cyphomandra

Just finished:

Experimental Film, Gemma Files. Lois Cairns is a film critic/lecturer suddenly without a job, who in an otherwise uninspiring short film sees a sample taken from much older footage; a glimpse of a field in harsh sunlight, people working in it, and a woman in a dazzling white veil with a sword. She becomes obsessed with this, and the two stories behind it. One is of an unknown early amateur Canadian filmmaker, Mrs Whitcomb, who made the film, hid it, and disappeared under strange circumstances from a locked train carriage; the other is a Wendish tale about Lady Midday, who comes to workers in the fields and offers them dangerous choices. All of these stories run together, the echoes building on each other in unnerving near-similarity.

Lois is also a mother to Clark, who is autistic, and whom she loves with a difficult, believable tension that is only aggravated by her own mother (there is a deeply black comic moment where Lois forces her mother to look at an Asperger's Syndrome checklist and compare it with Lois' own childhood behaviours, to which her mother can only tell Lois; "It's bad enough as it is. Don't try to make this all about you.").

I liked this a lot; the evocative writing, the daylight horror of Lady Midday, the disintegration of Lois (and I loved that her husband Simon provides support and optimism in the way of someone who feels he's been through far worse). I did feel that Lois told me that things would get worse, be more terrible etc, at least three more times than I would have liked, and the human villain never quite feels real (also while I know nothing about Canadian film history and it all sounded good, I did have a slight internal lurch when the book hit an area I do know about and managed five errors of fact in as many sentences). I intend to read more by her.

Going back before that, towards the end of January I was booked for a much-anticipated five day guided bush walk, and then had a sore throat on the first morning and so couldn’t go, which is disappointing enough, but the associated drama (initially they said I could go, then changed their minds and left me in a small town with no transport, a cousin living vaguely locally offered to have me stay and then when I finally made it there changed his mind and said I’d have to sleep outside, the (rather expensive) guide company are refusing to give me even a partial credit towards another walk, etc, etc) was pretty crushing and I ended up reading a ridiculous number of books as a coping mechanism (all following were in January).

Wonder City Stories, Jude McLaughlin. Adventures in a city of superheroes. Started as a weblog and still rather bitsy; on the plus side, queer and trans representation, ethnic diversity, and I liked that we got a range of ages. Didn’t leave me with a desperate desire to read more but I’d give another work by the same author a go.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Lois Bujold. I’ve sort of been avoiding this since it came out (I even got an ARC) because initially I had formatting & compatibility problems and then - well, I wanted to see if I could forget how much I’d disliked Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and the answer is nope, not yet. Did this help? Not really. In it we get the revelation that Aral had a longstanding relationship with his aide (Jole) that Cordelia was perfectly happy with (I’m okay with that, although I note concern from other readers that Aral seems to have started the relationship before discussing it with Cordelia) and that, more dubiously from my pov, involved no concern over power dynamics.

For plot, Cordelia is planning to have at least six girls via uterine replicator and offers some “eggshells” to Jole to have his own kids via combining his and Aral’s DNA. The science is dubious on this - three party IVF does exist now, but it relies on 2 female parents (one provides mitochondrial DNA, one egg/DNA) and one male (sperm/DNA). I suppose by “eggshell” Cordelia means that mitochondria are also present, but having both sets of DNA from the male parent would, in current time, cause problems due to disorders of imprinting. However possibly future technology has fixed this; it also seems to have greatly enhanced the success rates of any IVF procedure from about 20% to a near inevitability. Cordelia & Jole also get together and there’s a bit of worldbuilding as we’re back on the same planet as Shards of Honor. Disappointingly, given how thoughtful Bujold was about childbearing in the early books, here she has adopted the Abbey/Chalet School approach of bestowing on her favourite characters large numbers of enchantingly named children. Miles and Ekaterin have six; Cordelia plans another six; Jole loses one eggshell and thinks dolefully about only being able to manage three. In accordance with my concerns about her previous books, favoured individuals - especially Cordelia - will always make the right decisions and organisations need to be overruled.

There are some nice moments - I actually liked the bit where Cordelia suggests to Jole that once he tells people about considering parenting he will see a new side of them, and this happens - but I think my fundamental split with this series happened when Bujold gave Miles the Auditor job and didn’t make him ever face up to the consequences of what he did in Memory. That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed some of the books since then, and this irritated me less than Cryoburn, but it’s a pretty low bar.

The Searcher, Tana French. Cal Hooper, Chicago detective, quits the force and moves to a small town in Ireland, where he spends most of his time fixing up an abandoned house; then one of the neighbourhood kids asks him to find a missing sibling. It’s really about the journey rather than the destination; the town, the people, the weather, the shifting undercurrents that can suddenly suck you under that French does so well. The ending is a bit of a letdown - the suspect is obvious, the denouement reinforces beliefs rather than challenges them - but it was an enjoyable read.

