cyphomandra (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cyphomandra) wrote2019-05-16 10:32 am
cyphomandra) wrote2019-05-16 10:32 am
Books read, September
The highlight this month was the Jinty re-reads, because I can still find my childhood reading self in those pages.
Omega Required, Dessa Lux
Rocket Fuel: some of the best from Tor.com non-fiction
The Secret Ministry of Ag & Fish, Noreen Riols
Ship It, Britta Lundin
Exog, Peale McDaniel
In Love and War: Nursing Heroes, Liz Byrski
Land of No Tears, Pat Mills and Guy Peeters
The Human Zoo, Malcolm Shaw and Guy Peeters
The Abyss Surrounds Us, Emily Skrutskie.
Hull Metal Girls, Emily Skrutskie.
Sheets, Brenna Tummler
Omega Required, Dessa Lux. Alpha werewolf needs a husband as evidence of stability in order to get him into the medical residency of his dreams; omega Roland has barely survived a series of bad relationships and is suffering from a mysterious illness. Marriage of convenience that was perfectly readable but not really my thing. Also features the least demanding medical residency ever.
Rocket Fuel: some of the best from Tor.com non-fiction. I have retained almost none of this. I liked reading it but nothing particularly stands out, although I did order a few Grady Henrix books off the strength of either this or his Stephen King re-read on the site (spoiler: his books are solidly okay but not as good as the King re-read).
The Secret Ministry of Ag and Fish, Noreen Riols. Memoir about her time in the Special Operations Executive, to which she was recruited as a young fluent French speaker. This is more about her wanting the SOE’s work and its agents to be honoured and remembered (she was one of the last survivors) and it’s good, but it suffers from not being focussed on her own work. More interesting for after the war.
Ship It, Britta Lundin. Reviewed earlier and, argh, I feel a bit bad for the comments it got there. I did like quite a bit about it. I’m just not convinced by the main character’s approach to aggressively breaking down the fourth wall.
Exog, Peale McDaniel. Fin leaves Earth to attend a interstellar university and ends up developing a rather sweet relationship with his alien roommate, Chrt, despite disapproval from both sides. Nicely done, good worldbuilding and too short. Also, I would have liked more environmental engineering and generally a bit more focus outside of their room, but the length argues against that.
In Love and War: Nursing Heroes, Liz Byrski. The author grew up in a small village near where Dr Archibald McIndoe was pioneering plastic surgery on severely injured WWII airmen, and was terrified by the abnormal faces she saw then; this is her attempt to not just make peace with her memories but look at the experiences of the nurses looking after the Guinea Pig Club, who were often very poorly treated (sexual harassment was seen as a good thing, because it made the airmen feel more normal - feel free to add quotemarks). Interesting and very readable, and good for giving a new perspective on the situation.
Land of No Tears (written by Pat Mills and drawn by Guy Peeters) and The Human Zoo (written by Malcolm Shaw and drawn by Guy Peeters), Jinty (re-reads). When I was nine someone left two large stacks of comics in my classroom. One stack was Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, an early masked vigilante with bonus colonialism that probably set me up for liking Batman over Superman, and the other was Jinty, one of three British girls’ story comics (a mix of serials and one-offs) from the 70s/80s, which set me up for disappointment because along with Tammy (less SF, more contemporary/supernatural) and Misty (all horror) after this heyday I never really found another assortment of comics aimed quite so squarely at girls and featuring such a range of genres (to be fair translation bias may well account for this in manga).
The stack I read had most but not all of Land of No Tears, which introduced me to the heartbreak of cliffhangers and is still one of my favourites. My sister and I eventually tracked down all the episodes, along with many other issues; then sadly lost nearly all of them in a fire. Rebellion now have the rights and are reprinting some of the serials so they’re finally accessible, and my sister has tracked down some of the comics, so at least there’s that (there is an Ebay listing at the moment for a complete run of Jinty, but in addition to being hideously expensive there’s the not insignificant matter of international shipping. I check in on it every so often and pine).
