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.
Showing posts with label CBR6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CBR6. Show all posts
Thursday, 24 July 2014
#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.
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, 24 April 2014
#CBR6 10: Digger: The Complete Omnibus Edition, Ursula Vernon
Page count: 850 pages
Time taken: 4.5 hours
Digger-of-convoluted-tunnels is a wombat who accidentally finds herself digging to the surface through a temple to Ganesh, where the statue of Ganesh - also a god in its own right - helps her to work out where she is, what's going on, and what she needs to do to get home. Unfortunately, things quickly stop being simple, as Digger meets a weird shadow creature who needs lessons in basic morality, and a nameless hyena she calls Ed after he agrees not to eat her. And that's just Chapter 1. Lots more stuff happens, involving mad priests, dead gods, why obligatory herbivores shouldn't eat meat, ghosts, vampire squashes, and things that skin people and wear their faces as a mark of respect and are actually really cute.
This is an omnibus edition of a webcomic that ran for several years, although I'd never come across it until a friend told me I would like it. She was right. I read chapter one one evening, and then I read the next eleven chapters instead of playing Mass Effect one morning. That's how good this graphic novel is. The humour is mostly dry, the action is compelling and the characters are lovable and memorable even several weeks after I read it, last month not having been a great month for blogging because of health stress and laziness.
Unlike a couple of the webcomics I follow, Digger stuck to one story arc which by and large sticks to the initial premise: the plot resolves, the characters develop and move on in the way you expect, and there aren't many new characters after the first couple of chapters. This makes it a much better candidate for novelisation than, say, Least I Could Do, or even than Garfield and Peanuts: short story arcs followed by random funny interludes don't really work as novels, although they're great bathroom books for precisely the same reason.
However, webcomics are different from graphic novels in that it's a more organic process of development over time, and reader interaction can be much easier, so this isn't quite the same as reading 850 pages of Sandman or Preacher. It's tightly written and plotted, but there are a few points which feel much more "I have a cool idea about vampire squashes" rather than "I shall now introduce the major plot element of vampire squashes". I'm pretty sure Vernon just likes the idea of undead gourds.
The artwork is lovely, black and white with good shading, and it's easy to follow what's going on. I really enjoyed this, and I recommend it without reservation to everyone regardless of how much of a comic fan you are; it's very accessible and a really good example of what the medium is capable of. It's also a lot easier to read than most of the big names in quote-unquote literary graphic novels, whilst still being complex and thought-provoking.
Time taken: 4.5 hours
Digger-of-convoluted-tunnels is a wombat who accidentally finds herself digging to the surface through a temple to Ganesh, where the statue of Ganesh - also a god in its own right - helps her to work out where she is, what's going on, and what she needs to do to get home. Unfortunately, things quickly stop being simple, as Digger meets a weird shadow creature who needs lessons in basic morality, and a nameless hyena she calls Ed after he agrees not to eat her. And that's just Chapter 1. Lots more stuff happens, involving mad priests, dead gods, why obligatory herbivores shouldn't eat meat, ghosts, vampire squashes, and things that skin people and wear their faces as a mark of respect and are actually really cute.
This is an omnibus edition of a webcomic that ran for several years, although I'd never come across it until a friend told me I would like it. She was right. I read chapter one one evening, and then I read the next eleven chapters instead of playing Mass Effect one morning. That's how good this graphic novel is. The humour is mostly dry, the action is compelling and the characters are lovable and memorable even several weeks after I read it, last month not having been a great month for blogging because of health stress and laziness.
Unlike a couple of the webcomics I follow, Digger stuck to one story arc which by and large sticks to the initial premise: the plot resolves, the characters develop and move on in the way you expect, and there aren't many new characters after the first couple of chapters. This makes it a much better candidate for novelisation than, say, Least I Could Do, or even than Garfield and Peanuts: short story arcs followed by random funny interludes don't really work as novels, although they're great bathroom books for precisely the same reason.
However, webcomics are different from graphic novels in that it's a more organic process of development over time, and reader interaction can be much easier, so this isn't quite the same as reading 850 pages of Sandman or Preacher. It's tightly written and plotted, but there are a few points which feel much more "I have a cool idea about vampire squashes" rather than "I shall now introduce the major plot element of vampire squashes". I'm pretty sure Vernon just likes the idea of undead gourds.
The artwork is lovely, black and white with good shading, and it's easy to follow what's going on. I really enjoyed this, and I recommend it without reservation to everyone regardless of how much of a comic fan you are; it's very accessible and a really good example of what the medium is capable of. It's also a lot easier to read than most of the big names in quote-unquote literary graphic novels, whilst still being complex and thought-provoking.
#CBR6 9: NOS4A2, Joe Hill
Page count: 720 in paperback, although once again, I read the Kindle version
Time taken: seven hours?
Victoria McQueen is a kid when she discovers an unexpected talent for finding lost things. A creepy talent, which only gets weirder as she gets older. Charles Talent Manx also has a creepy talent. He kidnaps children and takes them to a magical place called Christmasland, where their teeth turn into tiny hooks and they play forever. Their paths collide several times, and Vic is forced to repeatedly confront the dark places in herself and others, and question how much she is willing to lose - and sacrifice - on the way.
This book creeped the everloving shit out of me. I read it in feverish chunks over several days, unable to put it down for hours at a time until I was forced to stop because oh my god, little hooks for teeth, or something worse. I enjoyed it immensely, which I did not really expect, and I really empathised with the ensemble cast of weirdos and fuckups (except Manx, I hate that guy) - unexpectedly so, given how badly they mess up their lives and the lives of people around them at times.
The book touches on a lot of really complex ideas, like the nature of identity, the destructive power of genius, and the surprising and unexpected inheritances we get from our parents and theirs. Hill is no doubt deeply irritated with people doing this, but to me it pretty clearly drew on elements of his own life - his father is Stephen "I write all of the books" King - albeit I really, really hope his home life was nothing like the lives of his characters. Still, as someone who regularly thinks about her own physical and psychological inheritances, I was particularly struck by those motifs in the later parts of the book.
Hill deals with various different kinds of mental illness, destructive personality traits, and conflicted relationships really well, whilst never really making it feel like a effort or an object lesson. Occasionally, this cut really close to the bone for me, but never passed across the invisible line into triggering. I would exercise caution if you're particularly sensitive about issues surrounding child abduction, addiction and self-harm, and mental breakdowns, as the book returns to these themes pretty regularly.
My favourite part of the book was where Mr De Zoet was listening to the Cloud Atlas symphony, because I love David Mitchell too, and I'm always thrilled when writers I like like other writers I like. I've only read another couple of Hill's works, some of the Locke and Key graphic novels, but I will absolutely read more when I get the chance.
