Books read, March
Apr. 7th, 2024 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraI keep intending to post and getting caught up in all the things I feel I should have written up, so here's something recent to get started. I have moved back from the UK and into a new house, which has obviously been somewhat disruptive, but for the last six weeks or so I have been totally consumed by the Final Fantasy VII remake (first I played Remake, which I finished the night before Rebirth came out, and then I played Rebirth up until 3 am last Sunday, when I finally finished the final final no really final battle, and now I am doing a few leftover combat challenges and trying to work out whether I now play Crisis Core or replay the original game and then play through Remake and Rebirth again with the Japanese VAs). It's so good and it has brought back all the feelings I had about the original game, which I played for the first time in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake back in 2011 (my house and almost all my stuff were in the red zone, so I bought myself a PS3 and huddled up in a rental with my dog, in limbo for months with ongoing aftershocks).
Ahem. Anyway. While I will no doubt return to FFVIIR, here is everything I read in March when I was not physically attached to the PS5.
To shape a dragon’s breath, Moniquill Blackgoose.
Broken rules, Michaela Grey.
Crystal singer, Anne McCaffrey (re-read).
Everything is true, Roopa Farooki.
Proof, Dick Francis.
Contract season, Cait Nary.
Season’s change, Cait Nary.
The grimmelings, Rachel King.
Peter Cabot gets lost, Cat Sebastian.
On call, Ineke Meredith.
To shape a dragon’s breath, Moniquill Blackgoose. Anequs finds a dragons’ egg and bonds with the newly hatched dragon, making her Nampeshiweisit to her people. Unfortunately they are ruled by the colonising Anglish, who have very different ideas about dragons. Anequs is offered the chance to attend the proper Anglish dragon school on the mainland; not much of a choice, as the alternative seems to be destruction of both her and her dragon.
I liked the idea of of this book more than the actual details, unfortunately, although I will probably read the sequel in the hope of a bit more development and messiness. Anequs is secure in her beliefs and her identity to a degree that becomes unhelpful as a protagonist in a YA novel, who might be expected to learn and grow. I would also have liked a lot more dragon bonding and a lot less of the the version of this world’s chemistry classes. Ultimately though I’m not the audience for this book and I’m glad it’s out there.
Broken rules, Michaela Grey. This has a stylised fox head on the cover, which is very pretty but does not exactly establish it as a BDSM m/m romance in which the dom at the local BDSM bar takes on a stereotypical rich brat longing for someone to take him in hand (the brat does turn out to be nicknamed Fox). I actually rather liked Fox’s sister Cricket, who spends her time hunting down vintage glass to resell it at a flea market, but the rest of this was rather forgettable.
Crystal singer, Anne McCaffrey (re-read). On the one hand this is the bog standard fantasy very standard special person discovers their elite magical ability and does amazing things with it cliche, on the other hand Killashandra is an adult (I think in her early 30s) with a fully formed and entertainingly disagreeable personality, who has had her lifelong dream shattered. She manages to have sex with multiple men with minimal significance other than pleasure, and the whole crystal set-up - the world, the storms, the crystal training - is so full of delicious training neepery that it’s very hard to stop reading. I don’t remember the second as being nearly as much fun and I’m not sure I ever read the third, but although McCaffrey has her faults she also has a direct pipeline to specific parts of the id that still work for me.
Everything is true, Roopa Farooki. Rope’s sister dies from cancer just before the pandemic starts; Roopa, struggling with grief and a difficult marriage, is a junior doctor in the NHS, thrust into a horrific experience of death and loss and dehumanisation, exacerbated by government decisions and intransigent stupidity on all sides. It’s worth reading but relentless. I was in the UK last year and you can clearly see the scars from COVID, far deeper than those in Aotearoa New Zealand (Roopa mentions NZ briefly, when comparing country lockdowns; at that stage the UK has over 10 000 deaths and NZ has 4.).
Proof, Dick Francis. I thought I’d read this but it was unfamiliar. Tony is a wine merchant grieving his dead wife; he is catering the drinks for a large party run by a wealthy horse trainer when a van rolls down the hill and smashes through the marquee with horrific results (the scene where Tony, with the help of one of the survivors, makes a tunnel through the canvas to try to rescue anyone still inside is vivid and effectively grim). The fallout from this non accidental event sees Tony’s skills at identifying wine and whisky by tasting become crucial in establishing who did this and why - and what they’re prepared to do to cover it up. I’d give this an A- on my personal Francis scale.
Contract season, Cait Nary.
Season’s change, Cait Nary.