In Land of No Tears the main character, Cassy Shaw, is undergoing surgery to fix a congenital leg problem - surgery she doesn’t want, as she enjoys using her disability to garner sympathy - when something goes wrong and she is catapulted into a dystopian future where perfection is prized above all else and Cassie, as a “Grade One Deformity” is lumped in with the Gamma rejects. She fights back, deciding she can get her fellow Gammas to form a sports team to compete against the Alphas in a prestigious sports tournament (she herself is a strong swimmer) and her chief persecutor, Perfecta, the main Alpha girl. I like Cassy a lot, although some of the treatment of disability is problematic.
You can see an extract and read more about the series at this Jinty blog. Writers and artists were never credited in these comics, and although I could work out some of the artists by spotting those who also drew for 200AD (which did credit creators, albeit by referring to them as “droids”), such as Casanovas and Jim Baikie, I couldn’t reliably do that for writers. I was tickled to find that Pat Mills did Land of No Tears along with many others, that I generally like more than his stuff for 2000AD (I never got into Slaine, although I do have a soft spot for Nemesis, and the ABC Warriors.).
The Human Zoo has twins Shona and Jenny captured by telepathic aliens and taken to another world, where they are treated like animals; the story starts with Shona being upset by the treatment of animals at an Earth zoo, and there’s a strong theme of animal rights running through this, along with lots of danger, aliens, and a great two-headed goat sidekick. The ending doesn’t work - it swings rapidly from very dark to a sudden retcon - but it’s a solid story. Same artist as Land of No Tears. The next Jinty reprint due out is Fran of the Floods, which is a near-future drowned Britain due to climate change; I've only read bits the first half and I'm really looking forward to it.
The Abyss Surrounds Us, Emily Skrutskie.
Hull Metal Girls, Emily Skrutskie.
I wanted to like these more than I did. The Abyss Surrounds Us is nearish future flooded Earth with giant genetically engineered sea monsters who defend ships against pirates; Cas, from a long line of people who train these creatures (Reckoners) is kidnapped by the pirate queen Santa Elena on her first solo mission and forced to bond with and train a Reckoner pup the queen has also stolen. Her determination to fight back against the pirates is complicated by the fact that she's developing feelings for Swift, another female pirate, who the queen is training up as a successor. Part one of two.
Hull Metal Girls is generation ship sf alternating between two pov characters, both who’ve undergone a risky and irreversible process to turn them into alien tech cyborgs. Aisha is poor and desperate to save her sick sibling; Key is her opposite, from the elite ruling classes, but has amnesia and can’t remember why she agreed to the procedure. They and two other characters are mentally bonded together, but their squad is failing to work together, rebellion is breaking out, and the search for a home is in danger...
Both of these had strong set-ups but got weaker as they went along, with a lot of reactive, obvious plotting. Hull Metal Girls in particular I loved the set-up for, but the story was tired and the two pov characters became increasingly hard to distinguish, and in the end I stopped caring. That said, I do like that these books are out there and I would have liked them more for that if I’d stumbled across them as a teenager. Also HMG got the author in an #ownvoices brangle that, frankly, highlights my issues with the execution of the #ownvoices concept - she was basically forced to come out as aro/ace in order to defend having a similar character. I’ve been thinking about how I critique books for representation an the tension between wanting better and wanting something not to have happened, and it’s a useful data point.
Sheets, Brenna Thummler Rather sweet graphic novel about a ghost - the old school type of a sheet with eyes - and a girl who runs a laundry. I am not sure the evil character plotting to take over the laundry really worked but it’s an enjoyable read.
Omega Required, Dessa Lux
Rocket Fuel: some of the best from Tor.com non-fiction
The Secret Ministry of Ag & Fish, Noreen Riols
Ship It, Britta Lundin
Exog, Peale McDaniel
In Love and War: Nursing Heroes, Liz Byrski
Land of No Tears, Pat Mills and Guy Peeters
The Human Zoo, Malcolm Shaw and Guy Peeters
The Abyss Surrounds Us, Emily Skrutskie.
Hull Metal Girls, Emily Skrutskie.
