CBR8 2: Once Upon A Marquess, Courtney Milan

Seriously, "once upon a Marquess" has literally zero to do with the plot except that the male lead is a Marquess. I can't imagine that Milan had anything to do with it unless she was off her tits. Given that she self-publishes, it can't have been pressure from the publishers. I am a fan of Milan specifically, and I have fond feelings for romance in general, but the naming convention is total sexist bullshit that infantilises the readers and detracts from the genre. Am I right? I'm right.

Judith Worth and Christian Trent had a History, but Circumstances mean that Judith turns to Christian for help protecting her remaining family. Judith is the second of five Worth children and is the sole guardian and protector of the youngest two; the eldest son is presumed dead, and the middle daughter left Judith after their father and brother were tried and convicted of treason. Judith has to keep her remaining family together and happy while resisting the pull of the past. Christian, meanwhile, is torn between the honesty that his honour demands, and the narrative that is demanded by his loved ones.

So far, so predictable, as far as set-ups go. Will Judith and Christian get back together? Will the youngest Worth boy get over his year of torment at Eton? Will the clearly on the autism spectrum Worth daughter continue to be a comedy interlude slash signifier of the purity of Judith's character or will she experience true growth? Is the eldest brother really dead or has he been secretly you know what, actually, let's just go with this book is mostly predictable in its entirety, but that's not a bad thing.

What makes Milan stand out as a writer is her social commentary, not her plotting, and in Milan's defence there it should be pointed out that I am pretty cynical about romance plots generally (I prefer it as a sub-plot) and, unfortunately, whenever I read a book with the intention of reviewing it I bring the full force of my cynicism to bear. It's sort of the force of a strong gale, not a hurricane or El Nino driven snowstorm or Arctic whatever. I'm British. Our cynicism, like our weather, is constant but relatively mild.

The social commentary in Once Upon A Marquess is as good as I expected, and more philosophical than I anticipated - which in retrospect was my error; anyone as astute as Milan at under-the-radar social justice commentary can obviously do the same with moral philosophy 101. She seems to be expanding her repertoire, and I look forward to finding out how that progresses. I would like it if she was less narrow with her representations of life-as-neuratypical, but the fact that she has any representations of it at all is still awesome.

4 stars: I'm looking forward to the rest of the series and will read this again. Half a point removed for slightly ableist representation of the sister, another half a point for the OCD representation; half a point regained for good addict/addiction representation, and another half a point for not starting the sex scene with cunnilingus. (It annoys me as a trope, okay? It's the cookie-cutter aspect of sex scenes that bothers me rather than any one particular aspect.)

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

CBR8 1: A Rose Red Chain, Seanan McGuire

So, a new year and a new Cannonball. A Rose-Red Chain, by Seanan McGuire, the ninth book in the October Daye series. Also, warning: this review will contain spoilers for the rest of the series, which I have not reviewed, on account of having read most of them before starting to review books for the purposes of Posterity, Comedy, and Fucking Cancer (But Not Like That Where Has Your Mind Gone You Filthy Animal).

October is newly engaged to the lovely Tybalt, my favourite man-who-is-also-a-cat (which really isn't a descriptor I ever thought I would write, good to know all those English Lit courses were in fact for nothing), and they have just started to plan their wedding when Toby - through shenanigans - is sent to be the ambassador to the northern Kingdom of Silences, which has just declared war on the Kingdom of Mists. She has to stop the war, and preferably also survive.

I'm a huge McGuire fan, she's an incredible writer who has the perfect amount of black humour, terrible puns, scorching hot sexytimes, and rapid-fire action for my tastes. This book feels like one of the weaker ones in the series though, which I think is probably a combination of the winding up of the series (sob), and the relative absence of the Luideag from the story, because she's my favourite. Sarcasm and a tragic back story does it for me every time.

That said, my standards for McGuire are really high at this point, and she handles Toby's power-creep really well - Toby angsts about her nature, confronts various moral dilemmas regarding the usage of her powers and resolves them in a pleasing fashion, and while the villains of the story are powerful enough to be a threat and a challenge to Toby, they're not subject to the same power-creep, which is really nice - they're a challenge because they're clever and careful and powerful, and Toby's victory is more to do with her allies and friends than it is her own special snowflake-ness. In that respect, McGuire is both fighting the tropes as well as satisfying them, which is a hard line to walk for any author, especially in paranormal-urban-romance-fantasy, which is really trope-tastic. (I have Thoughts about the nature of the genre, actually, but I'll save that for another time. I think it deserves its own post.)

My main complaint, really, is the speed of book. The pacing was weird in places, really slow in some parts and then so fast it was almost blink-and-you-miss-it in others, and the ending was much more abrupt than I expect from a Toby book, usually there's more deconstruction and winding-down of the plot after the big bad is gone. I don't know if that's because McGuire is doing about twelve other things and got distracted by the siren song of another novel, or her editor was phoning it in that week, or if it was a deliberate choice and the next book will pick up immediately in the aftermath, but it left me a little wrong-footed.

Still, this is still a damn good book, and an excellent addition to the series. Don't start with it, obviously, start with the first one ffs, but this is one that fans of the series are going to want to read and won't be disappointed by.

4/5: when I read again, I'm going to add in my own Luideag commentary and it will be awesome. "Really, Toby? Really? JUST BURN IT. What, none of you can make fire? I dunno, kids these days, what was Dad thinking." Etc.

Crossposted to Cannonball Read here.

#CBR7 12: Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

Tho' much is takes, much abides;

On a frozen world far outside of civilised space, Breq is distracted from her self-appointed mission of vengeance by a face from her distant past. Seivarden was the sole survivor of an assassination attempt on the Lord of the Radch a thousand years ago, a period in Breq's past which becomes more and more relevant as the narrative weaves on.

Breq is the last remnant of the troop carrier Justice of Toren, lost to all parts of herself and cast adrift two decades previously. She is not mad, although she was for a time, stuck in one body with only one set of senses to draw on where before she was the ship and the thousands of ancillaries she controlled. She struggles constantly to disguise her nature and her past from those around her, allies and enemies alike, while she unravels her recent and distant pasts and begins to understand the nature of her true enemy.

