survivor of twins. After the cataclysm, most people are born as twins; most die if their twin dies, but a diminished survives for some amount of time-until they become uncontrollably violent and have to be taken down. A few are still singleborn, and thus marked for extra wisdom and rulership, like Bo, the queen’s designated heir. When Vi’s plot to free herself from the humiliations of the Temple where her parents sent her fails and sends her across the ocean, her path intersects surprisingly with Bo’s. I was engaged, and there was certainly room for a sequel. Without being too spoilery, there is one semi-major character whose fate is very Rosencrantz & Guildenstern: significant, but offscreen, in a way that makes some sense but still feels dangling.
T. Kingfisher, Clockwork Boys (Clocktaur War Book I): A forger takes a disgraced knight with a dead demon inside him, an assassin, and a misogynist cleric on a suicide mission to figure out the source of the Clockwork Boys who have been devastating their city. Enjoyable steampunkish fantasy world where the characters banter pretty much exactly as Buffy would have done, except without the pop culture references. (I heard it said recently how that’s unrealistic-people would be making pop culture references all the time, and religion/saint’s names can’t be complete substitutes. That strikes me as true, and is probably part of what made the banter feel a little off, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it anyway.)
Daniel Handler, All the Dirty Parts: A middle-aged man’s take on what horny 16-year-old boys think like-whether or not that man has been publicly implicated in #metoo-has some inherent issues with unreliable narration. That said, Handler can write very catchily. Cole reads plausibly as a boy who really loves sex and, at the start, is deluding himself about how carefully he has been going about getting it from girls (and it is getting it from, not sharing it with). Then he starts fooling around with his male best friend, who also starts catching feelings-and then he meets A Different Girl. It’s clear that from an outside perspective, she’s not different in any way other than the random ways in which people differ, but that doesn’t matter to Cole, nor does it matter to anybody else in love. I was surprised by how much the ultimate message resonated with me: if you think that you’re having uncomplicated sex (at least as a teenager) then the complication is probably you.
Ed Ryder, Jack Gilmour: Wish Lawyer: A hardboiled lawyer in Las Vegas makes a career out of dealing with demon contracts. Great premise, but there wasn’t enough lawyering-Gilmour basically acts as a PI, investigating a contract that threatens the soul of a casino owner’s feckless nephew (oh, and the sexual autonomy of the beautiful woman he desires, if that matters at all) and getting entangled in demon politics.
Jim Butcher, Brief Cases: Dresden Files short stories, some of them starring non-Harry POV characters. The best was a story about Molly’s new job as the Winter princess/enforcer and the new abilities she was learning to navigate; the silliest was a Rashomon-like trip to the zoo in which Harry, his ten-year-old daughter, and his foo dog each had their own battles to fight, only somewhat perceived by each other.
Theodora Goss, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter: Women erased from their own stories-Jekyll’s daughter, Hyde’s daughter, Rappacini’s daughter, one of Moreau’s creations, Justine Frankenstein (aka intended bride of…), etc.-get together to figure out how they are connected by a mysterious society of experimenters, encounter Sherlock Holmes, and find a family of choice. It was okay; I don’t have very strong connections with the foundational stories, and I think I would have liked it better if I had.
Genevieve Cogman, The Lost Plot: In this Invisible Library novel, our heroine is sent to investigate an apparent breach of Library neutrality in favor of a dragon engaging in political maneuvering. Danger in a Prohibition-era NYC follows, along with major changes in her relationship with her apprentice, the dragon Kai.
Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road: Hartman turns her focus to one of Seraphina’s younger half-sisters, Tess-the designated bad girl of the family. Raised in a religiously repressive household, Tess rebels, with incredibly negative consequences that leave her resentful and trapped, drinking too much and looking forward to nothing but a life of looking after her good twin’s children in another repressive house. After some spectacular indiscretions, Tess runs away, reconnects with a childhood friend, and finds herself on the road, pun intended. I liked this one better than the previous books, which I thought were good, but this one was good in a way made for me-it’s about how your parents fuck you up, often without meaning to; about how sexism warps people from the inside out; about how you can leave but you take your problems with you unless you confront them; about how a person can be a wonderful friend, mentor, comrade to some people and also a disastrous parent to others. It’s also witty and compassionate. More fantasy elements, but very much reminded me of Frances Hardinge.
In the Footsteps of Dracula, ed. Stephen Jones: Stories in rough chronological (setting) order, starting from an excerpt from a play version of Stoker’s book penned by Stoker himself. Authors include Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Charlaine Harris, Nancy Holder, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, Paul McAuley, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, and F. Paul Wilson. Newman is a reprint from his Anno Dracula series, and Harris is a Sookie story, so the supposed throughline of following Dracula through time doesn’t work all that well.
