Books and comics read in January 2018

[usuallyhats]

Arrow's Fall - Mercedes Lackey
We That Are Young - Preti Taneja
Doctor Who: The Pit - Neil Penswick
A Skinful of Shadows - Frances Hardinge
Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me - Bill Hayes
Borders of Infinity - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Stone Sky - NK Jemisin
A Civil Campaign - Lois McMaster Bujold
Winterfair Gifts - Lois McMaster Bujold
Robin: Year One

We That Are Young
This retelling of King Lear set in an Indian business was very good. It went hard for the "Lear is the real villain" line, with Goneril/Gargi in particular coming off as a very sympathetic character, which I really liked, although it did mean I wasn't entirely happy about the ending - it follows the play very closely. I was impressed with the way it managed to stick to the play without feeling it was dragging the story it was telling out of shape to fit. I did feel like Sita/Cordelia wasn't particularly well developed, and I wasn't 100% sure about the portrayal of Jeet/Edmund's sexuality (he's queer in this retelling) - both I think side effects of making Lear and Gloucester much more explicitly villainous - but otherwise this was pretty great.

Doctor Who: The Pit
This book is very bad. I mean, to be fair, the plot wasn't completely incoherent, and Benny had at least one nice moment, but otherwise it was pretty dire. The writing in particular was awful: clumsy, awkward and flat. I kept having to stifle my giggles at just how bad it was.

A Skinful of Shadows
What a wonderful book. It has all of Hardinge's usual hallmarks - intensity, complexity, originality - topped off with a gloriously uplifting conclusion. Seeing the heroine grow into her courage and compassion was a joy.

Didn't finish: Naondel
I really enjoyed the book that this is a prequel to, Maresi, but one of the main draws of that book was that it was about a community of women. This one's more about the individual women who go on to form that community, and included a nasty thread of punishing women who didn't respond correctly to the villain, even if that was because they didn't have all the information they needed. It was also extremely heavy on the rape backstories, to the point where my reaction to the third in a row was basically just "oh, this again.". :/ Looking at reviews, I get the impression that it got better towards the end, but it was becoming such a slog that I just couldn't be bothered to force myself to get there.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

This book is very bad. I mean, to be fair, the plot wasn't completely incoherent, and Benny had at least one nice moment, but otherwise it was pretty dire.

*nods* This matches my memory exactly. Except, alas, no giggling for me.

(I got curious suddenly reading this and wondered what happened to Neil Penswick? Did he improve? Change his name? Leave the country? What do you do after The Pit? In between the entertaining yes-it-really-is-that-bad reviews I found someone else asking the same question, but with no answer (although someone in the comments reckons he works in child protection in the Netherlands, but whether or not that is reliable, who knows?)

[sir_guinglain]

I, too, regard The Pit as a miscommission. There is no sense of William Blake the historical figure in it, let alone that the author understands him.

[usuallyhats]

Yes, it's a real missed opportunity.

[usuallyhats]

I just couldn't get over the fact that something this badly written had been published! /o\

(I love that not only had other people asked that question, someone could actually answer it. Doctor Who fandom is great.)

[thisbluespirit]

I love that not only had other people asked that question, someone could actually answer it. Doctor Who fandom is great.

It is! (The Pit, though, is not.)

[brokenmnemonic]

What did you think of Jemisin's "The Stone Sky"?

[usuallyhats]

It was extremely good! I really admire the worldbuilding and Jemisin's commitment to unfolding, unflinchingly, exactly how oppression works, in all its complications and horrors. (There were a few things I was less keen on, but they were pretty much all things that I personally don't enjoy in fiction rather than actual flaws.)