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Jul. 31st, 2015 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretBooks that I have read recently:
-Four of Courtney Milan's Brothers Sinister romances, which were a lot of fun, in general, and not at all cringeworthy in the way they told stories about relationships. The obstacles to romance were meaningful and different. I think my favorite was the Suffragette Scandal because it pushed the timeline down the road a few years and showed all the different outcomes, but it wasn't just an excuse to do so. The main storyline was interesting on its own terms, and so the background catch-ups to all the other marriages was effective without being obtrusive.
-Veronica Mars: Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Jennifer Graham and "Rob Thomas". Given how much more I liked this than the movie, I'm fairly convinced Thomas had little to do with it, other than approving the limits of canonical deviation. More Mac and Wallace than the movie, a lot less Logan than the movie, a compelling Veronica/Keith story, a compelling Veronica/Lianne story, fun cameos from Weevil and Cliff and Dick and a few others... and in general, a story about the costs of giving up New York that worked for me a lot better than the movie and made skillful use of the movie's time jump.
-Books 8-11 of the Dresden Files. No, I have not made it to Skin Game yet, and will be leaving it off my ballot in any case for Puppy reasons, but I'll keep at it.
Books that I am in the middle of:
-The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon, which got off to a rollicking start and then lost me. It's about a future where smart phones have technologically advanced to the point where they're essentially auxiliary brains, and then their software catches a bug which gives users some sort of SFnal aphasia. Graedon made the dubious decision to try to represent this in text by randomly replacing words in her narrators' narration with nonsense words, and since this is a progressive aphasia, it gets worse and worse the deeper I get into the book. Protip: If you're going to try to make me read a book full of nonsense words, they'd better at least be puns like in finnegans Wake. I'm still trying to finish it, but my motivation to finish has vanished.
-Changes by Jim Butcher, book 12 of the Dresden Files. In which changes happen. No, I mean, in which Harry finally gives into one or several of the temptations to power that he has systematically denied for every book up to this point, in the name of rescuing a daughter he never knew he had. It's pretty interesting to watch the process happen, and to realize it's been happening for several books: Harry is turning into Gandalf, or if not precisely Gandalf, into a Gandalf-type wizard. He is unrelatable because his building power is now substantial enough that his goals are inhuman. I don't think I've ever actually seen a story do this part of the journey... wizards are almost inevitably either novices figuring out their powers, or inscrutable masters of powers beyond the ken of man. (Though I've been told that the third book in Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy more explicitly covers this territory)
-Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews. Gritty urban fantasy set in Atlanta. True, it's a later book in the series, but 20 pages in I already was liking it more than the Dresden books. The city is more present, the sense of community stronger, the characters more believable, the danger more scary.
-Four of Courtney Milan's Brothers Sinister romances, which were a lot of fun, in general, and not at all cringeworthy in the way they told stories about relationships. The obstacles to romance were meaningful and different. I think my favorite was the Suffragette Scandal because it pushed the timeline down the road a few years and showed all the different outcomes, but it wasn't just an excuse to do so. The main storyline was interesting on its own terms, and so the background catch-ups to all the other marriages was effective without being obtrusive.
-Veronica Mars: Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Jennifer Graham and "Rob Thomas". Given how much more I liked this than the movie, I'm fairly convinced Thomas had little to do with it, other than approving the limits of canonical deviation. More Mac and Wallace than the movie, a lot less Logan than the movie, a compelling Veronica/Keith story, a compelling Veronica/Lianne story, fun cameos from Weevil and Cliff and Dick and a few others... and in general, a story about the costs of giving up New York that worked for me a lot better than the movie and made skillful use of the movie's time jump.
-Books 8-11 of the Dresden Files. No, I have not made it to Skin Game yet, and will be leaving it off my ballot in any case for Puppy reasons, but I'll keep at it.
Books that I am in the middle of:
-The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon, which got off to a rollicking start and then lost me. It's about a future where smart phones have technologically advanced to the point where they're essentially auxiliary brains, and then their software catches a bug which gives users some sort of SFnal aphasia. Graedon made the dubious decision to try to represent this in text by randomly replacing words in her narrators' narration with nonsense words, and since this is a progressive aphasia, it gets worse and worse the deeper I get into the book. Protip: If you're going to try to make me read a book full of nonsense words, they'd better at least be puns like in finnegans Wake. I'm still trying to finish it, but my motivation to finish has vanished.
-Changes by Jim Butcher, book 12 of the Dresden Files. In which changes happen. No, I mean, in which Harry finally gives into one or several of the temptations to power that he has systematically denied for every book up to this point, in the name of rescuing a daughter he never knew he had. It's pretty interesting to watch the process happen, and to realize it's been happening for several books: Harry is turning into Gandalf, or if not precisely Gandalf, into a Gandalf-type wizard. He is unrelatable because his building power is now substantial enough that his goals are inhuman. I don't think I've ever actually seen a story do this part of the journey... wizards are almost inevitably either novices figuring out their powers, or inscrutable masters of powers beyond the ken of man. (Though I've been told that the third book in Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy more explicitly covers this territory)
-Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews. Gritty urban fantasy set in Atlanta. True, it's a later book in the series, but 20 pages in I already was liking it more than the Dresden books. The city is more present, the sense of community stronger, the characters more believable, the danger more scary.
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Date: 2015-07-31 06:08 pm (UTC)