Last Reading Wednesday (now Thursday) of 2014

[dhampyresa]

I'm posting this now, because I want to do some of the various year-in-books memes I've seen floating around and it's quite hard to do that if my last Reading Wednesday post was in mid-November. I think that's all the books I've read since then, but I might be wrong and have missed one. In case, heh, it couldn't have been that good, could it?

With cuts! Because I remember how to do those and this entry is hella fucking long. Like 3k+. Because I TL;DR like it's my job when it comes to books.


What did you finish reading? (aka what did you finish before Dec 31 2014?)

Crimson Angel, by Barbara Hambly: So I still haven't figured out what The Right Answer TM to the ethical dilemna posed in the book is (because there kind of isn't one) and it is still fucking with my head, because I apparently have massive issues re: ethics in medicine. That aside, it was a really good book and y'all should read it. It really stuck with me.

The Demigod Files , by Rick Riordan:So THAT's where Bob the Titan came from! I was wondering about that. Okay, so the book is spilt up into three short stories and various extras.

Percy Jackson and the Stolen Chariot: In which Percy and Clarisse team-up reluctantly and it is great. It's pretty much about two people who don't want to admit they're friends, help each other against jerks (Clarisse's brothers, Deimos and Phobos) and finally admit that they are friends.

[Clarisse] looked at me uncomfortably. "Did Phobos scare you?"
"Yeah. I saw the camp in flames. I saw my friends all pleading for my help and I didn't know what to do. For a second, I couldn't move. I was paralysed. I know how you felt."
She lowered her eyes. "I, uh... I guess I should say..." The words seemed to stick in her throat. I wasn't sure Clarisse had ever said thank you in her life.
"Don't mention it," I told her.
I started to walk away, but she called out, "Percy?"
"Yeah?"
"When you, uh, had that vision about your friends..."
"You were one of them," I promised. "Just don't tell anybody, okay? Or I'd have to kill you."
A small smile flickered across her face. "See you later."

And no body was suprised that I liked this. If anyone feels that this is oddly meek for Clarisse, she's just faced her worst fear. Her worse fear is her father Ares and it manifests like this

the tall god of war, dressed in black leather and sunglasses, his whole body shaking with anger as he raised his fist over Clarisse.
"You failed me again!" the war god bellowed. "I told you what would happen!"
He tried to strike her, but Clarisse scrambled away, shrieking, "No! Please!"

which isn't exctly a surprise, because it was very heavily implied (if not stated outright) in Sea of Monsters that Ares was physically abusive towards Clarisse. It's not a surprise, but it was SO FUCKING SATISFYING to have it be adressed and confronted in text.

[Clarisse] hesitated. Then she began to stand.
"What are you doing?" Ares bellowed. "Grovel for mercy, girl!"
Clarisse took a shaky breath. Very quietly, she said, "No."
"WHAT?"
She raised her sword. "I'm tired of being scared of you."

I cheered. YOU GO, CLARISSE.

Percy Jackson and the Bronze Dragon: This is, I think, Festus' first chronological appearance. I can't say I remember much about it except Percy and Beckendorf getting their butts saved by Annabeth and Silena (Silena ♥). Also giant man-eating ants.

Percy Jackson and the Sword of Hades: A son of Poseidon, a daugher of Zeus and a son of Hades go on a road-trip... Sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? But I actually really enjoyed the team-up of Percy + Nico + Thalia and how blasé everyone is at this point with the batshit that is Greek mythology

"Some god is messing with us," I guessed.
"Probably."
"Good to see you, though."

And I'm pretty sure that when Nico referred to being "in a New Orleans graveyard", he's talking about bringing Hazel back to life. So basically, Persephone made Hades a WMD that got stolen and now the kids have to get it back. This is where Iapetus Bob the Titan comes in. Also, at one point, Percy literally holds Thalia's flower, whic amuses me to no end:

"Give me the potted plant."

