Books and comics read in July 2014
Friday, 1 August 2014 13:14![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
*Ash: A Secret History - Mary Gentle
Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters
*Ascension - Jacqueline Koyanagi
*Knights of the Old Republic: Commencement
Bringer of Light - Jaine Fenn
*Wolverine and the X-Men Vol 1
*Howards End Is On The Landing - Susan Hill
*Glamour In Glass - Mary Robinette Kowal
Justice League of America: Team History
Wolverine and the X-Men Vol 2
Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations - Mary Beard
The Severed Streets - Paul Cornell
*New Mutants: Back to School
Knights of the Old Republic: Flashpoint
Didn't finish: The Best of All Possible Worlds - Karen Lord. ...argh. I have heard such good things about this book! There was a lot to like in the sixty-odd pages I read, and it seemed like it was going to be really good on themes of identity, race and culture. But I felt that it had gender and sexuality issues that annoyed me too much to enjoy what it was getting right. The premise involves an alien society, the Sadiri, whose planet was destroyed, leaving them with a gender imbalanced population (because most of the people who were offworld were men and most of the people who stayed at home were women. DOT DOT DOT), which they need to rebuild. But there was never any indication that there could be any other way of doing this than the men going out to find wives from similar racial backgrounds and then bringing them home to marry, and no acknowledgement of the fact that not all of the survivors would WANT to settle down into the heterosexual-marriage-and-babies model. On top of that, there was some other grating stuff, like the bit where a reserved, rational Sadiri tells the main character that "we understand [crying] is common behaviour among Terran females". ACK. And then there was the agender character, Lian, which, yay for the existence of an agender character! But the narrative carefully avoids assigning them a pronoun, and the narrator says that she doesn't know if Lian is asexual but that many gender-neutral people are, and... I'm PRETTY SURE that's not how it works. Aside from anything else, gender does not dictate sexuality. D:
Selling Out - Justina Robson. I just got tired of this. I liked the first one, Keeping It Real, enough to give the second a try, but I got about halfway through this one and realised I was looking for excuses to drop it. So I dropped it.
Ash: A Secret History
This was a LOT of book. Totally worth it, though: it really blew me away. It combines the story of Ash, legendary medieval warrior, with a framing narration about the man translating her story and the woman planning to publish it slowly realising that Ash's history is not our history, and both stories are equally compelling. The characters are all very well drawn, and Gentle blends medieval and modern-day language excellently. I was pleased to see that Ash is not a lone female fighter: there are other women in her company, and other powerful women in the text. She's unusual, but not unprecedented. (Also, there were queer characters, well done book.) I was actually glad the few times that it did something that I DIDN'T like, because otherwise my love of this book would have been... somewhat overwhelming. Highly recommended, though with a couple of caveats: 1) it's not that great on race, I didn't think, which was a shame, and 2) it can be pretty brutal and graphic at times in its depictions of violence and sexual violence: I did feel that this was rarely gratuitous, though.
Ascension
Really solid sci-fi novel with a disabled black lesbian protagonist, yesssss. I enjoyed this very much and am looking forward to reading more by this author and in this world.
Knights of the Old Republic: Commencement
I've never really got round to reading any of the Star Wars EU stuff (though thinking about it I have no idea why) butbeccatoria recommended this series to me! This was a very promising first volume: it set up the characters and their world well and definitely made me want to read the next one. The lead character, Zayne, is very endearing, and I liked the supporting cast too. Especially Jarael, who is going on my list of "characters I want to cosplay". :D
Wolverine and the X-Men Vol 1
This was an unexpected delight! I got it because I am on a quest to read all of Warbird's appearances, and it turned out to be mostly hilarious and fun and a little bit touching. That being said... I am slightly worried about what will happen next, because I don't like the new artist nearly as much as Bacchalo, and also there looks to be a mystical pregnancy storyline with Kitty, and that sort of thing usually goes badly. We will see.
