Books read recently
Been a while, right?
So having a Kobo did work very well to help get back on the voracious book reading bandwaggon.
I started with Dominion by Celia Friedman,
the novella set in the Coldfire trilogy universe. It was hardly bad, but as far as further exploration of this setting and characters it was hardly what I would have picked first. Adequate for the fans, I guess, but not much more.
Then I read the Hand of Isis by Jo Graham,
a History novel about Cleopatra from the point of view of one of her handmaiden (and half sister). I love Jo Graham's writing a lot, so this was a very pleasant read, and certainly she draws characters and setting in a gorgeous and very entrancing way. OTOH, I didn't think it was quite as good as her previous novel Black Ships, possibly because the latter had more of a focused plot while this one being framed more heavily by the biographical aspect had less leeway to do its own plot. I also thought the reincarnation aspect played a bit too heavily into the story, which is weird because I usually love reincarnation as a story element. Or perhaps it's the cross chronological aspect that stumbled me since most of the refenreces were to Stealing Fire although it is next in the published order (I have no idea whether there is a recommended reading order separate from the published one).
Dauntless by Jack Campbell, had this one from the public library actually. It's basic military SF, with a premise strongly reminescent of BSG. I'd call it barely decent a read, as it was reasonably entertaining although it is very... drab and clichéd in various ways. I especially was amused by how the villains are the evil Sovietic Union IN SPACE (I checked the data of publication, it's 2007, I guess ti's a sort of retro kind of thing) and they are very EVIL. And you can tell the good guys because they are all COMPETENT.
Call for the Dead by John Le Carré, is cross between a murder mystery and a spy novel. It is very good in a very harsh, merciless way, being very much a Cold War story that is in the shadow of WW2 and the Shoah. I found the writing style to be sometimes a bit hard to follow, not because it was bad, but it has a sort of allusive, idiomatic bent to it that harmed its flow. For a random note, I kind of want to throw the book at various XMFC fanfic writers for how contemporary people would talk about Jews and the Holocaust at the time (its publication date is 1961).
The Andrien English series by Josh Lanyon which is a set of 5 M/M romance/mystery about an amateur sleuth who is a mystery bookshop owner. They were a very fun read, although I wouldn't call them very good. The mysteries are average-ish - they start out pretty crappy but get a bit better with every novels. Mainly I enjoyed the main character, who is a sarcastic smartass, and his voice, and although I didn't exactly like his love interest much, the fact that he is a deeply closeted cop put an interesting spin on the story overall. Several of the secondary characters were also pretty good and interesting. There is some hilarious meta-ish stuff that sometimes threaten to be a bit too *winkwink* in a cheesy way though/
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marryblack told me the movie was loooooooooooong with a lot of boring talking scenes, which now that I've read the book I'm not surprised of, this has to be a hard to adapt to a movie story XD. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not exactly well acquainted with spy novels, in fact those (and the one above) may be the first I've read unless you wanna count Tim Powers' Declare; but I really liked it a lot. The plot and the storytelling really were a beautiful mechanic to have unfold, different storyline coming from a variety of sources and flashbacks all crossing with one another to build the whole pictures - I love a well structured novel. The characterizations is also excellent. I also found the writing to flow more easily despite having some issues with some idiomatic turn of phrases still here and there. Although if the next Le Carré book again as a Tragic minority character I'm going to start giving him some serious side eyes.
Jack of Shadow by Roger Zelazny, a fantasy novel in the inimitable style of Zelazny. It's an interesting story, with, as always with Zelazny, some pretty damn awesome world building. Not quite sure what i thought of the characterizations, though, especially for a book about a trickster, I was not all that interesting. The writing is good, but not Zelazny's best.
Fire by Kristin Cashore, a YA fantaszy novel that came heavily reccomended by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
haremstress. I'd already read Graceling (although I didn't review it) which I liked but wasn't overly blown away with. This one is good and perhaps a bit better plotted. It's a very interesting deconstruction of the So Beautiful It's a Curse trope, and the world building around that is very solid and intriguing, and arguably makes it a very interesting feminist book. The characters are well drawn and very sympathetic, and Cashore continues to be successful at making traditional romance more interesting to me than it ever is asides from some mangas and fanfics. I especially loved the themes around heavily dysfunctional parents-children relationship - I guess it's my love for tragic family relationships striking again, and I think that's what made the book most successful to me.
I also tried to read Tiger Eye, Marjorie Liu's first novel in the Dirk & Steel series which I went almost halfway before I decided it just wasn't a book for me, as my eyes were glazing over with boredom. Quite disappointing.
So having a Kobo did work very well to help get back on the voracious book reading bandwaggon.
I started with Dominion by Celia Friedman,
the novella set in the Coldfire trilogy universe. It was hardly bad, but as far as further exploration of this setting and characters it was hardly what I would have picked first. Adequate for the fans, I guess, but not much more.
