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lady_ragnell) wrote2024-02-17 10:54 am
lady_ragnell) wrote2024-02-17 10:54 am
2024 Books, Post 2
A much less rough group than last time, thank goodness! Though I'm still struggling a little, I think because my shelves have been so full for so long and I've got a bad habit of trying to read things in order of least-excited to most-excited that I should really give up on at least temporarily, because the biggest hits this time were me going against that rule.
Also, before I begin the books I did read, got far enough in another book I think I'm DNFing (I still have a week left on my library hold in case I change my mind) to mention it here, which is unfortunately Clark's A Master of Djinn. I'd read and liked the novellas in this universe before, alternate history fantasy is such a fun genre and I liked the world and the mysteries, but oh boy, for a book that's great at being antiracist and queer and feminist, it suuuure did start off with a paragraph of really upsetting fatphobia. I kept going because I wanted to like the book so much, and then a quarter of the way through they were interviewing someone and once again the larger character was shitty in various ways, and I was out of there. I want to want to go back for the compelling fantasy mystery, but ugh.
Onward to the real post, though!
Jeweled Fire by Sharon Shinn
Shinn really gets me with the politics and the worldbuilding in this universe! There's spycraft, there are tense political conversations, there's good succession politics, there are people with lots of different relations to their various religion and spirituality, and it's all so fun to read. This book had the politics I've enjoyed most so far, and a heroine who was allowed to be abrasive while still being sympathetic. (It does buy a little bit into "I can write the fun messy Byzantine court politics but sympathetic characters have to disclaim liking them," a thing that annoys me.) Two detractions, though, one serious but a small part of the narrative, one only about my taste but a bigger part. The first is, fair warning, and with apologies for spoilers if you want to read this book, a character is proved to have been faking a disability throughout, never something I'm excited to see. The second is just that Shinn and I don't really seem to share taste in romances! This one wasn't bad, but it also didn't draw me in very much, and most of the development didn't feel very interesting to me.
Give the Devil His Duke by Anna Bradley
An enjoyable historical romance! Honestly a couple weeks on I'm having trouble remembering specific things I loved or didn't like, but it was an interesting enough premise, there were enough conflicts to keep the book going without me starting to go "well, these characters probably just shouldn't be together," and generally it was a nice way to spend a day or two.
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
On the other hand, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this one, and I would be surprised if it doesn't end up in my top ten for the year. It's a very messy romance and doesn't pretend not to be, which isn't always my taste, but it's done honestly and, more than that, it's done with just absolutely gorgeous writing. The level of sensory detail in this, about food and art and landscape and even the fabrics the character is wearing, really sucked me in. I read it on a snowy day and it really did feel like an escape to a Caribbean island.
The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
And then this was A Book That I Read (my colleague really wants me to like his favorite books. I do not). I almost put this down after the prologue, when a woman got egregiously fridged, and only didn't because I feel obligations about books lent or given to me by friends. Anyway, Sanderson writes exciting action scenes and he knows his worldbuilding inside out, and that's about as much as I can say for this one. His ethos is so inescapably Mormon (a genuinely interesting fantasy religion concept ruined by having "no lust without commitment" as the first-mentioned major tenet for no reason beyond the author's squeamishness) and so influenced without examining by the genres he's playing with here (it's essentially a western, and about a frontier lawman forced back into city society who has contempt both for criminals and for the city police being overly bureaucratic and incompetent). I cared about one character and it was because he treated her as a joke and had her kidnapped for truly distressing reasons. Anyway, between Sanderson and Kim Stanley Robinson, my friends need better taste in books.
The Hollow Plane by Allison Carr Waechter
There was a short story by Waechter about two of the characters in this book in the fantasy romance advent thing, and when I saw this was on sale, it seemed worth picking up! I quite enjoyed it, to my relief, it was a good balance of plot and characters bonding. As answers started coming out, they weren't necessarily ones I was interested in, and the romances both went from zero to sixty very quickly (though one of them had a reason for doing so, in all fairness). However, there was good development of friendships, and some interesting worldbuilding elements I wished hadn't been skimmed over as much! Some things were explained when I discovered a character was introduced in a previous series by the author (I know that big sprawling multi-series universes are a popular thing right now, but I tend to prefer other things), but yeah, this was a book with a lot of promise that I enjoyed reading and that I wish had scrambled things up a bit, more because of my taste than because of an inherent fault in the book.
Funny Guy by Emma Barry
I read a book last year that also used SNL as the home base for one of its romantic leads, and I liked this one much better! Probably because this one is more traditionally a romance novel, in all fairness, but also because the premise is just taken advantage of in ways that worked better for me. Essentially, the hero is a comedian, the heroine is his childhood best friend who's been in love with him forever, and it's about them coming together but also about him grappling with all the ways he's been hurt and hurts others and starting the slow process of dealing with that. Just a really nice contemporary in these days of oversaturation.