Howards End Is On The Landing
I found this account of Susan Hill's year of reading only books she already owned somewhat unsatisfactory, but some of this was due to a mismatch in expectations - I wanted more on the books themselves, the experience of rereading and of finally getting to things you've been meaning to read forever. Instead it was much more of a memoir, and also FULL of name-dropping, and it felt a bit surface and scattershot: I didn't really get any sense of Hill herself from it, either. (It didn't help that we disagree on MANY things - she hates the internet, e-readers, sff and trade unions, and loves Hardy's novels - which made it a rather uncongenial reading experience.)
Glamour In Glass
I wasn't wowed by the first book in this series, butmuccamukk said I might like the later books more, and she was right! I thoroughly enjoyed this. The magic system is such a great idea and it unfolds beautifully; it's also really deftly woven into Regency society as we know it. The heroine, Jane, is wonderful, and I enjoyed her relationship with her husband much more here than in the previous book. I was a little iffy on (skip) Jane miscarrying, because it felt a bit melodramatic and a little too close to the idea that pregnant women are basically made of glass and shouldn't be allowed to do anything, but I did really like that (skip) she was allowed to have conflicting feelings about it.
New Mutants: Back to School
So this comic wasn't AMAZING or anything, but it was a nice setup and I'm sad to see that M-Day intervened andnothing ever came of it wait, it looks like there are a few more volumes as New X-Men, awesome. TO THE LIBRARY. It's about Dani Moonstar finding teenage mutants and offering them a place at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning (or whatever it's called at this point), and in the process running into her old friend Karma (a lesbian immigrant librarian mutant :DDDDDD) and bringing her back to join the faculty too. It was great to see Dani get so much focus (she was very underused in Fearless Defenders, alas), and I liked a lot of the kids, too, especially Sofia and David (HI PRODIGY HI).
Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters
*Ascension - Jacqueline Koyanagi
*Knights of the Old Republic: Commencement
Bringer of Light - Jaine Fenn
*Wolverine and the X-Men Vol 1
*Howards End Is On The Landing - Susan Hill
*Glamour In Glass - Mary Robinette Kowal
Justice League of America: Team History
Wolverine and the X-Men Vol 2
Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations - Mary Beard
The Severed Streets - Paul Cornell
*New Mutants: Back to School
Knights of the Old Republic: Flashpoint
Didn't finish: The Best of All Possible Worlds - Karen Lord. ...argh. I have heard such good things about this book! There was a lot to like in the sixty-odd pages I read, and it seemed like it was going to be really good on themes of identity, race and culture. But I felt that it had gender and sexuality issues that annoyed me too much to enjoy what it was getting right. The premise involves an alien society, the Sadiri, whose planet was destroyed, leaving them with a gender imbalanced population (because most of the people who were offworld were men and most of the people who stayed at home were women. DOT DOT DOT), which they need to rebuild. But there was never any indication that there could be any other way of doing this than the men going out to find wives from similar racial backgrounds and then bringing them home to marry, and no acknowledgement of the fact that not all of the survivors would WANT to settle down into the heterosexual-marriage-and-babies model. On top of that, there was some other grating stuff, like the bit where a reserved, rational Sadiri tells the main character that "we understand [crying] is common behaviour among Terran females". ACK. And then there was the agender character, Lian, which, yay for the existence of an agender character! But the narrative carefully avoids assigning them a pronoun, and the narrator says that she doesn't know if Lian is asexual but that many gender-neutral people are, and... I'm PRETTY SURE that's not how it works. Aside from anything else, gender does not dictate sexuality. D:
Selling Out - Justina Robson. I just got tired of this. I liked the first one, Keeping It Real, enough to give the second a try, but I got about halfway through this one and realised I was looking for excuses to drop it. So I dropped it.
