Switching back to actual books for a bit after a couple seriously annoying anthologies (which I’ll record eventually). Finished Into the Light which is a David Webber/Chris Kennedy collaboration and for the most part it was very good, but it’s the follow up to the ‘What the hell are vampires doing in my military sci-fi book?’ book, and that much is…consistent. The flow seemed to be
A hundred pages of interesting world building/world recovery, re-introducing useful characters
Three pages randomly injecting vampires.
A hundred pages of interesting future-tech and continuing character development.
Four pages of ‘Hey, look, there are still vampires.’
A hundred pages building up first contact and a decently-written (if not the most original) alien civilization
Five pages of ‘SEE, WE HAVE VAMPIRES!!!’
End of book
It’s definitely building into a series, and the non-vampire portion was much better than I was expecting (have to go see what else Kennedy has written), but if the vampires were put on a spaceship to far, far away before the next book comes out it’d probably be much better for all involved.
Recent anthology list, mostly being read looking for new authors to try:
Black Tide Rising and Valley of Shadows–Set in Ringo’s Black Tide Rising universe, a couple good stories but most of them were by authors I already read. One maybe option. Give Me Libertycon–Extremely limited number of passable stories and a remarkable number that were not. I get the feeling that this was written (or second-tier stories were rewritten) for a select audience and publishers put it out knowing people would buy it for the known authors even if the actual quality was not high. There was one more maybe option, but it’s very maybe considering what some of the reviews of his other work have to say. Passages,Sun In Glory, and Swords of Ice–From Lackey’s Valdemar universe, again a range in quality (but much higher across the board than the last) but I’d already read these before so no new author options.
Catching up on reading after skiing the last couple days…hadn’t realized that Mercedes Lackey (in collaboration with Cody Martin) had put out a couple more novels in the SERRAted Edge series…Silence and Breaking Silence were pretty good quick reads, definitely focused more heavily on the human side than the elf side than I remember from previous books. Also read The Devil’s Apprentice by Kenneth Anderson which I hope is a YA read and it’s decent if it is (and no comment if it’s not). And tracked down the book that matched the motivation for the aliens in Out of the Dark/Into the Light to The Excalibur Alternative…which is actually another one of Weber’s where the ending comes vaguely out of nowhere. Although there aren’t any random vampires involved so it’s got that going for it.
Mend! - Very interesting and informative, though I’ll need to YouTube most of the actual techniques… it did get me inspired to learn embroidery!
Pagan Portals Brigid - I wish I’d read this much earlier in my journey, as it’s a fairly short introduction to the goddess, but quite good. Unlike most other Brigid reference material, it focuses on Her as a goddess and almost totally excluded information on Her as a saint. I also really enjoyed the sections on the author’s own experiences with Her.
Red, White, & Royal Blue - A romance between the son of the first female president of the United States and the youngest grandson of the queen of England. Too political to be fluffy, but extremely good.
A Land of Ash - Boring, unpleasant apocalyptic/disaster stories.
Do not recommend unless you really want to geek on investing theory, and know enough about the pop science experiments that get referenced to know which ones have been called into question thanks to the replication crisis (including Milgram and Stanford Prison).
I just finished Burn Our Bodies Down, YA horror by Rory Power. Content warnings for some body horror, emotionally abusive family, and murders. If all that plus lesbian protagonist sounds like your cup of tea, read it! You will not regret it. I also highly recommend her Wilder Girls, also queer YA horror with intense-to-the-point-of-unhealthy relationships. I will follow Rory Power anywhere, as long as I can stay physically in a building with the lights on. (I also looked at her Twitter and I want us to be friends.)
Also recently finished In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette De Bodard. Post-apocalyptic/post-colonial fantasy queer Beauty and the Beast, with a dragon. I also enjoyed it, though as usual I had a hard time connecting with De Bodard’s characters.
Finished 2 books yesterday: Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which I was reading for a couple of month, and Dragons in a Bag.