The Girls of St Cyprians, Angela Brazil. Mildred is prone to laziness and day-dreaming but is also a talented musician; a competition between the five schools of the town (with contests in music, drama, arts etc) may be the spark she needs to really develop her talent. Quite a lot going on here - Mildred is also an orphan, whose rich relations invite her to stay with them and then expect that she will continue to do so, rather than with the poorer aunt & uncle who raised her, and there are tensions at school - and also a terribly racist bit with one of Mildred’s new-found cousins pretends to be a Māori relative to trick their brother (who fooled Mildred and a friend into each thinking the other was a suicidal medieval fantasist who needed humouring (they were both exploring a ruined castle)) which, argh, I was not expecting at all. Also the denouement has Mildred winning a musical scholarship to study in German for several years (as well as lots of musical Germans in her English town) and was published in 1914 so reads rather oddly in context.

The Lion and the Crow, Eli Easton. Beefy upstanding knight (the Lion) is trying to rescue his sister from her abusive noble husband, and ends up travelling with the beautiful, sneaky, youngest son (the Crow) of a bullying father, who is desperate to escape for his own reasons; forbidden passions ensue. This was much less irritating that Alex de Campi's The Scottish Boy, which is similar era (1200/1300s) and which I have some grumpy notes about somewhere, but I don't know, still not really hitting the spot for me.

Nerve, Dick Francis. Starts with a fellow jockey blowing his brains out at the races, and then follows Rob Finn, an aspiring steeplechaser and a disappointment to his musical family, as he uncovers a viciously successful plot to undermine jockeys and, in the process, becomes a target. I can see echoes of the more complex machinations in Come to Grief here; both works deal with the corrosion of character rumour can induce. Solid B grade.

Currently reading:

Beware of Dogs, Elizabeth Flann. Alix is a geologist who accepts an offer from a former neighbour to come to his family's holiday house; what he doesn't tell her until she turns up is that it's on a private island (he knows she is terrified of boats) and that he and the friends he brings with him intend to rape, torture, and murder her. The book starts with Alix hiding in a cramped cave with very limited supplies, having overheard some of the plans; she is experienced in the bush, but surviving - and escaping - is going to take her to the edge of her endurance.

I opened this tonight because it was due back in two days and I wanted to see what it was like, and now I only have fifty pages to go so yes, it's compelling, Alix is prickly and competent, and the set-up of survival vs landscape and human predators is great. It is a first novel and the backstory regarding Alix' family (cult-inclined missionaries who dragged Alix and her brother to Madagascar, then sent Alix away to a brutal boarding school in the UK) isn't always well-integrated, but I'm enjoying it a lot and hoping it can stick the ending.

Up next:

The last volume of Silver Spoon arrived at the library! And I do want to finish Death Sets Sail. I also appear to be reading three of MM Kaye's Death in ... books and a volume of her memoirs.

Abandoned:

Romancing Mr Bridgerton, Julia Quinn, in audiobook. I would have skimmed it in hardcopy but even yanking the speed up didn't help. Very, very, slow, and oddly unengaging. I still like Penelope but not as much, and Colin is very ordinary.

Dear Mrs Bird, AJ Pearce. WWII Britain; enthusiastic and naive Emmy dreams of being a war correspondent, but accidentally ends up becoming the assistant for a dour and puritannical agony aunt. I might go back to this.

I've had my first COVID swab, which was a) mildly unpleasant and b) negative, but am still feeling a bit flattened by the fever that warranted the swab, plus I had to stay home until I had the results.

Just finished:

Boy Shattered, Eli Easton
Three Hours, Rosamund Lupton

A back-to-back pair about school shootings. In Boy Shattered, Brian is a popular closeted quarterback who is seriously injured when two masked men kill 42 people at his school and escape without trace. In the aftermath, Brian turns to Landon, who helped him during the shootings, is out as gay and now determined to campaign for gun control with students from other affected schools. Brian, however, is trying to find the shooters while dealing with his father, a QAnon follower who thinks the whole thing was staged by the military.

Three Hours, in contrast, is UK rather than US, and - as the title suggests - follows the incident from the first shot to final resolution, moving between schoolchildren and teachers caught by the gunmen and those outside; police, parents, relatives. Two of the main protagonists are Syrian refugees, brothers; as events turn, it becomes apparent that the school’s decision to take them has made them a target.

