Books and comics read in July and August 2021
Wednesday, 1 September 2021 11:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhatsForgot to actually post this last month so here's a bumper July-August edition!
The Jasmine Throne - Tasha Suri
Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett
The Middle Ages: A Graphic History - Eleanor Janega and Neil Max Emmanuel
Hawkeye: Rio Bravo
Detransition, Baby - Torrey Peters
Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities ed Jos Twist, Ben Vincent, Meg-John Barker and Kat Gupta
Spellcracker's Honeymoon - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Shards of Earth - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Case of the Missing Marquess - Nancy Springer
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Cosmic Cooties
The Mighty Thor: Thunder In Her Veins
Riot Baby - Tochi Onyebuchi
The Mighty Captain Marvel: Alien Nation
The Flowers of Vashnoi - Lois McMaster Bujold
Three Seeking Stars - Avi Silver
She Who Became the Sun - Shelley Parker-Chan
Shadowhouse Fall - Daniel José Older
The Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett
The Folklore of Discworld - Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson
The Dark Archive - Genevieve Cogman
Drowned Country - Emily Tesh
Ghost-Spider: Dog Days Are Over
The Jasmine Throne
I LOVED this. The depth of characterisation and worldbuilding was wonderful; everything was so richly and vividly imagined. Tasha Suri is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors.
Spellcracker's Honeymoon
This is the third novella in Roberts's Regency-inspired-but-with-magic setting, and everything about it is really growing on me. It's very light, and I feel like overall I would prefer if it was slightly less light, but I enjoyed it a lot nevertheless.
The Case of the Missing Marquess
First in the Enola Holmes series! On the one hand, this was a fun entry into the "feisty teenage Victorian heroine" genre, very entertaining and handling the Sherlock Holmes stuff well. On the other, it was riddled with unexamined classist assumptions, plus a lot of stuff on Romani people that was clearly meant to indicate that Enola was more sympathetic and enlightened than the norm, but which came off as patronising and stereotyping. And also a bit of fatphobia, and a transphobic trope in a book with no indications that queer people exist in its world. And while none of this was more egregious than is (sadly) standard, it still made the reading experience much less fun than it would otherwise have been.
(I haven't actually seen the film yet but want to; a quick glance at the plot summary on wikipedia suggests it drops the transphobic trope at least?)
She Who Became the Sun
This has had a lot of hype and it really lived up to it. The setting feels gloriously real, the characters are rich and interesting, and it has a lot of big complicated feelings about gender. Excellent stuff, looking forward to the sequel.
The Folklore of Discworld
An interesting read but not quite the book I wanted it to be. It lays out the established folklore of the Disc and briefly comments on the real world folklore it's drawing from, but what I was hoping for was more exploration of how and why Discworld draws on and uses folklore, and what it does with it.
Ghost-Spider: Dog Days Are Over
Perfectly decent, if slight, superhero comic in the Buffy mould. The writing is fine, the art is good, but I'm coming down harder on it than I otherwise would because it's been nominated for a Hugo and I really don't think it's up to that standard. Aside from anything else, it's the only big two comic nominated this year and although I'm a long way out of comics fandom at this point I really can't believe this is the best or most interesting thing that Marvel or DC did in 2020. I mean, it's a fun read, it's all well executed, but as much as I feel like a solid execution of a fairly standard trope is absolutely praiseworthy, I just don't know that it's award worthy.
Didn't finish: The Conductors - Nicole Glover
This didn't do anything wrong, exactly, it was just a bit flat - I got to about 20% and couldn't really tell you anything more about the characters and setting than I'd got from reading the blurb, and given how many things I have to read that I'm really excited about I decided that I didn't want to sink any more time into it. I did really like the premise - magic based on constellations! Former Underground Railroad conductor fighting crime! - but the execution didn't really work for me.
The Jasmine Throne - Tasha Suri
Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett
The Middle Ages: A Graphic History - Eleanor Janega and Neil Max Emmanuel
Hawkeye: Rio Bravo
Detransition, Baby - Torrey Peters
Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities ed Jos Twist, Ben Vincent, Meg-John Barker and Kat Gupta
Spellcracker's Honeymoon - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Shards of Earth - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Case of the Missing Marquess - Nancy Springer
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Cosmic Cooties
The Mighty Thor: Thunder In Her Veins
Riot Baby - Tochi Onyebuchi
The Mighty Captain Marvel: Alien Nation
The Flowers of Vashnoi - Lois McMaster Bujold
Three Seeking Stars - Avi Silver
She Who Became the Sun - Shelley Parker-Chan
Shadowhouse Fall - Daniel José Older
The Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett
The Folklore of Discworld - Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson
The Dark Archive - Genevieve Cogman
Drowned Country - Emily Tesh
Ghost-Spider: Dog Days Are Over
The Jasmine Throne
I LOVED this. The depth of characterisation and worldbuilding was wonderful; everything was so richly and vividly imagined. Tasha Suri is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors.
Spellcracker's Honeymoon
This is the third novella in Roberts's Regency-inspired-but-with-magic setting, and everything about it is really growing on me. It's very light, and I feel like overall I would prefer if it was slightly less light, but I enjoyed it a lot nevertheless.
The Case of the Missing Marquess
First in the Enola Holmes series! On the one hand, this was a fun entry into the "feisty teenage Victorian heroine" genre, very entertaining and handling the Sherlock Holmes stuff well. On the other, it was riddled with unexamined classist assumptions, plus a lot of stuff on Romani people that was clearly meant to indicate that Enola was more sympathetic and enlightened than the norm, but which came off as patronising and stereotyping. And also a bit of fatphobia, and a transphobic trope in a book with no indications that queer people exist in its world. And while none of this was more egregious than is (sadly) standard, it still made the reading experience much less fun than it would otherwise have been.
(I haven't actually seen the film yet but want to; a quick glance at the plot summary on wikipedia suggests it drops the transphobic trope at least?)
She Who Became the Sun
This has had a lot of hype and it really lived up to it. The setting feels gloriously real, the characters are rich and interesting, and it has a lot of big complicated feelings about gender. Excellent stuff, looking forward to the sequel.
The Folklore of Discworld
An interesting read but not quite the book I wanted it to be. It lays out the established folklore of the Disc and briefly comments on the real world folklore it's drawing from, but what I was hoping for was more exploration of how and why Discworld draws on and uses folklore, and what it does with it.
Ghost-Spider: Dog Days Are Over
Perfectly decent, if slight, superhero comic in the Buffy mould. The writing is fine, the art is good, but I'm coming down harder on it than I otherwise would because it's been nominated for a Hugo and I really don't think it's up to that standard. Aside from anything else, it's the only big two comic nominated this year and although I'm a long way out of comics fandom at this point I really can't believe this is the best or most interesting thing that Marvel or DC did in 2020. I mean, it's a fun read, it's all well executed, but as much as I feel like a solid execution of a fairly standard trope is absolutely praiseworthy, I just don't know that it's award worthy.
Didn't finish: The Conductors - Nicole Glover
This didn't do anything wrong, exactly, it was just a bit flat - I got to about 20% and couldn't really tell you anything more about the characters and setting than I'd got from reading the blurb, and given how many things I have to read that I'm really excited about I decided that I didn't want to sink any more time into it. I did really like the premise - magic based on constellations! Former Underground Railroad conductor fighting crime! - but the execution didn't really work for me.
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