Then there was the bit where we met both Thalia's and Nico's moms. Have I mentionned yet that Bob is really adorable? Because he is.

I don't have much to say about the extras. They were nice, but not very memorable.


Storykiller, by Kelly Thompson:I liked it, but mostly I felt very lukewarm towards it. I'm not sure why, because I shoudl like it, but I was very eh about it. Kind of like there was no 'there' there, you know? Mostly I think it was because a) the fuck misuse of commas: I don't care if you're self-publishing, if you expect me to pay money, I expect you to have proper SPaG, b) I had trouble telling some of the characters apart: in particular, I could never keep track of which cop was which, which I think took some of the wind out of the emotional sails of one of the reveals towards the end and c) it felt like what it was: a very extended prologue to a series I would much rather read ("With our help she will be the god she was always intended to be." because damn).

I did appreciate a lot of things and I'm not ashamed to say I knew who most of the people in this list of witches were:

Le Fay, Baba Yaga, Nimue, Harkness, Karaba, Nessarose, Bavmorda, Enchantress, Galadriel, Black Forest, Maximoff, Kiki, The Mayfairs, Lin, Maleficent, Mombi, Ozma, Willow, Amy, Yubaba, Repulsa, Blackwood, The Three Sisters, Cassandra, Endor, Sendo, Dalma, Taranee, Zatara, Traci Thirteen, Nico, Circe, Medea, The White Witch, Nutter, Pekkala, The Queen, Sycorax, all the damn Potters --

That said, I'm pretty sure no one in this day and age says "hott, double t, hott". That struck me as spectacularly outdated, especially given that it showed up twice, with pretty much those exact words both times.

And, you know what? Snow and Fenris are totally my favourites! Just look at this conversation between Tessa and Fenris on why he likes humans:

"You like mortals because they're funny?" Tessa asked, not even trying to hide her surprise.
"Stories aren't very funny on the whole. It's all 'dire this' and 'tragedy that'. Big stakes and prophecies and damsels in distress --"
"-- From you," Tessa cut in.
"Sure, whatever."

And Morgana is also a favourite. Idk, the more the narrative was telling me they were the bad guys* and would betray Tessa, the more I started liking them, because fuck predestination. FUCK IT. I'm only interested in stories with predestination if it ends up wrong. Team Free Will all the way. Also, the image of "The Big Bad Wolf is watching cartoons with [Tessa's] best friend and her pet dragon" is both adorable and hilarious. And that time Snow punched out Circe? Epic. And I loved her habit of referring to Micah and Brand as minions. Not hers, mind you, but Tessa's.

But of course the Asian girl gets power related to, and I quote, "ancient Asian culture".

(*I will apparently never get over the fact that in the English version of the Arthurian myth, Morgane is the bad guy. What the hell are y'all smoking?)


Les Ogres-Dieux: Petit, by Hubert and Gatignol: French comic that I greatly enjoyed. It's billed as Les Ogres-Dieux, T01: Petit in a lot of online places, but as far as I know there's no plan for a sequel. (Would be hard to do, given the ending.) The best way to describe it is "Gothic". Not in the Japanese fashion sense, or the architectural sense (although, by moments...), but in the literary sense. I was greatly reminded, while I was reading it, of "Fall of the House of Usher". The art is all in shades of greay, but mostly in stark black and white and the various sizes of different things and people are very well transcribed; it's full of tiny details and some of the panelling is breathtaking. I also really like the chapter separation which are plain text and explain what's up with the family of the Ogres: why they're so much smaller now than they used to be (inbreeding, because gothic, remember?), how they came to be the way they are (they eat people! Gothic!) and mostly how they're one completely fucked up breeding ground for neuroses, delusions of grandeur and madness (GOTHIC!). It's also a reflection on human nature and nurture vs nature and all that good stuff. It's not for the faint of heart, though, because it is gothic and contains a vast array of disturbing things: cannibalism, sexual assault, normalised incest, graphic violence, institutionalised breeding of humans as cattle, graphic murder, etc. It's very in line with a lot of the horror commonly found in gothic literature, is what I mean.