Hockey m/m. I read them in this order but they actually go the other way round chronologically. Contract Season has Brodie, the hockey player, coming off a painful break-up and hooking up with Sea, an up-and-coming country singer, at a wedding. Brodie ghosts Sea afterwards, Shay writes a song about it that is a breakout hit, they have another brief interaction that doesn’t go well but unfortunately get papped in the process, and when the video goes viral their respective PR teams decide that a fake relationship is more palatable to the public that transient hook-ups. This is a trope I am very fond of (not necessarily with all these specifics!) and so I read happily through all the pages of agonising that followed, but I do think if you’re reading for traditional romance beats you might feel a bit cheated. Otherwise, though, I liked the country music parts and the way Sea felt like part of a community.
In Season, angsty closeted Olly Järvinen is traded to a new team for a fresh start, and acquires a cheerful bouncy rookie roommate (Benji) who is deeply oblivious about everything, including why Olly might be deeply uncomfortable after he convinces a drunken Olly to participate in an mfm threesome. There is a weird thing going on with Benji’s sister being in an abusive relationship with another hockey player that doesn’t really get dealt with, and overall this book is leaning a lot on its characters. I did like it but not as much.
The grimmelings, Rachel King. NZ contemporary fantasy. Ella lives with her sister Fiona, mum, and grandmother on a farm and run a horse-trekking business; when Ella curses a local bully and he disappears, she discovers her family is shadowed by a kelpie, who has followed her grandmother out from Scotland and stalks the women of the family jealously. This has great writing, good atmosphere and a fantastic cover, and I wish I’d loved it more. But my issue with it is that Ella has no real part in either summoning the kelpie in the first place or dismissing it at the end - it’s all on her grandmother (who is a fabulous character! But this is a middle grade fantasy novel, and it should be Ella’s book). It made me think wistfully about Diana Wynne Jones’ characters, who stuff up their own lives in a myriad of terrible, believable ways, and then have to find their way out again.
Peter Cabot gets lost, Cat Sebastian. 60s road-trip m/m; Caleb has just graduated Harvard and has a job offer in L.A., but no money for the bus fare; his rich classmate Peter is a disappointment to his family, who are mounting a political campaign, and offers to drive Caleb there to avoid his family obligations. This is a low-conflict unthreatening romance, and it’s fine but it’s not really my thing.
On call, Ineke Meredith. Memoir - Meredith is a Samoan general surgeon (specialising in breast surgery) who trained in Aotearoa NZ, making it through despite racism, misogyny, a violent father, and becoming a solo mother during her training. It’s mostly about her cases and it leaves out a lot about her personally to an extent that I found frustrating - I don’t have to know! But then you need to take out the stuff that relies on that knowledge - and I did need the book feeling that she really hadn’t dealt with a lot of the things she assures the reader she doesn’t mind.
Ahem. Anyway. While I will no doubt return to FFVIIR, here is everything I read in March when I was not physically attached to the PS5.
To shape a dragon’s breath, Moniquill Blackgoose.
Broken rules, Michaela Grey.
Crystal singer, Anne McCaffrey (re-read).
Everything is true, Roopa Farooki.
Proof, Dick Francis.
Contract season, Cait Nary.
Season’s change, Cait Nary.
The grimmelings, Rachel King.
Peter Cabot gets lost, Cat Sebastian.
On call, Ineke Meredith.
To shape a dragon’s breath, Moniquill Blackgoose. Anequs finds a dragons’ egg and bonds with the newly hatched dragon, making her Nampeshiweisit to her people. Unfortunately they are ruled by the colonising Anglish, who have very different ideas about dragons. Anequs is offered the chance to attend the proper Anglish dragon school on the mainland; not much of a choice, as the alternative seems to be destruction of both her and her dragon.
I liked the idea of of this book more than the actual details, unfortunately, although I will probably read the sequel in the hope of a bit more development and messiness. Anequs is secure in her beliefs and her identity to a degree that becomes unhelpful as a protagonist in a YA novel, who might be expected to learn and grow. I would also have liked a lot more dragon bonding and a lot less of the the version of this world’s chemistry classes. Ultimately though I’m not the audience for this book and I’m glad it’s out there.
Broken rules, Michaela Grey. This has a stylised fox head on the cover, which is very pretty but does not exactly establish it as a BDSM m/m romance in which the dom at the local BDSM bar takes on a stereotypical rich brat longing for someone to take him in hand (the brat does turn out to be nicknamed Fox). I actually rather liked Fox’s sister Cricket, who spends her time hunting down vintage glass to resell it at a flea market, but the rest of this was rather forgettable.
Crystal singer, Anne McCaffrey (re-read). On the one hand this is the bog standard fantasy very standard special person discovers their elite magical ability and does amazing things with it cliche, on the other hand Killashandra is an adult (I think in her early 30s) with a fully formed and entertainingly disagreeable personality, who has had her lifelong dream shattered. She manages to have sex with multiple men with minimal significance other than pleasure, and the whole crystal set-up - the world, the storms, the crystal training - is so full of delicious training neepery that it’s very hard to stop reading. I don’t remember the second as being nearly as much fun and I’m not sure I ever read the third, but although McCaffrey has her faults she also has a direct pipeline to specific parts of the id that still work for me.