Then I read the Hand of Isis by Jo Graham,
a History novel about Cleopatra from the point of view of one of her handmaiden (and half sister). I love Jo Graham's writing a lot, so this was a very pleasant read, and certainly she draws characters and setting in a gorgeous and very entrancing way. OTOH, I didn't think it was quite as good as her previous novel Black Ships, possibly because the latter had more of a focused plot while this one being framed more heavily by the biographical aspect had less leeway to do its own plot. I also thought the reincarnation aspect played a bit too heavily into the story, which is weird because I usually love reincarnation as a story element. Or perhaps it's the cross chronological aspect that stumbled me since most of the refenreces were to Stealing Fire although it is next in the published order (I have no idea whether there is a recommended reading order separate from the published one).
Dauntless by Jack Campbell, had this one from the public library actually. It's basic military SF, with a premise strongly reminescent of BSG. I'd call it barely decent a read, as it was reasonably entertaining although it is very... drab and clichéd in various ways. I especially was amused by how the villains are the evil Sovietic Union IN SPACE (I checked the data of publication, it's 2007, I guess ti's a sort of retro kind of thing) and they are very EVIL. And you can tell the good guys because they are all COMPETENT.
Call for the Dead by John Le Carré, is cross between a murder mystery and a spy novel. It is very good in a very harsh, merciless way, being very much a Cold War story that is in the shadow of WW2 and the Shoah. I found the writing style to be sometimes a bit hard to follow, not because it was bad, but it has a sort of allusive, idiomatic bent to it that harmed its flow. For a random note, I kind of want to throw the book at various XMFC fanfic writers for how contemporary people would talk about Jews and the Holocaust at the time (its publication date is 1961).
The Andrien English series by Josh Lanyon which is a set of 5 M/M romance/mystery about an amateur sleuth who is a mystery bookshop owner. They were a very fun read, although I wouldn't call them very good. The mysteries are average-ish - they start out pretty crappy but get a bit better with every novels. Mainly I enjoyed the main character, who is a sarcastic smartass, and his voice, and although I didn't exactly like his love interest much, the fact that he is a deeply closeted cop put an interesting spin on the story overall. Several of the secondary characters were also pretty good and interesting. There is some hilarious meta-ish stuff that sometimes threaten to be a bit too *winkwink* in a cheesy way though/
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré.
marryblack told me the movie was loooooooooooong with a lot of boring talking scenes, which now that I've read the book I'm not surprised of, this has to be a hard to adapt to a movie story XD. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not exactly well acquainted with spy novels, in fact those (and the one above) may be the first I've read unless you wanna count Tim Powers' Declare; but I really liked it a lot. The plot and the storytelling really were a beautiful mechanic to have unfold, different storyline coming from a variety of sources and flashbacks all crossing with one another to build the whole pictures - I love a well structured novel. The characterizations is also excellent. I also found the writing to flow more easily despite having some issues with some idiomatic turn of phrases still here and there. Although if the next Le Carré book again as a Tragic minority character I'm going to start giving him some serious side eyes.Jack of Shadow by Roger Zelazny, a fantasy novel in the inimitable style of Zelazny. It's an interesting story, with, as always with Zelazny, some pretty damn awesome world building. Not quite sure what i thought of the characterizations, though, especially for a book about a trickster, I was not all that interesting. The writing is good, but not Zelazny's best.
Fire by Kristin Cashore, a YA fantaszy novel that came heavily reccomended by
haremstress. I'd already read Graceling (although I didn't review it) which I liked but wasn't overly blown away with. This one is good and perhaps a bit better plotted. It's a very interesting deconstruction of the So Beautiful It's a Curse trope, and the world building around that is very solid and intriguing, and arguably makes it a very interesting feminist book. The characters are well drawn and very sympathetic, and Cashore continues to be successful at making traditional romance more interesting to me than it ever is asides from some mangas and fanfics. I especially loved the themes around heavily dysfunctional parents-children relationship - I guess it's my love for tragic family relationships striking again, and I think that's what made the book most successful to me.I also tried to read Tiger Eye, Marjorie Liu's first novel in the Dirk & Steel series which I went almost halfway before I decided it just wasn't a book for me, as my eyes were glazing over with boredom. Quite disappointing.
no subject
For a random note, I kind of want to throw the book at various XMFC fanfic writers for how contemporary people would talk about Jews and the Holocaust at the time (its publication date is 1961).
oh, how would they talk about it?
i really enjoyed TTSS the movie, personally.
no subject
oh, how would they talk about it?
well, I'm not a Historian or Historiographer or anything; but for Jewish people, I think one of the main thing is that they weren't really seen as white people yet, if you will, even as late as the 60s. And people talked about them being Jews, not about them being Jewish people, much more essentialisation. About the Holocaust, I think there was much more coyness and allusiveness about it. It was known, but it wasn't a Big Narrative everyone talks about openly. Lots of euphemisms.
i really enjoyed TTSS the movie, personally.
