Post-Hamilton Post

It was amazing. It was glorious.  It was just what you want it to be.  The music that I know by heart, the same, but with enough subtle changes to make every bit worth listening to. The dancing was amazing--just the dance alone would have been an incredible show.  The acting was such fun to watch, and there are so many details in action and expression that it brought a whole new level to how wonderful the album already is.

Absolutely delightful.

And now I have a cold, thanks NYC, so back to our regularly scheduled posts next week!

This Hiatus Brought To You By....

Hamilton!

That's right, no bookish post today because I'm on Broadway, baby, with the hottest ticket in town in my hot little hands.  Full report to come!

In the meantime:

I Heart Patreon

I have a million more reviews I need to write, but I've wanted for a while to do a post about Patreon.

I love Patreon. I love being able to give money to creators I love, especially those whose product is online, or sporadic, or whom I consume through the library and don't pay directly.  I love the idea that I can pay a small amount for something I value online.  For the most part, if you're in my blog reader and you have a Patreon, I am very happy to be giving you money.

So who do I support?

Webcomics!

Tom Siddell's Gunnerkrigg Court is the big one; he was the first one I sponsored, and it was so exciting to see that he is making about the same amount from his Patreon per month as I am at my job. (That equates to less after taxes and fees, but either way, he's making a living wage from his art.)  I find this incredibly inspirational.  I will say that he is a complete professional--his posting schedule is like clockwork and I don't think he's ever missed a post.  I really hope he's living the dream as much as I imagine he is.

I also support Ngozi Ukazu's Check, Please!, which is insanely popular and another one that's making her a full time living. I support this one at a lower level, partly because there are WAY fewer updates. She does maintain an active Twitter feed for the characters and posts sketches pretty regularly, but the fact is that I don't follow all those (and actually find a lot of the supplemental material hard to navigate). But the comic is amazing and worth my money, so by gum she gets my cash.

Drew Weing writes The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo, which I don't even remember how I found.  I got in on the ground floor of that one, though; I read the first couple of pages and it seemed to have potential, so I figured I'd give him some money and see where it went.  It's a good comic, and I feel like I'm watching the mythology get richer and the story get better as he goes.

Bloggers.

I am a complete sucker for an advice column; most of the ones I read are in newspapers (I pay for an online subscription to the Washington Post because of Carolyn Hax), but I've been reading Captain Awkward forever. I actually emailed her once and suggested she open a Patreon so I could sponsor her; I don't flatter myself that that's how it happened, but I'm glad it did.

Siderea is a blogger I learned about specifically because her sponsorship model is a bit unusual; it's per post, rather than per month.  If she posts, you pay; if not, you don't.  She actually posts small, casual posts at a fairly normal rate, but her long, carefully researched analytical posts are incredible and totally worth the money.  I've read her nearly-novella-length exegesis of the first part of Watership Down several times. She's been writing a lot about politics lately, and her realism and pragmatism are very reassuring to me.

I've been reading the Lady Business blog for a while; they just started their Patreon and it hasn't got a ton of momentum yet, but I'm glad to sponsor it.  They are a go-to source for feminist geekery, and where I get most of my non-Buffy fanfic recommendations, as well as a lot of great, in-depth recommendations for TV, movies, and books that are directly up my alley.

Creators.

There are a few artists who aren't producing anything special, but whose work I love so much that I sponsor them in a small way just so they'll keep creating things for me to read.  There's Ursula Vernon, on whom I've gushed in the past, and Linda Medley, whose Castle Waiting is so wonderful that it's worth the years of waiting and paying for in the interim.

I actually don't sponsor any podcasts yet; I've only recently become a real podcast listener, and some of my favorites aren't sponsored (Gin Jenny, Whiskey Jenny, I would sponsor you!). Ursula Vernon has podcasts; I already give her money.  But I've also been listening to StoryWonk's Dusted (Buffy podcast) and I've got a whole bunch of things that I want to try an episode of--when I get my lineup lined up, I'm probably going to add some podcasters to this list.