Everything is true, Roopa Farooki. Rope’s sister dies from cancer just before the pandemic starts; Roopa, struggling with grief and a difficult marriage, is a junior doctor in the NHS, thrust into a horrific experience of death and loss and dehumanisation, exacerbated by government decisions and intransigent stupidity on all sides. It’s worth reading but relentless. I was in the UK last year and you can clearly see the scars from COVID, far deeper than those in Aotearoa New Zealand (Roopa mentions NZ briefly, when comparing country lockdowns; at that stage the UK has over 10 000 deaths and NZ has 4.).
Proof, Dick Francis. I thought I’d read this but it was unfamiliar. Tony is a wine merchant grieving his dead wife; he is catering the drinks for a large party run by a wealthy horse trainer when a van rolls down the hill and smashes through the marquee with horrific results (the scene where Tony, with the help of one of the survivors, makes a tunnel through the canvas to try to rescue anyone still inside is vivid and effectively grim). The fallout from this non accidental event sees Tony’s skills at identifying wine and whisky by tasting become crucial in establishing who did this and why - and what they’re prepared to do to cover it up. I’d give this an A- on my personal Francis scale.
Contract season, Cait Nary.
Season’s change, Cait Nary.
Hockey m/m. I read them in this order but they actually go the other way round chronologically. Contract Season has Brodie, the hockey player, coming off a painful break-up and hooking up with Sea, an up-and-coming country singer, at a wedding. Brodie ghosts Sea afterwards, Shay writes a song about it that is a breakout hit, they have another brief interaction that doesn’t go well but unfortunately get papped in the process, and when the video goes viral their respective PR teams decide that a fake relationship is more palatable to the public that transient hook-ups. This is a trope I am very fond of (not necessarily with all these specifics!) and so I read happily through all the pages of agonising that followed, but I do think if you’re reading for traditional romance beats you might feel a bit cheated. Otherwise, though, I liked the country music parts and the way Sea felt like part of a community.
In Season, angsty closeted Olly Järvinen is traded to a new team for a fresh start, and acquires a cheerful bouncy rookie roommate (Benji) who is deeply oblivious about everything, including why Olly might be deeply uncomfortable after he convinces a drunken Olly to participate in an mfm threesome. There is a weird thing going on with Benji’s sister being in an abusive relationship with another hockey player that doesn’t really get dealt with, and overall this book is leaning a lot on its characters. I did like it but not as much.
The grimmelings, Rachel King. NZ contemporary fantasy. Ella lives with her sister Fiona, mum, and grandmother on a farm and run a horse-trekking business; when Ella curses a local bully and he disappears, she discovers her family is shadowed by a kelpie, who has followed her grandmother out from Scotland and stalks the women of the family jealously. This has great writing, good atmosphere and a fantastic cover, and I wish I’d loved it more. But my issue with it is that Ella has no real part in either summoning the kelpie in the first place or dismissing it at the end - it’s all on her grandmother (who is a fabulous character! But this is a middle grade fantasy novel, and it should be Ella’s book). It made me think wistfully about Diana Wynne Jones’ characters, who stuff up their own lives in a myriad of terrible, believable ways, and then have to find their way out again.
Peter Cabot gets lost, Cat Sebastian. 60s road-trip m/m; Caleb has just graduated Harvard and has a job offer in L.A., but no money for the bus fare; his rich classmate Peter is a disappointment to his family, who are mounting a political campaign, and offers to drive Caleb there to avoid his family obligations. This is a low-conflict unthreatening romance, and it’s fine but it’s not really my thing.
On call, Ineke Meredith. Memoir - Meredith is a Samoan general surgeon (specialising in breast surgery) who trained in Aotearoa NZ, making it through despite racism, misogyny, a violent father, and becoming a solo mother during her training. It’s mostly about her cases and it leaves out a lot about her personally to an extent that I found frustrating - I don’t have to know! But then you need to take out the stuff that relies on that knowledge - and I did need the book feeling that she really hadn’t dealt with a lot of the things she assures the reader she doesn’t mind.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-08 01:53 pm (UTC)Thank you for the interesting book reviews. The Blackgoose and the McCaffrey are the only ones I've read and I mostly agree with your take on them--I kind of liked the fantasy!chemistry classes in the former, but the dragons did feel an awful lot like, well, plot devices and not much else. Let's see what the sequel does.
I haven't read Crystal Singer in years and years but I would remember every line in it if I read it now, I'm sure. (Having grown up with opera singers around on account of my father's work and hobbies, I looked at Killashandra being arrogant, self-centered and obsessed with her voice and said "yup, that tracks.") You're so right about how fun the whole crystal-singing world and its rules and practices are!
no subject
Date: 2024-04-10 10:36 pm (UTC)Aha! Yes Crystal Singer did not make me want to spend more time with opera singers en masse