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lady_ragnell) wrote2024-05-18 10:32 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2024-05-18 10:32 pm
2024 Books, Post 6
A pretty fast group this time! I was doing pretty well at getting my shelves down, and then I had a birthday and also a craving for some historical romances and now I'm back up nearly to where I was. Whoops!
Consort of Fire by Kit Rocha
This is what I want in a fantasy romance! High-heat, not cozy but also not the Maas vibes that are popular in the genre right now that I'm not particularly into, fairly casually poly. Not quite sure how I feel about some of the plot choices in it, but I liked all the characters and dynamics and the worldbuilding enough to not mind, they weren't objectively bad choices, just ones that aren't always my deal. But the sex was hot and the story was absorbing. I wish the sequel were about different characters, that's how I prefer my romance series to go, but I'll probably read it anyway!
A Sky Painted Gold by Laura Wood
Someone recced me this and other books by Wood by telling me they're like Eva Ibbotson, which is exactly the historical romance vibe I tend to want, especially with updated sensibilities like this one has. In many ways, it was! It was a fun story with a fun romance and I had a good time reading it. The writing wasn't as good as Ibbotson's (Ibbotson has this way of writing a portrait of a side character in one paragraph that I really respect), especially because it was in first person, something I don't always like if there isn't a diegetic reason for it to be, like a journal or something, but still, I had a nice time. Oh, one other nitpick: let sympathetic historical heroines be good at fibercrafts! It stretches credulity that the two eldest girls in a country household in Cornwall in the 1920s are actively bad at sewing and don't care to improve! Especially when one of them loves couture fashion!
The Employees by Olga Ravn trans. Martin Aitken
A strange little Danish sci fi I picked up on a whim, in part because I have a "translated into English" square on my book bingo card for the year. It is a weird story, and made more sense when I looked up the art exhibit it was based on. It was cool, and worth the read, but I don't think it's precisely my style, either, and that's what I've got to say about that.
Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George
A fun little middle grade fantasy adventure story with, as the title suggests, lots of dragons. And also, more relevantly to my interests even more than dragons, a heroine who does fiber crafts and is very good at them! There was so much dress-making and discussion of textiles in this one and it delighted me. Delighted me less: the one disabled character was a villain and they leaned so hard on her disability in her description CONSTANTLY.
The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet by Katherine Cowley
If there's one subgenre of Published Austen Fanfic I am tempted by every time, it's a Mary Bennet book. This one wasn't bad! It did lean an unfortunate amount on something Mary Bennet stories often lean on (including, really, P&P itself), where a character does not realize what is obvious to the reader and other characters, that they are in the wrong, or annoying people, or hurting them, and simply don't know it. It makes reading Jeeves & Wooster stories tragically fraught for me, and this book leaned on it so much, and it was deeply upsetting, especially when it was clearly framed as an autistic woman missing social cues (and without the framework of autism being a diagnosis). So, there were some fun parts, but also it was brutal and I'm not sure I'll continue.
Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas
Rereading a romance! I wish I knew what about this one bewitches me so! The subplot with the characters from the next book is skippable, but man, this one makes me not just not mind but actively enjoy the extensive flashbacks when I hate them in so many contemporary romcoms. I really need to figure out what in this book gets to the heart of what I like so I can try to do it.
Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday
It's weird how opposite this handles the whole "I made up a boyfriend and now here he is, whoops" to most fanfic. Here, it's a terrible secret she must keep from the boyfriend. I feel like the point of fake dating, including this brand of fake dating, is to put people in cahoots, and they weren't in cahoots here, so that was tragic. Other than that, not bad, but I've read a few from Holiday before and this definitely wasn't her strongest outing. (Also, people should do whatever feels right to them when they are widowed, but it was a bit weird to me here that the guy had been widowed less than a year when this one got going. My own biases, probably, but still.)
Dragon Flight by Jessica Day George
The library had the sequel! This one, tragically, wasn't as good. The fibercraft parts still made me happy! Just the plot didn't work as well for me, and the romance bits didn't feel super earned. (Also, look. Good books can come from authors of all backgrounds and religions, but sometimes you read an author bio and see they live in Salt Lake City and went to Brigham Young and it immediately makes you read a lot of things into their gender dynamics.) So, not bad, but I probably won't read the third, since the library doesn't have it.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss
A very fun concept! Lady monsters from 19th century literature take on their shitty fathers, with help from Holmes and Watson. (Plus Mary Jekyll and her half-sister Diana Hyde, our chief characters.) I liked the concept and the characters and the mystery of it all a whole lot, Goss knows how to write an engaging story, but there was a whole thing of repeated intrusions of the characters into the narrative that one of them was writing out, commenting on her characterizations of all of them and the events, and it didn't add enough to the story to justify itself for me. Also, the eternal modern-takes-on-historical-women problem of "well, of course we largely agree that wearing the normal clothes of the era is terrible and restrictive," which wasn't super present but was there and which I noted because I'd noticed some not-like-other-girls tendencies in Goss's short stories a few months back.
The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Someone mentioned this on tumblr, I remembered I keep meaning to read more Burnett, and then suddenly I was reading it! Burnett really wasn't pulling any punches in this one. I came in expecting the plot to mostly be about American heiresses marrying English lords and the frictions there, and there was a good amount of it (with both cultures lionizing each other a lot, sigh), and ended up with a plot about a woman fighting to save her sister and her nephew from an abusive marriage, and spending a lot of time with the abusive man's awful manipulations. If you or someone you know has had to or is dealing with a similar situation, just be warned going in, I found it hard to read at times, though also rewarding, in all fairness. I quite liked the heroine, I've got a fondness for competent women who roll up their sleeves and fix things and also know how to finesse social situations.