This book is incredible. The narrative is gently paced and portentous at first, as the world is slowly built up around Breq, but it accelerates constantly and by the end of it I resented every interruption and really had to force myself back into the real world. The characters are wonderful, redolent with flaws and strengths and dreams broken against the terrible machinations of a nearly-unimaginable enemy. The various different cultures examined in the book are all believable and unique - no simple space America, space USSR, space inscrutable Orientals here.

The blurb talks about how if you loved Iain M Banks' Culture novels you'll love this, and there are definitely similarities in the scope and ambition of the galaxy-building, as well as the transhuman and AI elements. But for me, Leckie felt much more like a true inheritor of Ursula K LeGuin, with her intricacies and slow burn and above all, her superb investigation into the nature of gender in society. If you are even the slightest bit interested in the way gender and sex interact with language and thinking, you need to read this book.

If you prefer rollicking space opera, this is going to be a harder read for you. (QQ, puppies, QQ.) But it's still the best Mil-SF I've read since Walter Jon Williams' Dread Empire's Fall series, and it does Leckie a massive disservice to overlook how good the action sequences are, how well she uses physics, and how much care she has taken to make it all visualisable and believable.

5 stars: and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here. Poetry: Ulysses, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

#CBR7 11: New Amsterdam, Elizabeth Bear

I went on holiday last week and prepared my kindle with a bunch of interesting new books, several of which have been recommended by fellow Cannonballers. The first one I read, though, was one I bought a while ago in a Humble ebook bundle: New Amsterdam, by Elizabeth Bear.

More of a collection of short stories than a novel per se, the book contains several mysteries which are investigated and solved by three connected people: the vampire Don Sebastien de Ulloa, the sorcerer Abigail Irene Garrett, and de Ulloa's servant and courtier/courtesan Jack. The mysteries all have a supernatural bent to them, but the very human politics and scandals surrounding them are just as thrilling.

I've read other books by Bear, which I didn't review because I was stuck for a while, and she does non-standard characters well, as well as non-heteronormative romances. This book is no exception: the chemistry between the various different characters is great, and the way Sebastien builds up his small and unique court is a pleasure to watch unfolding. If I had to be a thrall to any fictional vampire, I'd want it to be him. He is a lovely character, and a really good vampire as well, with pleasing amounts of inhuman predator about him.

Abby Irene was my favourite though. She is never anything less than brutally honest with herself, and she takes no prisoners with anyone else either. She is very much in charge of her body and sexuality, and that's rare to see in any female character, let alone one in her middle age. She reminded me a lot of some of Bujold's older heroines, although Bear's style is very different than Bujold's work.

Amazon tells me there are more books in this series. I will definitely be checking them out at some point.

4 stars, highly recommended, would like more sex for fifth star.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

My pain is not your entertainment

This post contains spoilers for The Others series by Anne Bishop and references the computer game Guild Wars 2. It also contains descriptions of self-harm and self-harm ideation, and discussion of various mental health conditions. As such, clicking on the jump into the post signifies your consent to reading all of the above, that you will never talk about this or mention it to my mother, and also your understanding that these depictions might distress you. Links are included to various organisations dedicated to helping the survivors and sufferers of the issues discussed. I am turning off comments for this post.

#CBR7 10: Paper Towns, John Green

I read this at the request of a friend, who had really enjoyed it and wanted me to read it as well. Thanks to Malin (thanks Malin!) I was able to get hold of a copy and read it in an evening. My cheesecake -loving friend really enjoyed it; my own feelings were slightly more mixed.

Paper Towns is a book in three parts, but defining them involves spoiling the story, so I'm going to stick to being vague. All three parts have a different feel to them, and they take roughly a third of the book each - it's well-balanced and the writing keeps moving you forward. The journeys of the main character, both literal and metaphorical, are very detailed and realistic.

I strongly disliked Margo for the first half of the book. She embodies everything I hate about the manic pixie dream girl trope, and I hated Q's fixation on her and his own embodiment of the unhappy nerd stuck in friendzone trope. I really, really hate the friendzone bullshit narrative that nerd subcultures fixate on, and my exhaustion with MPDGs combined with what appeared to be a straight out friendzone bollocks meant that the only reason I got past the first half of the book at all was because I told my friend I would read it, and I didn't want to dismiss something he was so clearly invested in.

Fortunately for me, Green is a far cleverer writer than I gave him credit for to begin with. He explicitly deconstructs Margo's personality and life, exploding the manic pixie myth very effectively. He's less explicit about the friendzone thing, but I think it was less widely talked about when the book was written in 2009, and he still does present a good deconstruction of the ideas around it so he gets thumbs up from me for that.

The secondary characters were less good though. Part of this is the limitations of first-person narrative, combined with a less than completely reliable narrator, and in fact there is one really good scene where one of Q's friends calls him out on his lack of empathy with another member of their circle. In that respect, their flatness can definitely be viewed as a comment of Q's own self-absorption and carelessness. But the relationships his two best friends have are poorly investigated, and one in particular felt really clichéd and unrealistic.

There is a lot in this book for any aspiring teenage student of literature. That sounds more faint praise than I intend it to: the book perfectly exemplifies several literary themes and conceits which regularly feature in literature studies, and the characters are all in high school so it's going to resonate much more with a younger audience than most of the crap - sorry, classics - they make you study in school. That said, I can't bring myself to give the book a 5, because of how long I spent wanting to slap the two main characters upside the head. Which I guess is a feature of not being a teenager any more, something I am permanently grateful for.

4 out of 5, definitely recommended.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

#CBR7 9: The Girl WIth All The Gifts, MR Carey

Melanie is one of a small group of children who are educated at an exclusive facility, with highly trained security personnel and top-tier medical experts on hand. Her education is extensive and varied. She is a precocious and brilliant girl, with an inquisitive personality and a great deal of self-control. Her survival instinct is finely honed. This all comes in very useful when she, her favourite teacher, two of the guards and one of the doctors are forced to flee their facility and run for their lives in infested territory.

Infested by what, you say? Well, you know those ants? You've seen the time-lapse. There's an ant, and it gets infected with a fungus, and then it climbs as high as it can and waits until a mushroomy thing grows out of its head, and then the mushroomy thing makes spores go over all the nearby ants? That ant thing. I'm not finding a link. You can google it at your leisure.

