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cyphomandra) wrote2024-07-25 11:33 am
cyphomandra) wrote2024-07-25 11:33 am
Books read, June
Tales from Watership Down, Richard Adams
Fangirl Down, Tessa Bailey
Home Front, Kristin Hannah
Here we go again, Alison Cochrun
The butcher’s masquerade (re-read), Matt Dinniman
Spectred Isle (re-read), KJ Charles
The eye of the bedlam bride (re-read), Matt Dinniman
The miscalculations of lightning Girl, Stacy McAnulty
Top secret, Elle Kennedy & Sarina Bowen
The oak and the ash, Annick Trent
I've put these behind a spoiler cut for length but there aren't any major spoilers -
Tales from Watership Down, Richard Adams. 19 short stories, the first half more stories of El-ahrairah and the second half stories about the original Watership rabbits, set between the defeat of Efrafra and the death of Hazel. I picked this up when it first came out and all I can remember is disappointment; I’m not even sure if I finished reading it. It’s a bit better this time round but it took me a few repetitions of borrowing the ebook to get through it (my copy is in a box somewhere), and I don’t feel an urge to revisit it. I like the El-ahrairah stories in the original, where they act as mirrors or inspiration to the rabbits listening to them; here they’re plunked down without context and they lack any of the neat tricks of stealing the king’s lettuces or the horrific imagery of the Black Rabbit’s plague pits. The Watership rabbits’ stories are slight - there’s an issue, it’s resolved - and while I appreciate Adams making Hyzenthlay co-Chief Rabbit and having another story revolving around a female Chief Rabbit from another warren, I’d really rather these took place in tales I liked better. I like Hyzenthlay having similar prophetic visions to Fiver in the original book, for example; I don’t like a magical river of memories coursing through one of the Efrafran burrows that the does take turns listening in on.
Fangirl Down, Tessa Bailey. Alas, this is the sports variety of fangirl - Josephine Doyle runs her family’s struggling golf store and is the last remaining fan of Wells Whitaker, a former golf rising star who is now an alcoholic loser. He quits, insults her, and then her store is wrecked by a hurricane and Wells, perturbed by guilt, hires her as his caddy and tries to turn his game around. There is a lot of enthusiastically described sex (a number of the GR reviews are not thrilled by the sequence in which Josephine rims Wells) with occasional golf and a rather unbelievable redemption arc for Wells. I did like that the heroine had Type I diabetes .
Home Front, Kristin Hannah. Jolene’s marriage is falling apart, and her defence attorney husband Michael doesn’t seem to care about her or her role as a BlackHawk pilot with the National Guard. Then she gets deployed to Iraq. The book switches between her time there and Michael’s attempts to look after their two daughters at home, and then after Jolene returns home, injured. The problem I have with this and the other book by Hannah I’ve read is that the heterosexual relationships are by far the weakest parts of the book and I would like it much more if she wrote about lesbians. Which would be easy! Jolene’s best friend, Tami, another BlackHawk pilot, is in Iraq with her, and the earlier Vietnam book had some great relationships with other nurses; a lot of the reviews go on about how great Hannah is at female friendships, and she is! I just also think she could be great at lesbians. There are, however, bits I liked, such as Michael’s eventual realisation at how much Jolene is trying to protect him and the kids about her actual job (“just flying VIPs around the safe bits of the city”, she tells them).
Here We Go Again, Alison Cochrun. I bailed on her The Charm Offensive from lack of interest but thought I would give this a go as it’s f/f. Two former childhood friends (who could have been something more) are now both back working as teachers in the small-minded small town they grew up in and take on the job of fulfilling their beloved and terminally ill former English teacher’s last request - to take him on a road trip to coastal Maine. Logan is the car-crash chaotic multiple hook-ups one, Rosemary is the uptight control-freak who’s never been in a relationship. It was marginal. Logan is so thoughtless that she’s actually cruel, and the reason why they stopped being friends was oddly flimsy (Logan kisses Rosemary at a party when they’re teenagers. Rosemary then kisses a guy. They never speak again). I liked the English teacher a bit, although he’s also a terrible example of how to communicate in a mature adult relationship.
Spectred Isle, KJ Charles, re-read. This kind of slipped off me when I read it the first time, and then because I knew the sequel was extremely unlikely to ever happen I hadn’t gone back. But quite a few people on the KJ Charles FB group love it the most, so I thought why not? And yep, it slipped again. On paper I should love it- 1920s Britain, disgraced archeologist Saul ekes out a living doing research for an occult conspiracy theorist but keeps bumping into Randolph Glyde, the last of an ancient family who were actually an occult conspiracy with strange powers used in the defence of Britain until it all went horribly wrong in WWI, creepy bits in the fens with a landscape that keeps repeating, green men everywhere. But I’ve never been able to finish her Simon Feximal book and this is in the same world, and something about it doesn’t engage me.
