![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Reading December
Jan. 1st, 2022 10:43 amThe heart principle, Helen Hoang
Pandora, Jilly Cooper (re-read)
The edge, Roland Smith
The charm offensive, Alison Cochrun
Total creative control, Joanna Chambers & Sally Malcolm
Lil’ Leo, Hagio Moto
[redacted for Yuletide]
Finished Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle (mentioned last reading post) and really enjoyed it - it’s not going to be the romance that lingers with me, though, but the story of an adult autistic woman dealing with her delayed diagnosis and her loving but actively unhelpful family. I understand this was very close to Hoang’s own experience.
The Edge, Roland Smith. Peak Marcello is a teenage climbing prodigy who previously failed to reach the summit of Mt Everest in the rather good YA novel Peak that I haven’t got around to reviewing yet. In this he reluctantly agrees to go on a peace climbing expedition in the Hindu Kush that goes badly wrong. What works well in this is his mum, a climber who gave up professional climbing after a bad accident (Peak’s dad, an active professional climber, is divorced from her and largely absent), but who picks it up again to back up Peak on this and turns out to have lots of useful skills, and I really liked the relationship between her and Peak developing. The rest of it is not so successful, the annoying arrogant climber with no real talent seem an unlikely pick for any other reason than to be an antagonist, and the homage at the ending that is supposed to be touching comes across as too much authorial heavy-handedness. I do want to read the next two, though, because the climbing is great and Peak is growing as a character.
Pandora, Jilly Cooper. This is a Jilly Cooper that I’ve only read once before; it came out in 2002, after Score! (1999), which was the first of her books that I thought was really terrible in a way that indicated a basic loss of authorial control, whereas prior to that she’d had characters do terrible things but still manage to make the readers understand why they did it and sympathise. Jump! (2010) had at least one functional plot line and did make me cry at the end, but Wicked! (2006) and the execrable Mount! (2016) do not inspire in me any desire to return to them, whereas I will still cheerfully return to my personal favourites of Polo (1991) and Appassionata (1996) at any opportunity. Pandora is a mixed success and the ending doesn’t really work, and in addition there are no horses.
What there is is a Raphael painting of Pandora, and a repressed gay art dealer who acquires it in dubious circumstances in WWII, and then a multigenerational saga with lots of artistic types and arguments over the painting. Cooper handles her cast well (it is Rutshire-adjacent and Rupert not infrequently inserts himself into the action) and the art side is well done, but the wheels come off a bit in the modern day setting. One thread that really doesn’t work for me is Zachary Ansteig, the tigerish journalist whom, it turns out, is seeking the Pandora painting as reparations for art stolen by the Nazis from his Jewish ancestor, and although he is a romantic lead Cooper unfortunately treats him more as a punchline than as a character (Abby Rosen, the lead in Appasionata is also Jewish; but this is a much more emotionally weighted background for Cooper to deal with and she doesn’t make it work, and her attempts at her usual jabs become far too nasty). When she returns to her strengths, with a high-minded impoverished artist who ends up sleeping on the streets with his loyal dog, she is much more comfortable and effective.
The charm offensive, Alison Cochrun
Total creative control, Joanna Chambers & Sally Malcolm
I read these both together, trading off chapters depending on which one was irking me least, and as might be anticipated wasn’t wild about either of them. Both are m/m romances set in the TV industry; The Charm Offensive has Dev, a not-so-secret romantic working on the latest season of a successful reality TV dating show who starts to fall for the latest bachelor, Charlie, a tech mogul who has reluctantly agreed to appear to salvage his tech career. Total Creative Control has Lewis Hunter, the volatile and demanding creator of hit UK TV show Leeches (about vampires), doing a deal to rework the show to enter the US market - but this could mean losing his slashy second lead and, as a result, losing his own personal assistant, Aaron Page, a devoted fan of the show and fanfic writer who is the only one who can put up with Lewis’ demands and also now deeply involved in writing for it while hopelessly worshipping his boss from afar.
I really disliked the power imbalance in the second one but both characters felt as if they achieved the same level of believability, whereas in the first Dev is compelling but Charlie never makes sense (why is he doing this show???). Both have bits that hit my second-hand embarrassment squick, especially the second where Lewis ends up declaring his undying love for Aaron at a fanfic convention, aargh. TCO has a significantly better backing cast while TCC has just thrown a bunch of cliches at a country house retreat to see what sticks. Neither made me want to read more - I’ve already tried Chambers’ historical novels a few times because I want to like them and failed, while Malcolm favours small town romances with all the tension sucked out of them that are never going to be my thing.
Lil’ Leo (I really wish they'd stuck with the original's レオくん, Leo-kun) is a tabby cat who wants to do more; go to school, act in movies, get a job at a manga studio. Hagio draws him in a liminal space where he can look and act more human or more feline as the situation demands, or as would prove most entertaining. It’s episodic and endearing and quite different from her Heart of Thomas, which was published 30 years earlier and which I’m reading rather slowly because I need to be in the right mode for that degree of emotional fraughtness. The manga studio bits are particularly great.