Just so we're clear, that has always been my personal fucking nightmare. I don't know why. I have a problem with plants growing where they shouldn't. I freaked the fuck out when I found a clover growing up through the overflow in the sink in my last house, and it was green and normal, do not even get me started on the creepy white no-sunlight plants gah they're awful. I am aware this is firmly on the "Elizabeth being really not normal" side of the ledger, but I get twitchy just thinking about it. (I think this is why beansprouts really bother me as well. Yech.)

Anyway, this is a zombie apocalypse novel without any actual undead, and it is an incredible piece of work. I forswore zombie novels after I spent a year and a half dreaming about zombies courtesy of Max Brooks World War Z, but this one had piqued my interest earlier. (I dreamt about the book last night. Actually, I dreamt about writing this review about the book, and then it sort of segued into the plot of the book. I spent some time in the dream critiquing my own dream version of the story, so it definitely stayed with me. I just hope it stops, I remember my dreams every night courtesy of brain drugs and I am really not joking about the year and a half of zombie dreams thing.)

ANYWAY, the characters are all really well fleshed out and the story is really well-paced; I have a very visual experience when I read, but this was even more like a film than normal. Carey has written a bunch of comics before, and he's clearly learned a thing or two about pacing and dramatic tension. If this doesn't get made into a film at some point, I will be very surprised.

I am mostly very tired of zombies as a trope, vampires have always been more my thing, but The Girl With All The Gifts is a really good addition to the oeuvre, and there's a lot in there for the reader to mull over. Clearly, it stayed with me really very clearly, and I think it would even without the fungus thing. (GAH. Still horrible. Yuck yuck yuck.)

4 stars: clever and compelling, this book doesn't quite meet my criteria for 5 stars but it's a very close thing. Highly recommended.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

#CBR7 8: The Martian, Andy Weir

I am so far behind on reviewing that I've started to forget what I've read, although I recall a three day Courtney Milan marathon so Malin and Mrs Julien will be happy when I get round to reviewing them. First though, the best SF novel I've read since Anathem.

Mark Watney is one sixth of the third manned mission to Mars, and it turns out that third time is not, in fact, the charm: during evacuation six days into the mission, he is left behind, presumed dead. Fortunately, he's dead clever, not dead dead, and he diaries his struggles to survive on our inhospitable and barren neighbour. His diary entries are interspersed with the activities of the many people who work to rescue him, once they realise he's alive.

"What must it be like?... He's stuck out there. He thinks he's totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man's psychology?"
Log Entry: Sol 61. How come Aquaman can control whales? They're mammals! Makes no sense.

I had to take a little break after reading that last part, until I could breathe again and I'd stopped tearing up with laughter, and it's by no means the only funny bit, just the one I remember the most. Watney was a wonderful character, his humour and sarcasm his only real defence against crushing despair, and the supporting cast is really well fleshed out and pleasingly varied. The pace is relentless and the plot is gripping, with all of the setbacks and disasters and triumphs one would hope for and expect in an action novel.

The science in the book is superb, with enough technical detail for me to be all nerd happy, but enough narrative explanation for it to make sense to someone without a general scientific grounding. (I think. I have one, so it's hard to tell. But the bits I didn't know all made sense so I'm presuming the rest of it does too.) Watney's survival never feels guaranteed either, which is quite a feat.

The humanity of the book is its real tour-de-force though, as the reader empathises with Watney's first-person diary entries, whilst watching the practical and ethical concerns of the team on Earth unfold. This dual narrative keeps reminding the reader of the wider concerns beyond just the survival of one man. I always cheered for him, but it made me think hard about what might happen in the real world, and what arguments would be used.

5 out of 5. This book shines as bright as Jupiter in the night sky, and has a heart as big as the Great Red Spot. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I'm even going to recommend it to my dad, that's how much I love it.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

CBR7 7: The Darkest Part of the Forest, Holly Black

I have given up thinking about reviewing the other two books in the Bishop series, because I think they might end up increasingly hysterical rants and no-one seems to agree with me, and I am moving on the the excellent and reliable Holly Black again.

Hazel and Ben live in Fairfold, a small tourist-trap town with a bunch of fairies living in the forest nearby. Once, they were as close as two siblings could be, but their relationship has fractured over the years as the weight of secrets and misunderstandings lies heavily on it. In a glade in the forest, a horned prince lies sleeping in a glass box, as he has done for generations. One day, the box is shattered, and he is gone. As the pair begin to resume their old roles, they quickly find out that they are running out of time, because the monster at the heart of the forest is on the move, and is hungry for the town.

Ben is a great main character - desperately romantic, cursed/blessed with fairy magic which he struggles with on a daily basis, and deeply in love with the idea of the horned prince. His journey is lovely to watch unfold, and it's easy to read as both an analogy for the trials of any gifted child, and as an analogy for coming to terms with one's sexuality.

Hazel, though, is inspired. She is complicated, makes bad decisions for bad reasons, and occasionally bad decisions for good reasons, and is a true Knight Errant in the old Romantic style. The gender reversal of the pair is mentioned briefly in the book, but it never feels strained or pushed. Hazel is jealous, and angry at herself for that jealousy, and lives her life with the terrible intensity of a person who tries to feel something, anything to make her forget the weight of the truths she is hiding from everyone. Her journey is hard to watch. It is painful and spiky and everything that I remember late adolescence being. It is beautiful.

There are many themes investigated in the book, and I suspect that everyone who reads it will take different things away. For me, it was family, the sacrifices we make for our siblings, the obliviousness of our parents, the intense bond that develops and sometimes sours. It was the weight of expectation versus the weight of one's own heart. There's a lot more in there that I could English Lit about, but I'm not going to, because I want another cup of tea and I didn't make any notes, and because you should read this and find them out for yourself. Also, I want to play more Pillars of Eternity there I said it I hope you are happy now.

5 stars: will play with the fairies in the wood again. (When I've stopped playing PoE.)

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

CBR7 6: Written In Red, Anne Bishop

Page count: 512, time taken: 4 hours

Driven by visions, Meg Corbyn flees her captors and ends up stumbling into a job as a Human Liaison in an Others enclave in Lakeside. She quickly finds acceptance from the shape-shifting inhabitants, except from Simon Wolfgard, leader of the Courtyard, and his father. Fortunately, Meg manages to help Simon's nephew through the worst of his severe PTSD, and Simon quickly becomes a fan. Which is useful when Meg's past catches up to her.

