cyphomandra (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cyphomandra) wrote2024-05-16 11:46 am
cyphomandra) wrote2024-05-16 11:46 am
Books read, February
Best this month were Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory (queer space opera YA with a great character arc) and Matt Dinniman’s latest in the Dungeon Crawler Carl sequence, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride, a series which continues to be my most favourite ongoing series (that isn't manga) while being incredibly hard to convince people to read.
Better than people, Roan Parrish
One Piece, v1, Eiichiro Oda
Role Playing, Cathy Yardley
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
The New Guy, Sabrina Bowen
I’m Your Guy, Sabrina Bowen
Sunny Side Up, Jennifer L Holm, Matthew Holm
The Marquis Who Mustn’t, Courtney Milan
The renegades of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
All the weyrs of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
The masterharper of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
The Year of the Lucy, Anne McCaffrey
The Last Summer, Helen Griffiths
The Magpie Lord, KJ Charles (re-read)
All the Skills 1, Honour Rae
All the Skills 2, Honour Rae
I Will Find You, Harlan Coben
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride: Dungeon Crawler Car book 6, Matt Dinniman
Thornhedge, Ursula Vernon
Foxglove copse, Alex Beecroft
Better than people, Roan Parrish. Simon struggles with severe anxiety but loves animals; when Jack, a grumpy children’s book illustrator breaks his leg and needs someone to help look after his assortment of animals, Simon steps up. I have tried a number of Parrish’s m/m romances and they are all not my thing. I am sure there is probably useful literature and self-analysis into digging down into what sort of dysfunctional characters I like and why, but basically I need something a lot less gooey or with a bit more plot.
One Piece v1, Eiichiro Oda. Loved the live action adaptation, have failed to get into the anime, never (previously) read the manga. I think I really need to have an entire day with a massive stack to get into these. The art style is not my thing although works perfectly for the story.
Role playing, Cathy Yardley. Grumpy solo mum Maggie makes a deal with her off-at college son that she will be more social if he will; she joins an online gaming guild and befriends one of the other players, Aiden, but assumes he’s a similar age to her son. Aidan is actually 50 (Maggie is 48) and trying to care for his ageing mother despite family dramas, largely related to the fact that he’s bisexual; in turn, he assumes Maggie is his mother’s age because of her on-screen persona. Romance ensues, eventually. This was a nice counterpoint to all the early 20 year olds I keep encountering in my romance novels and I liked it, but there were some pacing issues and a few hanging plot threads. Will see what else she’d done.
Some desperate glory, Emily Tesh. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, dedicated to avenging the death of the Earth at the hands of aliens. But Gaea Station, her home, considers her best sent to Nursery, where she can have lots of warrior babies rather than fight; this is the first fracture in Kyr’s understanding of her world, but by far from the last. Enthusiastically vivid space opera and I liked it a lot, especially how Tesh manages to make Kyr believably unpleasant at the beginning but still a compelling protagonist.
The new guy
I’m your guy
Sabrina Bowen. Hockey m/m. Many time traded hockey player hooks up with hot athletic trainer single dad in the first, grumpy hockey player hooks up with interior designer in the second. Both pretty forgettable and I had issues with the ethics of client/trainer relationships in the first one that were apparently not shared by anybody in the book.
Sunny side up, Jennifer L Holm, Matthew Holm. Middle grade graphic novel set in the 1970s where Sunny is sent away for the holidays to her grandfather in Florida for Mysterious Reasons. The nostalgia bits and Sunny’s grandfather’s community are great. The spiralling of Sunny’s older brother into addiction and their parents’ subsequent decisions are okay but I’m never a big fan of Secret that will be Revealed By the Ending narratives.
The marquis who mustn’t, Courtney Milan. Naomi Kwan is desperate to take ambulance classes; when they won’t let her in (again) without her husband’s permission, she claims the stoic Chinese nobleman she’s just met is her fiancé. What she doesn’t know is that he actually is (a childhood betrothal), and he is also the son of a man who conned most of her town, now back for one last fraud/redemption. This has a lot of great pottery details, which I realise is probably not the most enthusiastic recommendation of the romance. I did like it! But the previous one in this series was tighter and just more functional.
The renegades of Pern
All the weyrs of Pern
The masterharper of Pern
Anne McCaffrey
Renegades is a bit of a fix-up and goes from Dragonflight through to just after the ending of The White Dragon; it’s loosely themed around Thella, the titular renegade, and also picks up with Aramina from The Girl Who Heard Dragons. I don’t like anyone in this book even if I’ve previously liked them and I really wish McCaffrey hadn’t bothered even creating Toric as a character as I find him teeth-grindingly awful. I do have a tiny bit of admiration for how McCaffrey manages to stitch all the events together but it gets swamped by all the compulsory heterosexual match-ups and the clumsy characterisations.