Time taken: seven hours?
Victoria McQueen is a kid when she discovers an unexpected talent for finding lost things. A creepy talent, which only gets weirder as she gets older. Charles Talent Manx also has a creepy talent. He kidnaps children and takes them to a magical place called Christmasland, where their teeth turn into tiny hooks and they play forever. Their paths collide several times, and Vic is forced to repeatedly confront the dark places in herself and others, and question how much she is willing to lose - and sacrifice - on the way.
This book creeped the everloving shit out of me. I read it in feverish chunks over several days, unable to put it down for hours at a time until I was forced to stop because oh my god, little hooks for teeth, or something worse. I enjoyed it immensely, which I did not really expect, and I really empathised with the ensemble cast of weirdos and fuckups (except Manx, I hate that guy) - unexpectedly so, given how badly they mess up their lives and the lives of people around them at times.
The book touches on a lot of really complex ideas, like the nature of identity, the destructive power of genius, and the surprising and unexpected inheritances we get from our parents and theirs. Hill is no doubt deeply irritated with people doing this, but to me it pretty clearly drew on elements of his own life - his father is Stephen "I write all of the books" King - albeit I really, really hope his home life was nothing like the lives of his characters. Still, as someone who regularly thinks about her own physical and psychological inheritances, I was particularly struck by those motifs in the later parts of the book.
Hill deals with various different kinds of mental illness, destructive personality traits, and conflicted relationships really well, whilst never really making it feel like a effort or an object lesson. Occasionally, this cut really close to the bone for me, but never passed across the invisible line into triggering. I would exercise caution if you're particularly sensitive about issues surrounding child abduction, addiction and self-harm, and mental breakdowns, as the book returns to these themes pretty regularly.
My favourite part of the book was where Mr De Zoet was listening to the Cloud Atlas symphony, because I love David Mitchell too, and I'm always thrilled when writers I like like other writers I like. I've only read another couple of Hill's works, some of the Locke and Key graphic novels, but I will absolutely read more when I get the chance.
Sunday, 16 February 2014
#CBR6: 8: Dark Witch, Nora Roberts
Page Count: 368 pages in the deckle edge edition, I read a kindle version
Time Taken: 5 hours
Iona Sheehan has arrived in Ireland to take up her mantle as one of three inheritors of the powers of a 13th Century witch and matriarch of her family line. Together with her cousins Connor and Branna, she has to fight a dark power who hounded her ancestress to death and desires her power even now. As her power grows, so too do her feelings for her handsome boss, Boyle McGrath. Can she beat her personal demons and claim her prize?
I made that sound good there, right? It's a shame that the actual book is much more formulaic than my précis of it, because I would like to read a book where the heroine got to claim some bit of fluff as a reward - oh sorry, a well-rounded character who develops and grows over time and is coincidentally attractive. That is not this book. Unfortunately.
The book lost me in the first part, which is told in close third person narrative and starts with the eponymous Dark Witch, Sorcha. It lost me at quite a specific point. It lost me when Sorcha told her daughter to go back to the house and chop the potatoes for the stew.
From Wikipedia, entry potato: "In the Andes, where the species is indigenous, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species. Potatoes were introduced outside the Andes region four centuries ago, and have become an integral part of much of the world's food supply...Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century." Those first two sentences came from THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF THE ENTRY. Now, I grant you that researching potatoes for your partially historical novel might not strike you as necessary, but I found it staggeringly awful that neither the writer, nor the editor, nor any of the proof readers picked up on what is a glaring historical inaccuracy in the first chapter.
In fact, none of the historical or cultural details in the book really ring true to me. The 13th Century stuff is pretty bad all round - "Sorcha" is not what the name is in Gaelic, that would be "Saoirse" - and a lot of the modern Irish stuff is very... well, shit. Horseshit. Quite literally, a lot of the time. Okay, it's a vaguely supernatural romance written by someone who isn't Irish, for a US audience who probably (also) don't know about the potato thing of how to spell/pronounce Gaelic, but for the writer of over 200 novels, I kind of expected better. I presume that the Gaelic in it is of similarly dubious provenance, but I don't speak any so I don't know, and also Scots Gaelic is a bit different to Irish Gaelic so I'd know the wrong one anyway.
There's no exposition in the story as to the nature of magic or how common its usage is, the book completely ignores everything Catholic about Ireland except for a couple of buildings, and the non-witches in the circle of friends are completely okay with magic existing. There's no sense of world-building or history in the books, no sense of place or time particularly; it didn't feel real to me at all.
Also the word is spelled "magic" not "magick". I appreciate that one might want to use the word magick to hint at a pseudo-Celtic romanticised mythology, and it certainly did that in this book, but it also really reminds me of teenagers who think they can do magic because they got stoned and watched The Craft and wear a lot of green and black. I am totally fine with pretentious arsery, do not get me wrong, me and pretentious arsery go way back, but deliberately drawing on that resonance seems a bit sloppy. And shit.
The second book in the trilogy will be out soon. Without reading any of the blurb, I knew that it would be about the romance between Connor and Maera (not even sure that's an Irish name). I'm sure that Connor will find himself hurt and Maera will have to rescue him with her leet swordswoman skills, and that she'll be rescued by him whilst wearing an unlikely outfit, and there will be Humorous Misunderstandings which will Cause Their Blossoming Relationship To Falter.
I know what the next book will be as well. The compellingly beautiful Branna, long thwarted in her love for Fin because he's the descendent of the evil witch man who is trying to kill them all and claim their powers, will become more and more drawn to and suspicious of her erstwhile lver. He, meanwhile, will be tortured and brooding whilst his dreams are haunted by his dark forefather's malign influence. Eventually, nearly mad with it all, he will do Cabhan's bidding (yes, that's his name, you pronounce it "Cavan", it apparently means "the hollow" LIKE HIS SOUL and is a placename in the Republic of Ireland) before redeeming himself to prove his love for Branna and finally defeating Cabhan, taking a mortal would in the process which will of course be cured by Branna. In the epilogue, Iona will reveal she's pregnant.
I did not just do magic there. Or *shudder* magick. I used my wealth of experience at reading by-the-numbers novels by bored writers. This is one of those. I'd give it two stars, because it was at least readable trite, but I'm taking one star off for the potato and name thing, because that really fucked me off. It's pretty harsh that I marked this lower than Claim Me, but it had better sex scenes, and laugh-out-loud bad is, you know, laughable, rather than tedium interspersed with a voice in my head shouting "IT'S SPELLED MAGIC YOU FUCKS". Not recommended, unless you're doing a thesis on "common US misinterpretations of Ireland", "cultural appropriation", or "examples of poor pacing/stereotypes/clichés/chemistry in romance novels". If you do read it, I found that occasionally pausing to say "it doesn't have a K in it" helped a lot.