Good things about this book: the shape-shifting stuff is really cool. The mythology of the world is interesting, well thought-out and explained, and the non-human characters actually feel like non-humans, instead of excuses to have a lot of wild sex and growling. (There is a lot of growling though. Some tropes are too stubborn to die.) I found the Sanguinati particularly interesting, because I love me some vampires and these were good ones.

Other good things: the supporting cast were all really well characterised, and the villains of the novel were great. The pacing was good, and the book was long enough that the plot never felt too rushed, allowing things to develop in a reasonable amount of time. (That particularly is rare to see in urban fantasy, in my experience.)

Okay but slightly heavy-handed thing: moralisation about humanity being the true monsters. (More on this in my as-yet-unwritten reviews of the next books.) This is another trope of the genre, and it's a worthy message to try to get across, but it was not done with any great degree of subtlety.

Bad bits of the book: Meg was a magical special unique snowflake who made everyone love her instantly (with one or two exceptions) and she was precious and beloved and must be guarded and protected at all costs. I started calling her Meg Sue in my head pretty quickly. Even the parts where she fucks up, she does it in a really adorable and trying-to-help way which meant people forgave her really quickly.

Bit of the book which made me genuinely unhappy: there are repeated, graphic descriptions of self-harm which I personally found hit me far too close for comfort. There was also zero warning about it. (Granted, Meg being cassandra sangue, a blood prophet, is mentioned in the blurb a lot. That's really not the same as a content warning though.)

Here are some numbers for you. 1 in 5 women in the US has self-harmed. 1 in 7 men in the US has self-harmed. Think about those numbers for a short while. That's a lot of people. Whoever you are, you almost certainly know someone who uses or used self-harm as a means of coping. Of survival. I am one of those people. I know many others. The use and depiction of self-harm in this novel, and especially the sequels, made me uncomfortable in many, many ways.

The story was still pretty good though. If it had a content warning, I would happily give it 4 stars. But it doesn't. So it gets 3, and a caveat: do not read this series if you are particularly sensitive to descriptions of self-harm, or are at risk of using self-harm as a means of coping or control. I would be very wary about recommending it to any teenager without first discussing the issues.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

CBR7 5: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black

Page count 448, time taken 3.5hours, number of blue nails 3*.

Tana is a big damn goth who finds herself in the wrong party at the wrong time. Several times. I think she might be cursed. She finds herself travelling to Coldtown in the company of a vampire and her infected ex-boyfriend, and quarantines herself with them. She meets a bunch of other big damn goths, some of whom are more terrible than others, and makes friends. She also makes questionable decisions about the security of her belongings, seriously girl if you are wearing big boots there is plenty of space in them for small object, pieces of paper etc, I know, I had oxblood Doc Martens too. At least she uses the Secret Hidden Woman Pockets** a couple of times, so bonus points for that.

This is a great vampire story, and a reasonable YA coming-of-age/accepting-responsibility story. It is much better than a lot of the urban fantasy I've read, given that there's only one monster type, and the idea of Coldtowns as being quarantine zones is a good one. The story is very well paced, with a sense of urgency imparted in various different ways. The male romantic lead is suitably damaged and brooding for my big damn goth soul, and Tana is really great as a protagonist, being both strong and self-reliant and flawed and emotionally vulnerable.

It's been years since I read Queen of the Damned, which this book draws on pretty heavily, and in those years social media has gone from some people having terrible Geocities pages through to Twitter being the best source of news and social activism currently around. Black weaves blogging into her narrative, and the plot revolves around the media presentation of vampires, both traditional media and new media forms. This will undoubtedly date the book in another decade's time - no-one can predict what the next internet craze will be, and if they tell you they can they're lying - but right now the book is up-to-date and a pretty accurate representation of how the technologically literate use the various different forms of communication available.

As far as big complicated philosophical thoughts go, the story is a reasonable investigation into the nature of illness and addiction, and the way that people respond to it as both sufferers and the healthy people who have to deal with them. Whilst vampire imagery always revolves around sex and self-harm, both of those topics are handled really lightly, as appropriate to the age of the target audience, whilst being pretty nuanced. There is also a really interesting minor character whose interactions with Tana are thought-provoking in many ways.

The only things I can really fault the book on are (1) it ended and (2) not enough corsetry and black lace. So, 5 out  of 5, would recommend and will probably read again. With candles and wine as red as blood. And some Type O Negative in the background.

* I have Reynaud's disease so my fingers get very cold very quickly, and eventually turn blue. Normally this bothers me, but I have to say, it kind of added to the description of turning Cold. It was like a multi-sensory experience for me. I appreciate that that's weird though.

** Her bra. I stash my phone there too. Also small change. NB: if using your bra as a place to put small change, remember that metal heats up to skin temperature so it's very easy to forget you put anything in there until you take it off and then you have a reverse 5p printed on your boob for a while.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

CBR7 4: Say Yes to the Marquess

Length: 390 pages, time taken: 3 hours

Clio Whitmore is tired of waiting for her fiancé to come back to the country and marry her, and now she finally has the means to create a life for herself, she wants her engagement dissolved. Rafe Brandon, the erstwhile groom's brother, has the legal power to do so, but instead of giving her what she wants, he tries to persuade her into going ahead. Unfortunately for him, it turns out that kissing her in the rain and groping her in the bedroom are not, in fact, good ways to persuade someone to marry your brother. Can this twisted mess of family and honour be untangled satisfactorily, or will they be trapped in lives they never asked for?

I was inspired to get this after reading Mrs Julien's excellent review of it, and I am very glad I did. This book is funny, sexy, and assured, and has the right balance of following the tropes of the genre whilst still making the plot surprising and enjoyable to read. if you read this, you are in very safe hands, and I will keep my eye out for more Dare the next time I feel the need for a historical romance book-blankie. (That's pretty much how I think of books like this, being wrapped in a warm blanket with a cup of hot chocolate and a few candles. It's not complicated, but sometimes, you need it.)