It ends where All the Weyrs of Pern starts; this is a book I am sure I originally read while standing in a bookshop and becoming increasingly grumpy. AIVAS, the AI from the original colony, talks everyone through their history and a series of major technological upgrades, with the ultimate aim of sending all the dragons into space and altering the orbit of the Red Star, thus ending Thread forever. Meanwhile various poorly-drawn Oldtimers, Holders and Crafters conduct intermittent acts of sabotage in their resentment against change. This is better than Renegades - it helps that it’s at least creating its own canon - but not by much. It has a lot of Jaxom, who has not aged well, and who despite now having two children spends about two seconds with them and I suspect would need to be reminded of their names. Once again time travel is key for the final plot point but is not used at any other occasion when it might have been helpful (e.g. when Robinton gets kidnapped). There are occasional neat moments - Ruth in zero gravity for the first time, for example - but a lot of it reads more like a summary than a story.
Masterharper is Robinton’s life story and it a) retcons a lot of stuff in ways that don’t work very well b) gives me more reasons to dislike Robinton c) retells the opening of Dragonflight in a way that sucks most of the power out of it. I grumpily re-read that opening again afterwards and it’s so much better, argh. McCaffrey could write well and I wish they’d handed everything over to her son after The White Dragon rather than drag all this out of her. It’s like reading the Dick Francis books after Mary died. I have read Dolphins of Pern, which along with The Skies of Pern are the last two of hers set after this, but I don't know if I can force myself through them.
The year of the Lucy, Anne McCaffrey. I then went and read this, which is sort of a contemporary (set 1960s, published 1980s) and not really a romance. I think McCaffrey intends it as a year of growth for her lead character, Mirelle, who is a sculptor who has lost her creative self, largely because her husband and mother-in-law don’t like it, and it is, but it’s also a portrayal of an abusive relationship that, in the end, Mirelle stays in, and this is presented as the expected outcome (sure, they’ve both had affairs but only the husband is violent, in that “see what you’ve made me do” deeply unpleasant fashion). It is much more competently written than the later Pern books but it leaves a nasty aftertaste.
The last summer, Helen Griffiths. Civil-war Spain; a boy is caught up in the Spanish Civil War and tries to make his way to safety with Gaviota, a former bull-fighting horse. Manages to convey the awfulness of war without being too lurid. Art by Victor Ambrus; I love his shambling masses of lines.
The magpie lord , KJ Charles (re-read). The magic in this is so nasty, I say, in a deeply admiring way. The sexual dynamic is not my fave but I really like both characters and their thoroughly lived-in world.
All the skills 1,2, Honour Rae. Gamerlit with deckbuilding - characters can have cards in their heart decks, a concept it’s best not to think too closely about. I liked the first one, in which struggling peasant Arthur acquires a super powerful rare card that enables him to learn and develop various skills - there’s a lot of nice worldbuilding and exploitation of the basic concept to make things work against more powerful battle-oriented enemies. Then the character acquires a dragon sidekick whom I deeply disliked (and I normally like dragons! But he’s an obnoxious bully who’s treated as endearing) and I have now lost most of my interest in the series, alas.
I will find you, Harlan Coben. Father serving life for the death of his young son finds out he has been framed and his son is still alive, breaks out of prison bent on revenge. Forgettable thriller and the “quirky” FBI agents’ dialogue is terrible.
The eye of the bedlam bride, Matt Dinniman. These continue to be totally excellent, gripping, gross, and moving. Don’t start here but do give them a go.
Thornhedge, T Kingfisher. Toadling is a human swapped for a changeling and raised by the frog-like greenteeth while time passes much slower in the outside world. She is given the job of acting as fairy godmother for the changeling, Fayette, but makes a mistake with her words, and the changeling becomes increasingly violent and dangerous. Unable to kill her, Toadling places everyone into an enchanted sleep and encourages thorns to grow around the castle, which works find until Halim, a Muslim knight, comes seeking the rumours of a lost princess. This is novella-length, and it’s satisfying, with all of Kingfisher’s usual well-chosen details, but the resolution of how to deal with Fayette is an underwhelming conclusion.
Foxglove copse, Alex Beecroft. Sam leaves his high-powered city job after an anxiety attack and goes on the road in a small van. Things go poorly; he is running out of money, he stumbles across a slaughtered sheep surrounded by strange symbols, someone steals his laptop, and then the sheep farmer turns up and accuses him of the killing. Fortunately the sheep farmer’s nephew takes pity on him and provides useful local information & heated glances, and their relationship develops while the really rather unexciting plot resolution unspools. Did not make me any fonder of small towns.