I love Patreon.  I love that I can be a small part of something that can make a big difference together. I love the idea of the artists whose work I value making a living doing what they love.  Patreon is something I'm so glad exists, because this is exactly how I want to be spending my money.

Quick Review: Comeback!

I read a bunch of books over the holidays this year that I haven't had a chance to review yet, but I lurved them and want to share the glory with you. So: a series of brief review posts!

Do you remember Trouble Is a Friend of Mine? Remember how much I loved it?  (A lot. The amount was a lot.) The sequel came out!  I had pre-ordered it, which is a thing that I do not do, ever.  And I read it.  Right away.  This is unprecedented; I never read the books I buy.

Once again, I was in no way disappointed.  Trouble Makes a Comeback is great in all the best ways.  It's also preposterous, melodramatic, and convoluted, but you just can't care with Zoe and Digby and Sloane and Henry and Felix tooling around town, going up against drug dealers small and large, enormous corporate conspiracies, and the high school football team. 

Digby's back, but Zoe's settled into a normal life and maybe knows better than to get involved with his brand of crazy again (also, why didn't he call?).  She has a boyfriend and besties and is totally normal, and Digby is trying to drag her straight into his investigation...but how can she resist? Everything is more interesting with Digby around.

And more dangerous.  The stakes are higher this time around--in the first book, there's a sense at first that this could all be a bit overblown and mostly in Digby's head.  But here, we are learning that everything in the first book is the tip of the iceberg. 

And I really loved that, while there was definitely romantic tension in this book, that is not even remotely the main basis of this relationship.  I don't even know if you call this a slow burn--this is a book full of sparks, but with people who have more important things to do than obsess over romance.

There will definitely be a third--the end was practically a cliffhanger--and as soon as they announce it I'm ordering it.  Can't waaaaaaaaait.  Stephanie Tromly, you're awesome. Write more books!

Quick Review: Diabolical!

I read a bunch of books over the holidays this year that I haven't had a chance to review yet, but I lurved them and want to share the glory with you. So: a series of brief review posts!

I really wanted to do a post of its own about S.J. Kincaid's The Diabolic, which I read over Christmas, but it sat half written through the flu and now it's too late for the lavish, loving extravaganza of a review I wanted to give it.

Nemesis is a Diabolic, a genetically engineered humanoid who is designed to be a bodyguard.  Big, fast, strong, ruthless, she's been imprinted on a girl named Sidonia, who becomes her best friend and the star around which Nemesis orbits.  But when Sidonia's family falls out of favor with the Emperor, she is summoned to his space station palace as hostage, and it's clear what her fate is to be.  The only way for Nemesis to save her is to take her place.

Okay, so this is a fish-out-of-water story about someone bluntly practical trying to imitate royalty, which is TOTALLY MY JAM. I was all over this, and it generally did not disappoint, in many ways soared far beyond my hopes for it, and in one way really made me mad--partly because it was otherwise SO GOOD why did you use Literally The Worst Trope? Why? (Note: I will spoil in "The Bad" section below. Warned!)

What was good: The complicated political games Nemesis has to learn how to play.  She's more of a trouble-comes-punch-it type of person, but she knows full well that she can't show that or everyone will know she's not Sidonia, so she takes her lessons very seriously. There are many layers to alliances and manners and invitations and appearances, and they are treated with the solemnity they reserve, which is to say that everyone knows they're ridiculous, but they dictate how the world is run, so you have to play them.  This isn't about how snobs are shallow; it's about how snobs are cutthroat.

What was even better: I find that futuristic stories that try to hinge on manners and mores and appearances the way Victorian novels do tend to be unbelievable.  It's very hard to convince me that a romance in the future is shocking in its impropriety. But Kincaid made the silly, meaningless rules of court hugely important.  Honestly, it was almost Dune-like in how it folded real politics into frivolous appearances. 

Also, Nemesis's explorations of what it means that she's not human, the fact that she doesn't just discover that she's really a human being after all, but that she gets to be who she is--not human, but a person.  Something different, but still someone worthy. The things that make her different make her better not just in the ways they are intended--strong, brave, loyal--but also in unexpected ways--perceptive, just, sympathetic.