Given the long and impressive comments Mrs Julien got, anything that I could have niggled about has mostly been answered already. The only thing I was less happy with was Piers Brandon, who was much better as an off-camera neglectful arse than he was as an on-camera SPOILERS REDACTED character in the story. I would have preferred either a better explanation and more exposition, or him being a less sympathetic character. Then again, he's clearly being set up for a book of his own, as is Clio's sister Phoebe, so I can understand the decision to both make him sympathetic and not give huge amounts of exposition - that will come in his own novel.

4.5 stars: practically perfect, sweet as cake and warm as a winter fireplace.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

CBR7 3: Once Upon A Rose

Length: 300 pages in the print edition

Time taken: 3 hours

Layla DuBois inherits a house in a valley in the South of France, and goes there to recharge her creative batteries. Unfortunately, the valley already has an owner, Matt Rosier, and he is not happy that "his" property has been stolen. can this beauty tame the beast?

Taking most of its elements from the classic fairytale Beauty and the Beast, OUaR is a well-written and enjoyable spin on a familiar story. The details are vivid and loving rendered - I had a very clear image of the location and could almost smell the air at times - and the writing is engrossing and fast-paced.

Too fast for me. I do not like romances which take place over the course of a couple of weeks. I was far more interested in Matt's cousins than I was in him, and I found Layla the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to be as annoying as I find all Manic Pixie Dream Girls. There were a lot of things in the book which really worked for me - Layla felt like a real musician to me, the creative process was realistic and well-drawn, and I do always like seeing what can be done with fairytale elements. But if it's a choice between this and either of Robin McKinley's excellent retellings, I'll take McKinley any day.

I am very interested in seeing what other tales Florand uses to inspire the rest of the series - Sleeping Beauty will almost certainly be one of them, being also heavily redolent with rose imagery - but I really hope she branches out a little bit further than just the well-known Disney type tales. I think though that Florand made the wrong decision by taking so many elements of Beauty and the Beast. It's not a straight retelling, it's more a variation on a theme, but there's too much in there for me to forget about the original fairytale, and I much prefer the original.

I can see this working much better for readers who aren't me though. I don't regret the purchase, but I'll be careful in who I recommend it to.

3.5 stars: better than average but let me cold.

Cross-posted to Cannonball Read here.

CBR7 2: Trade Me, Courtney Milan

Pages: 280 in PB although I read the Kindle vcrsion

Time taken: ~3 hours (does anyone actually time these? I read about 100 pages per hour or the average book, I just guess based on that.)

 

Tina Chen has a loving but disorganised family, a job in a library, two majors, and a room-mate. Blake Reynolds has a loving but asshole father, a job at a high-tech company, one major, and $1.4billion (US). An argument over food-stamps and the reality of living in poverty in the US leads Blake to offer Tina to swap lives for the rest of the semester: she deals with the product launch he's supposed to be working on, and he lives her life, working minimum-wage jobs, sending money home, and living in squalor. There is indeniable chemistry between them, but can two people who come from such opposite worlds really be compatible?

 

Spoiler alert: dur, of course they can, this is a romance novel. We do not read these because we wish our hearts shattered into tiny pieces. Milan has made her career out of writing thoughtful, strong heroines hooking up with thoughtful, flawed heroes, while adding enough social commentary to satisfy my Social Justice Elementalist heart (if you don't know what that means, good for you, it's for the best right now), and this fits right in, albeit with fewer descriptions of clothes, which I personally missed. I like purple prose. It makes me happy. I like fabrics. (Also corsets. Big goth right here.)

 

I've seen this described as New Adult, which I guess it is, given the relative youth of the protagonists and smexy times combination. It certainly annoyed me less than the YA stuff I read last year and neglected to review - apparently I like my heroines to be either out of their teens, or on an obvious Hero's Journey/Coming Of Age type thing, which I suppose makes me either terribly boring or nearly 33 and hence very tired of teenagers. Or both. I can only take introspection so far.

 

What the book does really, really well is the thing I am going to term SPOILERS REDACTED. If you want more thoughts, go through the jump. Otherwise, read the Cannonball Read review.

CBR7 1: The Bees, Laline Paull

Page count: 344, I read the UK paperback edition

Time taken: probably four hours

This book is really hard to summarise. It's a close third-person narrative about a honeybee, Flora 717. It's a classic hero(ine)'s journey. It's an investigation into the idea of free-will and determinism. It's a novel about upheaval in a rigid caste-based state, drawing from classic dystopian literature. It's a love story. It's a survival story. It's about the consequences of climate change in the insect world. It's a nuanced and sophisticated discussion about the nature of motherhood and family. It is all of these things, and none of them, because I don't think there has ever been another book like it, and it is on the sharp edge of art.

I picked this up because (1) I was in Waterstones for a diary in the post New Year sale and I always check to see if there are books because I read like it's a food-group or something (2) it was yellow and shiny which caught my eye, I am like a shallow cover-judging magpie that way and (3) I read the first couple of pages and was hooked. I read it in great gulps, totally absorbed in the narrative (which, given that I got Dragon Age Inquisition for Christmas and have sunk around 250 hours of play into it this month, should be understood to be a Huge Thing), and I loved it.

I'm sure there are flaws. Certainly, if you're not familiar with tropes of dystopian fiction you'll have a harder time with it (not that it is fully a dystopia, but it has elements), and if you don't like reading anything about alien forms of life then you'll almost certainly not get it at all, but there was nothing that I can point my finger to and say "this is a flaw" or "this bit did not work for me". Okay, I am a big giant nerd who likes to feel clever and be challenged, so realistically anything slightly pretentious and/or high-concept appeal to me a lot more than it should.

And it is high-concept. The narrative takes you into the mind of a worker bee, through the various different jobs she has, dealing with various different sisters and other insects. The detail is rich and complicated as the honey Flora 717 works to make, and the world-building is incredible. The bees are at once alien and familiar, which is rare to find even in high-SF. The book was clearly a labour of love on the part of the author, and I like bees a lot more than I did before I read it, which is a real achievement given that I am hardcore phobic of wasps. (In person. I am less bothered about wasps which are not able to get to me.)