Time Taken: 5 hours
Iona Sheehan has arrived in Ireland to take up her mantle as one of three inheritors of the powers of a 13th Century witch and matriarch of her family line. Together with her cousins Connor and Branna, she has to fight a dark power who hounded her ancestress to death and desires her power even now. As her power grows, so too do her feelings for her handsome boss, Boyle McGrath. Can she beat her personal demons and claim her prize?
I made that sound good there, right? It's a shame that the actual book is much more formulaic than my précis of it, because I would like to read a book where the heroine got to claim some bit of fluff as a reward - oh sorry, a well-rounded character who develops and grows over time and is coincidentally attractive. That is not this book. Unfortunately.
The book lost me in the first part, which is told in close third person narrative and starts with the eponymous Dark Witch, Sorcha. It lost me at quite a specific point. It lost me when Sorcha told her daughter to go back to the house and chop the potatoes for the stew.
From Wikipedia, entry potato: "In the Andes, where the species is indigenous, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species. Potatoes were introduced outside the Andes region four centuries ago, and have become an integral part of much of the world's food supply...Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century." Those first two sentences came from THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF THE ENTRY. Now, I grant you that researching potatoes for your partially historical novel might not strike you as necessary, but I found it staggeringly awful that neither the writer, nor the editor, nor any of the proof readers picked up on what is a glaring historical inaccuracy in the first chapter.
In fact, none of the historical or cultural details in the book really ring true to me. The 13th Century stuff is pretty bad all round - "Sorcha" is not what the name is in Gaelic, that would be "Saoirse" - and a lot of the modern Irish stuff is very... well, shit. Horseshit. Quite literally, a lot of the time. Okay, it's a vaguely supernatural romance written by someone who isn't Irish, for a US audience who probably (also) don't know about the potato thing of how to spell/pronounce Gaelic, but for the writer of over 200 novels, I kind of expected better. I presume that the Gaelic in it is of similarly dubious provenance, but I don't speak any so I don't know, and also Scots Gaelic is a bit different to Irish Gaelic so I'd know the wrong one anyway.
There's no exposition in the story as to the nature of magic or how common its usage is, the book completely ignores everything Catholic about Ireland except for a couple of buildings, and the non-witches in the circle of friends are completely okay with magic existing. There's no sense of world-building or history in the books, no sense of place or time particularly; it didn't feel real to me at all.
Also the word is spelled "magic" not "magick". I appreciate that one might want to use the word magick to hint at a pseudo-Celtic romanticised mythology, and it certainly did that in this book, but it also really reminds me of teenagers who think they can do magic because they got stoned and watched The Craft and wear a lot of green and black. I am totally fine with pretentious arsery, do not get me wrong, me and pretentious arsery go way back, but deliberately drawing on that resonance seems a bit sloppy. And shit.
The second book in the trilogy will be out soon. Without reading any of the blurb, I knew that it would be about the romance between Connor and Maera (not even sure that's an Irish name). I'm sure that Connor will find himself hurt and Maera will have to rescue him with her leet swordswoman skills, and that she'll be rescued by him whilst wearing an unlikely outfit, and there will be Humorous Misunderstandings which will Cause Their Blossoming Relationship To Falter.
I know what the next book will be as well. The compellingly beautiful Branna, long thwarted in her love for Fin because he's the descendent of the evil witch man who is trying to kill them all and claim their powers, will become more and more drawn to and suspicious of her erstwhile lver. He, meanwhile, will be tortured and brooding whilst his dreams are haunted by his dark forefather's malign influence. Eventually, nearly mad with it all, he will do Cabhan's bidding (yes, that's his name, you pronounce it "Cavan", it apparently means "the hollow" LIKE HIS SOUL and is a placename in the Republic of Ireland) before redeeming himself to prove his love for Branna and finally defeating Cabhan, taking a mortal would in the process which will of course be cured by Branna. In the epilogue, Iona will reveal she's pregnant.
I did not just do magic there. Or *shudder* magick. I used my wealth of experience at reading by-the-numbers novels by bored writers. This is one of those. I'd give it two stars, because it was at least readable trite, but I'm taking one star off for the potato and name thing, because that really fucked me off. It's pretty harsh that I marked this lower than Claim Me, but it had better sex scenes, and laugh-out-loud bad is, you know, laughable, rather than tedium interspersed with a voice in my head shouting "IT'S SPELLED MAGIC YOU FUCKS". Not recommended, unless you're doing a thesis on "common US misinterpretations of Ireland", "cultural appropriation", or "examples of poor pacing/stereotypes/clichés/chemistry in romance novels". If you do read it, I found that occasionally pausing to say "it doesn't have a K in it" helped a lot.
#CBR6 7: The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
Page count: 352 pages
Time taken: 6 hours
Amir is the wealthy and privileged son of a rich Afghan entrepreneur, whose best friend Hassan is the son of one of his father's servants and a member of a despised ethnic minority. The book covers a period of about thirty years, detailing Amir's struggle to earn his father's love and respect, his great betrayal of his friend, and his difficult journey to find forgiveness. The story takes place mostly chronologically, and follows the historical progression of Afghanistan from relatively progressive monarchy through to total religious oppression under the Taliban.
Obviously, I am several years behind most people for a first time reading of this book, but I was given the opportunity to read it and am very glad I did so. This is a masterpiece of regret, loss of innocence, truth and lies, and redemption, and I highly recommend it. (Five stars: this book will make you a better person.)
There are so many themes in this that it must be a source of it to any English Lit student who is assigned it; the only difficulty is unpicking them all from each other, as the threads of the tale are so thickly interwoven that to discuss one part one must by necessity discuss them all. Of course, that would also spoil the book, so I'm not going to do that. Also it would take ages and I still have two more completed books to review tonight.
Instead of themes, then, I'll talk briefly about the cleverness of the book from a literary point of view. Early in the book, Amir writes a short story, and is complimented by his father's best friend: "But the most impressive thing about your story is that it has irony...". It's rare that a writer tells you the constructions he is using in his work before you get to them. I've only seen it does a couple of times before, and each time, it's been a combination of self-deprecation (I'm being silly here), pride (look how clever I am for using this!) and fear (what if no-one gets it?). This is no exception, I think; Hosseini must have congratulated himself on the tidiness of his work even as he was agonising over whether it was too subtle or convoluted to be enjoyable.