I'm quite curious about it, now. Not sure I have the money for a trip to the movie theatre but i'll probably watch it eventually.
no subject
oh, yeah, it was an important point when i was reading about shirley polykoff. i've seen some writers make references to this and some slurs, but i think it's hard to really grasp the extent for a good chunk of contemporary audiences. especially in xmfc, because the movie never brings it up with adult erik. and he wasn't tied to a community when he was in the us, or by his name. he was tall handsome white brooding european gentleman.
no subject
The sad thing is, it was still better than a lot of movie.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
And thanks for the notes on Hand of Isis! Just ordered from the library. And may try those others by Graham.
no subject
You're welcome! Her writing is definitely worth checking out!
no subject
(I still think Cashore's worldbuilding is, basically, one striking and well-thought-out idea per book + roughly sketched in everything else, which doesn't work for me very well, but Fire had enough interesting characters and relationships to make up for that where Graceling, IMO, did not.)
no subject
You're right, Fire/Archer was also well written in its dysfunctional ways. She did a good job at making Archer's good qualities exist despite the fact that he was mostly an overly possessive asshole.
I didn't think the idea in Graceling was all that striking? It's like, just the notion that some people have some sort of power, which is a very pat setting premise no matter how you dress it, and the execution in this case was neither overly stereotypical nor very original. It was just there.
Fire had a real original concept behind it, though, and it was well executed too. It's not a very broad premise, but it still does the job well enough for my original/well constructed setting loving self!
no subject
She did a good job at making Archer's good qualities exist despite the fact that he was mostly an overly possessive asshole.
Yep, and Fire and the text acknowledged him to be a possessive asshole, but you could also see why Fire still loved him, and also why breaking off the relationship with him was the only sane thing to do.
I didn't think the idea in Graceling was all that striking? It's like, just the notion that some people have some sort of power,
Yeah, you're right -- the idea in Fire is far more interesting. I guess what I meant more was that it was clear Cashore had given some thought to the idea of Graces, and added some neat twists to it (NGL, I think "Graceling!" every time I see a cat or character or whatever with two different colored eyes, which suggests to me Cashore did something right with that) while everything else was almost laughably bare bones (like the names of the countries, which sound like someone spent all of 30 seconds looking at a compass/map). But actually even with the concept of Graces there were some things in Graceling that I don't think made any sense, like Leck's (? bad guy's, anyway) Grace being somehow transitive while nobody else's seemed to be. I didn't trip up on stuff like that in Fire, which was refreshing.
no subject
Hahaha, I'm the opposite. Liked Briggan a great deal, but Po was the one who was total catnip.
But actually even with the concept of Graces there were some things in Graceling that I don't think made any sense, like Leck's (? bad guy's, anyway) Grace being somehow transitive while nobody else's seemed to be.
Yeah, that was a bit weird :/ Very "It's Magical, shut up!" as we say in French.
no subject
Er. It's just that I don't know ANYONE else whi's read that book, so this is pretty exciting for me. :)
no subject
no subject
I adore that book, but I find it hard to reread since the -spoiler!- ending was so incredibly depressing.
Also I -know- there's a version out there with gender-neutral pronouns but I can't seem to find it...
no subject
I love depressing ending so I did not mind too much :)
someone's currently writing a Thor fandom fanfics that's inspired by the setting of the books an it works in awesome ways!
I didn't know that!!! I will have to look out for it!
no subject
I'll have to read more Zelazny sometime. I've read Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Doorway in the Sand and the first 5 Amber books and liked them all (although the first two I mentioned more than the others). Annoyingly, most of his work seems to be out-of-print now.
no subject
Yes! Too many of his books are out of print or otherwise hard to find. I think the only reason I was able to read so many in my youth is reading in French translation (French cultures does keep at least some books in print more easily than American culture does) but even so I'm so glad that getting into reading ebooks allow me to catch up with those that had so far escaped me, like Jack of Shadows.
I'd reccomend a few mother Zelazny books. Night of a Lonesome October, for example; and Roadmarks. And probably a few others that escape my mind right now :)
no subject
I'll keep an eye out for those Zelazny books. I do have a couple more Zelazny books on my to-be-read pile - the short story collection "The Last Defender of Camelot" and "To Die In Italbar" (although I've heard the latter isn't meant to be one of his best).
no subject
I read that short story collection not very long ago!! It had some good thing in it. To die in Italbar was a bit meh, yeah, IIRC.
no subject
I don't think I've read any of Zelazny's short fiction yet (apart from his contribution to the first Wild Cards book), but from his novels I imagine he'd be a good short story author.
no subject
no subject
no subject