This is a beautiful, compelling, deeply strange and triumphant novel, and I recommend it to everyone unless you are the type of phobic that gets bothered by descriptions of insects, spiders, and grubs, in which case, I apologise for using the title to make an Eddie Izzard reference instead of warning you, and kudos for making it to the end of the review. (Although actually Paull manages to make bee larvae cute, which is a note-worthy achievement in and of itself.)

Five stars: intoxicating as mead, without the hangover the next day.

(Cross-posted to the Cannonball Read page here)

Armchair Activism: A Practical Guide

“What can Men do against such reckless hate?” – Theoden, The Two Towers

A few days ago I (finally) tweeted about my horror and disgust at the Gamergate “movement”, and about my disappointment at the relative lack of comment by most of the male gamers I know. A couple of people responded with “but what can I do” questions or comments, and I have spent some time since then thinking about that. (Also plotting out a novel and playing Saints Row IV, because I multitask.) So here are some suggestions. I have illustrated with lots of different examples, not just my current particular bugbear, because this stuff is appropriate in a lot of different situations.

Publicise. The general public does not have my awareness of Gamergate, because most people don’t have my specific interests. Even where there is public awareness of specific events, like natural disasters and war, people forget pretty quickly. This is natural and does not make them terrible human beings with all the compassion of a brick. It is just what we do. We care about things that affect us personally, and if they don’t, we care when we first hear about it and then we forget. So, keep talking about it. You don’t have to bore everyone by talking about it all the time, but mention it, link to articles or stats about it, and make it clear that it affects you – it’ll affect other people through you.

Consider getting your place of employment involved, if you work in the kind of place that likes ostentatiously giving to charity or which has some kind of interest in the issue. Companies wield a different kind of power than people do, and usually have much wider pools of people they can reach. But companies do not take action independently of their employees and owners/shareholders: someone has to be the first to suggest it. This isn’t always appropriate, but it widens your ability to publicise from a couple of hundred people up to potentially Stephen Fry-like levels of influence.

Educate yourself about the issues involved. This is especially important for social justice stuff, but the way that things are presented in the media always involves some level of prejudice and presumption, and you need to be able to identify what and how. For example, the ebola crisis in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is widely known about, but the media concentrates on white victims, or on those who have developed the illness in Western nations. Not only is this a clear media bias based on systemic racism, it also presents a false image of the disease and its spread and consequences across the world. In order to counter that, you need to know the facts about the epidemic as a whole, and you should try to have an understanding of the social issues involved both here and in the affected countries.

This leads on to: Learn the arguments. Again, this is more specific to social justice issues, but there are always arguments, and you need to understand both sides in order to explain them to people who don’t know. So, in the case of the Fukushima disaster, a lot of people took the view that all nuclear power stations were ticking time bombs, when in actual fact the set of circumstances which led to the meltdown were really specific - tsunami and industrial negligence – and they can be protected against. But people don’t know that unless they know roughly how nuclear reactors work, and have a reasonable working understanding of probability. Most people do not have these things, hence the reaction.

In situations where you have a clear moral stance on something, you need to know what the other side is saying so that you can recognise the specific argument and respond to it effectively. Most people have not been trained in debating or in critical thinking, and there are a lot of really terrible arguments out there. It is unreasonable to expect that the people who are directly affected by the "policing" of Ferguson should have to spend their time and effort explaining Systemic Racism 101. They are too busy doing other things, like surviving and keeping themselves safe. But Systemic Racism 101 still needs to be explained. That is something you can do, and it’s helpful both as an explanation and as a gesture of support for the victims.

Complain to the relevant authorities. This isn’t always an appropriate course of action, but when it is, do it. You can write to your MP, MEP, Senator, whatever. There are specific oversight bodies which have powers to investigate, fine, or take to court –get in touch with them. You can also get in touch with other bodies which have a vested interest, like the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund, or the Trussell Trust, or a politician who is on a committee investigating a related issue. And then tell other people what you’ve done and why. Don’t make it about your feelings though – you’re not telling people so they can praise your actions, you’re telling them so that they know they can do it too. Provide a link to the method you used, to make it even easier. This is tedious to do (believe me, I know) but people are lazy and won't necessarily do it themselves.

Provide emotional support to the victims. It’s a little eye-rollingly twee to say things like “solidarity for the victims of this terrible thing”, but it’s not useless to do – you’re making your views clear, and while one voice on its own is quiet, lots of quiet voices together is a roar. Politicians and charities genuinely do gauge reactions to crises by aggregating responses on social media and blogs etc, so even if none of the victims ever see it, you’re still helping.

Provide financial support to the victims, if you can afford it. For big disasters, go through one of the big charities – they’re more reliable and more efficient. I would recommend UN bodies, MSF, or the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which are much larger and have access to specialists who can provide appropriate assistance. For private individuals, check if there is a crowdfunding appeal for them (I would exercise caution with this though, be sure to research it as thoroughly as you can), or support them through their work by sponsoring them or purchasing their products.

Providing goods instead of money can be useful, but unless you know what specifically is needed it’s generally a better idea to just donate a sum of money. Food banks much prefer to receive cash rather than tins of food, because they can buy in bulk which is cheaper, and because people get it wrong. Anyone who’s ever seen a harvest festival in a church or school knows that there are a lot of mystery cans or esoteric ingredients which are unlikely to be useful to the people receiving them. What use is a can of capers on its own? Even if you get it right, you’ll still be missing a lot of basic supplies that are needed – food banks also hand out nappies, sanitary towels and tampons, toilet roll, and other necessary but unglamorous products.

(This last is something that it is good to remember about giving wedding and baby presents. When my sister got married, she ended up with so many towels that some of them are still unused five years later. When she had her daughter, they got so many newborn clothes that my niece had grown out of them before she could wear them all. This is so common that charity shops have huge ranges of unworn newborn clothes, which hardly ever get bought. Think about what other people are likely to get, and don’t get that. If you don’t know, just give a voucher or cash.)

Listen to the victims and believe them. Hard to believe that this still has to be said, but people doubt the testimony of victims all the time. This is in part because of media reporting on the issues, which makes false claims seem much more prevalent by focussing on them instead of on the wider picture, but also because of underlying social issues like sexism and racism. (That ties back to education as well.) If you as an ally or supporter dismiss claims as outlandish or as exaggeration, think how much easier it is for the opponents to dismiss them.