The irony isn't particularly subtle, in truth, but it is ever-present, and the sense of terrible inevitability it engenders is part of the power of the story. This was a very hard book to read in places, and deserves a whole bunch of trigger warnings for pretty much everything awful you can think of, but it is a very important book, and there is a great deal in it to take away and think about.
Time taken: 6 hours
Amir is the wealthy and privileged son of a rich Afghan entrepreneur, whose best friend Hassan is the son of one of his father's servants and a member of a despised ethnic minority. The book covers a period of about thirty years, detailing Amir's struggle to earn his father's love and respect, his great betrayal of his friend, and his difficult journey to find forgiveness. The story takes place mostly chronologically, and follows the historical progression of Afghanistan from relatively progressive monarchy through to total religious oppression under the Taliban.
Obviously, I am several years behind most people for a first time reading of this book, but I was given the opportunity to read it and am very glad I did so. This is a masterpiece of regret, loss of innocence, truth and lies, and redemption, and I highly recommend it. (Five stars: this book will make you a better person.)
There are so many themes in this that it must be a source of it to any English Lit student who is assigned it; the only difficulty is unpicking them all from each other, as the threads of the tale are so thickly interwoven that to discuss one part one must by necessity discuss them all. Of course, that would also spoil the book, so I'm not going to do that. Also it would take ages and I still have two more completed books to review tonight.
Instead of themes, then, I'll talk briefly about the cleverness of the book from a literary point of view. Early in the book, Amir writes a short story, and is complimented by his father's best friend: "But the most impressive thing about your story is that it has irony...". It's rare that a writer tells you the constructions he is using in his work before you get to them. I've only seen it does a couple of times before, and each time, it's been a combination of self-deprecation (I'm being silly here), pride (look how clever I am for using this!) and fear (what if no-one gets it?). This is no exception, I think; Hosseini must have congratulated himself on the tidiness of his work even as he was agonising over whether it was too subtle or convoluted to be enjoyable.
The irony isn't particularly subtle, in truth, but it is ever-present, and the sense of terrible inevitability it engenders is part of the power of the story. This was a very hard book to read in places, and deserves a whole bunch of trigger warnings for pretty much everything awful you can think of, but it is a very important book, and there is a great deal in it to take away and think about.
#CBR6 6: Taming the Alpha, Adriana Hunter
Page count: 116
Time taken: 1.5 hrs
Trigger warning: Child rape, emotional abuse
Nikki Avery is a stripper, and a pretty good one, working for a strip club which is only slightly dodgy and doesn't actually require her to sleep with anyone. One of the johns catches her eye and she becomes increasingly drawn to him, against her better judgement and that of her best friend Lori, also a stripper.
Jax is the leader of the local werewolf pack, much to the chagrin of his younger brother. He has yet to do the two things which will cement his claim to be Alpha: kill in wolf form, and take a mate. In Nikki, he finally finds a woman he desires more than any other, but can she ever be accepted by his pack? And what is it that stalks the night, leaving behind death and a terrible stench?
This is book five of the Alpha's Touch set, the previous two books not being long enough to count for the cannonball read. To its credit, it is definitely better than "Curves for her Billionaire Doms", a book which I genuinely regret having read, although I have to say "His Golden Cuffs: Sacrifice" was better, scoring a good, oooh, 2 stars as it did (not worth paying for but you're not going to want to claw your own eyes out). This... One star: would make a good object lesson in how not to write a book.
The characters are one dimensional and frankly fucking annoying, the sex scenes irritating and of dubious hygiene - if you're regularly using sex as a way to make yourself feel better about your shitty life and you don't use condoms, you're going to be passing around a lot of clap, fantasy novel or no - and the politics risible. The only vaguely interesting this is the monster and the similarities and differences between it and the werewolves, but seeing as there is fuck all by way of exposition, it's more annoying and frustrating than an interesting take on the legend, which was clearly what the author was going for.
Unlike One Night of Danger, the emotional and mental trauma suffered by the heroine is used purely as a plot device and is magically fixed by Jax being there and listening, because of course that will get rid of all of the trust issues you would have if you'd been sexually abused by your father and your mother had denied it or blamed you depending on her mood. It's not even surprising; the "stripper damaged by childhood sex abuse" cliché is, well, a cliché.
The relationship Nikki has with her best friend is really odd - they have had sex before but there's no real desire there, and Lori has a cavalier attitude towards personal space and fidelity in a relationship - and it feels really out of place in the novel, coming across much more as a lesbian interlude in otherwise straight porn (which, let's be clear, is what this is). I'm pretty sure that Lori's some kind of shapechanger as well, or at least is clued in, but no exposition means I don't know what is possible in this world at all. Jax's relationship with his brother Bec is also really odd, lots of posturing and dick-waving but no explanation.
The book clearly suffers from the fact that it should have more parts, e-readers having reopened the possibility of serials for authors, but I doubt an extra 200 pages would make me any happier - at least this was a fast read, literally the only thing it had in its favour. Unlike many poorly executed books I've read, I don't even have the sense that I could do a better job with the basic idea: it's so poorly conceived there's nothing salvageable. I'd say burn before reading, but it's digital, and delete before reading doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Time taken: 1.5 hrs
Trigger warning: Child rape, emotional abuse
Nikki Avery is a stripper, and a pretty good one, working for a strip club which is only slightly dodgy and doesn't actually require her to sleep with anyone. One of the johns catches her eye and she becomes increasingly drawn to him, against her better judgement and that of her best friend Lori, also a stripper.
Jax is the leader of the local werewolf pack, much to the chagrin of his younger brother. He has yet to do the two things which will cement his claim to be Alpha: kill in wolf form, and take a mate. In Nikki, he finally finds a woman he desires more than any other, but can she ever be accepted by his pack? And what is it that stalks the night, leaving behind death and a terrible stench?
This is book five of the Alpha's Touch set, the previous two books not being long enough to count for the cannonball read. To its credit, it is definitely better than "Curves for her Billionaire Doms", a book which I genuinely regret having read, although I have to say "His Golden Cuffs: Sacrifice" was better, scoring a good, oooh, 2 stars as it did (not worth paying for but you're not going to want to claw your own eyes out). This... One star: would make a good object lesson in how not to write a book.
The characters are one dimensional and frankly fucking annoying, the sex scenes irritating and of dubious hygiene - if you're regularly using sex as a way to make yourself feel better about your shitty life and you don't use condoms, you're going to be passing around a lot of clap, fantasy novel or no - and the politics risible. The only vaguely interesting this is the monster and the similarities and differences between it and the werewolves, but seeing as there is fuck all by way of exposition, it's more annoying and frustrating than an interesting take on the legend, which was clearly what the author was going for.