Basically: it's very gothic, but it's damn good gothic. It's delightfully creepy and baroque; I would heartily reccomend it to anyone for who the words "gothic graphic novel" sound right up their alley, because it's gonna be. (Also, gothic no longer looks like a word.)


City of Stairs, by Robert Jackson Bennett:I got an ARC from NetGalley and I fucking loved this book. As I was reading, I kept going "It's really great and you should read it" to whoever was next to me at the time. I couldn't put it down, because I desperately wanted to know what happened next and at the same time, I kept putting it down so my brain had time to move on from "whoa... whoa". I'm not sure when the last time I was so blown away by a book was, but more like that, please.

(A note before, I really get going: I am so fucking glad Ahanas wasn't more than mentionned in the book, because every time I read her name, I kept going "ANANAS! THE DEITY OF PINENAPPLE!" in my head, because I am apparently nine years old. Let's just say that's not exactly conducive to dramatic tension.)

One of the things (maybe the thing) I liked most was the worldbuilding. Bulikov and the rest of the Continent evoke a very Russian feel and Saypur, even though we see little of it except names of places and people, felt very South-East Asian. If I had to give a time on top of a place, I would say late 19th/early 20th century. I loved the way the world's (hi)story slowly came to light and what that story was (even though in several places I had figured the reveal out already). But I think my very favourite thing was the way the city was described. It was almost a character in its own right and I really loved the way it was written.

[The city] remembers. Its past is written in its bones, though now the past speaks in silence.

It's basically the story of Sharan, who comes to Bulikov to investigate a murder and uncovers something far greater and deadlier than she -- or anyone -- could have expected. I could say more, but then we would get into spoilery territory and just this once I think it's best if you read it unspoiled. (Although feel free to ask if you want to be spoiled about some things, obvs.)

There are many excellent points being made about personal responsibility and how far is too far and what justice means and corrupt politicians and dealing with the aftermath of colonialism and slavery ("I suppose it doesn't mean anything to you, does it? Calling someone yours. Saying they belong to you. Me being your girl. But we don't say things like that here. And you might not understand... but then, your people have never been owned.") and what it means when the colonised becomes the coloniser and a lot of similarly juicy stuff and I loved it.

I loved, loved that not only did the narrative remember that LGBT people exist, but also that one of the main characters is explicitly queer

"I've fucked men and I've fucked women. [...] I have fucked and been fucked. And it was lovely, really lovely. I had an excellent time doing it and I would gladly do it again. I really would."

Quote abridged because the person being adressed is a massive spoiler. (Also? Crying because of what happens just after this. In my personal canon, that didn't happen, LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU)

And I loved Shara and Vo and Mulaghesh and Sigrud and pretty much everyone, because they're all awesome in their different ways. And fuck me if Mulaghesh doesn't have one hell of an awesome speech towards the end that culminates in

"You wish to relive history? Are your standards so low? You will make this day!"

But then Shara has this line

"They are people," says Shara. "They have asked me for help. And I will give it."

which also fabulous.

So yeah, A++, would def reccomend. It was amazing.


Stranger, by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith:I wanted to love this a lot more than I did. I'm not sure why, maybe it was because I read it just after City of Stairs which I absolutely fucking loved so it suffered in comparaison, or because I'd been hyping it up for myself too much (a problem I often have) or if I was expecting a different book, but even though I liked it and will probably be reading the sequel(s?), I didn't love it.

