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cyphomandra) wrote2024-05-23 11:17 am
cyphomandra) wrote2024-05-23 11:17 am
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Books read, April
In April I read possibly 5 million words of FFVII fanfiction? Lots, anyway (me, Sunday evening: hmm I thought I’d get more done today (flashback to me, Sunday morning: ooh look a 500K slow burn WIP)). I may end up putting some comments on here at least for my own reference. I did finish a small number of actual books and started quite a few things that did not grab me nearly as much as yet another fic.
The women, Kristin Hannah
Death in the Spires, KJ Charles
The Black Island, Hergé
The women, Kristin Hannah. Frankie is a sheltered young woman raised by conservative parents who idolise military service; after a conversation at a party, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows her brother to Vietnam. The war - and war nursing - is horrific, nothing like her family’s shiny ideals (civilian deaths are a significant theme), and she struggles, but she makes friends with the other nurses and is, ultimately, transformed. Only to return home to hostile protesters, a family who find her service an embarrassment (they told family friends that Frankie was studying art in Italy), and veterans’ services that insist that there were no women in Vietnam and Frankie cannot possibly have PTSD from her experiences.
I really liked both Frankie’s nursing experiences and her bumpy attempts to readjust to civilian life. I did not like any of the romances, unfortunately, and they tended to go along with the super obvious plot twists. Solidly researched and I’d give another by her a go, tho’.
Death in the spires, KJ Charles. Billed as murder mystery rather than romance, although I do wonder how much of that is because Charles doesn’t want the reader to think there’ll definitely be a happy ending. Jeremy Kite is a scholarship student at Oxford who is picked up by the wealthy scion of nobility Toby as part of his collection of interesting people (the college’s only Black student, two women etc), who form a group (enviously) nicknamed the Seven Wonders. One thread of the story is Jeremy’s time at Oxford, all golden dreams and heightened emotions and conversations that operate on multiple levels, heading for the inevitable crash; the other picks up ten years later, with Jeremy an impoverished clerk who loses his job after an anonymous letter brings his past back to explode in his face. Because Jem’s Oxford dream died when one of the group murdered Toby - and the murderer was never found.
I enjoyed this and the atmosphere is great, although it’s still not going to displace Gaudy Night as my favourite Oxford mystery. Solving a mystery years after the original event does pose some challenges, and Jem is not really a detective who looks for clues and evidence and draws up neat timetables (contrast Robin Stevens’ Cambridge-set Mistletoe and Murder); it’s more talking to all his former friends and seeing what shakes loose (it also reminded me of Agatha Christie's Five Little Pigs, but Jem is implicated rather than an observer like Poirot). I did guess the solution but Charles puts a neat twist on it that I liked a lot (and my only other comment is that I’m really not wild about the title, which was originally Come to Dust - I like this a lot more but this is partly due to fond memories of Nicola Marlow singing it in Antonia Forest's books :D ).
The black island, Hergé. Gosh it’s been a long time since I read any Tintin. I do like the pace in this - it’s basically an extended chase sequence - but Tintin himself is barely paper-thin as a character, possibly as a result of rather a lot of head trauma.
The women, Kristin Hannah
Death in the Spires, KJ Charles
The Black Island, Hergé
The women, Kristin Hannah. Frankie is a sheltered young woman raised by conservative parents who idolise military service; after a conversation at a party, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows her brother to Vietnam. The war - and war nursing - is horrific, nothing like her family’s shiny ideals (civilian deaths are a significant theme), and she struggles, but she makes friends with the other nurses and is, ultimately, transformed. Only to return home to hostile protesters, a family who find her service an embarrassment (they told family friends that Frankie was studying art in Italy), and veterans’ services that insist that there were no women in Vietnam and Frankie cannot possibly have PTSD from her experiences.
I really liked both Frankie’s nursing experiences and her bumpy attempts to readjust to civilian life. I did not like any of the romances, unfortunately, and they tended to go along with the super obvious plot twists. Solidly researched and I’d give another by her a go, tho’.
Death in the spires, KJ Charles. Billed as murder mystery rather than romance, although I do wonder how much of that is because Charles doesn’t want the reader to think there’ll definitely be a happy ending. Jeremy Kite is a scholarship student at Oxford who is picked up by the wealthy scion of nobility Toby as part of his collection of interesting people (the college’s only Black student, two women etc), who form a group (enviously) nicknamed the Seven Wonders. One thread of the story is Jeremy’s time at Oxford, all golden dreams and heightened emotions and conversations that operate on multiple levels, heading for the inevitable crash; the other picks up ten years later, with Jeremy an impoverished clerk who loses his job after an anonymous letter brings his past back to explode in his face. Because Jem’s Oxford dream died when one of the group murdered Toby - and the murderer was never found.
I enjoyed this and the atmosphere is great, although it’s still not going to displace Gaudy Night as my favourite Oxford mystery. Solving a mystery years after the original event does pose some challenges, and Jem is not really a detective who looks for clues and evidence and draws up neat timetables (contrast Robin Stevens’ Cambridge-set Mistletoe and Murder); it’s more talking to all his former friends and seeing what shakes loose (it also reminded me of Agatha Christie's Five Little Pigs, but Jem is implicated rather than an observer like Poirot). I did guess the solution but Charles puts a neat twist on it that I liked a lot (and my only other comment is that I’m really not wild about the title, which was originally Come to Dust - I like this a lot more but this is partly due to fond memories of Nicola Marlow singing it in Antonia Forest's books :D ).
The black island, Hergé. Gosh it’s been a long time since I read any Tintin. I do like the pace in this - it’s basically an extended chase sequence - but Tintin himself is barely paper-thin as a character, possibly as a result of rather a lot of head trauma.
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Okay; this sounds like a KJ Charles I might want to read. Thank you for the heads-up.
the title, which was originally Come to Dust - I like this a lot more but this is partly due to fond memories of Nicola Marlow singing it in Antonia Forest's books
I always hear Loreena McKennitt.
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oh dear, I feel this! Fic reading is marvelous stress relief but interferes with other stuff...
I haven't read either of the two novels you mention but I'll look into them; everybody seems to be reading the KJ Charles one at this point. (Does it in fact have something vaguely recognizable as a happy ending?) If you want another good, if rough, novel about being an Army nurse in Vietnam, I can recommend Ellen Emerson White's The Road Home.
What brought you to The Black Island in particular? (Is that the one in Scotland or the one with a hideous red-and-white fungus thing on the cover or are they the same one?) I don't know that I would go to the Tintin books for deep characterization, except maybe the Tibet one, but they are reliable fun.
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It is the Scottish one! Fungus is The Shooting Star, and my childhood Tintin obsession enabled me to identify that immediately :D I read it because a friend had it out from the library for the kids and I was curious how it held up - it’s not one of my favourites but at least it’s not totally soaked in colonialism.
Does it in fact have something vaguely recognizable as a happy ending?)
spoiler title
Yes!
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Yep there are definitely moments of resonance (but no war bits).