Comments | hamsterwoman: Reading roundup: Craft, magpies, and a lack of Vorkosigans

hamsterwoman

Reading roundup: Craft, magpies, and a lack of Vorkosigans

Oct 23, 2015 22:33

OK, this feels a bit surreal but... I'm a third of the way through a Vorkosigan book and was considering whether to wait with my reading roundup until I was done with it and include it, but I don't think I'm going to finish it this weekend, probably not until my next commute. It's going fine! I'm enjoying what I'm reading! but it's not calling me ( Read more... )

reading, a: kj charles, a: max gladstone

Comments 15

q99 October 24 2015, 14:52:12 UTC

EBook Vorkosigan??

I only read paper, so I'm going to have to wait all the way til February on that one.

hamsterwoman October 24 2015, 17:43:42 UTC

One of the formats they have the eARC available in is PDF, and I think some other non-eReader-specific formats, too. Buuut as of this moment in my experience and what I've seen elsewhere, waiting until February is not a huge onus. (It's enjoyable! Just slow and slight. I'm still happy to have it because I love these characters and I wanted post-CryoBurn closure, but it's not holding my attention as a standalone novel, if you know what I mean.)

q99 October 25 2015, 02:33:40 UTC

It's not the digital format, it's that I spend a lot of time reading while doing other stuff. Hence, paper!

Clay tablets are also acceptable.

hamsterwoman October 25 2015, 05:37:40 UTC

Ah, I see. PDF's not much help in that case (and clay tablet is sadly not one of the available formats)

a_phoenixdragon October 24 2015, 16:17:53 UTC

*Drive by squishes!!*

hamsterwoman October 24 2015, 17:44:04 UTC

egelantier October 24 2015, 18:18:18 UTC

as far as i know literally nobody liked caleb/mal or mal herself. like, i don't know if it was an attempt at deconstructing a noir femme fatale or an earnest attempt, but it didn't work, either way, and the book overall suffers for it - it's indeed the weakest one!

BUT it's absolutely worth it because now you can go read first last snow with all the context (OH, TEMOC) and, like. well, mostly cry a lot (OH, TEMOC, SERIOUSLY).

he does sell you on the sacrifices, doesn't him? i mean, i still think he's wrong, and i thought he was wrong in the prequel, too, overall, but just... there's a point, and really nobody is looking good there, least of all kopil.

(elayne is looking good there. elayne is looking good EVERYWHERE).

hamsterwoman October 24 2015, 18:41:55 UTC

I guess I can see Mal as a deconstruction of the noir femme fatale a bit more readily than the same trope played straight -- or at least not Mal herself but Caleb's obsession with her -- but I agree that it doesn't really work either way. I was actually thinking that the other books in the series (that I've read so far) are completely devoid of romance -- I counted 3PD for my "main male and female character do not fall in love" square and the only romantic relationship in FF5 is the post-breakup messiness of Kai and Claude, so possibly Gladstone should just leave romance out of it entirely. But it is impressive to see him trying an assortment of things, even if they don't always work. I think he's the least formulaic genre writer I've read yet!

i mean, i still think he's wrong, and i thought he was wrong in the prequel, too, overall, but just... there's a point, and really nobody is looking good thereYeah, I still think he's wrong, too, but I also have the nagging feeling that I may be thinking this mainly because in *my* world ( ... )

_profiterole_ October 24 2015, 19:21:08 UTC

I can't say I was very interested in Izza, except around the end of the book where stuff started to happen for real. But apart from that, I mostly wanted to go back to Kai's POV, because she's such a strong and fascinating character, while Izza is your usual street urchin.

hamsterwoman October 24 2015, 19:28:04 UTC

I definitely preferred Kai's POV as well, and I would like to see more of her, while Izza I'm fairly indifferent on. But I do like the effect of seeing POV characters through the eyes of other POV characters.

thistle_chaser October 25 2015, 04:56:44 UTC

Which zoo does L work at again? I took my mother to Happy Hollow (neither of us had been before) and I thought of you and L.

hamsterwoman October 25 2015, 05:34:38 UTC

San Francisco Zoo. (But I've heard a lot of nice things about Happy Hollow from my friends who live in Silicon Valley.) I'm sure she would be happy to be associated with any zoo, though, as am I :) And I hope the two of you had a nice time there!

thistle_chaser October 25 2015, 06:01:24 UTC

Happy Hollow is a nice little zoo, but very very small (website said 150 animals, but if I had to guess, I would have said about 20 non-barn/farm/domestic animals).

We did enjoy it! It was aimed towards small kids, but we had some one-on-one time with the keepers (shows no one else attended), so that was very nice. The area was really pretty too. Lots of open space/lush lawns.