Addie LaRue I really enjoyed as a drawn-out, chapter-at-a-time experience. It helped me settle down for bed and didn’t keep me up at night, but wasn’t boring. Addie is not especially likeable but who says she has to be? She’s strong AF and out to beat the devil at his own game.
Dragons in a Bag is a children’s fantasy with Black people in it, because that’s a thing that there was little to none of. I was a little disappointed that the dragons didn’t have names or personalities and pretty much never made it out of the purse, but the human characters were well-drawn.
Picked up Moon Beam by Jody Lynn Nye and Travis Taylor on my last library run since I like some of her work in the Ship Who books. It reads a little younger than I was expecting, but it’s fun, and there’s a second one in the series that another library has so off to put in a request. And then to switch back to Qunicy Harker, which are mostly Dresden-clone-type novellas…they aren’t bad, but seriously, it’d be nice if the main character could remember what kind of car he drove from day to day (or at the very least leave the detail out if the author doesn’t give a damn).
Finished Fortune Favors the Dead, a lightweight mystery set in post WW2 NYC. Our POV ran away at 15 to join the circus, and at a certain point was mixed up with a murder investigation and was offered a job. Now they’re working with an older famously eccentric lady detective who needs someone to carry on her work once her MS makes it impossible for her to continue.
The murder mystery is a locked room with many of the predictable beats, but that didn’t offend me because the other characters were so fun.
eta: it’s interesting to compare these historical mysteries with Dorothy Sayers’ coverage of certain topics.
Recently finished rereading the Lunar Chronicles for the third time. YA based loosely on fairytale characters, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White.
Now I’m reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern I loved her debut novel The Night Circus And so far her second one is also very enjoyable.
Picked up Calculated Risks, the latest InCryptid novel from Seanan McGuire…pretty good, I think I liked this better than Imaginary Numbers, although that may just have been that this was the conclusion to the events that that one started. Plus there was a novella included in this one, although Annie’s ongoing time-for-a-rant-about-Verity monologues get tiring.
One of the grab bag books I got from my library was “yes &I love you” by Roni Loren. I have never read anything of hers, but I definitely will now. It’s a sweet and fluffy book, but a nice read.
picked up Docile from the library because I thought it was going to be an sf book about later stage capitalism and literal debt slavery. I was not expecting
Summary
an explicit m/m ‘romance’ which starts with rape between the two pov characters and one of them brain washing the other.
DNF. It’s fine to put a TW at the beginning of the book, but I did not expect a book promoted by the Tor newsletter to go down that path.
decided to cleanse my palate with a bunch of Dorothy Sayers short stories.
I finished Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi last week. I got it out from the library but am strongly considering buying a copy, it’s that good – I know I’m going to want to reread it. This is a fucking masterful work. The prose and style are incredibly distinctive and both very Clarke but also very this book. The setup and scene are amazingly original and interesting and fascinating. The POV character is compelling and interesting, and the character progression for the POV character – whoa. That was intensely cool. I don’t want to give spoilers, because so much of what’s so cool on the first read is watching this masterpiece unfurl, but unf! so good!
Last library run had some new books come in, and just finished Wild Sign, the latest Alpha and Omega novel from Patricia C. Briggs. I mostly started reading this series because it’s in the same universe as the Mercy Thompson series and those are fast, fun reads. This one wasn’t bad, but definitely not as good as the last…the plot seemed kind of re-hashed (or at least the main antagonist’s motives/plans certainly were) and one of the not-major-but-important-enough-for-multiple-previous-mentions character’s backstories was retconned to make it fit this new story which is always annoying. If it had to be that specific character for some future reason, even fixing up a couple lines could have made things a lot smoother. She also introduced a couple secondary antagonists who should have been seriously bad news based on previous worldbuilding but who then just disappeared, so I’m assuming there is some setup happening here for the next book in the series. (ETA–if you read any of her other books, assume an Iron Kissed level of trigger warning)