Sheets, Brenna Tummler
Omega Required, Dessa Lux. Alpha werewolf needs a husband as evidence of stability in order to get him into the medical residency of his dreams; omega Roland has barely survived a series of bad relationships and is suffering from a mysterious illness. Marriage of convenience that was perfectly readable but not really my thing. Also features the least demanding medical residency ever.
Rocket Fuel: some of the best from Tor.com non-fiction. I have retained almost none of this. I liked reading it but nothing particularly stands out, although I did order a few Grady Henrix books off the strength of either this or his Stephen King re-read on the site (spoiler: his books are solidly okay but not as good as the King re-read).
The Secret Ministry of Ag and Fish, Noreen Riols. Memoir about her time in the Special Operations Executive, to which she was recruited as a young fluent French speaker. This is more about her wanting the SOE’s work and its agents to be honoured and remembered (she was one of the last survivors) and it’s good, but it suffers from not being focussed on her own work. More interesting for after the war.
Ship It, Britta Lundin. Reviewed earlier and, argh, I feel a bit bad for the comments it got there. I did like quite a bit about it. I’m just not convinced by the main character’s approach to aggressively breaking down the fourth wall.
Exog, Peale McDaniel. Fin leaves Earth to attend a interstellar university and ends up developing a rather sweet relationship with his alien roommate, Chrt, despite disapproval from both sides. Nicely done, good worldbuilding and too short. Also, I would have liked more environmental engineering and generally a bit more focus outside of their room, but the length argues against that.
In Love and War: Nursing Heroes, Liz Byrski. The author grew up in a small village near where Dr Archibald McIndoe was pioneering plastic surgery on severely injured WWII airmen, and was terrified by the abnormal faces she saw then; this is her attempt to not just make peace with her memories but look at the experiences of the nurses looking after the Guinea Pig Club, who were often very poorly treated (sexual harassment was seen as a good thing, because it made the airmen feel more normal - feel free to add quotemarks). Interesting and very readable, and good for giving a new perspective on the situation.
Land of No Tears (written by Pat Mills and drawn by Guy Peeters) and The Human Zoo (written by Malcolm Shaw and drawn by Guy Peeters), Jinty (re-reads). When I was nine someone left two large stacks of comics in my classroom. One stack was Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks, an early masked vigilante with bonus colonialism that probably set me up for liking Batman over Superman, and the other was Jinty, one of three British girls’ story comics (a mix of serials and one-offs) from the 70s/80s, which set me up for disappointment because along with Tammy (less SF, more contemporary/supernatural) and Misty (all horror) after this heyday I never really found another assortment of comics aimed quite so squarely at girls and featuring such a range of genres (to be fair translation bias may well account for this in manga).
The stack I read had most but not all of Land of No Tears, which introduced me to the heartbreak of cliffhangers and is still one of my favourites. My sister and I eventually tracked down all the episodes, along with many other issues; then sadly lost nearly all of them in a fire. Rebellion now have the rights and are reprinting some of the serials so they’re finally accessible, and my sister has tracked down some of the comics, so at least there’s that (there is an Ebay listing at the moment for a complete run of Jinty, but in addition to being hideously expensive there’s the not insignificant matter of international shipping. I check in on it every so often and pine).
In Land of No Tears the main character, Cassy Shaw, is undergoing surgery to fix a congenital leg problem - surgery she doesn’t want, as she enjoys using her disability to garner sympathy - when something goes wrong and she is catapulted into a dystopian future where perfection is prized above all else and Cassie, as a “Grade One Deformity” is lumped in with the Gamma rejects. She fights back, deciding she can get her fellow Gammas to form a sports team to compete against the Alphas in a prestigious sports tournament (she herself is a strong swimmer) and her chief persecutor, Perfecta, the main Alpha girl. I like Cassy a lot, although some of the treatment of disability is problematic.
You can see an extract and read more about the series at this Jinty blog. Writers and artists were never credited in these comics, and although I could work out some of the artists by spotting those who also drew for 200AD (which did credit creators, albeit by referring to them as “droids”), such as Casanovas and Jim Baikie, I couldn’t reliably do that for writers. I was tickled to find that Pat Mills did Land of No Tears along with many others, that I generally like more than his stuff for 2000AD (I never got into Slaine, although I do have a soft spot for Nemesis, and the ABC Warriors.).