Don’t expect thanks or praise. You might receive some, but you shouldn’t be looking for it. Giving money to look good is still useful, but constantly making the conversation about yourself is selfish and unhelpful. I know that this sounds like I’m contradicting the first thing I said, but it’s possible to demonstrate that you are affected by an issue and care about it whilst making sure that the voices of the direct victims are heard. If in doubt, don’t mention anything more than “I care about this issue and I think you should too”.

Don’t talk yourself out of helping. You don’t have to do all of these things. You don’t even have to do any of them: if you want to help and can think of a better way, do that. But don’t think that your contribution would be meaningless so why bother at all. It’s both defeatist and wrong. One person genuinely can change the world, albeit one person in the right place at the right time with the right skillset, and you have no idea if you’re going to be that person.

Keep yourself safe: only do things that you are prepared to accept the consequences of. This is especially important in protests where you know the police (or army) are using violent or aggressive tactics. If you can’t afford to get arrested because of the type of industry you work in, you’re allowed to stay at home. You are allowed to place your safety ahead of your principles. Equally though, everyone is allowed to place their principles before their safety. The calculation is different for everyone at different times. Don’t presume that someone else didn’t think their actions through just because you came to a different conclusion.

Finally, don't be a dick. Don't threaten people with an opposing viewpoint physically or verbally, or make deliberately inflammatory statements, or make sweeping generalisations like "all TERFs are evil". These things can and will be used as ammunition by the other side. They will also alienate people with more moderate views, or people who are undecided about the issue or issues involved. You don't have to be excruciatingly nice to every sockpuppet or right-wing talk-show host you come across, but as a general rule you can't persuade them anyway: you can only persuade their audience. And that's a worthy goal.

Armchair activism has a bad name, but I'm pretty sure I have just comprehensively demonstrated that there are a large number of things that can be done sitting on one's arse in front of one's PC, or standing on public transport using your phone, or round the water cooler at work. You don't have to do all of them. You don't have to do any of them. If you need to stay anonymous, do it. But there are always, always things that you can do if you care about something.

Here are a list of links to various organisations, some specifically mentioned here and some not, which I have googled for you so you don't have to. Feel free to add more in the comments. (Just so we're clear, I reserve the right to moderate any comment made.)

• The Trussell Trust - food bank in the UK
• Comic Book Legal Defence Fund - protecting First Amendment stuff in the US
• Medécins Sans Frontières - international charity sending doctors to places their expertise is needed
• International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent - links to national pages there too
• UN Foundation - international with links to different campaigns
• UNICEF - international, links to national pages
• Kickstarter - crowdfunder, projects need to be fully funded to take off
• Indiegogo - crowdfunder, allows flexible funding where projects can withdraw funds even if target is not met
• Patreon - crowdfunder for sponsoring creative types

#CBR6 14: You Had Me At Hello, Mhairi McFarlane

Page count: 436 pages
Time taken: 3.5 hours

Rachel has been with her fiancé Rhys since before she went to university, until an argument over their wedding DJ sees her ending their relationship and moving out. This coincides with an old friend (Ben) moving back to Manchester, and Rachel finds herself examining her life in detail, both past and present. Her work as a court reporter, her friendship group, and Ben’s wife, all serve as complications which she has to juggle. As the layers of concealment and deception build up, she has to decide which truths to reveal, and which to bury for good.

I love this book. Every part of it is perfect to me. The only criticism I have about it is that it makes me nostalgic for university. That’s it. Everything else is great. The characters are engaging, flawed, and well-rounded; the relationships are all believable; there’s no fat-shaming, or slut-shaming, or stupid frothy girly twee bullshit. It’s one of the few books I own in more than one format, purely so I can lend people the book so that they can love it as much as I do. (Also, I had a voucher for Sainsbury’s and it was perfectly priced to use up the rest that wasn’t spent on a stockpot, which was also a very good purchase.)

I was reminded a lot of Jane Austen – not in terms of the plot, which is very different, but in the pointed observations of people, subversive humour, and tidiness of the story. There are a lot of laugh-out-loud funny bits – I suspect it helps to have a dry, dark, and occasionally twisted sense of humour - and the book is a fast and compelling read.

This is McFarlane’s first book, and it really announced her as a rising new star of contemporary romance in Britain. I’ll review her second book once I finish it (for the second time), and she’s on my “buy immediately and keep forever” list. She’s also on Twitter ( @mhairmcf ) and is just as funny in 140 characters. I hope that it marks a watershed moment in romance fiction as well, where more authors try to avoid the worst tropes of the genre – if you want any examples of those, feel free to browse my Alpha’s Touch boxset reviews, which range from the depressed to the disgusted. YHMAH is the perfect cure for all such shit.

5 stars: reaffirms faith in humanity whilst being, to quote the book, a proper lol.

#CBR6 13: Metro 2033, Dmitry Glukhovsky

Page count: 464 pages
Time taken: 6 hours (I spent a lot of time looking up stations)

Artyom is a young man living in VNDKh, the northernmost inhabited station in Moscow’s metro system. The past few weeks have seen terrifying new creatures, “dark ones”, invading down the lines from the irradiated and lethal outside world, and Artyom finds himself on a mission to warn the near-mythical Polis of this new and lethal threat. On the way, he meets a motley collection of people who variously help and hinder him, and uncovers secrets of a world he barely remembers. Can he save the Metro, or is the presumed last bastion of humanity doomed to die in the dark?

This is a classic post-apocalyptic piece of fiction, which if the writer were British I would say owed much to John Wyndham’s legacy. Given that he’s Russian though, I have no idea what his influences were. The action mainly takes place within the confines of the Moscow metro system – there are handy maps at the front and back of the book for readers without familiarity, although I still found it difficult to work out where the action was actually taking place because the names are all long and I have very little familiarity with Russian.

The pacing is superb, which really adds to the race-against-time theme, and Artyom’s journey, both physical and spiritual, is a really good variant of the hero’s quest. I enjoyed the slow reveal of what happened to the world above, and I loved the various different social structures which exist in various different stations – the ideologies and how they interact are really well thought through and investigated. I’m not a huge dystopia fan, but I enjoyed this one a lot, and the black Russian humour that seeps in is very welcome. There’s also a surprising amount of Pilgrim’s Progress style allegory, which breaks up the dark and claustrophobic imagery of the action sequences, and the nature of humanity is thoroughly explored.