Unlike One Night of Danger, the emotional and mental trauma suffered by the heroine is used purely as a plot device and is magically fixed by Jax being there and listening, because of course that will get rid of all of the trust issues you would have if you'd been sexually abused by your father and your mother had denied it or blamed you depending on her mood. It's not even surprising; the "stripper damaged by childhood sex abuse" cliché is, well, a cliché.
The relationship Nikki has with her best friend is really odd - they have had sex before but there's no real desire there, and Lori has a cavalier attitude towards personal space and fidelity in a relationship - and it feels really out of place in the novel, coming across much more as a lesbian interlude in otherwise straight porn (which, let's be clear, is what this is). I'm pretty sure that Lori's some kind of shapechanger as well, or at least is clued in, but no exposition means I don't know what is possible in this world at all. Jax's relationship with his brother Bec is also really odd, lots of posturing and dick-waving but no explanation.
The book clearly suffers from the fact that it should have more parts, e-readers having reopened the possibility of serials for authors, but I doubt an extra 200 pages would make me any happier - at least this was a fast read, literally the only thing it had in its favour. Unlike many poorly executed books I've read, I don't even have the sense that I could do a better job with the basic idea: it's so poorly conceived there's nothing salvageable. I'd say burn before reading, but it's digital, and delete before reading doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
#CBR6 5: One Night of Danger, Clara Bayard
Page count: 231 pages
Time taken: 3 hours
Trigger warning: Domestic violence
Carly Chase works a dead-end job which she hates. After a particularly bad day at the office, she goes out for a night on the town with her BFF, and meets the sexy and surprisingly into her Sam Rollins. As her work life spirals deeper into crime and physical danger, she turns to Sam for help; but is he all he appears to be?
Unlike the first book of the Alpha's Touch box set, this one was surprisingly well written and enjoyable. There, I said it. From a feminist point of view, Carly is pretty awful, but she's well written enough that she has good reason to be, and while she does a whole bunch of things that one might generously call "of questionable judgement" they all serve to drive the plot forward, and it's difficult to see how the story could have progressed if she hadn't done them.
There are a few things that annoyed me - the erotica parts used really clichéd phrases in place of "erection" and "vagina" which I got really bored of, but I appreciate that many people prefer floaty euphemism so I'll put that down to taste. Carly is described as a "plus-sized beauty", but in fact there's nothing in the book to make me think she's particularly plus-sized at all, just tall and correspondingly bigger all over. It's possible I missed something, but all of the occasions where Carly's narration talks about it is really just stuff most women get paranoid about even when they've nothing to be worried about. Then again, that in itself might have been a commentary on the fact that society deems all women not built on petite lines as "plus-sized" even when they aren't, which as a taller than average woman myself I feel pretty strongly about.
Sam also bothered me as a romantic lead; Carly's mistakes were compounded by his, although his actions are presented as reasonable and logical, and his character seems an uncomfortable mix of proper hardcore alpha male and sensitive understanding and empowering feminist-appropriate type. As it's a first person narrative, and he's not the first person, the conflicting drives seem much more stark than they might have done if the novel had been from his perspective.
The plot was pretty light and relatively predictable, although there were a few nice touches in there which I didn't see coming. Where the book really stood out for me was the fact that Carly is the survivor of an abusive relationship, and has struggled her way back to herself; she suffers a couple of panic attacks and flashbacks over the course of the narrative. It's dealt with pretty sensitively, and it's not brushed off. Current estimates suggest that one billion women worldwide are victims of domestic abuse. That's 1,000,000,000 women, or the equivalent of the entire population of India. It's important that this is recognised in media and entertainment, because it's brushed under the carpet all too often.
Whilst it loses a point for its general predictability, I was impressed enough with its treatment of a difficult subject to add a point back, so this gets three stars: you probably won't hate yourself for reading this, but it won't blow your mind.
Time taken: 3 hours
Trigger warning: Domestic violence
Carly Chase works a dead-end job which she hates. After a particularly bad day at the office, she goes out for a night on the town with her BFF, and meets the sexy and surprisingly into her Sam Rollins. As her work life spirals deeper into crime and physical danger, she turns to Sam for help; but is he all he appears to be?
Unlike the first book of the Alpha's Touch box set, this one was surprisingly well written and enjoyable. There, I said it. From a feminist point of view, Carly is pretty awful, but she's well written enough that she has good reason to be, and while she does a whole bunch of things that one might generously call "of questionable judgement" they all serve to drive the plot forward, and it's difficult to see how the story could have progressed if she hadn't done them.
There are a few things that annoyed me - the erotica parts used really clichéd phrases in place of "erection" and "vagina" which I got really bored of, but I appreciate that many people prefer floaty euphemism so I'll put that down to taste. Carly is described as a "plus-sized beauty", but in fact there's nothing in the book to make me think she's particularly plus-sized at all, just tall and correspondingly bigger all over. It's possible I missed something, but all of the occasions where Carly's narration talks about it is really just stuff most women get paranoid about even when they've nothing to be worried about. Then again, that in itself might have been a commentary on the fact that society deems all women not built on petite lines as "plus-sized" even when they aren't, which as a taller than average woman myself I feel pretty strongly about.
Sam also bothered me as a romantic lead; Carly's mistakes were compounded by his, although his actions are presented as reasonable and logical, and his character seems an uncomfortable mix of proper hardcore alpha male and sensitive understanding and empowering feminist-appropriate type. As it's a first person narrative, and he's not the first person, the conflicting drives seem much more stark than they might have done if the novel had been from his perspective.
The plot was pretty light and relatively predictable, although there were a few nice touches in there which I didn't see coming. Where the book really stood out for me was the fact that Carly is the survivor of an abusive relationship, and has struggled her way back to herself; she suffers a couple of panic attacks and flashbacks over the course of the narrative. It's dealt with pretty sensitively, and it's not brushed off. Current estimates suggest that one billion women worldwide are victims of domestic abuse. That's 1,000,000,000 women, or the equivalent of the entire population of India. It's important that this is recognised in media and entertainment, because it's brushed under the carpet all too often.
Whilst it loses a point for its general predictability, I was impressed enough with its treatment of a difficult subject to add a point back, so this gets three stars: you probably won't hate yourself for reading this, but it won't blow your mind.
