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usuallyhats) wrote2021-12-13 04:26 pm
usuallyhats) wrote2021-12-13 04:26 pm
Books and comics read in November 2021
Earth Logic - Laurie J Marks
One of Them - Musa Okwonga
The Poppy War - RF Kuang
The City We Became - NK Jemisin
Lady Liesl's Seaside Surprise - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Miles Morales: Straight Out of Brooklyn
Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett
The Poppy War
I dnfed this at 80% a few years ago, but the trilogy's been getting a lot of buzz so I thought I'd try finishing it. I'm not sorry I did, but it's SO grim, it's just not a trilogy for me.
The City We Became
Five strangers discover they're the embodiment of New York City as it comes under attack by Lovecraftian monsters. I liked this a lot, but it's definitely flawed in a lot of ways. A lot of the way it talks about New York borders on the hagiographic, which I didn't particularly mind as although I've only visited once I was very taken with it, but could get annoying if that's not your thing. (I did raise an eyebrow at the idea that there are no two cities more different than New York and London, though.) It raises a major moral dilemma - (skip) if cities being born is destroying millions of lives in other worlds, should it be allowed to continue? - which it then just ignores, though since it's the first in a trilogy there's plenty of time to revisit this. It's deeply unsubtle, which I mostly was really on board with, but between that and the archetypal elements of the city avatars' personalities, characterisation ended up being fairly thin. The main exception was the racist young white woman we meet partway in - the book does a great job of portraying how her bigoted domineering father shaped her and why her anger and frustration is always directed at the wrong targets, without making excuses for her actions and her racism.
But all that being said, I did really enjoy it - it's a fun read, I loved its commitment to displaying the diversity of New York, and as a big fan of cities I love anything about how great they are.
Lady Liesl's Seaside Surprise
These novellas just get more and more delightful. This one's a mystery novel with myths and magic and a very sweet f/f romance, I liked it a lot. (It did however somewhat skip over some consent issues (not in the central romance), which I didn't love - it didn't treat the situation as ok, but it didn't really unpack the implications.)
Didn't finish: Legendborn - Tracy Deonn
This was a perfectly solid YA novel, but transplanting Arthurian myths to the US is a really hard sell for me, and this didn't manage get over that (my suspension of disbelief shattered at a group of people who can trace an unbroken line back to various of the knights of the round table, including Arthur himself). Definitely a soft DNF, we were just not right for each other.
The Old Drift - Namwali Serpell
I enjoyed a lot of things about this magical realist multigeneration novel - I blazed through the first third - but the character relationships were all so antagonistic (very few characters ever seemed to either offer or receive affection or kindness), and there was really a lot of Straight Nonsense, and by the time I hit the 60% mark the things I liked were being outweighed by the things I didn't, so I stopped reading it.
A short story I enjoyed this month:
Open House on Haunted Hill - John Wisewell: Very charming story about a haunted house that doesn't want to hurt anyone.
One of Them - Musa Okwonga
The Poppy War - RF Kuang
The City We Became - NK Jemisin
Lady Liesl's Seaside Surprise - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Miles Morales: Straight Out of Brooklyn
Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett
The Poppy War
I dnfed this at 80% a few years ago, but the trilogy's been getting a lot of buzz so I thought I'd try finishing it. I'm not sorry I did, but it's SO grim, it's just not a trilogy for me.
The City We Became
Five strangers discover they're the embodiment of New York City as it comes under attack by Lovecraftian monsters. I liked this a lot, but it's definitely flawed in a lot of ways. A lot of the way it talks about New York borders on the hagiographic, which I didn't particularly mind as although I've only visited once I was very taken with it, but could get annoying if that's not your thing. (I did raise an eyebrow at the idea that there are no two cities more different than New York and London, though.) It raises a major moral dilemma - (skip) if cities being born is destroying millions of lives in other worlds, should it be allowed to continue? - which it then just ignores, though since it's the first in a trilogy there's plenty of time to revisit this. It's deeply unsubtle, which I mostly was really on board with, but between that and the archetypal elements of the city avatars' personalities, characterisation ended up being fairly thin. The main exception was the racist young white woman we meet partway in - the book does a great job of portraying how her bigoted domineering father shaped her and why her anger and frustration is always directed at the wrong targets, without making excuses for her actions and her racism.
But all that being said, I did really enjoy it - it's a fun read, I loved its commitment to displaying the diversity of New York, and as a big fan of cities I love anything about how great they are.
Lady Liesl's Seaside Surprise
These novellas just get more and more delightful. This one's a mystery novel with myths and magic and a very sweet f/f romance, I liked it a lot. (It did however somewhat skip over some consent issues (not in the central romance), which I didn't love - it didn't treat the situation as ok, but it didn't really unpack the implications.)
Didn't finish: Legendborn - Tracy Deonn
This was a perfectly solid YA novel, but transplanting Arthurian myths to the US is a really hard sell for me, and this didn't manage get over that (my suspension of disbelief shattered at a group of people who can trace an unbroken line back to various of the knights of the round table, including Arthur himself). Definitely a soft DNF, we were just not right for each other.
The Old Drift - Namwali Serpell
I enjoyed a lot of things about this magical realist multigeneration novel - I blazed through the first third - but the character relationships were all so antagonistic (very few characters ever seemed to either offer or receive affection or kindness), and there was really a lot of Straight Nonsense, and by the time I hit the 60% mark the things I liked were being outweighed by the things I didn't, so I stopped reading it.
A short story I enjoyed this month:
Open House on Haunted Hill - John Wisewell: Very charming story about a haunted house that doesn't want to hurt anyone.