And that's all for this time! Next time, my resumed battle to reduce my TBR shelves a bit!
Consort of Fire by Kit Rocha
This is what I want in a fantasy romance! High-heat, not cozy but also not the Maas vibes that are popular in the genre right now that I'm not particularly into, fairly casually poly. Not quite sure how I feel about some of the plot choices in it, but I liked all the characters and dynamics and the worldbuilding enough to not mind, they weren't objectively bad choices, just ones that aren't always my deal. But the sex was hot and the story was absorbing. I wish the sequel were about different characters, that's how I prefer my romance series to go, but I'll probably read it anyway!
A Sky Painted Gold by Laura Wood
Someone recced me this and other books by Wood by telling me they're like Eva Ibbotson, which is exactly the historical romance vibe I tend to want, especially with updated sensibilities like this one has. In many ways, it was! It was a fun story with a fun romance and I had a good time reading it. The writing wasn't as good as Ibbotson's (Ibbotson has this way of writing a portrait of a side character in one paragraph that I really respect), especially because it was in first person, something I don't always like if there isn't a diegetic reason for it to be, like a journal or something, but still, I had a nice time. Oh, one other nitpick: let sympathetic historical heroines be good at fibercrafts! It stretches credulity that the two eldest girls in a country household in Cornwall in the 1920s are actively bad at sewing and don't care to improve! Especially when one of them loves couture fashion!
The Employees by Olga Ravn trans. Martin Aitken
A strange little Danish sci fi I picked up on a whim, in part because I have a "translated into English" square on my book bingo card for the year. It is a weird story, and made more sense when I looked up the art exhibit it was based on. It was cool, and worth the read, but I don't think it's precisely my style, either, and that's what I've got to say about that.
Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George
A fun little middle grade fantasy adventure story with, as the title suggests, lots of dragons. And also, more relevantly to my interests even more than dragons, a heroine who does fiber crafts and is very good at them! There was so much dress-making and discussion of textiles in this one and it delighted me. Delighted me less: the one disabled character was a villain and they leaned so hard on her disability in her description CONSTANTLY.
The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet by Katherine Cowley
If there's one subgenre of Published Austen Fanfic I am tempted by every time, it's a Mary Bennet book. This one wasn't bad! It did lean an unfortunate amount on something Mary Bennet stories often lean on (including, really, P&P itself), where a character does not realize what is obvious to the reader and other characters, that they are in the wrong, or annoying people, or hurting them, and simply don't know it. It makes reading Jeeves & Wooster stories tragically fraught for me, and this book leaned on it so much, and it was deeply upsetting, especially when it was clearly framed as an autistic woman missing social cues (and without the framework of autism being a diagnosis). So, there were some fun parts, but also it was brutal and I'm not sure I'll continue.
Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas
Rereading a romance! I wish I knew what about this one bewitches me so! The subplot with the characters from the next book is skippable, but man, this one makes me not just not mind but actively enjoy the extensive flashbacks when I hate them in so many contemporary romcoms. I really need to figure out what in this book gets to the heart of what I like so I can try to do it.
Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday
It's weird how opposite this handles the whole "I made up a boyfriend and now here he is, whoops" to most fanfic. Here, it's a terrible secret she must keep from the boyfriend. I feel like the point of fake dating, including this brand of fake dating, is to put people in cahoots, and they weren't in cahoots here, so that was tragic. Other than that, not bad, but I've read a few from Holiday before and this definitely wasn't her strongest outing. (Also, people should do whatever feels right to them when they are widowed, but it was a bit weird to me here that the guy had been widowed less than a year when this one got going. My own biases, probably, but still.)
Dragon Flight by Jessica Day George
The library had the sequel! This one, tragically, wasn't as good. The fibercraft parts still made me happy! Just the plot didn't work as well for me, and the romance bits didn't feel super earned. (Also, look. Good books can come from authors of all backgrounds and religions, but sometimes you read an author bio and see they live in Salt Lake City and went to Brigham Young and it immediately makes you read a lot of things into their gender dynamics.) So, not bad, but I probably won't read the third, since the library doesn't have it.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss
A very fun concept! Lady monsters from 19th century literature take on their shitty fathers, with help from Holmes and Watson. (Plus Mary Jekyll and her half-sister Diana Hyde, our chief characters.) I liked the concept and the characters and the mystery of it all a whole lot, Goss knows how to write an engaging story, but there was a whole thing of repeated intrusions of the characters into the narrative that one of them was writing out, commenting on her characterizations of all of them and the events, and it didn't add enough to the story to justify itself for me. Also, the eternal modern-takes-on-historical-women problem of "well, of course we largely agree that wearing the normal clothes of the era is terrible and restrictive," which wasn't super present but was there and which I noted because I'd noticed some not-like-other-girls tendencies in Goss's short stories a few months back.
The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Someone mentioned this on tumblr, I remembered I keep meaning to read more Burnett, and then suddenly I was reading it! Burnett really wasn't pulling any punches in this one. I came in expecting the plot to mostly be about American heiresses marrying English lords and the frictions there, and there was a good amount of it (with both cultures lionizing each other a lot, sigh), and ended up with a plot about a woman fighting to save her sister and her nephew from an abusive marriage, and spending a lot of time with the abusive man's awful manipulations. If you or someone you know has had to or is dealing with a similar situation, just be warned going in, I found it hard to read at times, though also rewarding, in all fairness. I quite liked the heroine, I've got a fondness for competent women who roll up their sleeves and fix things and also know how to finesse social situations.
And that's all for this time! Next time, my resumed battle to reduce my TBR shelves a bit!