Steven Brust, Good Guys:Mostly I just like Brust’s Jhereg stories, and To Reign in Hell, but I didn’t bounce off of this one as I have some recent Brust. Donovan and his team-Hippie Chick (the bruiser) and New Girl (the sorceror) are part of the Foundation, whose ill-paid job is to protect magic from general discovery and catch those misusing it. When people connected to the other main magical organization start turning up killed in magical, and increasingly gruesome, ways, Donovan and his team investigate, even though the people they’re protecting have done some very bad things. Not quite as much about bureaucracy as The Laundry Files, but somewhat in that vein, as a low-level operative tries to save the world and, though he’s pretty sure he’s on the right side, deal with the things that his organization allows that are not very right at all.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
T. Kingfisher, Clockwork Boys (Clocktaur War Book I): A forger takes a disgraced knight with a dead demon inside him, an assassin, and a misogynist cleric on a suicide mission to figure out the source of the Clockwork Boys who have been devastating their city. Enjoyable steampunkish fantasy world where the characters banter pretty much exactly as Buffy would have done, except without the pop culture references. (I heard it said recently how that’s unrealistic-people would be making pop culture references all the time, and religion/saint’s names can’t be complete substitutes. That strikes me as true, and is probably part of what made the banter feel a little off, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it anyway.)
Daniel Handler, All the Dirty Parts: A middle-aged man’s take on what horny 16-year-old boys think like-whether or not that man has been publicly implicated in #metoo-has some inherent issues with unreliable narration. That said, Handler can write very catchily. Cole reads plausibly as a boy who really loves sex and, at the start, is deluding himself about how carefully he has been going about getting it from girls (and it is getting it from, not sharing it with). Then he starts fooling around with his male best friend, who also starts catching feelings-and then he meets A Different Girl. It’s clear that from an outside perspective, she’s not different in any way other than the random ways in which people differ, but that doesn’t matter to Cole, nor does it matter to anybody else in love. I was surprised by how much the ultimate message resonated with me: if you think that you’re having uncomplicated sex (at least as a teenager) then the complication is probably you.
Ed Ryder, Jack Gilmour: Wish Lawyer: A hardboiled lawyer in Las Vegas makes a career out of dealing with demon contracts. Great premise, but there wasn’t enough lawyering-Gilmour basically acts as a PI, investigating a contract that threatens the soul of a casino owner’s feckless nephew (oh, and the sexual autonomy of the beautiful woman he desires, if that matters at all) and getting entangled in demon politics.
Jim Butcher, Brief Cases: Dresden Files short stories, some of them starring non-Harry POV characters. The best was a story about Molly’s new job as the Winter princess/enforcer and the new abilities she was learning to navigate; the silliest was a Rashomon-like trip to the zoo in which Harry, his ten-year-old daughter, and his foo dog each had their own battles to fight, only somewhat perceived by each other.
Theodora Goss, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter: Women erased from their own stories-Jekyll’s daughter, Hyde’s daughter, Rappacini’s daughter, one of Moreau’s creations, Justine Frankenstein (aka intended bride of…), etc.-get together to figure out how they are connected by a mysterious society of experimenters, encounter Sherlock Holmes, and find a family of choice. It was okay; I don’t have very strong connections with the foundational stories, and I think I would have liked it better if I had.
Genevieve Cogman, The Lost Plot: In this Invisible Library novel, our heroine is sent to investigate an apparent breach of Library neutrality in favor of a dragon engaging in political maneuvering. Danger in a Prohibition-era NYC follows, along with major changes in her relationship with her apprentice, the dragon Kai.
Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road: Hartman turns her focus to one of Seraphina’s younger half-sisters, Tess-the designated bad girl of the family. Raised in a religiously repressive household, Tess rebels, with incredibly negative consequences that leave her resentful and trapped, drinking too much and looking forward to nothing but a life of looking after her good twin’s children in another repressive house. After some spectacular indiscretions, Tess runs away, reconnects with a childhood friend, and finds herself on the road, pun intended. I liked this one better than the previous books, which I thought were good, but this one was good in a way made for me-it’s about how your parents fuck you up, often without meaning to; about how sexism warps people from the inside out; about how you can leave but you take your problems with you unless you confront them; about how a person can be a wonderful friend, mentor, comrade to some people and also a disastrous parent to others. It’s also witty and compassionate. More fantasy elements, but very much reminded me of Frances Hardinge.
In the Footsteps of Dracula, ed. Stephen Jones: Stories in rough chronological (setting) order, starting from an excerpt from a play version of Stoker’s book penned by Stoker himself. Authors include Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Charlaine Harris, Nancy Holder, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, Paul McAuley, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, and F. Paul Wilson. Newman is a reprint from his Anno Dracula series, and Harris is a Sookie story, so the supposed throughline of following Dracula through time doesn’t work all that well.
Steven Brust, Good Guys:Mostly I just like Brust’s Jhereg stories, and To Reign in Hell, but I didn’t bounce off of this one as I have some recent Brust. Donovan and his team-Hippie Chick (the bruiser) and New Girl (the sorceror) are part of the Foundation, whose ill-paid job is to protect magic from general discovery and catch those misusing it. When people connected to the other main magical organization start turning up killed in magical, and increasingly gruesome, ways, Donovan and his team investigate, even though the people they’re protecting have done some very bad things. Not quite as much about bureaucracy as The Laundry Files, but somewhat in that vein, as a low-level operative tries to save the world and, though he’s pretty sure he’s on the right side, deal with the things that his organization allows that are not very right at all.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.