Three Hours is the more literary one; it’s better written and it deals well with a lot of issues. But I guessed every single one of its twists, whereas in Boy Shattered I missed one of the main two (and it was fair), and in addition there’s a big difference that I can’t talk about without spoilers.
( “SPOILERS )

I do recommend both. Three Hours is tense and will make you think; Boy Shattered will show you how people can start to put themselves back together after terrible tragedy. I would recommend both but I’m more likely to re-read the latter.


Song of the Spring Moon Waning, EE Ottoman.

Wen Yu is studying intently for his imminent exams when a mysterious note arrives, asking him to return a sick song thrush that he has never received; when Wen Yu investigates, he finds Liu Yi, a beautiful eunuch, who possesses a collection of mysterious moon poems that Wen Yu may be able to translate, and thus solve a fairy tale that left its own protagonists cruelly separated. This is more of a mood than a story - it’s nicely told and atmospheric, but not really interested in solving the fairy tale or explaining details like what actually happened to the thrush (I believe a sequel was intended). The romance between Wen Yu (who is transmasculine; possibly intersex, but it’s also said that his father, lacking any sons at birth, insisted one daughter be raised as male) and Liu Yi is sweet and careful.

Have also finished book for beta and the stories in His Magical Pet that aren’t mine, and enjoyed both! Will post about both Magical Pet collections when I’ve finished.

Currently reading:

I am really enjoying Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert, which is fanfic wish-fulfilment (of the m/f variety) and is also just really fun. April is a fat geologist who has spent more than enough time letting other people tell her what she should do and who seizes the opportunity of a new job (and move) to actually make public the things that she cares about, which are writing fic (mainly fluffy modern AUs) and cosplaying for Gods of the Gates, a Game of Thrones-esque series (very) loosely based on the Aeneid, and featuring Marcus Caster-Rupp, a devastatingly attractive but cheerfully dim actor as Aeneas - who is also hiding his true self, a shy dyslexic who adopted a persona to deal with his academic parents’ disappointment, and who writes angsty canon-based non-explicit fics to deal with his inner annoyance at the showrunners completely wrecking everyone’s character arcs.

April and Marcus have been betaing for each other for at least a year when the book starts, which is just after the final series wraps (but has not yet been shown). Both have thought about meeting up, but haven’t; what brings them into contact is April tweeting a pic of herself cosplaying, and a fanboy troll tagging Marcus in to mock her, which makes Marcus ask her out on a date.

I am very fond of character who pretends to be dim but has hidden depths, and this is a really nice example, with the fandom references a neat cherry on the top (there are AO3 fics inserted and everything). I do find it a bit odd that no-one’s mentioned slash, despite Marcus’s attractive male co-actor and friend (who even plays Cupid!). I am also tickled by the extracts from Marcus’ terrible past oeuvre, for example his role (roll) in 1 Wheel, 2 Real, where his character joins a unicycle gang on the mean streets of Portland but is brought back into the fold by a pink-haired quirky girl literally called Pixie. Also, I really liked the moment where April is talking to her new coworkers at a sushi bar about their science folk band and her costume abilities, and one of the women says to her wife & co-worker, “Mel, darling, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” and Mel says that actually she’s thinking about how we decide which species we will and won’t consume eggs from, and why. Because I am always fond of books that recognise that, just possibly, the minor characters might have their own stories, and not only be there to reflect the leads.

I am not actually listing all of the other things I am currently reading because it’s a bit out of control, so this is what I’m prepared to own up to. I stuck Endell Street in a bag and so haven’t finished that, nor have I given the library any money so at least I haven’t been able to borrow anything new.

Having physical overdues has no effect on the ebook app, though, where I am reading Layla Reyne’s Dine with Me, m/m romance in which a chef who doesn’t want treatment for his cancer because he is scared it will destroy his sense of taste takes a plastic surgeon who really wants to do oncology on a food tour of the US. The food is fantastic (they visit actual places) and I like the chef, but the surgeon has not quite managed a third dimension and I’m unconvinced by his dilemma of “my incredibly supportive family think I want to do plastic surgery with my dad so of course I could never disappoint them, or even do two things.” I am also about 1/3rd of the way through Marie Brennan’s Writing Fight Scenes and 17% through Agnes Gomillion’s The Record Keeper, YA race-based dystopia. On Kindle in addition to Spoiler Alert I’m reading two m/m romances, The Silver Cage (tortured writer and video gamer/freelance journalist are supposed to produce a New Yorker profile together; there’s a lot of damage here but it’s compelling) and Saving the Senator’s Son, which has a bodyguard falling for the closeted son of a right-wing evangelical senator who (the son) is receiving death threats; they’ve just hooked up and all the tension has totally drained out of the novel for me, because instead of “this is totally inappropriate” the bodyguard has gone straight to “this is the real thing and would you like to come meet my family”?

Up next:

I should really not add anything new to this list. Oh, wait. Possibly something Yuletide-relevant.