Better than people, Roan Parrish
One Piece, v1, Eiichiro Oda
Role Playing, Cathy Yardley
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
The New Guy, Sabrina Bowen
I’m Your Guy, Sabrina Bowen
Sunny Side Up, Jennifer L Holm, Matthew Holm
The Marquis Who Mustn’t, Courtney Milan
The renegades of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
All the weyrs of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
The masterharper of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
The Year of the Lucy, Anne McCaffrey
The Last Summer, Helen Griffiths
The Magpie Lord, KJ Charles (re-read)
All the Skills 1, Honour Rae
All the Skills 2, Honour Rae
I Will Find You, Harlan Coben
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride: Dungeon Crawler Car book 6, Matt Dinniman
Thornhedge, Ursula Vernon
Foxglove copse, Alex Beecroft
Better than people, Roan Parrish. Simon struggles with severe anxiety but loves animals; when Jack, a grumpy children’s book illustrator breaks his leg and needs someone to help look after his assortment of animals, Simon steps up. I have tried a number of Parrish’s m/m romances and they are all not my thing. I am sure there is probably useful literature and self-analysis into digging down into what sort of dysfunctional characters I like and why, but basically I need something a lot less gooey or with a bit more plot.
One Piece v1, Eiichiro Oda. Loved the live action adaptation, have failed to get into the anime, never (previously) read the manga. I think I really need to have an entire day with a massive stack to get into these. The art style is not my thing although works perfectly for the story.
Role playing, Cathy Yardley. Grumpy solo mum Maggie makes a deal with her off-at college son that she will be more social if he will; she joins an online gaming guild and befriends one of the other players, Aiden, but assumes he’s a similar age to her son. Aidan is actually 50 (Maggie is 48) and trying to care for his ageing mother despite family dramas, largely related to the fact that he’s bisexual; in turn, he assumes Maggie is his mother’s age because of her on-screen persona. Romance ensues, eventually. This was a nice counterpoint to all the early 20 year olds I keep encountering in my romance novels and I liked it, but there were some pacing issues and a few hanging plot threads. Will see what else she’d done.
Some desperate glory, Emily Tesh. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, dedicated to avenging the death of the Earth at the hands of aliens. But Gaea Station, her home, considers her best sent to Nursery, where she can have lots of warrior babies rather than fight; this is the first fracture in Kyr’s understanding of her world, but by far from the last. Enthusiastically vivid space opera and I liked it a lot, especially how Tesh manages to make Kyr believably unpleasant at the beginning but still a compelling protagonist.
The new guy
I’m your guy
Sabrina Bowen. Hockey m/m. Many time traded hockey player hooks up with hot athletic trainer single dad in the first, grumpy hockey player hooks up with interior designer in the second. Both pretty forgettable and I had issues with the ethics of client/trainer relationships in the first one that were apparently not shared by anybody in the book.
Sunny side up, Jennifer L Holm, Matthew Holm. Middle grade graphic novel set in the 1970s where Sunny is sent away for the holidays to her grandfather in Florida for Mysterious Reasons. The nostalgia bits and Sunny’s grandfather’s community are great. The spiralling of Sunny’s older brother into addiction and their parents’ subsequent decisions are okay but I’m never a big fan of Secret that will be Revealed By the Ending narratives.
The marquis who mustn’t, Courtney Milan. Naomi Kwan is desperate to take ambulance classes; when they won’t let her in (again) without her husband’s permission, she claims the stoic Chinese nobleman she’s just met is her fiancé. What she doesn’t know is that he actually is (a childhood betrothal), and he is also the son of a man who conned most of her town, now back for one last fraud/redemption. This has a lot of great pottery details, which I realise is probably not the most enthusiastic recommendation of the romance. I did like it! But the previous one in this series was tighter and just more functional.
The renegades of Pern
All the weyrs of Pern
The masterharper of Pern
Anne McCaffrey
Renegades is a bit of a fix-up and goes from Dragonflight through to just after the ending of The White Dragon; it’s loosely themed around Thella, the titular renegade, and also picks up with Aramina from The Girl Who Heard Dragons. I don’t like anyone in this book even if I’ve previously liked them and I really wish McCaffrey hadn’t bothered even creating Toric as a character as I find him teeth-grindingly awful. I do have a tiny bit of admiration for how McCaffrey manages to stitch all the events together but it gets swamped by all the compulsory heterosexual match-ups and the clumsy characterisations.