The bad: Again, this is the spoilery section.  I saw the plot thread coming for ages, but I'm so mad about how it ended.  Sidonia and Nemesis had such a lovely relationship--it was complicated by a lot of factors, but I really hoped it would turn into a romance.  Even later, after the male lead showed up, I had my hopes. And you know, I can live with not getting a lesbian romance out of this. But you know what happens to lesbians in The Worst Trope, right? Yup.

So, aside from that one big, glaring caveat, this book was amazing.  I highly recommend it, really, even if you have to brace yourself for The Worst Trope.  In so many ways it's a sharp, fast, smart story that really thinks about personal relationships and what they mean.  

Quick Review: Avalanche!

I read a bunch of books over the holidays this year that I haven't had a chance to review yet, but I lurved them and want to share the glory with you. So: a series of brief review posts!

Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies, by Lindsay Ribar. I read a review of this one from the Booksmugglers and it sounded weird and fascinating, and I'm sorry but is that not the best title?

Aspen Quick is visiting his aunt and grandmother for the summer; they need a third family member to help with the ritual.  Their family has powers--they can use objects to pull things from people--and they use them to keep the cliff that looms over the town from collapsing and destroying everything.  Every few days, the cliff trembles and the family makes an offering. They take something--one kid's competitive spirit; another woman's enjoyment of rowing on the lake. They offer these to the cliff to keep it quiet.

But Aspen can take things any time. He can take away his friend's anger when he's done something obnoxious, or a girl's desire for him to go away.  It's easy, and it makes life easy and smooth.  He just can't figure out why his father wouldn't take away his mother's desire to move out.

So good.  Aspen is exactly the kind of privileged kind-of-brat that having a power like that would make you. He doesn't seem like a jerk, really; even from the first page, you're reading this likeable guy, and he says some things that you think you must have misunderstood in the rush of worldbuilding.  But as you go along you realize, no, he just has no idea what's going on outside of his own head.  And so you follow Aspen through the summer when he basically learns what it means to be a good person. It's such a good story, with lots of sad parts, and also lots of parts about how hard it is to be a good person that, I'm sorry, I could really relate to.

Code Switch

I was drawn to Lucy and Linh, by Alice Pung, because a fish-out-of-water story at a fancy-pants private school is exactly what I want to read, thank you.  I got the book from Netgalley (for an honest review; thank you, Netgalley!) and I got started, and it is definitely about a fish out of water at a fancy-pants private school--but the pants might be too fancy, and instead of water, the fish is kind of in a murky cesspool of malevolence.

Lucy's family came to Australia from Vietnam when she was a small child; they're ethnically Chinese.  She lives on a poor side of town and goes to the local Catholic school, where many immigrants send their children to get a better education than in public school.  Her father works at a carpet factory and her mother does piecework, sewing clothing at home while taking care of her baby brother.

Then Lucy applies for the first ever scholarship position at the incredibly posh Laurinda Academy, and, to her own shock, gets in.  Suddenly she's going to a school where everyone else is rich, and white, and very, very snobby.  At the point where I am (not quite halfway through the book), most of the story is about the politics and social life of this school.

Which is awful. Every single person there is horrible. From the very first moment, when we learn that the very expensive uniform must be purchased from a certain very expensive store and the headmistress doesn't seem to notice that this might be a hardship, to the firm label of Charity Case that she seems to have stuck on Lucy's head, the whole school seems toxic.  There is a popular crowd who walks the halls in slow motion with a wind machine blowing their hair back--they are called The Cabinet and they rule the school but are evil, evil, evil, playing random pranks designed to crush people's spirits, including one on a teacher that results in a nervous breakdown.

These people are so evil I don't believe them.  They do not seem to have any interiority; unlike, say, Before I Fall, the mean girls don't seem to have any personalities or desires or emotions that drive them.  They just enjoy ruining lives.  They're sociopaths, basically.  And a lot of the attention of the school--and of the book--is devoted to them.

