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Book Reviews
Dec. 30th, 2017 09:29 pmAnd stuff. I've kind of fallen off the posting wagon here. It's not even that I haven't had things I'd wanted to post, but I've been trying to finish editing a novel and submitting stories and writing my congress critters and endlessly working and there's just only so much time in a day.
#86: Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, translated by Andrew Bromfield. 4. Urban fantasy done by a Russian is bleak, man. But excellent. Not as episodic as it originally appears. Like Dresden Files done by Dostoyevsky, philosophizing and flirting with nihilism while still believing in fate included.
#87: A Little Dinner Before the Play by Agnes Jekyll. 3. Historical recipes from turn of the last century. Re-read.
#88: Dawn by Octavia Butler. 3. I usually like Butler, but this one didn't really win me. The last humans are resurrected by aliens after a global catastrophe. The aliens are...annoying. The humans are worse. She's not wrong, it was just unpleasant in ways that I found not particularly helpful.
#89: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. 4.5. I've done the "what happens after you come home from Narnia" thing, McGuire does it better. Love love loved the mad scientist.
#90: Penric's Fox by Lois McMaster Bujold. 4. A story of Penric's earlier days, which continue to be charming and explains how he and his demon ended up in medicine in the first place.
#91: Mira's Last Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. 4. The later Penric books are less episodic and more connected. But Penric as Mira the courtesan is delightful.
#92: The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold. 4. Bujold is a master storyteller--at one point, she buries a major action deep in a paragraph so it's very much there and you don't even notice it until in retrospect. A nice tying up of this phase of Penric's saga.
#93: Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig. 4. This was much better than it needed to be, which has always been the hallmark of the better Star Wars books. Although a couple characters have miraculous survivals a few too many times.
#94: Sorcery & Cecelia: Or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. 4. Let's be clear--this book was written as an epistolary game between two authors, and only kinda cleaned up for publication, and it shows. Also, it's got a dated "men affectionately call women idiots when they themselves are being idiots, and the women just take it as affection" thing. That said, it's delightfully charming (especially given my weakness for fantasy Regencies).
#95: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne. 3.5. This was not amazing in text, but I suspect it was amazing to see on stage. (I'd love to know how they pulled off some of the effects.) I do like how they face the problem of Slytherins head on, as well as what it would be like to be the son of a great hero who's noticeably prone to depression.
#96: Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger. 3.5. Total fanservice - the long awaited reunion of Biffy and Lyall. The plot...is rather paper thin, and honestly, there's not a lot of build up on the romance angle, either. But seeing the two finally together is deeply soothing. Basically, if you were totally excited by this thing, you'll love it. If you aren't...there isn't anything here for you. Just pass by and let them be sweet at each other.
#97: The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey. 4. This prequel didn't really need to happen. It doesn't actually tell you a whole lot more than The Girl with All the Gifts, other than some logistics. But it's thoughtful and moving nonetheless. Also, trying to avoid to much spoilers, but the epilogue verges on wish fulfillment (and in someways undermines the power of the first book). And you know what? In this dark and difficult year, I read that chapter three times, buoyed by incredulous hope.
#98: Fellside by M.R.Carey. 5. This starts as another "Carey writes his own fanfic" as he basically resets up the Ravenscar Constantine sequence with a female character. Protagonist driven nearly insane by guilt for death of a child, haunted prison/asylum lost in the moors. It goes somewhere else. Quite literally haunting. I figured out some of the twist well before the protagonist (I think you're supposed to, it creeps up on you), and it actually works better if you can tell a bit where it's going while the characters blindly refuse to see. Dark but lovely.
#99: The Way into Chaos by Harry Connolly. 3. Tries a little to hard to George R.R. Martin you with characters he gets you invested in and then abruptly kills off. There's only so many times you can play that card in the first half of one novel, honestly. But points for gutsiness in setting up one fantasy scenario and then turning it around to an entirely different one.
#100: The Way into Magic by Harry Connolly. 3. Some interesting ideas, but they're mostly all a diversion from the actual plot of the trilogy.
#101: The Way into Darkness by Harry Connolly. 3. More interesting ideas. More "too many tangents". He's trying to subvert tropes, but takes on too many in one go. There's a long list of Kickstarter backers at the end, so the actual book ends at 90% completion...which honestly made me confused to realize that the climax was the climax. It had felt more like one more sidequest.
#102: Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen. 5. A takedown of toxic masculinity via a surprisingly sweet and aching portrait of Captain Hook.
