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recently read: june 2021
Jun. 27th, 2021 08:04 amI haven't been in a posting mood lately but I have been reading a lot.
The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells (books 1-6)
I ate these like potato chips. Fast-paced action scenes mercifully low on jargon (I saw a reviewer complain about a big gun being described as a "big gun") interspersed with the titular character learning how to do things like not have a panic attack when someone makes eye contact.
Note: entries 5 and 6 feel out of order to the point that I would recommend swapping their reading order, which I don't generally do! 5 is a full novel and takes place chronologically after 6, which is back to the novella format and doesn't really shed new light on anything in 5- it really feels like a publishing oddity, like 6 was in the chamber and ready to roll continuing with the existing format before a new publishing deal was signed.
Recommended: Yes
The Expert System's Brother / The Expert System's Champion by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The character voice on these is deliberately sort of... folkloreish? This is a scifi setting, but the people in it no longer understand the technology that got them to where they are.
Book 2 was still good but I felt like it dragged- I got tired of reading "stone-things" so often- and the questions it sets up have answers that are obvious a little too early in to be entirely engaging.
Recommended: Book 1 yes, book 2 probably if you enjoyed the first
The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
Part of the proud tradition of Sherlock Holmes AU fanfiction and up-front about it (the closing author's note is essentially "y'all heard about fanfic? this started off as a wingfic") and very fun. I enjoyed how it drops you into the setting that's largely familiar and then just drops in bits of information about the setting as asides from a POV character that takes for granted this all is common knowledge.
Recommended: Yes, with the caveat that a main character is trans in a setting where that's a point of significant conflict and I don't really know if their internal thoughts really land. Most of the book isn't focused on this, but it starts coming up in the later half / third.
Widdershins (Whyborne & Griffin book 1) by Jordan L Hawk
I gave this a go because I'd heard tell of fun depictions of archaeology in a supernatural setting later into the series but this left me a little meh. Very standard Lovecraft mythos cultist plot mashed together kind of gracelessly with stock M/M romance tropes. None of the characters really landed for me and I wasn't engaged with the romance, so it felt like half of this just wasn't for me, and the half I was there for fell kinda flat too. Maybe it hits its stride later into the series, but I don't think I'll find out.
Recommended: Nah. Maybe if you're more into M/M
The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang
This is a very cool setting that I don't know how to describe on a Sunday morning! Sorry.
Recommended: Yes
The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey
Honest to god I thought this was the first Lackey I'd read, and then I looked through my library and discovered I had read the entire Arrows trilogy and retained none of it. This is... maybe not a step up, but a step sideways from that. It feels like this is very much a mid-series book in a long-running series. It kind of chugs, frankly, with a lot of "the conclusion of this thread is obvious and I'm not really enjoying the journey there". Some of that may be that I don't enjoy siege stories much, and this is a tonally weird rollercoaster between grim sieges and descriptions of how the enemy loves to torture and kill people, and then decadent massage scenes. (What is it with older fantasy and its propensity for ~sexual healing~?)
I can see how some of Lackey's work would have been influential on queer people looking for the slightest scrap of content in the desert, but I don't think this has aged well. A mage making an entire species of sentient beings and playing keep-away with their reproductive rights, but they all decide it's okay and they love him anyway because he did it For Their Own Good: hoo boy.
Recommended: If you're deliberately going through older popular fantasy books? Sure. For enjoyment, no.
The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells (books 1-6)
I ate these like potato chips. Fast-paced action scenes mercifully low on jargon (I saw a reviewer complain about a big gun being described as a "big gun") interspersed with the titular character learning how to do things like not have a panic attack when someone makes eye contact.
Note: entries 5 and 6 feel out of order to the point that I would recommend swapping their reading order, which I don't generally do! 5 is a full novel and takes place chronologically after 6, which is back to the novella format and doesn't really shed new light on anything in 5- it really feels like a publishing oddity, like 6 was in the chamber and ready to roll continuing with the existing format before a new publishing deal was signed.
Recommended: Yes
The Expert System's Brother / The Expert System's Champion by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The character voice on these is deliberately sort of... folkloreish? This is a scifi setting, but the people in it no longer understand the technology that got them to where they are.
Book 2 was still good but I felt like it dragged- I got tired of reading "stone-things" so often- and the questions it sets up have answers that are obvious a little too early in to be entirely engaging.
Recommended: Book 1 yes, book 2 probably if you enjoyed the first
The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
Part of the proud tradition of Sherlock Holmes AU fanfiction and up-front about it (the closing author's note is essentially "y'all heard about fanfic? this started off as a wingfic") and very fun. I enjoyed how it drops you into the setting that's largely familiar and then just drops in bits of information about the setting as asides from a POV character that takes for granted this all is common knowledge.
Recommended: Yes, with the caveat that a main character is trans in a setting where that's a point of significant conflict and I don't really know if their internal thoughts really land. Most of the book isn't focused on this, but it starts coming up in the later half / third.
Widdershins (Whyborne & Griffin book 1) by Jordan L Hawk
I gave this a go because I'd heard tell of fun depictions of archaeology in a supernatural setting later into the series but this left me a little meh. Very standard Lovecraft mythos cultist plot mashed together kind of gracelessly with stock M/M romance tropes. None of the characters really landed for me and I wasn't engaged with the romance, so it felt like half of this just wasn't for me, and the half I was there for fell kinda flat too. Maybe it hits its stride later into the series, but I don't think I'll find out.
Recommended: Nah. Maybe if you're more into M/M
The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang
This is a very cool setting that I don't know how to describe on a Sunday morning! Sorry.
Recommended: Yes
The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey
Honest to god I thought this was the first Lackey I'd read, and then I looked through my library and discovered I had read the entire Arrows trilogy and retained none of it. This is... maybe not a step up, but a step sideways from that. It feels like this is very much a mid-series book in a long-running series. It kind of chugs, frankly, with a lot of "the conclusion of this thread is obvious and I'm not really enjoying the journey there". Some of that may be that I don't enjoy siege stories much, and this is a tonally weird rollercoaster between grim sieges and descriptions of how the enemy loves to torture and kill people, and then decadent massage scenes. (What is it with older fantasy and its propensity for ~sexual healing~?)
I can see how some of Lackey's work would have been influential on queer people looking for the slightest scrap of content in the desert, but I don't think this has aged well. A mage making an entire species of sentient beings and playing keep-away with their reproductive rights, but they all decide it's okay and they love him anyway because he did it For Their Own Good: hoo boy.
Recommended: If you're deliberately going through older popular fantasy books? Sure. For enjoyment, no.
