michelel72

Hello, world. I don't post much; I haven't been doing much. But I figured I'd make some notes of recent things as evidence to myself that I do anything.

Writing: I've been making stop-and-go progress on a story that I never meant to exist; it's ... 69,700 words so far, and it has so much left to go, and I need it to be in place for something else I wrote that follows it, and ... sigh. Why am I like this.

Beware of very mild spoilers beyond this point. Note also that I haven't been in an overly receptive headspace lately, so please know that I don't mean to denigrate anyone's favorites here.

( Books, Movies, YouTube )

Summary: Aramin "Min" Decourcey is a thief of some renown. When his "nephew" Harry gets into deep trouble with an aristocrat, Min is strong-armed into an agreement: if he retrieves Kazimir ("Kaz"), Harry's life will be spared. Kaz is in fae-controlled territory, though, and there are reasons he hasn't returned.

I generally prefer M/M romance to F/M, though it always depends on the individual story. This one didn't work for me, though I liked the apparently binormative society. ( Moderate spoilers )

In sum: Meh. Fine if you like that kind of thing, but not for me.

This review is a bit hazy because I read this book within a day of its release to Patreon but never posted about it. This is one of Vernon's paladin romances; I've enjoyed the series and I enjoyed this installment.

( Details ... )

Ultimately, the formula is starting to feel a little constraining, and I liked the prior works a bit better, but I still liked this one. Recommended.

A few quick takes, entirely out of order:

"Space Opera", Catherynne M. Valente (novel, interlibrary loan): Take Douglas Adams; get him hopped up on a blend of Tumblr, man's inhumanity to man, and coke-fueled glam rock; and set him loose to work out his feelings in permanent marker on the walls of a hipster London dive bar's bathroom stalls. That's the best I can come to describing my impression of the vibe; if that's your thing, cool, but turned out not to be mine. This is apparently quite unlike her other works, which I still hope to check out sometime.

"Head On", John Scalzi (novel, interlibrary loan): I actually liked this one. Subtle moments of humor in an otherwise straightforward narrative work well for me, as does his reasonably invisible writing style.

"Sword and Sorceress XXVII", various (anthology, trade paperback): As often happens with anthologies, I liked some and not others. I hadn't read this series before, which made a few stories frustrating, because they were written within worlds that had been established in earlier volumes. I disliked the structure of a couple. "The Salt Mines" was grimmer than I care for; "The Ghost Pyres" was as well. But I was surprised to like Leah Cypess's "Straw-Spun", which is probably unfair; I just remembered not caring for the way one of her novels resolved, but this story worked well for me. I especially liked "Mahrut's Road" by Nathan Crowder (strong worldbuilding), "Netcasters" by Layla Lawlor (a fun tension between twisty and stolid characters and a setting in which a lack of wealth does not equate to grim misery), and "The Rising" by Pauline J. Alama (which is pretty grim but has a satisfying resolution).

"The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart", Stephanie Burgis (novel, Kindle): It was fine, but I didn't really connect to anyone. I may have burned out Burgis's flavor of heroine.

"Chupacabra's Song", Jim C. Hines (short story, Kindle): This is a pretty short story that doesn't cover much ground and includes animal harm (not gratuitously at all, but still).

"Bad Gurus: Fiction from a Near Future", Jay O'Connell (short story collection, Kindle): I generally appreciated these stories. Most of them struck me as the 1990s vision of the future -- corporate-libertarian cyber-dystopia -- as filtered through real people actually living in it, rather than being a pristinely grimdark vision. "Things Worth Knowing" probably has the most punch; "Other People's Things" was effective (and recently topical); and the novella "Of All Possible Worlds" kept me invested throughout.

"The Vampire's Mail Order Bride", Kristen Painter (novel, Kindle): I suspect I picked this up after seeing it referred to as ... "sweet romance"? Not sure that was the right term. Basically, I sometimes enjoy reading romance but find erotica tedious, and I saw reference to romance-without-the-explicit-sex being an actual genre. This definitely qualifies as that, but pretty much all of the conflict was short-lived at best, so there wasn't much by way of stakes. It was fine, and the cat was never in danger so we're cool, but I don't feel much pressure to look into the rest of the series.

"Rabble Starkey", Lois Lowry (novel, borrowed hardcover): It's a year in the life of a girl, and that's pretty much it, as far as I can tell. I don't think anything really developed. I'm probably missing something.

I've been trying to do more non-internet reading lately, as well as checking out more shows now and then. Two recent works have been outside my comfort zone in different ways.

(I've tried to avoid spoilers for the works discussed here.)

( 'Redemption in Indigo' by Karen Lord ... )

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Meanwhile, for probably over a year now I've been reading the "reviews" and many of the comments at the Mark Does Stuff sites. (Without those sites, I might never have discovered the Newsflesh series or Tamora Pierce's books, just for two book examples. I can't read at his posting pace — see my comments about WIPs above — so if a book he's currently processing interests me, I read ahead and then follow his slower pace for the discussions. I don't have the same problem with visual media, fortunately, though re-watching Buffy and Angel as he discovered them for the first time was highly entertaining.)

He recently covered the short anime series ( Puella Magi Madoka Magica )

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I don't read or watch much outside my comfort zone of standard English-language narratives. Whedon's trope deconstructions (and similar) are about as adventurous as I tend to get, and I've felt ... disappointed lately by the books and TV series that don't give me the resolution I'm expecting. I've always felt a little bad that my narrative consumption tends to be so culturally "sheltered", but I rarely have the time or energy or knowledge to get into works from other cultures or traditions.

In some cases, there are "other-culture" narratives that are tailored to cater to the inexperienced; I think Redemption in Indigo is one such. But for those that aren't, I think I need the "book club" approach to walk me through it. It's odd; I don't tend to go seeking out communities, for the most part.

But I'm glad when I come across these experiences anyway. The works deserve appreciation on their own merits, and working to appreciate them is good brain exercise.

I know there's a fan comm to discuss these books, but since there's only one comment on the entry for this book, I can't judge whether it's actually another one of those communities that really only welcome squee. If it is, that's fine; I don't want to harsh anyone's squee, and I have a bad habit of not reading the room until too late, so here in my journal this tepid review will remain.

I'm posting this now so that I can go ahead and read "Homecoming" without forgetting anything here; I'd like to start that with a clean (mental) palate. Anyone who feels moved to comment, please do not spoil me for "Homecoming" or "The Lost".( tl;dr: Some nice bits, but too many errors. )

I've been trying to read Jo Graham's "Death Game", especially now that "Homecoming" has actually arrived as well, but finding time to read an actual book is nearly impossible. (Over about two weeks I've finally managed to read all seven text-pages of chapter one. Go, me.) But it was the third page that made me stop and say, "Wait, what?" — and the fifth page that made my quibble certain.

( Cut for first-chapter minor book spoilers, not really any more than the book teaser, and a vague one for Criminal Minds 2x14-2x15. )

Is it just me, or should any group in these circumstances know far better than to pull this?

I'm also cranky that the book uses "ok" as a word (rather than "OK" or "okay"), but I'm willing to blame that on a copyeditor somewhere along the line. It's cosmetic, not fundamental to the plot or characterization.