Wednesday Reading Meme
What I Just Finished Reading
Lyn Gala, Expeditions, Estimation, and Other Dangerous Pastimes: Look, sometimes you just want to read book number four in an m/m science fiction series where a human linguist and his giant lizard alien boyfriend have a bunch of kinky xeno sex and occasionally encounter new lifeforms and nothing all that bad happens to either one of them. Don't judge me.
K. M. Szpara, Docile: I originally heard about this in a fannish contest as being basically published m/m slavefic, and since I am generally down for m/m slavefic, I was intrigued. But then I read it and it was... kind of a letdown. The mainstream reviews are like OMG SO SCANDALOUS, IT HAS SO MUCH NONCON GAY SEX and I'm just sitting here like "I just read a story where Steve has to insert a variety of improbable and extremely painful objects inside Bucky in public and pretend to like doing it so I don't think you professional reviewers understand how hard fandom goes with respect to this genre; the most degrading thing this guy ever has to do is lick the floor." So I am torn: I don't understand how this really got published as a mainstream novel, what with all the gay slavefic, but also if you're going to embrace your inner non-con slavefic fan, why not go all out? It is a mystery. The actual plot involves the main character going into debt bondage and being essentially conditioned by his master, with a bunch of angst when his master falls in love with him. I guess that was probably why the author wanted to avoid the master doing anything too terrible, in the hopes that we could feel sympathy for him by the end. Weirdly, for a book set in America (specifically, in Baltimore), absolutely nothing about the American history of slavery is mentioned and there are, like, three characters of color total. The book does assert that the ancient Romans had debt bondage (nexum), which is technically true, but neglects to mention that it was abolished in 326 BC, which is the early Republic and almost certainly not the time period anyone pictures when they picture Rome, and it is also different from Roman slavery. Anyway. If you want to pay money for some fairly tropey m/m slavefic with extremely flat characters, you could read this, or you could just reread your favorite fic on AO3.
Naomi Novik, League of Dragons: The last of the Temeraire books, and you can tell -- it's been a couple years -- that I wasn't exactly in a hurry to get around to reading it. This book does pretty much what you think it's going to do: ends the Napoleonic Wars and pretty much wraps everything up about the characters and so on and so forth. I remember thinking that the last couple books were awfully slow, and while this one does hurry it up a little, it's not really anything special. I did really love the first book but I do think it goes downhill from there.
What I'm Reading Now
Still not comics! They might start coming out in the middle of next month!
What I'm Reading Next
Who even knows? Books, hopefully. Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
comments
Lyn Gala, Expeditions, Estimation, and Other Dangerous Pastimes: Look, sometimes you just want to read book number four in an m/m science fiction series where a human linguist and his giant lizard alien boyfriend have a bunch of kinky xeno sex and occasionally encounter new lifeforms and nothing all that bad happens to either one of them. Don't judge me.
K. M. Szpara, Docile: I originally heard about this in a fannish contest as being basically published m/m slavefic, and since I am generally down for m/m slavefic, I was intrigued. But then I read it and it was... kind of a letdown. The mainstream reviews are like OMG SO SCANDALOUS, IT HAS SO MUCH NONCON GAY SEX and I'm just sitting here like "I just read a story where Steve has to insert a variety of improbable and extremely painful objects inside Bucky in public and pretend to like doing it so I don't think you professional reviewers understand how hard fandom goes with respect to this genre; the most degrading thing this guy ever has to do is lick the floor." So I am torn: I don't understand how this really got published as a mainstream novel, what with all the gay slavefic, but also if you're going to embrace your inner non-con slavefic fan, why not go all out? It is a mystery. The actual plot involves the main character going into debt bondage and being essentially conditioned by his master, with a bunch of angst when his master falls in love with him. I guess that was probably why the author wanted to avoid the master doing anything too terrible, in the hopes that we could feel sympathy for him by the end. Weirdly, for a book set in America (specifically, in Baltimore), absolutely nothing about the American history of slavery is mentioned and there are, like, three characters of color total. The book does assert that the ancient Romans had debt bondage (nexum), which is technically true, but neglects to mention that it was abolished in 326 BC, which is the early Republic and almost certainly not the time period anyone pictures when they picture Rome, and it is also different from Roman slavery. Anyway. If you want to pay money for some fairly tropey m/m slavefic with extremely flat characters, you could read this, or you could just reread your favorite fic on AO3.
Naomi Novik, League of Dragons: The last of the Temeraire books, and you can tell -- it's been a couple years -- that I wasn't exactly in a hurry to get around to reading it. This book does pretty much what you think it's going to do: ends the Napoleonic Wars and pretty much wraps everything up about the characters and so on and so forth. I remember thinking that the last couple books were awfully slow, and while this one does hurry it up a little, it's not really anything special. I did really love the first book but I do think it goes downhill from there.
What I'm Reading Now
Still not comics! They might start coming out in the middle of next month!
What I'm Reading Next
Who even knows? Books, hopefully. Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
comments