I wanted more about Lucy.  So far she's mostly an observer; she's tried to talk to one or two other students about things, but they don't get it or won't talk about it.  I'm frustrated for her, because she seems like the only sane person in the crazytown of this school, but she's got a Nick Caraway vibe going on, in that she doesn't really seem to have much of a role in the story yet.

The format of the book is interesting, too--it's addressed to Linh, who seems to be a friend of Lucy's from her old school, someone she left behind. Linh is in all of her memories from her old school, and sometimes backs Lucy up when she's, say, on the phone with someone from school, but her actual role isn't clear at all.  I'm pretty sure at this point that the epistolary nature of the novel is a bit of a gimmick; it doesn't seem to be adding anything to the story, and I think it's working more as a metaphor.

I really wanted to like the book better.  I did listen to the Reading the End podcast episode about it (warning, there are some spoilers there--but it's worth listening to for the sharp observations about how evil cliques work in real life vs. stories), and they felt the same way I did: there's some good potential here, but the story focuses way too much of the mean girls at school.  I do love Lucy's family--her lovable baby brother, her dad who takes time of work whenever he needs to for her, her mom who sews all day and loves her children fiercely.  Her family is great, and if the book is trying to paint them as awkward in the fancy world Lucy now inhabits, it's failing, because her parents seem pretty rational and the adults at this school are all on some kind of crack.

So I think this book is not for me.  I'm pretty sure I really like what it's aspiring to, but it's strayed a little too much into caricature to work, in my opinion.  I'm only partway through it, so maybe that opinion will change, but I also might not finish it at this point. 

Thank you again to Netgalley for the review copy.  I'm never sure about writing about a review book that I'm not sure I'll finish, but I really wanted to talk about this one, because the ingredients of the book aren't adding up to everything it could be. 

Dusk or Dawn, Dark or Day

Or rather Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day, by Seanan McGuire, which is a lovely title for a ghost story with many lovely aspects but that is, ultimately, Not For Me.

I picked the book up (from Netgalley, for review; thank you, Netgalley!) because of how much I loved Every Heart a Doorway. I knew it was about ghosts--as in, a story about the "lives" of ghosts, from their point of view, which is a hard world to build, in my opinion.  If you're going to show me a vision of the afterlife that looks pretty much exactly like being alive (these are ghosts who live in apartments and have jobs and eat sometimes), I'm already pretty skeptical. There's an element of "moving on," though--you only stay as a ghost if you go before your time--another concept that I'm kind of fuzzy on, but I'm not bad at suspension of disbelief.

Jenna died too soon--when her sister Patty killed herself, Jenna was distraught and died in an accident. Now, years later, Jenna has moved from her small town home to New York City, where she works at a suicide hotline, "earning" her extra time back to get closer to the right time for her death.  So, this is the first confusing thing--ghosts can "steal" time from living people. Now, what I think when I hear this is that the person's life gets shorter--maybe their death date moves up or maybe they get older. But what it actually means is that the ghost takes some of the person's age--the person gets younger, winds back the time that the ghost takes, and the ghost gets older, closer to their death date/moving on.

Ghosts can also give time--get further from their death date, stay on earth longer, and by giving those minutes or hours or years to a human, cause the person to age.  Apparently most ghosts are eager to move on, so they steal time from people in a win-win situation--people get younger, ghosts get older and move on sooner. But a few ghosts want to stay, and they tend to find bad people and give them back time to keep away from their death date.

But Jenna's odder--she has somehow decided that she has to earn the right to move on. So she works at a suicide hotline, and whenever she talks someone into living longer, she logs that time and only then allows herself to take that time from someone. This was really my first sticking point; I really can't figure out why Jenna would put this artificial gate between herself and the thing she wants--to be with her sister Patty. I didn't get a feel for Jenna's relationship with Patty, either, which was supposed to be the driving force of the novel.

The actual story begins when ghosts start to disappear from the city. Jenna and a few allies are the only ones to investigate--her ghost landlady, a local witch, a homeless woman.  They follow the trail which leads them, for some reason, into Jenna's past.