It ends where All the Weyrs of Pern starts; this is a book I am sure I originally read while standing in a bookshop and becoming increasingly grumpy. AIVAS, the AI from the original colony, talks everyone through their history and a series of major technological upgrades, with the ultimate aim of sending all the dragons into space and altering the orbit of the Red Star, thus ending Thread forever. Meanwhile various poorly-drawn Oldtimers, Holders and Crafters conduct intermittent acts of sabotage in their resentment against change. This is better than Renegades - it helps that it’s at least creating its own canon - but not by much. It has a lot of Jaxom, who has not aged well, and who despite now having two children spends about two seconds with them and I suspect would need to be reminded of their names. Once again time travel is key for the final plot point but is not used at any other occasion when it might have been helpful (e.g. when Robinton gets kidnapped). There are occasional neat moments - Ruth in zero gravity for the first time, for example - but a lot of it reads more like a summary than a story.
Masterharper is Robinton’s life story and it a) retcons a lot of stuff in ways that don’t work very well b) gives me more reasons to dislike Robinton c) retells the opening of Dragonflight in a way that sucks most of the power out of it. I grumpily re-read that opening again afterwards and it’s so much better, argh. McCaffrey could write well and I wish they’d handed everything over to her son after The White Dragon rather than drag all this out of her. It’s like reading the Dick Francis books after Mary died. I have read Dolphins of Pern, which along with The Skies of Pern are the last two of hers set after this, but I don't know if I can force myself through them.
The year of the Lucy, Anne McCaffrey. I then went and read this, which is sort of a contemporary (set 1960s, published 1980s) and not really a romance. I think McCaffrey intends it as a year of growth for her lead character, Mirelle, who is a sculptor who has lost her creative self, largely because her husband and mother-in-law don’t like it, and it is, but it’s also a portrayal of an abusive relationship that, in the end, Mirelle stays in, and this is presented as the expected outcome (sure, they’ve both had affairs but only the husband is violent, in that “see what you’ve made me do” deeply unpleasant fashion). It is much more competently written than the later Pern books but it leaves a nasty aftertaste.
The last summer, Helen Griffiths. Civil-war Spain; a boy is caught up in the Spanish Civil War and tries to make his way to safety with Gaviota, a former bull-fighting horse. Manages to convey the awfulness of war without being too lurid. Art by Victor Ambrus; I love his shambling masses of lines.
The magpie lord , KJ Charles (re-read). The magic in this is so nasty, I say, in a deeply admiring way. The sexual dynamic is not my fave but I really like both characters and their thoroughly lived-in world.
All the skills 1,2, Honour Rae. Gamerlit with deckbuilding - characters can have cards in their heart decks, a concept it’s best not to think too closely about. I liked the first one, in which struggling peasant Arthur acquires a super powerful rare card that enables him to learn and develop various skills - there’s a lot of nice worldbuilding and exploitation of the basic concept to make things work against more powerful battle-oriented enemies. Then the character acquires a dragon sidekick whom I deeply disliked (and I normally like dragons! But he’s an obnoxious bully who’s treated as endearing) and I have now lost most of my interest in the series, alas.
I will find you, Harlan Coben. Father serving life for the death of his young son finds out he has been framed and his son is still alive, breaks out of prison bent on revenge. Forgettable thriller and the “quirky” FBI agents’ dialogue is terrible.
The eye of the bedlam bride, Matt Dinniman. These continue to be totally excellent, gripping, gross, and moving. Don’t start here but do give them a go.
Thornhedge, T Kingfisher. Toadling is a human swapped for a changeling and raised by the frog-like greenteeth while time passes much slower in the outside world. She is given the job of acting as fairy godmother for the changeling, Fayette, but makes a mistake with her words, and the changeling becomes increasingly violent and dangerous. Unable to kill her, Toadling places everyone into an enchanted sleep and encourages thorns to grow around the castle, which works find until Halim, a Muslim knight, comes seeking the rumours of a lost princess. This is novella-length, and it’s satisfying, with all of Kingfisher’s usual well-chosen details, but the resolution of how to deal with Fayette is an underwhelming conclusion.
Foxglove copse, Alex Beecroft. Sam leaves his high-powered city job after an anxiety attack and goes on the road in a small van. Things go poorly; he is running out of money, he stumbles across a slaughtered sheep surrounded by strange symbols, someone steals his laptop, and then the sheep farmer turns up and accuses him of the killing. Fortunately the sheep farmer’s nephew takes pity on him and provides useful local information & heated glances, and their relationship develops while the really rather unexciting plot resolution unspools. Did not make me any fonder of small towns.