Pandora, Jilly Cooper (re-read)
The edge, Roland Smith
The charm offensive, Alison Cochrun
Total creative control, Joanna Chambers & Sally Malcolm
Lil’ Leo, Hagio Moto
[redacted for Yuletide]
Finished Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle (mentioned last reading post) and really enjoyed it - it’s not going to be the romance that lingers with me, though, but the story of an adult autistic woman dealing with her delayed diagnosis and her loving but actively unhelpful family. I understand this was very close to Hoang’s own experience.
The Edge, Roland Smith. Peak Marcello is a teenage climbing prodigy who previously failed to reach the summit of Mt Everest in the rather good YA novel Peak that I haven’t got around to reviewing yet. In this he reluctantly agrees to go on a peace climbing expedition in the Hindu Kush that goes badly wrong. What works well in this is his mum, a climber who gave up professional climbing after a bad accident (Peak’s dad, an active professional climber, is divorced from her and largely absent), but who picks it up again to back up Peak on this and turns out to have lots of useful skills, and I really liked the relationship between her and Peak developing. The rest of it is not so successful, the annoying arrogant climber with no real talent seem an unlikely pick for any other reason than to be an antagonist, and the homage at the ending that is supposed to be touching comes across as too much authorial heavy-handedness. I do want to read the next two, though, because the climbing is great and Peak is growing as a character.
Pandora, Jilly Cooper. This is a Jilly Cooper that I’ve only read once before; it came out in 2002, after Score! (1999), which was the first of her books that I thought was really terrible in a way that indicated a basic loss of authorial control, whereas prior to that she’d had characters do terrible things but still manage to make the readers understand why they did it and sympathise. Jump! (2010) had at least one functional plot line and did make me cry at the end, but Wicked! (2006) and the execrable Mount! (2016) do not inspire in me any desire to return to them, whereas I will still cheerfully return to my personal favourites of Polo (1991) and Appassionata (1996) at any opportunity. Pandora is a mixed success and the ending doesn’t really work, and in addition there are no horses.
What there is is a Raphael painting of Pandora, and a repressed gay art dealer who acquires it in dubious circumstances in WWII, and then a multigenerational saga with lots of artistic types and arguments over the painting. Cooper handles her cast well (it is Rutshire-adjacent and Rupert not infrequently inserts himself into the action) and the art side is well done, but the wheels come off a bit in the modern day setting. One thread that really doesn’t work for me is Zachary Ansteig, the tigerish journalist whom, it turns out, is seeking the Pandora painting as reparations for art stolen by the Nazis from his Jewish ancestor, and although he is a romantic lead Cooper unfortunately treats him more as a punchline than as a character (Abby Rosen, the lead in Appasionata is also Jewish; but this is a much more emotionally weighted background for Cooper to deal with and she doesn’t make it work, and her attempts at her usual jabs become far too nasty). When she returns to her strengths, with a high-minded impoverished artist who ends up sleeping on the streets with his loyal dog, she is much more comfortable and effective.
The charm offensive, Alison Cochrun
Total creative control, Joanna Chambers & Sally Malcolm
I read these both together, trading off chapters depending on which one was irking me least, and as might be anticipated wasn’t wild about either of them. Both are m/m romances set in the TV industry; The Charm Offensive has Dev, a not-so-secret romantic working on the latest season of a successful reality TV dating show who starts to fall for the latest bachelor, Charlie, a tech mogul who has reluctantly agreed to appear to salvage his tech career. Total Creative Control has Lewis Hunter, the volatile and demanding creator of hit UK TV show Leeches (about vampires), doing a deal to rework the show to enter the US market - but this could mean losing his slashy second lead and, as a result, losing his own personal assistant, Aaron Page, a devoted fan of the show and fanfic writer who is the only one who can put up with Lewis’ demands and also now deeply involved in writing for it while hopelessly worshipping his boss from afar.
I really disliked the power imbalance in the second one but both characters felt as if they achieved the same level of believability, whereas in the first Dev is compelling but Charlie never makes sense (why is he doing this show???). Both have bits that hit my second-hand embarrassment squick, especially the second where Lewis ends up declaring his undying love for Aaron at a fanfic convention, aargh. TCO has a significantly better backing cast while TCC has just thrown a bunch of cliches at a country house retreat to see what sticks. Neither made me want to read more - I’ve already tried Chambers’ historical novels a few times because I want to like them and failed, while Malcolm favours small town romances with all the tension sucked out of them that are never going to be my thing.
Lil’ Leo (I really wish they'd stuck with the original's レオくん, Leo-kun) is a tabby cat who wants to do more; go to school, act in movies, get a job at a manga studio. Hagio draws him in a liminal space where he can look and act more human or more feline as the situation demands, or as would prove most entertaining. It’s episodic and endearing and quite different from her Heart of Thomas, which was published 30 years earlier and which I’m reading rather slowly because I need to be in the right mode for that degree of emotional fraughtness. The manga studio bits are particularly great.
