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Books I am reading
Feb. 12th, 2015 08:45 pmBecause why not? I have yet to write up books read January but ended up doing so in brief while writing this, as follows: Sarah Caudwell's The Shortest Way to Hades (great fun, largely for the voice), Mercedes Lackey's Steadfast (bad, bad, hanging plot threads and a complete failure to deal with the tone of the source fairy tale, which like most Hans Christian Andersen is deeply depressing) and Unnatural Issue (much better by comparison, objectively okay but wobbles with balancing fairy-tale plot vs WWI plot, and she's also lucky that I found her Peter Wimsey homage entertaining rather than irksome), the Pullein-Thompson sisters' joint memoir Fair Girls and Grey Horses, which was interesting but had less horse than I expected, and I found myself more interested in their mother's books (have read at least two of her horse books but didn't realise she'd done so many adult ones), and Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor, which is good and the characters are great but it did suffer a bit by my having read so much favourable press beforehand. I do like the moment when Maia meets the revolutionary who has, in fact, put him on the throne, and how he feels about this.
Just finished: Star Wars: Choices of One, by Timothy Zahn. Before that I re-read a Biggles book and I also have half a Dick Francis on the go, so I guess I am looking for action in some respects and predictable competence in others. Choices of One has to fit in between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, and it has to show off Mara Jade and Admiral Thrawn (I believe both are Zahn's creations) without undoing any of his chronologically later but written earlier works, plus not finding this enough challenge Zahn also brings in a group of idealistic Imperial Stormtroopers, and really has a lot of fun dealing with ostensibly bad and good guys working together against common evils etc. More often I don't like prequel work because it doesn't change anything, but this is appealing largely because of how it deals with that challenge - and there are enough little nudges to the characters that you can see an evolution.
Next up: the rest of the Dick Francis, probably, which I have actually abandoned in the middle of a sex scene (it's Dick Francis. A school teacher in her 40s asks the jockey/accountant she has just rescued from inexplicable kidnappers to have sex with her to rid her of her virginity, basically, so all calculation and very little passion so far). Possibly the Courtney Milan I have on my Kindle, or the Josh Lanyon I need to put on Stanza?
Just finished: Star Wars: Choices of One, by Timothy Zahn. Before that I re-read a Biggles book and I also have half a Dick Francis on the go, so I guess I am looking for action in some respects and predictable competence in others. Choices of One has to fit in between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, and it has to show off Mara Jade and Admiral Thrawn (I believe both are Zahn's creations) without undoing any of his chronologically later but written earlier works, plus not finding this enough challenge Zahn also brings in a group of idealistic Imperial Stormtroopers, and really has a lot of fun dealing with ostensibly bad and good guys working together against common evils etc. More often I don't like prequel work because it doesn't change anything, but this is appealing largely because of how it deals with that challenge - and there are enough little nudges to the characters that you can see an evolution.
Next up: the rest of the Dick Francis, probably, which I have actually abandoned in the middle of a sex scene (it's Dick Francis. A school teacher in her 40s asks the jockey/accountant she has just rescued from inexplicable kidnappers to have sex with her to rid her of her virginity, basically, so all calculation and very little passion so far). Possibly the Courtney Milan I have on my Kindle, or the Josh Lanyon I need to put on Stanza?
