Booklog 2: Letters of marque, letters of magic
Oh lordy people, it has been a WEEK. Well, week and a half. I will just say I hope that this has been the most disgusting time of my life over and done with and move on.
To books! I still haven't done February's booklog, so, here we are.
- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
I read this because it was there and it's an Atwood I hadn't previously read. It's a very Atwood-y story of female experience in Canada with a twist. I liked it: once it got to midway through it was really gripping and I cared a lot about the characters. I liked the current-day point of view best I think. It took a bloody long time to get to half way through though...it wasn't BAD until then but I found all the chopping and changing a bit gimmicky at first, a hindrance rather than a joy, and I don't think really there's enough plot to justify quite this many pages. I am glad I read it, however!
- Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold
I realise I am a terrible fan for not having read this yet!
I LOVED IT. It was actually fluffier than I was expecting - this is pre-Cryoburn, which was initially startling! - but aw, so much fun. It was basically a book designed to make people who go "Oh IVAN" happy, and that is me, and so it did. It is mostly a glorious romp through the trials of being Ivan and also what happens when Simon and Alys get bored, and I was delighted. I like Tej, too; I liked the bits where she got to do things much better than the bits where she had to do chauffeur duty a lot. And I really empathised with her feelings about her family and how that would draw her and Ivan together, as two people who are both totally in the middle of but deliberately distancing themselves from a certain kind of world.
(I am also maybe 90% sure Bujold wrote some of this deliberately to stop people shipping Ivan/By. I put the chances of this working at approximately nil.)
- Socery and Cecilia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician by Patricia C Wrede and Caroline Stevener
This is epistolatory fiction (well, except The Grand Tour, which suffers for not being) written by two friends, basically for their own amusement because they wanted the world to have a Heyer-esque regency romance with magic in it. And lo and behold it is really good fun and I laughed and laughed. It is very silly in some ways, but they're totally ways I can get behind (the couples who get together are delightfully perfect for each other in awesome but unlikely ways, things wrap up perfectly with a bow) but this is so EXACTLY what I wanted from the concept compared to Shades of Milk and Honey (which I mostly hated) I can't even tell you. It made me really happy. I love Cecilia and Kate and their friendship and the way they continue it in their adult lives. I love that THEY get the hero plots, not the boyfriends, and CECILIA is the powerful magic user. I love the way magic works - although the third book makes me wish there was waaaay more on it interacting with technology. I am such a sucker for that. It's just delightfully fun all the way through.
(The second one, not being letters, is not nearly as sparkly as the first, and the third isn't QUITE as good as the first, but if you like ladies and magic and fun and happy magical ladies, this is a great place to go.)
- Trials for the Chalet School and Theodora and the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent Dyer
I have a vague plan of re-reading the Chalet School books until I get bored of them. I'm not yet, but this is weird: both start with the school going OMG WE'RE GOING TO HAVE THE WORST NEW GIRL EVER in a hilariously exactly matched way, for one thing. And then in the first one Mary Lou is astonishingly sanctimonious, which isn't a surprise except how much. And in the second, um, Margot Maynard becomes completely psychotic, which really IS, because...wow, I do not remember that! I remembered her being jealous, I did not remember her shrieking with rage at her triplets that they weren't allowed to have any other friends than her ever omg. Scary. Still weirdly compulsively readable, and I love Jo. Her insight that giving Ted a new name and a new start is a good idea is exactly the sort of thing that makes me love her to pieces, even if I am forever sad we don't get her adventures as a jetsetting bestselling novelist: it's not actually that great a leap, in retrospect, but it's just so NICE. She has empathy. Which is seriously more than Mary Lou does for most of Trials, blech. The actual narrative comes over less badly than Mary Lou does, I think (we the reader know the person she's thinking that way about actually does have reasons why being annoyed is perfectly reasonable, for one thing) but it would still be a much better story for a healthy dose of disability awareness.
- Fever Season, Graveyard Dust, Die Upon A Kiss, and Wet Grave by Barbara Hambly
Benjamin January, free man of colour in New Orleans, awesome musical surgeon who fights crime! (Actually that makes me think he would get on well with Stephen Maturin, another awesome musical surgeon who fights crime. OMG, someone write me that crossover. It's juuuust physically possible for them to have met, right?) I have, as many have noted, a terrible tendency to read series out of order, which I am trying to correct. I already read a later one with Benjamin and Rose in it so I knew how that panned out, but I was really happy to see how it happened - they are very cute and I like them a lot. I really liked Artois for the time he was in the series, too. Aww. Basically, these are reliably excellent antebellum murder mysteries set in New Orleans which keep the politics in in a really good way without ever letting the various people be other than people. I really love these and I plan to read the rest.
I had previously heard of the Delphine Lalaurie case without remembering that that was her name, though, so when it started to be clear what was happening I was like, "Is that based on that case where [x]?" And it WAS and the name was even the same! So I felt a bit stupid. Although the creepiest thing in the series so far has been the description of Delphine Lalaurie at the piano lesson. The rest has been good and sometimes horrible and sometimes heartwarming and always interesting, but none of it creeped me the fuck out the way that did.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/105236.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
To books! I still haven't done February's booklog, so, here we are.
- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
I read this because it was there and it's an Atwood I hadn't previously read. It's a very Atwood-y story of female experience in Canada with a twist. I liked it: once it got to midway through it was really gripping and I cared a lot about the characters. I liked the current-day point of view best I think. It took a bloody long time to get to half way through though...it wasn't BAD until then but I found all the chopping and changing a bit gimmicky at first, a hindrance rather than a joy, and I don't think really there's enough plot to justify quite this many pages. I am glad I read it, however!
- Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold
I realise I am a terrible fan for not having read this yet!
I LOVED IT. It was actually fluffier than I was expecting - this is pre-Cryoburn, which was initially startling! - but aw, so much fun. It was basically a book designed to make people who go "Oh IVAN" happy, and that is me, and so it did. It is mostly a glorious romp through the trials of being Ivan and also what happens when Simon and Alys get bored, and I was delighted. I like Tej, too; I liked the bits where she got to do things much better than the bits where she had to do chauffeur duty a lot. And I really empathised with her feelings about her family and how that would draw her and Ivan together, as two people who are both totally in the middle of but deliberately distancing themselves from a certain kind of world.
(I am also maybe 90% sure Bujold wrote some of this deliberately to stop people shipping Ivan/By. I put the chances of this working at approximately nil.)
- Socery and Cecilia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician by Patricia C Wrede and Caroline Stevener
This is epistolatory fiction (well, except The Grand Tour, which suffers for not being) written by two friends, basically for their own amusement because they wanted the world to have a Heyer-esque regency romance with magic in it. And lo and behold it is really good fun and I laughed and laughed. It is very silly in some ways, but they're totally ways I can get behind (the couples who get together are delightfully perfect for each other in awesome but unlikely ways, things wrap up perfectly with a bow) but this is so EXACTLY what I wanted from the concept compared to Shades of Milk and Honey (which I mostly hated) I can't even tell you. It made me really happy. I love Cecilia and Kate and their friendship and the way they continue it in their adult lives. I love that THEY get the hero plots, not the boyfriends, and CECILIA is the powerful magic user. I love the way magic works - although the third book makes me wish there was waaaay more on it interacting with technology. I am such a sucker for that. It's just delightfully fun all the way through.
(The second one, not being letters, is not nearly as sparkly as the first, and the third isn't QUITE as good as the first, but if you like ladies and magic and fun and happy magical ladies, this is a great place to go.)
- Trials for the Chalet School and Theodora and the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent Dyer
I have a vague plan of re-reading the Chalet School books until I get bored of them. I'm not yet, but this is weird: both start with the school going OMG WE'RE GOING TO HAVE THE WORST NEW GIRL EVER in a hilariously exactly matched way, for one thing. And then in the first one Mary Lou is astonishingly sanctimonious, which isn't a surprise except how much. And in the second, um, Margot Maynard becomes completely psychotic, which really IS, because...wow, I do not remember that! I remembered her being jealous, I did not remember her shrieking with rage at her triplets that they weren't allowed to have any other friends than her ever omg. Scary. Still weirdly compulsively readable, and I love Jo. Her insight that giving Ted a new name and a new start is a good idea is exactly the sort of thing that makes me love her to pieces, even if I am forever sad we don't get her adventures as a jetsetting bestselling novelist: it's not actually that great a leap, in retrospect, but it's just so NICE. She has empathy. Which is seriously more than Mary Lou does for most of Trials, blech. The actual narrative comes over less badly than Mary Lou does, I think (we the reader know the person she's thinking that way about actually does have reasons why being annoyed is perfectly reasonable, for one thing) but it would still be a much better story for a healthy dose of disability awareness.
- Fever Season, Graveyard Dust, Die Upon A Kiss, and Wet Grave by Barbara Hambly
Benjamin January, free man of colour in New Orleans, awesome musical surgeon who fights crime! (Actually that makes me think he would get on well with Stephen Maturin, another awesome musical surgeon who fights crime. OMG, someone write me that crossover. It's juuuust physically possible for them to have met, right?) I have, as many have noted, a terrible tendency to read series out of order, which I am trying to correct. I already read a later one with Benjamin and Rose in it so I knew how that panned out, but I was really happy to see how it happened - they are very cute and I like them a lot. I really liked Artois for the time he was in the series, too. Aww. Basically, these are reliably excellent antebellum murder mysteries set in New Orleans which keep the politics in in a really good way without ever letting the various people be other than people. I really love these and I plan to read the rest.
I had previously heard of the Delphine Lalaurie case without remembering that that was her name, though, so when it started to be clear what was happening I was like, "Is that based on that case where [x]?" And it WAS and the name was even the same! So I felt a bit stupid. Although the creepiest thing in the series so far has been the description of Delphine Lalaurie at the piano lesson. The rest has been good and sometimes horrible and sometimes heartwarming and always interesting, but none of it creeped me the fuck out the way that did.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/105236.html. Please comment there using OpenID.