I have two criticisms of the book: firstly, very few female characters at all, the plight of women in this world being almost entirely ignored, which for my money makes it a much less in-depth thought experiment than it otherwise aspires to be. And secondly, there is no way that radiation alone could account for all of the mutants in the time stated since the nuclear apocalypse – one generation is not enough time for such vast speciation. There are hints in the book that more esoteric weapons were used than just nukes and explosives, but no-one really talks about it, which annoyed me because I like a certain amount of accuracy in my science fiction. That being said, this is a really good read, and deserves to be on everyone’s post-apocalyptic depressing dystopias reading list.

4 out of 5: a classic example of the genre, pity about the sexism.

There is a computer game based on the novel, which I own but have not yet got round to playing, and I'll link to that review when it's done. I'm curious to see how it compares, I'm pretty excited about the ways that games can reinterpret extant worlds.

#CBR6 12: Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

Page count: 456 in the large paperback edition
Time taken: 4 hours

Ista, dowager Royina of Chalion, has finally been released from the toxic influence of the curse which affected the royal house for generations. With her mother recently dead, she finds herself able to take charge of her life for the first time, and sets off on a voyage of discovery disguised as a pilgrimage: Ista has no desire to speak to any of the gods, ever again. Unfortunately, the gods have other ideas, and she finds herself on an all-too-familiar path. Will this one, too, lead her into death and madness, or will she find a way through the darkness?

The second of three books set in a late-medieval world where gods, demons and souls are all real, Paladin of Souls follows on pretty directly from The Curse of Chalion, and contains spoilers for it. However, you don’t have to read them in order as enough exposition is given. The theme of the series is the five gods of the world: Father of Winter, Mother of Summer, Son of Autumn, Daughter of Spring, and the Bastard, god of things out of season. This book is primarily concerned with the Bastard, although there is another cameo appearance. My understanding is that Bujold intends a series of five books, one for each god, but has only made it through three so far – the third one, The Hallowed Hunt, is set a couple of hundred years before Chalion and Paladin and can be read as a stand-alone with no spoiler concerns.

I love the gods of this world, who are all characters in their own right. Bujold is, I believe, quietly religious herself, although she neither proselytises nor evangelises in her works, and if she’s a practising Christian she’s definitely a modern one who likes birth control and gay people. The sense of the spiritual I get from this series is not something I would associate from a lifelong atheist, certainly, and the theology of the world is well thought-out and examined in all three books.

The secondary theme in this book is recovery from mental health issues, and as such it can be a bit of a difficult read. In the parlance of the time and place, Ista was driven mad by grief, and rage, and guilt, and a mystical curse. When the curse is lifted, she is still heartsick and depressed, albeit no longer actively suicidal and occasionally raving. Her journey to whole-ness is convincing and filled with all of the pitfalls one might expect, and the occasional flashes of her former thought patterns and processes are both worrying from a reader’s point of view, and entirely on the money from a sufferer’s perspective – again, I suspect personal knowledge from Bujold, although I do not know any specifics. As a chronic depressive, Ista is both mirror and aspiration.

This book is my favourite book of all time. I cannot read it without tears and laughter, and it warms my battered soul to the core. It deals with a wide variety of topics which are personal and constant headweasels: family, religion, depression, self-hatred – pretty much all of my worst thoughts are covered in this in one way or another. Despite the difficulty of the subject matter (for me personally, I don’t think it’s as on-point for everyone), I return to it again and again. If I could only read one book for the rest of my life, it would be this book. If I lose the ability to read, or hear, or feel my body, I will still find my way back to this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough: it has genuinely enriched my life, and I hope it does yours too.

5 stars, obviously.

#CBR6 11: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold

Page count: 422 in the hardback edition
Time taken: four hours

Ivan Vorpatril is working in one of the domed cities on Komarr when an old frenemy asks for his help. As the help in question is picking up a beautiful woman, Ivan agrees with very little hesitation, a decision he quickly comes to regret. Tej is a refugee from Jackson’s Whole, fleeing the destruction of her House with her only surviving companion Rish. Pursued across the wormhole Nexus, several planets still to go from her eventual destination, she finds herself on the planet Komarr working a dead-end job, trying to scrape together enough money to make it to Escobar and avoid the assassins still on her trail. Ivan quickly proves himself a solution to her problems, but is she the solution to his?

This book is the latest in Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, taking place a couple of years after Diplomatic Immunity and before Cryoburn. Ivan has been a character voice before, in A Civil Campaign, but never the main character, and this book shows him at his most complex to date. He has always previously been the foil to either his cousin Miles or the brilliant Byerly Vorrutyer, so it’s a welcome change to see him stretching himself and actually being the hero he has clearly always wanted to be.

I'm not sure how good this book would be for a first-time reader. Bujold does a good job with exposition of previous stories, but not all of the details are given, and it’s definitely a book with a lot of in-jokes. On the other hand, taken at face value it’s still a much better romance than a lot of the other romances I've read recently, with complex and realistically flawed characters, a fast-paced and engaging plot, and a liberal sprinkling of dry humour. Bujold always fades to black whenever her characters are doing anything more than kissing, but she still fits in plenty of dirty jokes.

As far as the science fiction elements of the book go, they’re pretty light on the field, no more complicated than the average fantasy novel which references faraway places and a couple of esoteric weapons. Bujold mainly concerns herself with genetic engineering, solutions of biological conundrums, and the occasional piece of large-scale engineering. This, in my considered opinion, has given her an unfair reputation as a genre-SF writer rather than a “proper” SF writer, in a combination of scientific snobbery and common-or-garden sexism. Biology has always been seen as the science that women do, the easy one, and engineering doesn't count as a real science either, as there’s not enough theory and too much practical application.

Despite this attitude, Bujold consistently tops the bestseller lists when a new book comes out and she has won numerous prestigious awards, so you always know you’re in safe hands. I highly recommend this book: it’s lighter and fluffier than a lot of her works, but a welcome one nonetheless.

4.5 stars: A fun read, good romance, great chemistry.