Thursday, 30 January 2014
#CBR6 4:Claim Me, Tawny Taylor
Pages: around 200 kindle pages
Time taken: 2-3 hours
Sylvie is the owner of a goth/fetish club whose office is the scene of the latest in a series of grisly murders. After the police leave, she finds herself in the company of Burke, who she presumes is a PI. In fact, he's a vampire who's been falsely accused of the murders, and he wants to clear his name. Sparks fly between the two characters, and upon realising that Sylvie is his Origo, a mystically ordained fated lover, Burke ravishes her pretty effectively. His mission to clear his name is complicated, however, by the discovery that Sylvie's other Master (yes, really) is Miko, the brother of the lead investigator into the murders, and sexy shenanigans ensue.
This book was laugh-out-loud awful. Seriously. Some of the smexy parts are okay (I added half a star for that), but some of them are pretty bad (hence it not being a whole star) - I found the BDSM bad and the threesomes okay, but YMMV. The rest of the book is just... wow. The plot could have made a half-decent book if it had place over a longer period of time and had not been secondary to the sex scenes. The characters were just awful; the narration is over-the-shoulder third person between Sylvie (so many exclamation marks! So little time between them!), the murderer (little sense of his character comes across, which was a waste), and Burke and Miko, who are practically identical in the way they think, act, and look, in as much as anything other than their rippling muscles and impressive cocks is described.
The exposition is really bad: Sylvie is perpetually confused about things - which I can't blame her for because neither Burke nor Miko bothers to tell her anything properly. The origins of Origos and Vampires are not discussed; the vampires can use magic, but they do it by snapping their fingers, and that's not explained either; Sylvie has a Small Dog Plot Device which gets abandoned at her one female friend's house and never mentioned after that; and the tropes followed are all clichés.
That all being said, I had fun reading it, largely because I was so amazed it got published at all. and there were certainly nuggets of good ideas there. It's basically the literary equivalent of my relationship with Burger King: every so often, I crave their fries, and I inhale a bunch of them, and then it triggers my IBS and I feel faintly disgusted with myself. This is like that. Only with words.
This is part of an anthology, The Alpha's Touch Boxed Set, and I have another 13 books to read in it. I am afraid for myself, but I won't stop reading it, just like the fries.
Time taken: 2-3 hours
Sylvie is the owner of a goth/fetish club whose office is the scene of the latest in a series of grisly murders. After the police leave, she finds herself in the company of Burke, who she presumes is a PI. In fact, he's a vampire who's been falsely accused of the murders, and he wants to clear his name. Sparks fly between the two characters, and upon realising that Sylvie is his Origo, a mystically ordained fated lover, Burke ravishes her pretty effectively. His mission to clear his name is complicated, however, by the discovery that Sylvie's other Master (yes, really) is Miko, the brother of the lead investigator into the murders, and sexy shenanigans ensue.
This book was laugh-out-loud awful. Seriously. Some of the smexy parts are okay (I added half a star for that), but some of them are pretty bad (hence it not being a whole star) - I found the BDSM bad and the threesomes okay, but YMMV. The rest of the book is just... wow. The plot could have made a half-decent book if it had place over a longer period of time and had not been secondary to the sex scenes. The characters were just awful; the narration is over-the-shoulder third person between Sylvie (so many exclamation marks! So little time between them!), the murderer (little sense of his character comes across, which was a waste), and Burke and Miko, who are practically identical in the way they think, act, and look, in as much as anything other than their rippling muscles and impressive cocks is described.
The exposition is really bad: Sylvie is perpetually confused about things - which I can't blame her for because neither Burke nor Miko bothers to tell her anything properly. The origins of Origos and Vampires are not discussed; the vampires can use magic, but they do it by snapping their fingers, and that's not explained either; Sylvie has a Small Dog Plot Device which gets abandoned at her one female friend's house and never mentioned after that; and the tropes followed are all clichés.
That all being said, I had fun reading it, largely because I was so amazed it got published at all. and there were certainly nuggets of good ideas there. It's basically the literary equivalent of my relationship with Burger King: every so often, I crave their fries, and I inhale a bunch of them, and then it triggers my IBS and I feel faintly disgusted with myself. This is like that. Only with words.
This is part of an anthology, The Alpha's Touch Boxed Set, and I have another 13 books to read in it. I am afraid for myself, but I won't stop reading it, just like the fries.
#CBR6 3: The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd
Pages: 384 hardcover (read ebook version)
Time to read: 4 hours. Barely put it down after I started reading it. This caused me to burn the first lot of toast I made.
Set in Charleston in the early 19th Century, The Invention of Wings tells the story of Handful and Sarah Grimké, slave and owner, and their separate but entwined lives. Sarah Grimké was one of the earliest Abolitionists and her story is based on what really happened to her; the character of Handful is mostly fictional, although Sarah was given a slave called Hetty (the name Handful is known to whites by) and she did try to refuse the gift on grounds of conscience, at the tender age of eleven. There are two first-person narratives intertwined through the novel, and the story covers a period of around 30 years.
Time to read: 4 hours. Barely put it down after I started reading it. This caused me to burn the first lot of toast I made.
Set in Charleston in the early 19th Century, The Invention of Wings tells the story of Handful and Sarah Grimké, slave and owner, and their separate but entwined lives. Sarah Grimké was one of the earliest Abolitionists and her story is based on what really happened to her; the character of Handful is mostly fictional, although Sarah was given a slave called Hetty (the name Handful is known to whites by) and she did try to refuse the gift on grounds of conscience, at the tender age of eleven. There are two first-person narratives intertwined through the novel, and the story covers a period of around 30 years.
This was a deeply compelling and well-crafted novel. The volume of research must have been enormous, but it has clearly paid off, as the book is redolent with details which ring true (albeit I don't know much about that period of history). Both characters are vividly drawn, and their relationship with its painful inequalities is really interesting to see develop. It's also great to see what each thinks about the other; in a way there is a silent third narrative voice, that of the objective truth the reder pieces together through the subjective viewpoints.
Given the very white-washed way we all seem to learn about history, a lot of the book makes for very uncomfortable reading. Slavery was not legal in Britain at the time the book was set, but the British had heavily profited from slavery for well over a century by that point. The ingrained attitude in the Southern states is something that I was aware of, but I was not aware of the arguments used and how much they fed on a (twisted, to my mind) Biblical precedent, although I could have probably figured it out if I'd ever thought to think about it.
It was also fascinating to see how closely entwined the philosophy of abolition and that of women's rights were entwined, not only in Sarah's personal journey but in the historical movements. I found this particularly striking because of the ongoing and vocal debate about the treatment of race in feminist thinking (or, to be more accurate, the lack thereof), and there's a particularly striking argument made by one of the (male) abolitionist leaders who tries to persuade the Grimké sisters not to argue for the rights of women at the same time as they are arguing for the rights of slaves and black people, because it's more complicated and drives people away from the abolitionist cause. This argument is still used against intersectional movements and thinking today, and I hope that more people learn to show it the same scorn that Sarah does.
