Books read in January 2019

[usuallyhats]

Revenant Gun - Yoon Ha Lee
Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve
Predator's Gold - Philip Reeve
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Joan Aiken
Clockwork Boys - T. Kingfisher
The Wonder Engine - T. Kingfisher
Witchmark - CL Polk
Doctor Who: Birthright - Nigel Robinson

This month I found out that I am in fact eligible to nominate for the Hugos this year, so I tried to read a lot of stuff that I might potentially want to nominate. I don't know if it was the pressure, or if I made bad choices, or if I'm in another book slump, but it went... poorly. I feel bad that all these reviews are so negative, but here we are.

Clockwork Boys
This was full of dudes and very heteronormative and yet somehow still really charming and enjoyable. I'm annoyed about it! But I'm going to read the sequel nevertheless.

The Wonder Engine
I read the sequel! I'm still annoyed about it! This was such a weird mixture of enjoyment and irritation for me - there's some great writing, solid characters and an interesting world, but it's all mixed in with an extremely trope-laden m/f romance that had me rolling my eyes approximately every seven seconds, and some inexplicable gender- and heteronormativity. (I'm also annoyed that these are being sold as two books when it's clearly one cut in half.)

Witchmark
(2.5 stars rounded up.) This was... fine. The characters were fine, the romance was probably fine if EXTREMELY accelerated, the plot was fine, the worldbuilding was fine. (I struggled a bit with the fact that the non-magical side of it was inspired by Edwardian England, but was also full of American cultural details, but that's more an issue with me than it - it's a whole other world, so it's not a failure of britpicking, but for me it felt a little jarring.) My main reservation was the treatment of PTSD: (skip) having what looked like PTSD turn out to be straight up possession by the malevolent dead souls of the people the soldiers had been at war with didn't sit well with me. Though I suppose on the plus side it broke the link between "person with PTSD" and "person likely to suddenly start murdering people", so there's that. But back on the minus side, I also wasn't pro the way the people that the main character's country had been at war with were treated: they clearly weren't the aggressors in this war, but they're exclusively portrayed as threatening, insidious and malevolent. Some of the characters' emotional responses seemed off or oddly muted, too, but overall: fine.

... it's possible I've forgotten how to enjoy books again, isn't it.

Didn't finish: The Queen of Ieflaria
I definitely didn't dislike this book, and if you're looking for a f/f romance in a fantasy setting, I'd commend it to your attention, but I was expecting more of a fantasy novella with a romance plot, and I didn't quite enjoy it enough to keep going regardless. The worldbuilding was pretty promising, though, and I might well end up going back to it when I have fewer unread books glaring pointedly at me.

The Poppy War
I don't know, I just didn't like it, I'm tired /o\ (I quite liked the academy stuff at the beginning, to be fair, though the interpersonal dynamics were pretty by the numbers for the kind of story it was at that point.)

Elysium Fire
I usually enjoy Alastair Reynolds's books (the notable exception being... the previous one in this series), but I just couldn't get into this one, possibly because I was reading it in tiny fragments, possibly because it was too much "police procedural" and not enough "in space" for me. Also it's a hardback and I was fed up of carrying it to and from work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I feel like I might have finished all three of these if I hadn't forgotten how to like books again. :/

Comments

[little_brisk]

having what looked like PTSD turn out to be straight up possession made me for real lol. I feel like this is a common experience in sff right now, like I've read a few recent books that start out presenting what looks like a reasonable-to-sensitive portrayal of mental illness / disability, and then either turn out to have like... not at all noticed that that was what they were doing and end up just replicating the worst forms of stigma, or take an insane left turn like DEMON POSSESSION (still laughing) that completely evacuates whatever they'd managed to accomplish. Or both! WHY.

I know that feeling of not being able to enjoy books. It's getting harder and harder for me to be really totally absorbed by anything anymore. Maybe we're too smart for this world. But would be v interested to hear your thoughts on Machineries of Empire (which I DID enjoy tremendously even with a few serious reservations).

[raven]

Much empathy on not enjoying books at the moment, I haven't started one in 2019. I am finding non-fiction a little easier though? I'm a little way into a short history of Hinduism that is actually holding my attention.

[tellitslant]

I really enjoyed Queen of Ieflaria and immediately bought and read the sequel, fwiw, but with both there was a little bit of "I enjoyed these despite..." rather than just straight-up loving them. They're definitely not OMG PERFECT books. I am looking forward to the third one soon!

[usuallyhats]

That's exactly what this one did! Oh book, you were doing so well, and then you... weren't.

I enjoyed all three books a lot, though none quite so much as the first. I think I enjoyed the tighter focus of the first one the most? The third one in particular felt like it had slightly too much going on and therefore not quite enough space to do justice to any of it. (I'd be really interested in your thoughts too!)

[usuallyhats]

<333 sympathies to you too. I've fallen pretty hard into rereads, but non-fiction is also a good call, I have something from the library that I've been meaning to read.

[usuallyhats]

Ooh, good to know! I do want to give it another try with slightly revised expectations at some point.