The writing didn't leave much of an impression on me and the wordbuilding felt very surface-level. There was a lot of cool bits of worldbuilding (the crystal trees, the not-exactly-telekinetic squirrel, the mouth-in-the-sand thing from Star Wars), but none of it was really dealt with. Like the bloodsucking roses: how the hell does that make evolutionnary sense? Honestly, the piece of worldbuilding I wanted to know the most about was Yuki's aircraft carrier: how did they manage to keep it working for literal centuries? How the hell did Japan end up with an aircraft carrier in the first place? HOW FAR INTO THE FUTURE ARE WE? With any luck, we'll deal more with the worldbuilding and the crystal trees in future books. (Okay, I know we went a lot into the crystal tree in this book, but nothing that explained how and why and also HOW and idk man maybe I expect my post-apoc to have too much of a scientific bent, but I really don't think it's too much to ask to want to why mineral is now vegetal or vice versa.)

The thing that bugged me most though, was Felicité. And first I couldn't name why she bugged me so much, except that she didn't feel connected to the plot (I figured that would change later one), but then I realised: "Holy shit, she's The Other Girl!" You know, the other girl, one of the ones YA heroines are supposed to not be like when they're said to be "not like the other girls"? Yeah, that's Felicité. She's obsessed with her clothes and her hair and her political maneuvering and it's all very Mean Girls and jars completely with everyone else. I called the twist of her storyline about two chapters in, on the principle of there being a reason for her PoV that had to be something about her we couldn't learn otherwise and lo, there it was! She never ended up feeling connected to the plot, though, because every other PoV character had a link to the book (Ross owns it, Mia and Jenny have hid it, Yuki can read it) and I don't think Felicité even knows about the book. And I kept expecting her reveal to have some sort of impact on something, but lol nope. I guess it's just there because it's there? Which how a lot of the Felicité stuff feels, like it has no point and is just there. She's pretty much the same person at the start and end of the book.

Also, she makes no sense. She spends a lot of time in the early book trying to break up Jenny and her boyfriend so that she, Felicité, can marry the boyfriend FOR GREAT POLITICAL GAIN!1! but then, as a consequence of her reveal, she explains that won't/can't have sex with anyone and really? How did she think that was going to work out with the marriage plan, in a world where people can Mia grief for being maybe-asexual? So that part of her plot fell apart for me and given that it's about all the plot she has... Honestly, I was very very disappointed with Felicité as a whole and it ended up dragging the whole book down. Plus she felt very stereotypical to me and I honesly was a expecting a more original character for her, something, anything that told me she was more than who she first appeared to be, which I sadly didn't get. (No, the reveal doesn't count. That's a what, not a who.)

A lot of the characters felt that same kind of slightly-deeper-than-cardboard. Idk, maybe it's because it's YA or the writing style didn't work for me, but they felt kind of flat and lot younger than they are. I would have pegged them as 13/14, not the 16/17 they apparently are.

Also, there's no tension for a lot of the book and the climatic battle comes out of pretty much nowhere. I felt absolutely no desire to find out what happened next at pretty much any point. the battle was over too fast for me really have time to get into it.

I'll give the book this much credit: it's very diverse, although I would have liked for Mia to actually be asexual. I know a lot of people are probably shipping Mia/Ross/Jenny, but while I'm fine with Mia/Ross and Jenny/Ross either separately or happening at the same time, I am very not shipping Mia/Jenny. It's the line about them growing up together that did for me and put me on the Nope train to Fuckthatshipville: I just cannot ship people who grew up together. (This is why I don't ship incest, incidentally, and why shipping blood siblings who met as adult = fine, but shipping adoptive siblings = not fine, for me. It's the growing-up-together that is the sticking point, not the related-by-blood.)

And yet, despite all the problems I've had with the book, I'll still check out the sequel. That takes skill.

(I kind of ship Dante Lee/Tom Preston, oops.)


What are you reading now? (aka what have you read since Jan 01 2015?)

I'll talk about all of these next week, for ease of tallying and I am making the arbitrary decision of counting all of House of Mystery (2008) as having been read in 2015, because if it wasn't, then certainly most of it was.