I highly recommend this book. Be sure to read the afterword by the author; Kidd gives a very good accounting of her sources and thinking behind the novel which provides greater depth to the work.
I highly recommend this book. Be sure to read the afterword by the author; Kidd gives a very good accounting of her sources and thinking behind the novel which provides greater depth to the work.
Monday, 27 January 2014
#CBR6 2: The Valley of Amazement, Amy Tan
Page count: 608 in hardback (I read an e-book version)
Time taken: 5 hours over two days
Violet is the daughter of a popular Shanghai hostess and madam at the start of the 20th century. The books follows her from childhood through to middle age, zooming in in important times and memories. Half-American, half-Chinese, Violet is pulled in several different directions by her heritage and the whims of fate, but is always saved by the strength of her relationships with others.
I read this book very quickly, in about five hours, which is testament to the pacing and plot of the novel. Violet is an interesting character; the book is essentially her life as she would tell it to someone else, and her narrative voice is a strong one. Set in a turbulent time in China's history, the cultural conflict was particularly resonant, and the book dealt very well with "passing" - Violet is white enough to pass for Southern European, and Chinese enough to pass for Manchu, with the right accessories. The discussion of race in the book is nuanced and subtle.
As the book progresses and time passes, Violet stops valuing herself the way others do and starts to value herself for who and what she is. It sometimes feels as though she is not the main character in her own life though; her mother cast a very large shadow over her, and even in the long years they are separated, Violet constantly compares herself to her mother. In fact, the main theme of the novel is "troubled relationships with parents" and this is particularly striking in the Mysterious Lulu Segment, which (whilst I appreciated getting to know the character through her own eyes) I could not find a reason for it being where it was or its relevance to the plot at the time.
I felt that the novel could have used more historical context than was given; I'm pretty well versed in that period of Chinese history (by which I mainly mean I read Wild Swans a bunch of times) so I knew the basics, but there was an awful lot left out. This could well have been a deliberate narrative choice to highlight the narrowness of Violet's world as a woman at that time, or how little life actually changed for people in the 40 years after the abdication of last Emperor and before the rise of Communism, but it was mostly just confusing when particular people were mentioned with no background as to who they were or why they were important.
The best thing about the book, for me, was its exploration of race and racism. The rest of the book felt much more shallow. There are other books - novels or factual - which deal with the subjects of enforced prostitution, life as a courtesan, life as a junior wife, and the gender politics of the place and time, with greater breadth and scope. Obviously, books are allowed to concentrate on one aspect of a situation more than others; but it came across as much more ambitious than it actually managed to a achieve.
Time taken: 5 hours over two days
Violet is the daughter of a popular Shanghai hostess and madam at the start of the 20th century. The books follows her from childhood through to middle age, zooming in in important times and memories. Half-American, half-Chinese, Violet is pulled in several different directions by her heritage and the whims of fate, but is always saved by the strength of her relationships with others.
I read this book very quickly, in about five hours, which is testament to the pacing and plot of the novel. Violet is an interesting character; the book is essentially her life as she would tell it to someone else, and her narrative voice is a strong one. Set in a turbulent time in China's history, the cultural conflict was particularly resonant, and the book dealt very well with "passing" - Violet is white enough to pass for Southern European, and Chinese enough to pass for Manchu, with the right accessories. The discussion of race in the book is nuanced and subtle.
As the book progresses and time passes, Violet stops valuing herself the way others do and starts to value herself for who and what she is. It sometimes feels as though she is not the main character in her own life though; her mother cast a very large shadow over her, and even in the long years they are separated, Violet constantly compares herself to her mother. In fact, the main theme of the novel is "troubled relationships with parents" and this is particularly striking in the Mysterious Lulu Segment, which (whilst I appreciated getting to know the character through her own eyes) I could not find a reason for it being where it was or its relevance to the plot at the time.
I felt that the novel could have used more historical context than was given; I'm pretty well versed in that period of Chinese history (by which I mainly mean I read Wild Swans a bunch of times) so I knew the basics, but there was an awful lot left out. This could well have been a deliberate narrative choice to highlight the narrowness of Violet's world as a woman at that time, or how little life actually changed for people in the 40 years after the abdication of last Emperor and before the rise of Communism, but it was mostly just confusing when particular people were mentioned with no background as to who they were or why they were important.
The best thing about the book, for me, was its exploration of race and racism. The rest of the book felt much more shallow. There are other books - novels or factual - which deal with the subjects of enforced prostitution, life as a courtesan, life as a junior wife, and the gender politics of the place and time, with greater breadth and scope. Obviously, books are allowed to concentrate on one aspect of a situation more than others; but it came across as much more ambitious than it actually managed to a achieve.
Saturday, 4 January 2014
#CBR6 1: The Lions of Al-Rassan, Guy Gavriel Kay
Page count: 592
Time to read: 6 or 7 hours over 2 days
The Lions of Al-Rassan is a fantasy novel set in pseudo-Europe, in a time roughly equivalent to the late 10th Century AD. The national and political situation is roughly based on the occupation of Spain by the Moors, and the retaking of the lands held by the occupiers.
Jehane bet Ishak is a doctor who finds herself caught up in the sweeping politics of the day. Her fate becomes entwined with that of Ammar ibn Khairan of Aljais, the adviser to the King of Al-Rassan, and that of Rodrigo Belmonte, a captain of the kingdom on Valledo (formerly a duchy of Esperaña). With me so far? All three find themselves exiled from their homes and meet again in the city of Ragosa, whilst they shape and are shaped by the unstoppable consequences of faith.
Each of the main characters follows a different faith, which are roughly analogous to Chrsitianity, Islam, and Judaism. The Esperañans (and their fellow pseudo-Europeans) are Jaddite, who worship the God-behind-the-sun Jad. The pseudo-Middle Easterners are Asharite, who worship the stars of Ashar. And the despised and wandering Kindath acknowledge the God but primarily worship his twin moon sisters. Despite being really obvious, this was a fairly clever move by Kay to be able to discuss the religious hysteria of the day without actively offending any part of his audience. He still makes mistakes though.
Given that the book hinges on the differences between these three faiths, surprisingly little exposition is given to their natures or details. We know that the Kindath are hated - in fact, they even suffer from what's know as the blood libel that was claimed of the Jews - there is no information as to why. At all. The other two faiths similarly suffer, and I was uncomfortable with the level of fanaticism shown by the Muwardi (Asharite) tribesmen in particular, who seemed to be pretty lazy Islamist bogeymen stereotypes. On the other hand, the corrupt and cynically manipulative Jaddite clergy were pretty spot on for what I know about the Church at the time, so maybe I'm just being over-sensitive about things I know less about.