Talking it through, I think this was part of the trouble I had with the story--there were a lot of different pieces that ended up dovetailing for no particular reason. Jenna's personal story and the problem of the missing ghosts are mostly unrelated, except for a lot of ways they're related.  A lot of the plot is driven by coincidence, in the end, which doesn't work as well for me.

What I will say, though, is that Seanan McGuire can write.  The day to day moments of Jenna's life are smooth and lovely to read, and if I didn't understand a lot of the emotional content, the way it's described was not the problem. I didn't love this book, but I absolutely want to read much more by this author.

A Whole New World

I don't even remember when I started reading 52 Book Minimum, and we have very dissimilar taste in books, but I actually kind of love reading book reviews for books that I'm never going to read, and I love people who take the time to fill their reviews with gifs.  So, despite the fact that she doesn't like Squirrel Girl, I continue to read her blog all the damned time.  I don't usually add to my to-read from there, though, because she reads a lot of, as she puts it, porn.

But I was recovering from the Death Flu and I read her review of The Wingman by Natasha Anders, which was glowing, and which ended with the point that it was available to Read Now on Netgalley, and here we are.  I read the porn. I am a reader of porn. Your finer contemporary erotic romance.

Nah, I'm just kidding. I mean, I'll admit that I usually get my porn from fanfic, because I don't have to worry about anyone making me care about their characters.  But as promised, this book was adorable.  Daisy is so likeable, and her sense of herself as the not-attractive one is really well-told.  She's the "other sister"--not the pretty one, not the cute one--and in their small town, that kind of thing sticks.  Mason would normally never look twice at her, but when his brother wants to chat up  her sister, he agrees to play you-know-what.

So, here's the thing--being hit on by the wingman is not by definition a bad thing.  I mean, sure, a guy who isn't actually attracted to you  was chatting you up, so maybe it's...dishonest, a little? But no, even that, you had a conversation with someone who didn't want to take you home--that's not inherently gross.  I will admit, however, that the way it went down was uncool, so it makes sense that Mason feels like a heel and Daisy feels like he owes her one, and sexy hijinks ensue.

There was a decent amount of the usual stuff that makes romances eye-rolly--Mason is ex-military and pretty fond of barking orders, and I'm sorry but boundaries are not a starting place for flirtatious negotiations--but overall this was really about two people who realize they like each other and become more attracted to each other as they get to know each other.  How about that, huh?

In sum, everything that Kelly said in her review, and please enjoy this picture of Daisy's dog, Peaches.

(I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley for honest review.)

Influenzed

Naturally, right after an author tweets something incredibly flattering and links my review, I immediately come down with the flu and can't post for a week. All of my descriptions for how sick I was sound like hyperbole--I was barely able to get out of bed, I kind of felt like I was dying. But yeah, the flu is not a joke--I had chills and the doctor gave me IV fluids and even after I was feeling better, I could only read for half an hour at a time before my head would loll back.

But!  Here I am, in between naps, back in action. I've read so many books in the past month that I want to write about, it's a bit overwhelming, but I'm also trying to decide whether to finish an ARC that I'm not that into, just because I want to talk about why I'm not that into it.  I generally try not to review advance copies unless I finish them, since it seems unfair--especially if the book seems mostly okay, just not for me.  But I really want to discuss this one.  I'm pretty sure, by my own personal ethical system, that means I have to finish the book.

Anyway, I hope to get back on my normal posting schedule this week, but I wanted to say hi and that I'm wheezing but surviving over here. And I'm reading the cheesiest romance novel, an incredible sci fi novel, and a Terry Pratchett novel, so life is, overall, not too bad.

I hope you can say the same!

The Long-Awaited Ursula Vernon Post

I have been promising a post about Ursula Vernon for so long I almost don't know how to write it.  And I keep mentioning how much I like her books, but I never get around to laying it all out there.  Well, this week I finished her novel Nine Goblins, and it's time to babble on appreciatively.