The Human Zoo has twins Shona and Jenny captured by telepathic aliens and taken to another world, where they are treated like animals; the story starts with Shona being upset by the treatment of animals at an Earth zoo, and there’s a strong theme of animal rights running through this, along with lots of danger, aliens, and a great two-headed goat sidekick. The ending doesn’t work - it swings rapidly from very dark to a sudden retcon - but it’s a solid story. Same artist as Land of No Tears. The next Jinty reprint due out is Fran of the Floods, which is a near-future drowned Britain due to climate change; I've only read bits the first half and I'm really looking forward to it.
The Abyss Surrounds Us, Emily Skrutskie.
Hull Metal Girls, Emily Skrutskie.
I wanted to like these more than I did. The Abyss Surrounds Us is nearish future flooded Earth with giant genetically engineered sea monsters who defend ships against pirates; Cas, from a long line of people who train these creatures (Reckoners) is kidnapped by the pirate queen Santa Elena on her first solo mission and forced to bond with and train a Reckoner pup the queen has also stolen. Her determination to fight back against the pirates is complicated by the fact that she's developing feelings for Swift, another female pirate, who the queen is training up as a successor. Part one of two.
Hull Metal Girls is generation ship sf alternating between two pov characters, both who’ve undergone a risky and irreversible process to turn them into alien tech cyborgs. Aisha is poor and desperate to save her sick sibling; Key is her opposite, from the elite ruling classes, but has amnesia and can’t remember why she agreed to the procedure. They and two other characters are mentally bonded together, but their squad is failing to work together, rebellion is breaking out, and the search for a home is in danger...
Both of these had strong set-ups but got weaker as they went along, with a lot of reactive, obvious plotting. Hull Metal Girls in particular I loved the set-up for, but the story was tired and the two pov characters became increasingly hard to distinguish, and in the end I stopped caring. That said, I do like that these books are out there and I would have liked them more for that if I’d stumbled across them as a teenager. Also HMG got the author in an #ownvoices brangle that, frankly, highlights my issues with the execution of the #ownvoices concept - she was basically forced to come out as aro/ace in order to defend having a similar character. I’ve been thinking about how I critique books for representation an the tension between wanting better and wanting something not to have happened, and it’s a useful data point.
Sheets, Brenna Thummler Rather sweet graphic novel about a ghost - the old school type of a sheet with eyes - and a girl who runs a laundry. I am not sure the evil character plotting to take over the laundry really worked but it’s an enjoyable read.
no subject
LOLOLOL.
HMG got the author in an #ownvoices brangle that, frankly, highlights my issues with the execution of the #ownvoices concept - she was basically forced to come out as aro/ace in order to defend having a similar character.
That seems really wrong to me. It's not always safe to come out, and even apart from that, people should be able to come out if and when THEY want to, not because they're being pressured.
And also, what about books that have multiple characters, like most books do? An author is only one person - they can't have ALL the identities. So does everyone in a book have to be the same identity as the author?
no subject
+1.
no subject
Yeah. It's also that assumption that everybody is straight (white, untroubled by gender dysphoria etc) unless they explicitly say otherwise, which feels as if it reinforces stereotypes while claiming to challenge them.
And also, what about books that have multiple characters, like most books do? An author is only one person - they can't have ALL the identities. So does everyone in a book have to be the same identity as the author?
Exactly! To some degree I think more representation will help over time, so any given character has much less weight put upon them (the four book queer romance series has an author's note identifying themself as ace on the ace f/f book, but didn't feel the need to comment on the bisexual f/f or m/m books). And I do think sensitivity readers are a good idea. But critique on the basis of representation, especially in YA, and how and who it's helping, is something I'm thinking about.
no subject
This sounds great, and thank you for telling me it exists!
Also HMG got the author in an #ownvoices brangle that, frankly, highlights my issues with the execution of the #ownvoices concept - she was basically forced to come out as aro/ace in order to defend having a similar character.
Argh.