The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, Stacy McAnulty. Lucy is struck by lighting and gets savant-level maths skills; since then she’s been home-schooled and avoids pretty much anyone except a few relatives and some on-line maths puzzle enthusiasts. Then her grandmother insists she attend middle school. It’s a little unclear why Lucy needs such a dramatic maths backstory - sometimes people just like maths! - and I’m not wild about the male friend who takes photos of people without asking and sorts them via emotional expression, but otherwise it’s a competent working-out-who-you-are middle school book with rescue dogs.
Top Secret, Elle Kennedy & Sarina Bowen. Keaton is a rich jock with parents with high expectations and a girlfriend who wants a threesome for her birthday. He joins a hook-up app and starts chatting to this guy, who (naturally) is in fact Luke, a poor scholarship college student who is in Keaton’s fraternity, is secretly stripping to afford food, and is his rival in the current candidacy for frat president (Keaton is doing it because his dad wants him to, Luke is doing it for the free room included in the deal). Feelings ensue, Keaton’s girlfriend cheerfully dumps him, Luke gets the presidency and an internship with Keaton’s dad and Keaton gets to be a marine biologist. Frats are not my favourite settings, everyone is a little 2D, and there’s something off in the pacing in the second half in case you were still keen but otherwise it’s readable.
The Oak and the Ash, Annick Trent. George, a surgeon with seditious tendencies, is called to aid in the aftermath of a duel between an Earl and his cousin; a stay made more bearable by the Earl’s valet, Noah. Their relationship develops despite their geographical separation and obligations; at least, until the cousin dies, the Earl is brought up on charges, and he seeks to defend himself by attacking George, something he expects Noah to eagerly do for him. I did like this and it does a lot of things I often despair of historical m/m for not doing, namely focussing on people outside the nobility and actually giving them a historical context and community, but I do wish I liked it more. I admire the research without falling for the characters.
The Butcher’s Masquerade, Matt Dinniman
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride, Matt Dinniman
Re-reads, books 5 & 6 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. So good. I back Dinniman on Patreon and I’ve started reading the next one (he puts it out serially) but I’ve stopped because I don’t want to run out! It’s possibly due out late October. The core relationship in these books is between Carl and Princess Donut, his ex-girlfriend’s pedigree cat who gains sentience after entering the dungeon, and it’s such a great friendship - they disagree and can have separate plans/goals, but there’s this abiding deep respect under it all. And unlike many other litRPG books I’ve tried, these do not have male gaze plastered all over the protagonists, and Carl has, six books in, yet to have any sort of romantic relationship other than the afore-mentioned ex. His relationships with the other crawlers are equally good at seeing people as people, and not plot conveniences.
(I could also go on about the plot! The end of the 6th book sees Carl out-planned for the first time, and in addition to whatever horrendous fallout is coming from that there’s the ring, the Blood Sultanate, Lucia Mar, argh argh argh. Can’t wait)
Fangirl Down, Tessa Bailey
Home Front, Kristin Hannah
Here we go again, Alison Cochrun
The butcher’s masquerade (re-read), Matt Dinniman
Spectred Isle (re-read), KJ Charles
The eye of the bedlam bride (re-read), Matt Dinniman
The miscalculations of lightning Girl, Stacy McAnulty
Top secret, Elle Kennedy & Sarina Bowen
The oak and the ash, Annick Trent
I've put these behind a spoiler cut for length but there aren't any major spoilers -
Tales from Watership Down, Richard Adams. 19 short stories, the first half more stories of El-ahrairah and the second half stories about the original Watership rabbits, set between the defeat of Efrafra and the death of Hazel. I picked this up when it first came out and all I can remember is disappointment; I’m not even sure if I finished reading it. It’s a bit better this time round but it took me a few repetitions of borrowing the ebook to get through it (my copy is in a box somewhere), and I don’t feel an urge to revisit it. I like the El-ahrairah stories in the original, where they act as mirrors or inspiration to the rabbits listening to them; here they’re plunked down without context and they lack any of the neat tricks of stealing the king’s lettuces or the horrific imagery of the Black Rabbit’s plague pits. The Watership rabbits’ stories are slight - there’s an issue, it’s resolved - and while I appreciate Adams making Hyzenthlay co-Chief Rabbit and having another story revolving around a female Chief Rabbit from another warren, I’d really rather these took place in tales I liked better. I like Hyzenthlay having similar prophetic visions to Fiver in the original book, for example; I don’t like a magical river of memories coursing through one of the Efrafran burrows that the does take turns listening in on.
Fangirl Down, Tessa Bailey. Alas, this is the sports variety of fangirl - Josephine Doyle runs her family’s struggling golf store and is the last remaining fan of Wells Whitaker, a former golf rising star who is now an alcoholic loser. He quits, insults her, and then her store is wrecked by a hurricane and Wells, perturbed by guilt, hires her as his caddy and tries to turn his game around. There is a lot of enthusiastically described sex (a number of the GR reviews are not thrilled by the sequence in which Josephine rims Wells) with occasional golf and a rather unbelievable redemption arc for Wells. I did like that the heroine had Type I diabetes .
