Books and comics read in March 2018
Tuesday, 17 April 2018 12:23![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Lost Steerswoman - Rosemary Kirstein
The Language of Power - Rosemary Kirstein
The Third Nero - Lindsey Davis
The Underwater Ballroom Society ed Stephanie Burgis and Tiffany Trent
La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman
Brit(ish) - Afua Hirsch
When I Hit You: Or, Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife - Meena Kandasamy
Patsy Walker aka Hellcat: Hooked on a Feline
Supergirl: Reign of the Cyborg Supermen
Star Trek: Waypoint vol 1
La Belle Sauvage
This gets its own cut, because I want to talk about something in the last 20% of the book, and I can't be bothered to find the code for the spoiler bars. I really loved the first 80% of this book - sinking back into Lyra's world was wonderful, and our new narrator, Malcolm Polstead was delightful: sweet and inquisitive. And I loved Hannah Relf. But the sudden diversion into fairyland felt really jarring. It's been quite some time since I read His Dark Materials and it's possible I've forgotten something important, but Actual Fairies seemed like a step further into fantasy than we've previously seen, and it rather threw me out of the book. And it wasn't even a necessary diversion: the book would have worked just as well if it had been cut.
On another note, there was also some stuff around sex and specifically the way that some of it was centred on Alice that felt weird. There wasn't any specific incident I would consider definitively not ok, but cumulatively it just seemed... off. So overall I'm not sure what I thought of it - some of it I definitely loved, other stuff not so much.
Cryoburn (reread)
This feels to me like a book that never quite comes together. There's a lot of big themes under the surface to do with death and capitalism and bodily autonomy, but they never really coalesce in any satisfying way. I miss the characters we don't see, and the ones we do don't seem to be quite on form. The adventure stuff isn't as fun as it usually is, either. It's definitely not terrible, but it feels like there's something missing. And although the ending is very powerful, it's also slightly frustrating that it took the book so long to get into gear. (I'm now imagining what it would have looked like if the thing that happens at the end had happened in the middle instead. Would it have galvanised the whole thing? I don't know.) All that being said, I do appreciate what it was trying to do, and I really enjoyed getting some Roic point of view, I just wish it had been a stronger book.
The Underwater Ballroom Society
I was lucky enough to win an ARC of this anthology and thoroughly enjoyed it. The standout story for me was definitely Iona Datt Sharma's "Penhallow Amid Passing Things", a beautifully atmospheric story with magic, smugglers and an f/f romance that I was approximately 1000% here for, which also managed the feat of feeling like it was just the right length whilst also making me want 900 more stories about the characters and the world. I also enjoyed revisiting the world of Snowspelled in Stephanie Burgis's "Spellswept", while Patrick Samphire's "A Spy in the Deep" made me want to check out his other Regency Mars books.
In fact, there weren't any stories in this anthology that I disliked - some appealed more to me than others, but there were things I liked about all of them, and I enjoyed seeing the different ways the various authors used the underwater ballroom concept. Recommended!
Star Trek: Waypoint vol 1
I liked this a lot! There were a few stories I was less keen on, whether because of the stories themselves or because they covered a bit of Star Trek I was less into, but most of them were solid and some of them were excellent, particularly the Kira one. (The Naomi Wildman story was also a delight.) I also liked seeing the mix of stories, eras and styles that this kind of anthology produces.
Patsy Walker aka Hellcat: Hooked on a Feline
The writing was really fun and earnest, the art was super cute, and sometimes that's all I want from a comic.
Didn't finish: The Golden Legend
Possibly I was just in the wrong mood for this, but I felt like it was so convinced of its own Meaningfulness that it hit me right in the contrariness and I couldn't get into it at all.
The Lost Steerswoman - Rosemary Kirstein
The Language of Power - Rosemary Kirstein
The Third Nero - Lindsey Davis
The Underwater Ballroom Society ed Stephanie Burgis and Tiffany Trent
La Belle Sauvage - Philip Pullman
Brit(ish) - Afua Hirsch
When I Hit You: Or, Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife - Meena Kandasamy
Patsy Walker aka Hellcat: Hooked on a Feline
Supergirl: Reign of the Cyborg Supermen
Star Trek: Waypoint vol 1
La Belle Sauvage
This gets its own cut, because I want to talk about something in the last 20% of the book, and I can't be bothered to find the code for the spoiler bars. I really loved the first 80% of this book - sinking back into Lyra's world was wonderful, and our new narrator, Malcolm Polstead was delightful: sweet and inquisitive. And I loved Hannah Relf. But the sudden diversion into fairyland felt really jarring. It's been quite some time since I read His Dark Materials and it's possible I've forgotten something important, but Actual Fairies seemed like a step further into fantasy than we've previously seen, and it rather threw me out of the book. And it wasn't even a necessary diversion: the book would have worked just as well if it had been cut.
On another note, there was also some stuff around sex and specifically the way that some of it was centred on Alice that felt weird. There wasn't any specific incident I would consider definitively not ok, but cumulatively it just seemed... off. So overall I'm not sure what I thought of it - some of it I definitely loved, other stuff not so much.
Cryoburn (reread)
This feels to me like a book that never quite comes together. There's a lot of big themes under the surface to do with death and capitalism and bodily autonomy, but they never really coalesce in any satisfying way. I miss the characters we don't see, and the ones we do don't seem to be quite on form. The adventure stuff isn't as fun as it usually is, either. It's definitely not terrible, but it feels like there's something missing. And although the ending is very powerful, it's also slightly frustrating that it took the book so long to get into gear. (I'm now imagining what it would have looked like if the thing that happens at the end had happened in the middle instead. Would it have galvanised the whole thing? I don't know.) All that being said, I do appreciate what it was trying to do, and I really enjoyed getting some Roic point of view, I just wish it had been a stronger book.
The Underwater Ballroom Society
I was lucky enough to win an ARC of this anthology and thoroughly enjoyed it. The standout story for me was definitely Iona Datt Sharma's "Penhallow Amid Passing Things", a beautifully atmospheric story with magic, smugglers and an f/f romance that I was approximately 1000% here for, which also managed the feat of feeling like it was just the right length whilst also making me want 900 more stories about the characters and the world. I also enjoyed revisiting the world of Snowspelled in Stephanie Burgis's "Spellswept", while Patrick Samphire's "A Spy in the Deep" made me want to check out his other Regency Mars books.
In fact, there weren't any stories in this anthology that I disliked - some appealed more to me than others, but there were things I liked about all of them, and I enjoyed seeing the different ways the various authors used the underwater ballroom concept. Recommended!
Star Trek: Waypoint vol 1
I liked this a lot! There were a few stories I was less keen on, whether because of the stories themselves or because they covered a bit of Star Trek I was less into, but most of them were solid and some of them were excellent, particularly the Kira one. (The Naomi Wildman story was also a delight.) I also liked seeing the mix of stories, eras and styles that this kind of anthology produces.
Patsy Walker aka Hellcat: Hooked on a Feline
The writing was really fun and earnest, the art was super cute, and sometimes that's all I want from a comic.
Didn't finish: The Golden Legend
Possibly I was just in the wrong mood for this, but I felt like it was so convinced of its own Meaningfulness that it hit me right in the contrariness and I couldn't get into it at all.
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Date: 17 Apr 2018 16:57 (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 Apr 2018 20:06 (UTC)no subject
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Date: 17 Apr 2018 22:14 (UTC)Ooh, new Favia Albas! And the local library actually has it! [glee]
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Date: 29 Apr 2018 20:06 (UTC)Hurray!
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Date: 18 Apr 2018 00:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 Apr 2018 20:07 (UTC)