Squire Derel by Rachel Ford
There was a big ebook sale of queer romance at the start of the month and I picked up like 6 or 8 because it promised to be about a lady knight in training, and it was! I liked a lot of things here about the plot and the characters and the worldbuilding even if I didn't Love them, and the romance wasn't bad, but I think the story as a whole would have been better if some time had been elided during it. As it is, the love interests knew each other closely for maybe two weeks and got way too serious about each other way too fast, when everything could easily have been slowed down, had almost the same beats, and worked way better for me. Still, it's the first in a series and I truly can't resist lady knights, especially not sapphic ones, so I may read more from Ford in the future.
Once Upon a K-Prom by Kat Cho
I wanted something that wouldn't demand much from me on a stressful night, and instead ended up thinking a lot of thoughts, not really in a good way. It's not that this book was bad! It's a pretty standard teen romcom with a fun k-pop angle and a subplot about keeping a community center open. It just also got me thinking about how one of the big buzzwords in publishing these days, especially in YA (and sometimes romance) is about Agency, where the main character has to be in control of (usually) her destiny, and how, while that can be a power fantasy in some ways, there are also many stories where too much insistence on that can ruin the escapism? And here it ruined the escapism for me. The heroine's got very few relationships at the start of the book, old friends and even her twin aren't particularly kind to her, and as the book comes on it becomes a whole thing about how she pushed them away, and it's up to her to start fixing things with them! And, you know, there's a place for those narratives, but it didn't feel like this story should have been one of them.
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older
I want to love these books! I really do! The worldbuilding is fascinating, the setting is vivid, I have been very into SFF mysteries lately, and I do like them. It's just that I ought to love them, and I don't. Something doesn't connect, and I can't figure out what I'm missing. Maybe I need more character development (though Pleiti has a nice little arc in this one), maybe the stories need more meat on them in general since they're quite slight, maybe it's that the mysteries aren't particularly solvable so they're missing that mystery whodunnit propulsion, I don't know. I just wish I loved them!
In Debt to the Earl by Elizabeth Rolls
Rolls understands escapism! Her books are melodramatic, full of misunderstandings, social consequences are only an obstacle as long as she wants them to be, but they are escapism, and sometimes that's what I need. This one wasn't my favorite Rolls, because there was the constant threat of sexual assault to the heroine, but it was a nice antidote to the Cho. Sometimes I just want a character who's never done anything wrong in her life ever and is Persecuted by those around her, and Rolls provides! I keep wanting to Defend This Position, but nah, it's not as though I don't like complex main characters ever, see several books above, it's just that the Cinderella story is a fantasy, and that fantasy doesn't usually include Working On Yourself, so the Rolls and the Cho are in direct contrast there.
Okay! Definitely not as bad as the first post, but some room for improvement. I'm in the midst of my first nonfic of the year, and have been for a couple weeks, hopefully that will go in the next one, as well as my continued chipping away at my shelves. And maybe A Master of Djinn will redeem itself? Let me know if you've read it and feel it does!
Also, before I begin the books I did read, got far enough in another book I think I'm DNFing (I still have a week left on my library hold in case I change my mind) to mention it here, which is unfortunately Clark's A Master of Djinn. I'd read and liked the novellas in this universe before, alternate history fantasy is such a fun genre and I liked the world and the mysteries, but oh boy, for a book that's great at being antiracist and queer and feminist, it suuuure did start off with a paragraph of really upsetting fatphobia. I kept going because I wanted to like the book so much, and then a quarter of the way through they were interviewing someone and once again the larger character was shitty in various ways, and I was out of there. I want to want to go back for the compelling fantasy mystery, but ugh.
Onward to the real post, though!
Jeweled Fire by Sharon Shinn
Shinn really gets me with the politics and the worldbuilding in this universe! There's spycraft, there are tense political conversations, there's good succession politics, there are people with lots of different relations to their various religion and spirituality, and it's all so fun to read. This book had the politics I've enjoyed most so far, and a heroine who was allowed to be abrasive while still being sympathetic. (It does buy a little bit into "I can write the fun messy Byzantine court politics but sympathetic characters have to disclaim liking them," a thing that annoys me.) Two detractions, though, one serious but a small part of the narrative, one only about my taste but a bigger part. The first is, fair warning, and with apologies for spoilers if you want to read this book, a character is proved to have been faking a disability throughout, never something I'm excited to see. The second is just that Shinn and I don't really seem to share taste in romances! This one wasn't bad, but it also didn't draw me in very much, and most of the development didn't feel very interesting to me.
Give the Devil His Duke by Anna Bradley
An enjoyable historical romance! Honestly a couple weeks on I'm having trouble remembering specific things I loved or didn't like, but it was an interesting enough premise, there were enough conflicts to keep the book going without me starting to go "well, these characters probably just shouldn't be together," and generally it was a nice way to spend a day or two.
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
On the other hand, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this one, and I would be surprised if it doesn't end up in my top ten for the year. It's a very messy romance and doesn't pretend not to be, which isn't always my taste, but it's done honestly and, more than that, it's done with just absolutely gorgeous writing. The level of sensory detail in this, about food and art and landscape and even the fabrics the character is wearing, really sucked me in. I read it on a snowy day and it really did feel like an escape to a Caribbean island.
