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Books and comics read in February and March 2024
Thursday, 4 April 2024 13:44Chain-Gang All-Stars - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The Saint of Bright Doors - Vajra Chandrasekera
Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo
American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang
Hollowthorn - Kalyn Josephson
Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate - Anna Bogutskaya
Dead Man's Ransom - Ellis Peters
Our Hideous Progeny - CE McGill
To Sail Beyond the Botnet - Suzanne Palmer
The Hexologists - Josiah Bancroft
The Scandalous Letters of V and J - Felicia Davin
Three Eight One - Aliya Whiteley
The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle - TL Huchu
Time of the Cat - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Catherine, Called Birdy - Karen Cushman
Ha'penny - Jo Walton
Thick As Thieves - Megan Whalen Turner
The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary - Sarah Ogilvie
The Body in the Blitz - Robin Stevens
A Stroke of the Pen - Terry Pratchett
Phantom Pains - Mishell Baker
Unruly: The Ridiculous History of Britain's Kings and Queens - David Mitchell
Not much to say about these, and I've been really busy at work so haven't had much brain for writing things up. A lot of really solid books in there, plus The Saint of Bright Doors really is as good as everyone's been saying.
This book felt like it was constantly on the verge of making an argument that it never quite got to. I really enjoyed its journey through the evolution of various types of unlikeable female character, and I'm glad I read it, but I wish there had been slightly more of a destination at the end of it.
Our Hideous Progeny
This was GREAT: what if Frankenstein's paleontologist great-niece discovered his notes and decided to Make Some Mistakes? It's incredibly assured for a debut and really good at nuance - every character is a whole person who remains human however badly they behave.
(content notes (beyond everything implied by "Frankenstein" and "Victorian setting"): infant loss)
Didn't finish:
Far From the Light of Heaven
I stuck with this much longer than I should have, partly because I found a lot to like in the author's previous work, and also because the premise sounded exactly up my alley: locked spaceship murder mystery in which the captain, Shell, wakes up to find that the ship's AI has rebooted and thirty of the thousand sleeping passengers she'd been transporting have been murdered. But sadly it just wasn't great. It's really messy and unfocussed: stuff keeps happening and our heroes react to it, but they (as of 50% in) never really get the chance to investigate anything or do anything other than react.
It also felt weirdly low stakes: the characters and narrative seem to forget about the surviving passengers too frequently for the threat to them to seem real, plus the ship is a) orbiting a planet, which seems to have the capability to rescue the named characters whenever, and b) close enough to the last space station it checked in at for Shell's godfather and his daughter to pop over and help out more or less on whim.
Ultimately there were some great elements and ideas thrown in, but the execution wasn't quite there, alas.
The Saint of Bright Doors - Vajra Chandrasekera
Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo
American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang
Hollowthorn - Kalyn Josephson
Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate - Anna Bogutskaya
Dead Man's Ransom - Ellis Peters
Our Hideous Progeny - CE McGill
To Sail Beyond the Botnet - Suzanne Palmer
The Hexologists - Josiah Bancroft
The Scandalous Letters of V and J - Felicia Davin
Three Eight One - Aliya Whiteley
The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle - TL Huchu
Time of the Cat - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Catherine, Called Birdy - Karen Cushman
Ha'penny - Jo Walton
Thick As Thieves - Megan Whalen Turner
The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary - Sarah Ogilvie
The Body in the Blitz - Robin Stevens
A Stroke of the Pen - Terry Pratchett
Phantom Pains - Mishell Baker
Unruly: The Ridiculous History of Britain's Kings and Queens - David Mitchell
Not much to say about these, and I've been really busy at work so haven't had much brain for writing things up. A lot of really solid books in there, plus The Saint of Bright Doors really is as good as everyone's been saying.
Unlikeable Female Characters (three stars), Our Hideous Progeny (five stars)
Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to HateThis book felt like it was constantly on the verge of making an argument that it never quite got to. I really enjoyed its journey through the evolution of various types of unlikeable female character, and I'm glad I read it, but I wish there had been slightly more of a destination at the end of it.
Our Hideous Progeny
This was GREAT: what if Frankenstein's paleontologist great-niece discovered his notes and decided to Make Some Mistakes? It's incredibly assured for a debut and really good at nuance - every character is a whole person who remains human however badly they behave.
(content notes (beyond everything implied by "Frankenstein" and "Victorian setting"): infant loss)
Didn't finish:
Far From the Light of Heaven - Tade Thompson
Far From the Light of Heaven
I stuck with this much longer than I should have, partly because I found a lot to like in the author's previous work, and also because the premise sounded exactly up my alley: locked spaceship murder mystery in which the captain, Shell, wakes up to find that the ship's AI has rebooted and thirty of the thousand sleeping passengers she'd been transporting have been murdered. But sadly it just wasn't great. It's really messy and unfocussed: stuff keeps happening and our heroes react to it, but they (as of 50% in) never really get the chance to investigate anything or do anything other than react.
It also felt weirdly low stakes: the characters and narrative seem to forget about the surviving passengers too frequently for the threat to them to seem real, plus the ship is a) orbiting a planet, which seems to have the capability to rescue the named characters whenever, and b) close enough to the last space station it checked in at for Shell's godfather and his daughter to pop over and help out more or less on whim.
Ultimately there were some great elements and ideas thrown in, but the execution wasn't quite there, alas.
