Reading Wednesday: au where I ever write these posts

[laceblade]

Vampire Knight, vol. 5 - Uhhh, I finished this right before going out of town for a week & have no memory of it. VAMPIRES COVERED IN BLOOD.

Kitty's Big Trouble - I still like this well enough, but this one I liked less than others. Can't remember too many specifics >__<

Dealing With Dragons - Yes, it's true; I've never read these. Recced to me by were_duck when we were wandering Half-Price Books with wild_irises. I liked this a lot. Would read Cimorene hanging out w/dragons forever. Loved how this fucked with so many tropes. If anything, this book was too short, which is why I'm glad the second one is already in my basket of books checked out from the library.

Unnatural Death - Was this book about lesbians, or did I make that up?

Sister Light, Sister Dark - This is the book that wild_irises recced to me in Half-Price Books after I brought up the fact that I'd never read anything by Jane Yolen. Enclaves of women live separately from other sections of society. Each (well, most) is able to call up their own "dark sister" through mirrors. These dark sisters are then forever bonded to them, although they can only appear where there's darkness - shadows, etc.
Jenna is an heroic figure who might be the fulfillment of a prophecy - but mostly she's trying to do what she feels like she has to.
Yolen mixes the narrative with ballads, songs (with actual music), academic analyses of Jenna's culture.
I'm glad there are more books, and also eager to read more by Yolen. (Feel free to tell me your faves.)

City of Illusions - Continuing my tour of the Hainish cycle. I really did not care for this one. Like, at all. And have struggled to get myself to return to LeGuin since reading it.

Whiteout - Borrowed this at comics club. Via jesse_the_k, I've been reading/watching antarctic_sue for a few years; thus, the concept of isolated bases where a substantial portion of the population leaves annually & supplies are scarce wasn't new to me. The ongoing murder mystery wasn't very interesting to me; however, the relationship between U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko and Lilly was.
I liked this, & the art, well enough to put volume 2 on hold, anyway.

The Goblin Emperor - LOVE. Written under Sarah Monette's new pseudonym. The airships made me think of Final Fantasy IX.
Basically the protagonist, Maia, has always lived banished with his abusive relative. Despite being the son of the Emperor, his mother has been dead for years after having been cast off, and nobody else really cares about his fate. Until his father, the Emperor, and all his half-brothers in line for the throne ahead of him die when an airship blows up. So Maia has to go to court and learn how to rule. Not only does Maia have no friends at court, he's never had any friends period. He doesn't know how to have friends. Happily, the compassion that his goblin mother taught him to have for others leads him to make choices that better the realm.
I loved that Maia's spirituality was so important to his staying grounded. Time spent meditating was always restorative to him. I think it's rare to read a fantasy series where a character's faith feels authentic. It probably helps that most of the background characters were not down with the religion, so it was a conscious choice made by the protagonist.
Another thing this novel did that I don't think I've ever seen in a fantasy before was that an antagonist - a rebel responsible for helping plant the bomb to kill the previous emperor - is allowed to explain himself. And the POV of the novel is not that of some noble rebellion, but nor are the rebels misguided morons who are just convenient plot devices for the heroes to rally against. As Maia notes in the narrative - the rebel is right. Killing the emperor & his first few sons put a half-goblin on the throne - one who was respectful of women's rights and also the underclass. This particular antagonist was willing to give up his own life & pursuits to initiate this sort of action. I just found the conversation fascinating & am glad Addison included it.
I loved the politics, loved how Maia chose to solve problems.
Definite content warning for an abuse survivor, who gets triggered and stuck in flashbacks.
People who have read both: Is this similar to the Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet? I own 3 of the 4 and while one time I almost finished the first one, I could use some motivation to get these read.

Anne of Windy Poplars - Probably my least favorite of these books so far, tbh. Everything feels like a retread of things that have already happened.

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life - Abandoning this on page 180, partly due to time constraints & this being due back at the library before I could finish it, but also because it started losing steam after the beginning. I liked reading about Fuller's childhood a lot. Once she gets older, things sort of read like a who's who of American Transcendentalism, and good Lord, Ralph Waldo Emerson sounds like a brat.

Please Save My Earth, volume 2. This series is SO nineties shoujo manga. AND THAT IS WHY I LOVE IT. I continue to slowly obtain this series through the library's outerlibrary loan system.

King's Dragon - LOVED IT. I was really craving a brick of a fantasy novel, and am so glad that I read this. I've already gushed about Elliott's Spiritwalker trilogy [Cold Magic/etc.], and I feel similarly gush-y about this one. This is the first in a series of seven bricks.
Elliott's fantasy world, which is sort of an alternate Europe with magic, feels real. The gender-equal world was so naturally described that I caught myself being tricked by my own socialized assumptions - assuming that warriors and biscops were only men & getting myself confused, etc. The religion felt SO real to me. Like people's beliefs actually shaped their thoughts and actions throughout the entire novel, and not just when it was convenient to the plot. I should have a disclaimer that at least some of my affection for the religion is probably due to the fact that it's so similar to Catholicism.
I have a lot of love for both protagonists, Liath and Alain. Loved the epic battle at the end.
Has anyone else read these? Just. UGH. LOVE. Very excited to read more. Really don't understand why this book has so many haters on Goodreads.
Definite content warning for domestic violence/abuse, as well as rape.