The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
And then this was A Book That I Read (my colleague really wants me to like his favorite books. I do not). I almost put this down after the prologue, when a woman got egregiously fridged, and only didn't because I feel obligations about books lent or given to me by friends. Anyway, Sanderson writes exciting action scenes and he knows his worldbuilding inside out, and that's about as much as I can say for this one. His ethos is so inescapably Mormon (a genuinely interesting fantasy religion concept ruined by having "no lust without commitment" as the first-mentioned major tenet for no reason beyond the author's squeamishness) and so influenced without examining by the genres he's playing with here (it's essentially a western, and about a frontier lawman forced back into city society who has contempt both for criminals and for the city police being overly bureaucratic and incompetent). I cared about one character and it was because he treated her as a joke and had her kidnapped for truly distressing reasons. Anyway, between Sanderson and Kim Stanley Robinson, my friends need better taste in books.
The Hollow Plane by Allison Carr Waechter
There was a short story by Waechter about two of the characters in this book in the fantasy romance advent thing, and when I saw this was on sale, it seemed worth picking up! I quite enjoyed it, to my relief, it was a good balance of plot and characters bonding. As answers started coming out, they weren't necessarily ones I was interested in, and the romances both went from zero to sixty very quickly (though one of them had a reason for doing so, in all fairness). However, there was good development of friendships, and some interesting worldbuilding elements I wished hadn't been skimmed over as much! Some things were explained when I discovered a character was introduced in a previous series by the author (I know that big sprawling multi-series universes are a popular thing right now, but I tend to prefer other things), but yeah, this was a book with a lot of promise that I enjoyed reading and that I wish had scrambled things up a bit, more because of my taste than because of an inherent fault in the book.
Funny Guy by Emma Barry
I read a book last year that also used SNL as the home base for one of its romantic leads, and I liked this one much better! Probably because this one is more traditionally a romance novel, in all fairness, but also because the premise is just taken advantage of in ways that worked better for me. Essentially, the hero is a comedian, the heroine is his childhood best friend who's been in love with him forever, and it's about them coming together but also about him grappling with all the ways he's been hurt and hurts others and starting the slow process of dealing with that. Just a really nice contemporary in these days of oversaturation.
Squire Derel by Rachel Ford
There was a big ebook sale of queer romance at the start of the month and I picked up like 6 or 8 because it promised to be about a lady knight in training, and it was! I liked a lot of things here about the plot and the characters and the worldbuilding even if I didn't Love them, and the romance wasn't bad, but I think the story as a whole would have been better if some time had been elided during it. As it is, the love interests knew each other closely for maybe two weeks and got way too serious about each other way too fast, when everything could easily have been slowed down, had almost the same beats, and worked way better for me. Still, it's the first in a series and I truly can't resist lady knights, especially not sapphic ones, so I may read more from Ford in the future.
Once Upon a K-Prom by Kat Cho
I wanted something that wouldn't demand much from me on a stressful night, and instead ended up thinking a lot of thoughts, not really in a good way. It's not that this book was bad! It's a pretty standard teen romcom with a fun k-pop angle and a subplot about keeping a community center open. It just also got me thinking about how one of the big buzzwords in publishing these days, especially in YA (and sometimes romance) is about Agency, where the main character has to be in control of (usually) her destiny, and how, while that can be a power fantasy in some ways, there are also many stories where too much insistence on that can ruin the escapism? And here it ruined the escapism for me. The heroine's got very few relationships at the start of the book, old friends and even her twin aren't particularly kind to her, and as the book comes on it becomes a whole thing about how she pushed them away, and it's up to her to start fixing things with them! And, you know, there's a place for those narratives, but it didn't feel like this story should have been one of them.
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older
I want to love these books! I really do! The worldbuilding is fascinating, the setting is vivid, I have been very into SFF mysteries lately, and I do like them. It's just that I ought to love them, and I don't. Something doesn't connect, and I can't figure out what I'm missing. Maybe I need more character development (though Pleiti has a nice little arc in this one), maybe the stories need more meat on them in general since they're quite slight, maybe it's that the mysteries aren't particularly solvable so they're missing that mystery whodunnit propulsion, I don't know. I just wish I loved them!
In Debt to the Earl by Elizabeth Rolls
Rolls understands escapism! Her books are melodramatic, full of misunderstandings, social consequences are only an obstacle as long as she wants them to be, but they are escapism, and sometimes that's what I need. This one wasn't my favorite Rolls, because there was the constant threat of sexual assault to the heroine, but it was a nice antidote to the Cho. Sometimes I just want a character who's never done anything wrong in her life ever and is Persecuted by those around her, and Rolls provides! I keep wanting to Defend This Position, but nah, it's not as though I don't like complex main characters ever, see several books above, it's just that the Cinderella story is a fantasy, and that fantasy doesn't usually include Working On Yourself, so the Rolls and the Cho are in direct contrast there.
Okay! Definitely not as bad as the first post, but some room for improvement. I'm in the midst of my first nonfic of the year, and have been for a couple weeks, hopefully that will go in the next one, as well as my continued chipping away at my shelves. And maybe A Master of Djinn will redeem itself? Let me know if you've read it and feel it does!