Books and comics read in August 2020
Wednesday, 2 September 2020 11:40![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhatsThe Name of All Things - Jenn Lyons
Queen of the Conquered - Kacen Callender
Dangerous Remedy - Kat Dunn
Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
The Wolf of Oren-Yaro - KS Villoso
The Dawnhounds - Sascha Stronach
Girl Reporter - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Empire of Gold - SA Chakraborty
Sing the Four Quarters - Tanya Huff
Ringlet and the Day the Oceans Stopped - Felicity Williams
From a Shadow Grave - Andi C. Buchanan
Queen of the Conquered
Unlikeable or morally dubious protagonists are usually a hard sell for me, but I'm glad I got over it on this occasion because this book was just so good. It's about a black woman who has achieved a position of power in an AU Caribbean that was conquered by an AU Denmark, and it's very clear eyed about the ways in which she is complicit in systems of oppression as well as being a victim. It's a hard book to read at times, but it's extremely compelling, and I was really impressed by the way it resisted easy, consolatory answers.
Content notes: slavery, rape (off page), violence (on page)
Dangerous Remedy
This is about a ragtag bunch of queers rescuing people from the Terror, but sadly it's not quite as good as that description made it sound. It's a very fun read and I enjoyed it, but neither the characters or the setting had quite enough depth to make it really sing.
Harrow the Ninth
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
From a Shadow Grave
Really excellent novella. It starts out with a narrow story of misery - the Great Depression, domestic violence, murder - and then broadens out to show three possible ways the murder victim might have lived. My favourite was the first, in which her ghost finds a new life eighty years later in Wellington's supernatural community, but the third was the right choice to end on: it was definitely the most narratively satisfying.
Didn't finish: Blackbirds Sing - Aiki Flinthart
I really liked the concept of this - it's a mosaic novel consisting of twenty four short stories about women in 1486 that all add up to one larger story - but the execution wasn't quite what I was expecting, and I never quite managed to get over it. I was hoping for something more slice of life, whereas this gave us lots of different angles on a big plot. The writing also wasn't quite as subtle as I wanted; it didn't give me the texture that I love in historical fiction, and I really could have done without the phonetic dialogue. It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't what I wanted.
Queen of the Conquered - Kacen Callender
Dangerous Remedy - Kat Dunn
Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
The Wolf of Oren-Yaro - KS Villoso
The Dawnhounds - Sascha Stronach
Girl Reporter - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Empire of Gold - SA Chakraborty
Sing the Four Quarters - Tanya Huff
Ringlet and the Day the Oceans Stopped - Felicity Williams
From a Shadow Grave - Andi C. Buchanan
Queen of the Conquered
Unlikeable or morally dubious protagonists are usually a hard sell for me, but I'm glad I got over it on this occasion because this book was just so good. It's about a black woman who has achieved a position of power in an AU Caribbean that was conquered by an AU Denmark, and it's very clear eyed about the ways in which she is complicit in systems of oppression as well as being a victim. It's a hard book to read at times, but it's extremely compelling, and I was really impressed by the way it resisted easy, consolatory answers.
Content notes: slavery, rape (off page), violence (on page)
Dangerous Remedy
This is about a ragtag bunch of queers rescuing people from the Terror, but sadly it's not quite as good as that description made it sound. It's a very fun read and I enjoyed it, but neither the characters or the setting had quite enough depth to make it really sing.
Harrow the Ninth
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
From a Shadow Grave
Really excellent novella. It starts out with a narrow story of misery - the Great Depression, domestic violence, murder - and then broadens out to show three possible ways the murder victim might have lived. My favourite was the first, in which her ghost finds a new life eighty years later in Wellington's supernatural community, but the third was the right choice to end on: it was definitely the most narratively satisfying.
Didn't finish: Blackbirds Sing - Aiki Flinthart
I really liked the concept of this - it's a mosaic novel consisting of twenty four short stories about women in 1486 that all add up to one larger story - but the execution wasn't quite what I was expecting, and I never quite managed to get over it. I was hoping for something more slice of life, whereas this gave us lots of different angles on a big plot. The writing also wasn't quite as subtle as I wanted; it didn't give me the texture that I love in historical fiction, and I really could have done without the phonetic dialogue. It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't what I wanted.