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent - This book grabbed me from page one, in which the protagonist is described as being one to read while she walks so as not to waste a moment - which is a habit I share. Ivy Lockwell and her two sisters live in a house due to be inherited by their repulsive male cousin upon their mother's death. While their mother hopes one or two of them will marry well to avoid destitution, the girls are pretty happy in the meantime.
Of her sisters & mother, only Ivy is still able to maintain a relationship with their father, who stays in the attic tossing books about magick around after having gone mad a few years ago.

I loved the writing - the author is clever and has a better grasp of language than many other fantasy authors, especially those trying for the Regency era.

I had to give this a three because Beckett relies too much on the sources he's drawing from - Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and what I think is Dickens, although I'm not 100% sure on Eldyn's plot.
While Beckett's third-person prose is great, approximately 100 pages in the middle of the book are written in the first-person, when the protagonist leaves her family briefly to become a governess for a few months, & then marry her employer - aka the Jane Eyre plot. I don't know why Beckett made this choice, but I think it was a poor one.
This middle section feels like an entirely different book. Not only does the narration change, but the POVs of Mr. Rafferdy & Eldyn are dropped completely.

While Ivy and her two sisters - Lily and Rose - are actually pretty interesting to me, I was really disappointed that Eldyn's sister Sashie is a prop for his entire story. I don't know if Beckett was trying to make a commentary on Charles Dickens's useless female characters, but I'll assume this was not deliberate.

The defects are unfortunate, because the writing is very high quality (Jane Eyre episode excepted), and world-building is very intriguing, and I'm not usually one to give a crap about world-building [because lots of authors focus on it instead of the quality of their writing]. Days (lumenals) and nights (umbrals) are variable, and characters must consult almanacs to know what kind of day it's going to be.

While Ivy is unable to perform magic herself, due to being a woman, her role in the main plot is far from passive.

This book's failings knocked it from a four to a three for me. Still, it was good enough that I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the trilogy's second installment. The review on Book Smugglers is probably more useful than my own.

The Diviners - Another book for my "abandoned" shelf on Goodreads. I made it to page 72.
I think I just can't stand Bray's writing. The characters don't talk like people, but rather historical caricatures.
It seems like there might be an interesting plot, but I can't force myself to keep going in order to find out what it is.

Comments

[umadoshi]

I keep hanging on to my Anne of Green Gables set despite knowing I'm not all that likely to reread it all the way through (and I imagine it's in the public domain anyway, so it's not like I couldn't regain it at will), but I'm tempted to ditch just Anne of Windy Poplars, because I never liked it. (And my copy not only doesn't match the rest of my set but is a) a completely different size and b) massively ugly. -_-)

[wrdnrd]

Yeah, i really disliked "City of Illusions" as well. I'm not sure i can articulate exactly WHY i disliked it so much. For one thing, Le Guin telegraphed pretty clearly (i thought) that the woman was not to be trusted, but idiot dude totally trusted her anyway! WHY? Also, i mostly felt like the entire 1st 2/3rds of the story -- all the shit where he's traveling across the country -- could have been completely cut. I wound up getting really interested in knowing more about the worldbuilding of how society had rebuilt itself in various ways and didn't care one iota for dude's progress across all of those societies. The entire story could have just focused on the stuff that happened in the city. In fact, if she had started the whole thing just with him walking into that 1st building not knowing what was going to happen, i don't know that i would have missed anything that had happened prior. All the earlier stuff didn't really feel like it *informed* the conclusion of the story. [shrug]

That's some of what i didn't like about it, but i feel like i could rant so much more.

[starlady]

I think The Crown of Stars has lots of haters because it gives women agency and in various other ways doesn't conform to a lot of post-GRRM tropes, not gonna lie. And it's not even that there isn't rape in Elliott's books, but that when there is, it isn't written to be titillating.

I haven't actually read them yet (I bounced off the first one when it came out, when I was 12, lol), but I could be persuaded to start reading them! I was planning on making 2015 the year of Kate Elliott anyway.

[jesse_the_k]

You're right the murder mystery in WHITEOUT isn't much, but many many ways to show snow!

I don't have a user pic for "XOMG your post title is fabulous" but Wow it sure is. Also Half-price Books with were_duck and wildirises sounds like the best possible way to spend any amount of time. Do you think we could somehow transform that into a "panel" experience?

[lileyo]

I adore Dealing with Dragons so much. I enjoy all four books in the series, but I've reread that first one like seven times. Cimorene is just the bamfest, and I love Kazul, and Morwen is my favorite, and whenever I read it I want to teach myself four languages and how to make cherries jubilee.

Anne of Windy Poplars is... yeah. I can barely remember the plot of it. I had to go look at the Wiki page to remind myself. Apparently it's the seventh book in the series she wrote, so I can imagine she was kind of running out of ideas and room to stretch the plot by that point. There's one thing from it that has always endured for me, though: the distinction between spelling Katherine with a C and with a K. It was just so very Anne, and it makes me smile every time I remember it. The series definitely picks back up again in the next book, at least.

[lileyo]

Oh, I just saw your call for recs of Jane Yolen. I've read four things by her: Armageddon Summer, which is a collaboration with Bruce Coville, and the first three books of the Pit Dragon Chronicles. I loved AS. It's about two teenagers who meet when their parents join a doomsday cult. It's ultimately kind of a sweet story about faith and how parents suck sometimes, lol.

As for the pit dragon chronicles, I really enjoyed the first book, but I think I might have been too young to appreciate the other two. They kind of descend into violence and politics and desperate survivalism, but that sounds so up your alley that I should probably recommend them to you wholeheartedly. :D And apparently she wrote a fourth one just a few years ago. Maybe I should revisit them myself.