The plot is fast-paced and compelling, and the descriptions are very vivid and well done. I've always felt that Kay tends to be much less good with his main characters than he is with his minor ones, and I think that's true here too - the minor characters are much more interesting than the main three. I did care about Jehane, Rodrigo and Ammar, but they could all have done with being a bit less perfect and beautiful and a bit more flawed and realistic. Also, despite hints of the fluid sexuality of Ammar, that was never really seen at all, and the nature of the relationship between Rodrigo and Ammar didn't really feel as well-developed as I think the author intended it to be.
That said, this was a very enjoyable read, and I am glad I was persuaded to keep it. On a scale of 1 to 5, it definitely deserves a 4.
Time to read: 6 or 7 hours over 2 days
The Lions of Al-Rassan is a fantasy novel set in pseudo-Europe, in a time roughly equivalent to the late 10th Century AD. The national and political situation is roughly based on the occupation of Spain by the Moors, and the retaking of the lands held by the occupiers.
Jehane bet Ishak is a doctor who finds herself caught up in the sweeping politics of the day. Her fate becomes entwined with that of Ammar ibn Khairan of Aljais, the adviser to the King of Al-Rassan, and that of Rodrigo Belmonte, a captain of the kingdom on Valledo (formerly a duchy of Esperaña). With me so far? All three find themselves exiled from their homes and meet again in the city of Ragosa, whilst they shape and are shaped by the unstoppable consequences of faith.
Each of the main characters follows a different faith, which are roughly analogous to Chrsitianity, Islam, and Judaism. The Esperañans (and their fellow pseudo-Europeans) are Jaddite, who worship the God-behind-the-sun Jad. The pseudo-Middle Easterners are Asharite, who worship the stars of Ashar. And the despised and wandering Kindath acknowledge the God but primarily worship his twin moon sisters. Despite being really obvious, this was a fairly clever move by Kay to be able to discuss the religious hysteria of the day without actively offending any part of his audience. He still makes mistakes though.
Given that the book hinges on the differences between these three faiths, surprisingly little exposition is given to their natures or details. We know that the Kindath are hated - in fact, they even suffer from what's know as the blood libel that was claimed of the Jews - there is no information as to why. At all. The other two faiths similarly suffer, and I was uncomfortable with the level of fanaticism shown by the Muwardi (Asharite) tribesmen in particular, who seemed to be pretty lazy Islamist bogeymen stereotypes. On the other hand, the corrupt and cynically manipulative Jaddite clergy were pretty spot on for what I know about the Church at the time, so maybe I'm just being over-sensitive about things I know less about.
The plot is fast-paced and compelling, and the descriptions are very vivid and well done. I've always felt that Kay tends to be much less good with his main characters than he is with his minor ones, and I think that's true here too - the minor characters are much more interesting than the main three. I did care about Jehane, Rodrigo and Ammar, but they could all have done with being a bit less perfect and beautiful and a bit more flawed and realistic. Also, despite hints of the fluid sexuality of Ammar, that was never really seen at all, and the nature of the relationship between Rodrigo and Ammar didn't really feel as well-developed as I think the author intended it to be.
That said, this was a very enjoyable read, and I am glad I was persuaded to keep it. On a scale of 1 to 5, it definitely deserves a 4.
Thursday, 2 January 2014
Cannonball Read 6
Following in the footsteps of my friend Malin I've signed up for the Full Cannonball this year. The goal is to read and blog about 52 books. The is an eminently achievable goal, and means that I should in theory post something.
Worry not, dear readers. I shall also challenge myself to review one game a month. These are probably going to be games I already own and have played a lot to begin with, but I'll try to branch out.
I'm going to pay specific attention to characterisation of "minorities", in quote marks because actually, women aren't a minority, and neither are coloured people, but we're still treated as such. I'll try to illustrate with quotes or examples if I compliment or criticise anything specific. Also, this applies to the books as well as the games. Intersectional feminism is for life, not just one small (alright totally not small I game for more than 12 hours a day sometimes) part of it.
When I say intersectional feminism, what I mean is that I am a believer in equal rights for everyone, regardless of gender, colour, health, sexual preference, or class. I am not necessarily typical of all the people who self-identify as intersectional feminists, and I have disagreed with statements that other intersectional feminists have made. We are not a monolithic culture and we should not be presumed to all be the same. I come from a position of relative privilege: I am white and middle class (which in the UK has little to do with wealth but is much more to do with aspirations and upbringing). Whilst I identify as gender-queer, I am comfortable with my presented gender. As I am heteroflexible, I have rarely encountered any homophobia or biphobia. I am privileged.
This means that I'm much less good at sensitivity about any discrimination I personally don't experience. I am trying to be a good ally, but I might not always be on top of my game. I am much better at spotting sexism and ableism (in myself as well as others) and I'm more likely to concentrate on that accordingly.
So with that out of the way I should probably read some damn books. My fingers are not going to thank me for this. (I nibble them while I read and they bleed a lot. Fortunately, blood wipes right off kindles.)
Worry not, dear readers. I shall also challenge myself to review one game a month. These are probably going to be games I already own and have played a lot to begin with, but I'll try to branch out.
I'm going to pay specific attention to characterisation of "minorities", in quote marks because actually, women aren't a minority, and neither are coloured people, but we're still treated as such. I'll try to illustrate with quotes or examples if I compliment or criticise anything specific. Also, this applies to the books as well as the games. Intersectional feminism is for life, not just one small (alright totally not small I game for more than 12 hours a day sometimes) part of it.
When I say intersectional feminism, what I mean is that I am a believer in equal rights for everyone, regardless of gender, colour, health, sexual preference, or class. I am not necessarily typical of all the people who self-identify as intersectional feminists, and I have disagreed with statements that other intersectional feminists have made. We are not a monolithic culture and we should not be presumed to all be the same. I come from a position of relative privilege: I am white and middle class (which in the UK has little to do with wealth but is much more to do with aspirations and upbringing). Whilst I identify as gender-queer, I am comfortable with my presented gender. As I am heteroflexible, I have rarely encountered any homophobia or biphobia. I am privileged.
This means that I'm much less good at sensitivity about any discrimination I personally don't experience. I am trying to be a good ally, but I might not always be on top of my game. I am much better at spotting sexism and ableism (in myself as well as others) and I'm more likely to concentrate on that accordingly.
So with that out of the way I should probably read some damn books. My fingers are not going to thank me for this. (I nibble them while I read and they bleed a lot. Fortunately, blood wipes right off kindles.)
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