Ash: A Secret History
This was a LOT of book. Totally worth it, though: it really blew me away. It combines the story of Ash, legendary medieval warrior, with a framing narration about the man translating her story and the woman planning to publish it slowly realising that Ash's history is not our history, and both stories are equally compelling. The characters are all very well drawn, and Gentle blends medieval and modern-day language excellently. I was pleased to see that Ash is not a lone female fighter: there are other women in her company, and other powerful women in the text. She's unusual, but not unprecedented. (Also, there were queer characters, well done book.) I was actually glad the few times that it did something that I DIDN'T like, because otherwise my love of this book would have been... somewhat overwhelming. Highly recommended, though with a couple of caveats: 1) it's not that great on race, I didn't think, which was a shame, and 2) it can be pretty brutal and graphic at times in its depictions of violence and sexual violence: I did feel that this was rarely gratuitous, though.
Ascension
Really solid sci-fi novel with a disabled black lesbian protagonist, yesssss. I enjoyed this very much and am looking forward to reading more by this author and in this world.
Knights of the Old Republic: Commencement
I've never really got round to reading any of the Star Wars EU stuff (though thinking about it I have no idea why) but
beccatoria recommended this series to me! This was a very promising first volume: it set up the characters and their world well and definitely made me want to read the next one. The lead character, Zayne, is very endearing, and I liked the supporting cast too. Especially Jarael, who is going on my list of "characters I want to cosplay". :DWolverine and the X-Men Vol 1
This was an unexpected delight! I got it because I am on a quest to read all of Warbird's appearances, and it turned out to be mostly hilarious and fun and a little bit touching. That being said... I am slightly worried about what will happen next, because I don't like the new artist nearly as much as Bacchalo, and also there looks to be a mystical pregnancy storyline with Kitty, and that sort of thing usually goes badly. We will see.
Howards End Is On The Landing
I found this account of Susan Hill's year of reading only books she already owned somewhat unsatisfactory, but some of this was due to a mismatch in expectations - I wanted more on the books themselves, the experience of rereading and of finally getting to things you've been meaning to read forever. Instead it was much more of a memoir, and also FULL of name-dropping, and it felt a bit surface and scattershot: I didn't really get any sense of Hill herself from it, either. (It didn't help that we disagree on MANY things - she hates the internet, e-readers, sff and trade unions, and loves Hardy's novels - which made it a rather uncongenial reading experience.)
Glamour In Glass
I wasn't wowed by the first book in this series, but
muccamukk said I might like the later books more, and she was right! I thoroughly enjoyed this. The magic system is such a great idea and it unfolds beautifully; it's also really deftly woven into Regency society as we know it. The heroine, Jane, is wonderful, and I enjoyed her relationship with her husband much more here than in the previous book. I was a little iffy on (skip) Jane miscarrying, because it felt a bit melodramatic and a little too close to the idea that pregnant women are basically made of glass and shouldn't be allowed to do anything, but I did really like that (skip) she was allowed to have conflicting feelings about it.New Mutants: Back to School
So this comic wasn't AMAZING or anything, but it was a nice setup and I'm sad to see that M-Day intervened and
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Date: 1 Aug 2014 16:28 (UTC)no subject
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Date: 4 Aug 2014 09:49 (UTC)You have totally sold me on Ash and I was already pondering giving Ascension a try!
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Date: 4 Aug 2014 10:31 (UTC)Hurray! Ash is so unlike anything else I've read, I loved it. (You are v. welcome to borrow my copy if you like!) And Ascension is definitely worth reading too. :D
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Date: 1 Aug 2014 16:08 (UTC)I love Dani Moonstar! There is also more New Mutants stuff if you can find the Zeb Wells run. Wikipedia says the first volume is New Mutants: Return of Legion (I read it on Marvel Unlimited, so I was not sure exactly how they break up the trades). It's more about the original New Mutants team and not really the younger mutants, but Dani and Karma and Magma are definitely in it.
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Date: 4 Aug 2014 10:20 (UTC)Awesome! I am currently debating whether go ahead and read the next New Mutants run, since it's in the library, or try and read New X-Men (which isn't) first...
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