Home Front, Kristin Hannah. Jolene’s marriage is falling apart, and her defence attorney husband Michael doesn’t seem to care about her or her role as a BlackHawk pilot with the National Guard. Then she gets deployed to Iraq. The book switches between her time there and Michael’s attempts to look after their two daughters at home, and then after Jolene returns home, injured. The problem I have with this and the other book by Hannah I’ve read is that the heterosexual relationships are by far the weakest parts of the book and I would like it much more if she wrote about lesbians. Which would be easy! Jolene’s best friend, Tami, another BlackHawk pilot, is in Iraq with her, and the earlier Vietnam book had some great relationships with other nurses; a lot of the reviews go on about how great Hannah is at female friendships, and she is! I just also think she could be great at lesbians. There are, however, bits I liked, such as Michael’s eventual realisation at how much Jolene is trying to protect him and the kids about her actual job (“just flying VIPs around the safe bits of the city”, she tells them).
Here We Go Again, Alison Cochrun. I bailed on her The Charm Offensive from lack of interest but thought I would give this a go as it’s f/f. Two former childhood friends (who could have been something more) are now both back working as teachers in the small-minded small town they grew up in and take on the job of fulfilling their beloved and terminally ill former English teacher’s last request - to take him on a road trip to coastal Maine. Logan is the car-crash chaotic multiple hook-ups one, Rosemary is the uptight control-freak who’s never been in a relationship. It was marginal. Logan is so thoughtless that she’s actually cruel, and the reason why they stopped being friends was oddly flimsy (Logan kisses Rosemary at a party when they’re teenagers. Rosemary then kisses a guy. They never speak again). I liked the English teacher a bit, although he’s also a terrible example of how to communicate in a mature adult relationship.
Spectred Isle, KJ Charles, re-read. This kind of slipped off me when I read it the first time, and then because I knew the sequel was extremely unlikely to ever happen I hadn’t gone back. But quite a few people on the KJ Charles FB group love it the most, so I thought why not? And yep, it slipped again. On paper I should love it- 1920s Britain, disgraced archeologist Saul ekes out a living doing research for an occult conspiracy theorist but keeps bumping into Randolph Glyde, the last of an ancient family who were actually an occult conspiracy with strange powers used in the defence of Britain until it all went horribly wrong in WWI, creepy bits in the fens with a landscape that keeps repeating, green men everywhere. But I’ve never been able to finish her Simon Feximal book and this is in the same world, and something about it doesn’t engage me.
The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, Stacy McAnulty. Lucy is struck by lighting and gets savant-level maths skills; since then she’s been home-schooled and avoids pretty much anyone except a few relatives and some on-line maths puzzle enthusiasts. Then her grandmother insists she attend middle school. It’s a little unclear why Lucy needs such a dramatic maths backstory - sometimes people just like maths! - and I’m not wild about the male friend who takes photos of people without asking and sorts them via emotional expression, but otherwise it’s a competent working-out-who-you-are middle school book with rescue dogs.
Top Secret, Elle Kennedy & Sarina Bowen. Keaton is a rich jock with parents with high expectations and a girlfriend who wants a threesome for her birthday. He joins a hook-up app and starts chatting to this guy, who (naturally) is in fact Luke, a poor scholarship college student who is in Keaton’s fraternity, is secretly stripping to afford food, and is his rival in the current candidacy for frat president (Keaton is doing it because his dad wants him to, Luke is doing it for the free room included in the deal). Feelings ensue, Keaton’s girlfriend cheerfully dumps him, Luke gets the presidency and an internship with Keaton’s dad and Keaton gets to be a marine biologist. Frats are not my favourite settings, everyone is a little 2D, and there’s something off in the pacing in the second half in case you were still keen but otherwise it’s readable.
The Oak and the Ash, Annick Trent. George, a surgeon with seditious tendencies, is called to aid in the aftermath of a duel between an Earl and his cousin; a stay made more bearable by the Earl’s valet, Noah. Their relationship develops despite their geographical separation and obligations; at least, until the cousin dies, the Earl is brought up on charges, and he seeks to defend himself by attacking George, something he expects Noah to eagerly do for him. I did like this and it does a lot of things I often despair of historical m/m for not doing, namely focussing on people outside the nobility and actually giving them a historical context and community, but I do wish I liked it more. I admire the research without falling for the characters.
The Butcher’s Masquerade, Matt Dinniman
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride, Matt Dinniman
Re-reads, books 5 & 6 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. So good. I back Dinniman on Patreon and I’ve started reading the next one (he puts it out serially) but I’ve stopped because I don’t want to run out! It’s possibly due out late October. The core relationship in these books is between Carl and Princess Donut, his ex-girlfriend’s pedigree cat who gains sentience after entering the dungeon, and it’s such a great friendship - they disagree and can have separate plans/goals, but there’s this abiding deep respect under it all. And unlike many other litRPG books I’ve tried, these do not have male gaze plastered all over the protagonists, and Carl has, six books in, yet to have any sort of romantic relationship other than the afore-mentioned ex. His relationships with the other crawlers are equally good at seeing people as people, and not plot conveniences.
(I could also go on about the plot! The end of the 6th book sees Carl out-planned for the first time, and in addition to whatever horrendous fallout is coming from that there’s the ring, the Blood Sultanate, Lucia Mar, argh argh argh. Can’t wait)