#103: Snake Agent by Liz Williams. 4. Inventive urban fantasy set partly in a biotech Singapore franchise (the city, not the book), partly in the Chinese underworld.
#86: Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, translated by Andrew Bromfield. 4. Urban fantasy done by a Russian is bleak, man. But excellent. Not as episodic as it originally appears. Like Dresden Files done by Dostoyevsky, philosophizing and flirting with nihilism while still believing in fate included.
#87: A Little Dinner Before the Play by Agnes Jekyll. 3. Historical recipes from turn of the last century. Re-read.
#88: Dawn by Octavia Butler. 3. I usually like Butler, but this one didn't really win me. The last humans are resurrected by aliens after a global catastrophe. The aliens are...annoying. The humans are worse. She's not wrong, it was just unpleasant in ways that I found not particularly helpful.
#89: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. 4.5. I've done the "what happens after you come home from Narnia" thing, McGuire does it better. Love love loved the mad scientist.
#90: Penric's Fox by Lois McMaster Bujold. 4. A story of Penric's earlier days, which continue to be charming and explains how he and his demon ended up in medicine in the first place.
#91: Mira's Last Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. 4. The later Penric books are less episodic and more connected. But Penric as Mira the courtesan is delightful.
#92: The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold. 4. Bujold is a master storyteller--at one point, she buries a major action deep in a paragraph so it's very much there and you don't even notice it until in retrospect. A nice tying up of this phase of Penric's saga.
#93: Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig. 4. This was much better than it needed to be, which has always been the hallmark of the better Star Wars books. Although a couple characters have miraculous survivals a few too many times.
#94: Sorcery & Cecelia: Or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. 4. Let's be clear--this book was written as an epistolary game between two authors, and only kinda cleaned up for publication, and it shows. Also, it's got a dated "men affectionately call women idiots when they themselves are being idiots, and the women just take it as affection" thing. That said, it's delightfully charming (especially given my weakness for fantasy Regencies).
#95: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne. 3.5. This was not amazing in text, but I suspect it was amazing to see on stage. (I'd love to know how they pulled off some of the effects.) I do like how they face the problem of Slytherins head on, as well as what it would be like to be the son of a great hero who's noticeably prone to depression.
#96: Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger. 3.5. Total fanservice - the long awaited reunion of Biffy and Lyall. The plot...is rather paper thin, and honestly, there's not a lot of build up on the romance angle, either. But seeing the two finally together is deeply soothing. Basically, if you were totally excited by this thing, you'll love it. If you aren't...there isn't anything here for you. Just pass by and let them be sweet at each other.
#97: The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey. 4. This prequel didn't really need to happen. It doesn't actually tell you a whole lot more than The Girl with All the Gifts, other than some logistics. But it's thoughtful and moving nonetheless. Also, trying to avoid to much spoilers, but the epilogue verges on wish fulfillment (and in someways undermines the power of the first book). And you know what? In this dark and difficult year, I read that chapter three times, buoyed by incredulous hope.
#98: Fellside by M.R.Carey. 5. This starts as another "Carey writes his own fanfic" as he basically resets up the Ravenscar Constantine sequence with a female character. Protagonist driven nearly insane by guilt for death of a child, haunted prison/asylum lost in the moors. It goes somewhere else. Quite literally haunting. I figured out some of the twist well before the protagonist (I think you're supposed to, it creeps up on you), and it actually works better if you can tell a bit where it's going while the characters blindly refuse to see. Dark but lovely.
#99: The Way into Chaos by Harry Connolly. 3. Tries a little to hard to George R.R. Martin you with characters he gets you invested in and then abruptly kills off. There's only so many times you can play that card in the first half of one novel, honestly. But points for gutsiness in setting up one fantasy scenario and then turning it around to an entirely different one.
#100: The Way into Magic by Harry Connolly. 3. Some interesting ideas, but they're mostly all a diversion from the actual plot of the trilogy.
#101: The Way into Darkness by Harry Connolly. 3. More interesting ideas. More "too many tangents". He's trying to subvert tropes, but takes on too many in one go. There's a long list of Kickstarter backers at the end, so the actual book ends at 90% completion...which honestly made me confused to realize that the climax was the climax. It had felt more like one more sidequest.
#102: Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen. 5. A takedown of toxic masculinity via a surprisingly sweet and aching portrait of Captain Hook.
#103: Snake Agent by Liz Williams. 4. Inventive urban fantasy set partly in a biotech Singapore franchise (the city, not the book), partly in the Chinese underworld.
