Books and comics read in February and March 2021
Friday, 16 April 2021 11:46![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhatsBorderline - Mishell Baker
The Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars - Francesca Wade
Fireheart Tiger - Aliette de Bodard
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson
Sal and Gabi Break the Universe - Carlos Hernandez
Death Sets Sail - Robin Stevens
Magic for Liars - Sarah Gailey
Tales from the Folly - Ben Aaronovitch
This Golden Flame - Emily Victoria
If It Makes You Happy - Claire Kann
Rocket Girl: Only the Good
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: I Kissed A Squirrel And I Liked It
Superior: The Return of Race Science - Angela Saini
Loveless - Alice Oseman
Lazarus: Lift
The Library of the Unwritten - AJ Hackwith
The Pale Dreamer - Samantha Shannon
Last Night at the Telegraph Club - Malinda Lo
Liquid Crystal Nightingale - Eeleen Lee
The Mask of Mirrors - MA Carrick
A Line in the Dark - Malinda Lo
The Library of the Dead - TL Huchu
The Unbroken - CL Clark
Rocket Girl: Only the Good
I started reading this in singles back in 2012 or so and was really pleased to see that my library had an e-copy of the conclusion. I shouldn't have been! The art was beautiful as ever and the plot was fun if chaotic... until it suddenly took a hard left into "everything is terrible and nothing will ever get better, trying to make it better will only end horribly". NO.
(Like, not that bleak endings are never ok, but this comic really hadn't earned it at all and I really wasn't in the mood.)
Loveless
This YA novel about a teenager figuring out she's aroace is not only set at Durham University, but the protagonist is also at the same college as me and studying the same course as I did, nearly two decades after me. O.o This really intensified the ways in which she was having an experience that was both very like and very unlike my own. There's a Tesco now! Also she met an ace person who explained that "asexual" and "aromantic" are things you can be! Imagine knowing at the tender age of eighteen that there are words for what you are and you're not just broken. Wild.
(me: it would be nice to feel more seen in the media i consume
also me: this is too much being seen take it back)
Anyway, my own personal complicated emotional situation aside, this was great - it really captures the experience of being a teenager and trying to figure out feelings and who you are and who your friends are. I felt like making the protagonist's older cousin also aroace felt a bit too neat, but otherwise, excellent stuff.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
I loved this novel about a teenage Chinese-American girl in the fifties discovering that she's queer. I've been following Malinda Lo's discussion of the research she'd been doing for this book in her newsletter, and based on that and her previous work, had a feeling it would hit on the richness of setting and character that really makes a book for me. And I was right: it really was an excellently engaging read.
I feel like the ending could have been a tad stronger, but honestly that didn't impinge on my enjoyment of it at all.
(content notes: homophobia, racism, threats to immigration status, brief but graphic mention of a past miscarriage)
A Line in the Dark
I have no idea how to rate this! The first half was shaping up to be a horribly compelling look at toxic friendship, but then it took a left turn into mediocre thriller, which seemed to be aiming for a shifting narrative, multiple perspectives, unreliable narrator thing that it couldn't quite land. But I did zoom through even the less good half at a rate of knots! I don't know.
Didn't finish: Queen of Coin and Whispers - Helen Corcoran
This f/f fantasy romance between a newly crowned queen and her newly appointed spymaster (both of whom are teenagers because why not) was mostly fine, if pretty flimsy. However about two thirds of the way through I hit the part where the queen and the spymaster's family get together to dress her up as a mythological figure to parade her at the Midwinter Ball, without telling her what they're doing, and without the narrative acknowledging that the spymaster had any reason to be upset other than the fact that she and the queen can't publicly acknowledge their relationship, and I was just done. Ultimately I feel like I spent a lot of the time I was reading this book thinking about ways it could have been better - the first few chapters were so promising!
The Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars - Francesca Wade
Fireheart Tiger - Aliette de Bodard
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson
Sal and Gabi Break the Universe - Carlos Hernandez
Death Sets Sail - Robin Stevens
Magic for Liars - Sarah Gailey
Tales from the Folly - Ben Aaronovitch
This Golden Flame - Emily Victoria
If It Makes You Happy - Claire Kann
Rocket Girl: Only the Good
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: I Kissed A Squirrel And I Liked It
Superior: The Return of Race Science - Angela Saini
Loveless - Alice Oseman
Lazarus: Lift
The Library of the Unwritten - AJ Hackwith
The Pale Dreamer - Samantha Shannon
Last Night at the Telegraph Club - Malinda Lo
Liquid Crystal Nightingale - Eeleen Lee
The Mask of Mirrors - MA Carrick
A Line in the Dark - Malinda Lo
The Library of the Dead - TL Huchu
The Unbroken - CL Clark
Rocket Girl: Only the Good
I started reading this in singles back in 2012 or so and was really pleased to see that my library had an e-copy of the conclusion. I shouldn't have been! The art was beautiful as ever and the plot was fun if chaotic... until it suddenly took a hard left into "everything is terrible and nothing will ever get better, trying to make it better will only end horribly". NO.
(Like, not that bleak endings are never ok, but this comic really hadn't earned it at all and I really wasn't in the mood.)
Loveless
This YA novel about a teenager figuring out she's aroace is not only set at Durham University, but the protagonist is also at the same college as me and studying the same course as I did, nearly two decades after me. O.o This really intensified the ways in which she was having an experience that was both very like and very unlike my own. There's a Tesco now! Also she met an ace person who explained that "asexual" and "aromantic" are things you can be! Imagine knowing at the tender age of eighteen that there are words for what you are and you're not just broken. Wild.
(me: it would be nice to feel more seen in the media i consume
also me: this is too much being seen take it back)
Anyway, my own personal complicated emotional situation aside, this was great - it really captures the experience of being a teenager and trying to figure out feelings and who you are and who your friends are. I felt like making the protagonist's older cousin also aroace felt a bit too neat, but otherwise, excellent stuff.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
I loved this novel about a teenage Chinese-American girl in the fifties discovering that she's queer. I've been following Malinda Lo's discussion of the research she'd been doing for this book in her newsletter, and based on that and her previous work, had a feeling it would hit on the richness of setting and character that really makes a book for me. And I was right: it really was an excellently engaging read.
I feel like the ending could have been a tad stronger, but honestly that didn't impinge on my enjoyment of it at all.
(content notes: homophobia, racism, threats to immigration status, brief but graphic mention of a past miscarriage)
A Line in the Dark
I have no idea how to rate this! The first half was shaping up to be a horribly compelling look at toxic friendship, but then it took a left turn into mediocre thriller, which seemed to be aiming for a shifting narrative, multiple perspectives, unreliable narrator thing that it couldn't quite land. But I did zoom through even the less good half at a rate of knots! I don't know.
Didn't finish: Queen of Coin and Whispers - Helen Corcoran
This f/f fantasy romance between a newly crowned queen and her newly appointed spymaster (both of whom are teenagers because why not) was mostly fine, if pretty flimsy. However about two thirds of the way through I hit the part where the queen and the spymaster's family get together to dress her up as a mythological figure to parade her at the Midwinter Ball, without telling her what they're doing, and without the narrative acknowledging that the spymaster had any reason to be upset other than the fact that she and the queen can't publicly acknowledge their relationship, and I was just done. Ultimately I feel like I spent a lot of the time I was reading this book thinking about ways it could have been better - the first few chapters were so promising!
no subject
Date: 16 Apr 2021 13:53 (UTC)I've got, but not yet read, Square Haunting - how did you find it?
no subject
Date: 17 Apr 2021 18:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: 17 Apr 2021 18:17 (UTC)