Finished: Stained Glass Monsters, House of Mystery (2008)

Still reading: Les Fleurs du Mal, Murder Most Witchy, The Art of War, Darshan, The Kick-Ass Writer, La véritable histoire de Carthage et de Hannibal, Gustav Adolf Mossa: L'oeuvre symboliste: 1903-1918


What are you reading next? (aka the to-read list)

A to-read list that is properly formatted, so I don't forget about books I wanted to read! Now updated with books I should have put on it a long time ago AND with recent recs I got.

Books that I have already: Prisoner (Echo's Wolf, Book 1) (Werewolf Marines 2) by Lia Silver, Darkness Over Cannae by Jenny Dolfen, Taking Stock by Scott Bartlett (yuleswap book 1), February by Lisa Moore (yuleswap book 2), The Demigod Diaries by Rick Riordan, The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett

Books that are out and that I haven't got: Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, by Garth Nix, Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, Melting Stones and Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce, The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, The Beginning Place by Ursula Le Guin (both recs by egelantier), Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (all three recs by scintilla10 in my fandom stocking), Hostage by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown, the last two books of Kate Eliott's Spiritwalker trilogy and whatever's out of the Craft Sequence series.

Books that aren't out yet (and when they're out): The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan (Autumn 2015), Benjamin January #14 by Barbara Hambly (no idea), Empire Ascendant by Kameron Hurley (Summer 2015? Still unsure if I'm even going to be reading this one), the Tris book by Tamora Pierce (2015), whatever Jenny Dolfen's next project is (THAT ART!) and probably Robert Jackson Bennett's next book.

I've also been thinking about doing a reread of Les mondes d'Ewilan (and assorted series) and/or (re)read the Tara Duncan series.

HI MY NAME IS DHAMPYRESA AND I LIKE TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS.

Comments

[schneefink]

Percy, Thalia, and Nico on a road trip?! Sounds fantastic. How do they meet Nico's mom, I thought she died in the past? Did she choose to stay in their version of limbo and is called as a ghost?

[dhampyresa]

It's a roadtrip through Hades, so they meet the ghost of Nico's mom, yes. It's pretty fantastic, I just wish it'd been longer than a short story.

[minutia_r]

My main issue with The Lions of Al-Rassan is that the fakey-Muslim religion and the fakey-Christian religion are represented by male warriors, whereas the fakey-Jewish religion is represented by a female doctor. Now, in general, female doctors are much more awesome than male warriors, but the whole thing is so . . . in line with ideas about Jews in medieval Europe, which has nothing to do with the actual situation in Spain in the thirteenth century which is what the novel is based on.

But hey, I can't complain too much, at least a) he included Jews at all and b) he did not establish one religion as being clearly superior to another according to the in-world rules. (I am looking at you SO HARD, Lois McMaster Bujold; you are in general a much better writer than GGK, too, and you don't have all those weird dudes-writing-ladies issues.)

[dhampyresa]

You had me at "Jewish female doctor", tbh, but yeah, it's good you warned me about the historial weirdness.

Yeah, it's pretty weird how often Jews tend to disappear in fiction.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

I will apparently never get over the fact that in the English version of the Arthurian myth, Morgane is the bad guy. What the hell are y'all smoking?

Bon, je ne connais pas la version française, mais c'est la raison pour laquelle j'ai arrêté de regarder Merlin à la fin de la Saison 2. Uther est un tyran qui commet un génocide contre les sorciers, mais comme c'est le père du "petit ami" du héros, c'est le gentil, et Morgana, qui s'oppose à lui, est la méchante ? o_O Non, merci, au revoir.

As-tu lu Mordred: Bastard Son de Douglas Clegg ? C'est du point de vue des sorciers, donc les Pendragon sont les méchants. Et en plus Mordred est gay et il y a du m/m. ^^

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Dans la version bretonne de la légende (en tout cas la version avec laquelle j'ai grandi), Morgane est le gentille et Merlin le méchant. je résume, bien sur, mais c'est ça l'idée générale.

Mdr. Heureusement que j'ai jamais accroché à Merlin, j'aurai pété un boulon!

Je l'ai pas lu, mais peut-être que je devrais.