But let's start at the beginning--Danny Dragonbreath. The library website kept putting that series in front of my face, and it seemed about age appropriate for my son, so we started reading them. They are the MOST fun. Danny is brave and loyal and tricky and just an ordinary kid, and with his best friend Wendell, he has adventures all over the place. No one believes he's a real dragon, because he can't quite breathe fire yet, but he can save the school from a scourge of were-wieners or visit his great grandfather in mythical Japan (It's a really good bus system.)

It's not perfect--there are some stereotypes, like Wendell, the genius who is frightened of and allergic to everything, and Danny's skepticism of girls in general (which gets much better over the course of the series). I admit those slowed me down a bit at first, especially since my son wasn't at all skeptical of girls when we read this and I didn't want him getting ideas.  But ultimately, they're just so off-the-wall and wacky, I can't pass them up.

When we'd plowed through all eleven Dragonbreath books, we started on Hamster Princess, which is about Harriet Hamsterbone, an incredible princess who spent her childhood invulnerable due to a curse and consequently learned to be a seriously badass hero.  There are only three Harriet books so far, but they are just as much fun--maybe moreso, with her battle quail and her cliff diving hobby and fearless swords-hamster-ship.

At about this point, Ursula Vernon wrote a book called The Seventh Bride, published under the name T. Kingfisher, which is the name that she uses for her non-kids work.  This book got some buzz, but I didn't realize it was the same author until months after I'd read it.  The only word for this book is charming--the story is loosely Bluebeardish, but between the hedgehog sidekick and the mysterious Clock Wife, it's the small, rich details of a mundane magical world that make the book shine.

The last time I really meant to write an Ursula Vernon review, though, was when I was reading Digger, a comic she originally published on the web, about a hard-bitten wombat who gets lost and tunnels her way into a land far from anything she knows.  Digger just wants to get home, but she finds herself embroiled in local drama. Between the mysterious source of her impossible tunnel, a talking statue of the god Ganesh, a fanatical order of veiled priests, an aggressive tribe of fierce warrior hyenas, and a simple child made of shadows, Digger has a lot to sort out if she's going to find her way home.

What makes Digger so great, though, is how this complicated, high-fantasy setting and plot are carried out around such pragmatic, mundane characters.  Digger has no interest in making enemies or solving mysteries, but she is very interested in doing the right thing, which drags her into the middle of a million situations.  Eventually, the world needs saving, and who's going to step up? That's right--always a wombat.

I'm not doing this justice; I don't think I can.  She's just so matter-of-fact, whether she's fighting a hoard of hyenas or befriending an outcast, politely drinking warrior tea (blech) or patiently explaining to the Shadowchild that you shouldn't eat anything that can talk (CAN YOU TALK, TOMATO? CAN YOU?), you just want Digger on your side. I read this to my son, and though I think a lot of it went over his head, he loved it, too.

This week, though, I read Nine Goblins, a short novel from a few years ago--again, T. Kingfisher--about a troop of goblins who get magically yanked from a battlefield by an errant wizard.  Miles from the front and in enemy territory, the motley band just wants to find their way safely home, but end up facing bigger dangers than they're ready for.

This book. This book. Okay, so there are two big things to say about it. The first--the obvious one--is that this is more like reading Terry Pratchett than anything I've ever read by anyone who was not Terry Pratchett. Except for those Pratchett moments where the narrator backs off to explicitly state grand facts about the way the world works that both fit perfectly in the story and are true on a very deep level (RIP, Sir Terry, you were a great gift to the world), this book had all the charm, wit, warmth and weirdness that made Discworld so incredible.  I thought this from the beginning, and then when I went to review it on Goodreads, I saw that everyone else thought it, too.  It's full of mostly good people doing mostly their best, even the ones who are causing trouble (mostly).

But there is another thing that was going on when I was reading this, which is that I was simultaneously rereading Siderea's essay on kingship in the first section of Watership Down. I read this essay before and loved it, and it came to mind because the Jennys at the Reading the End podcast might do a WD reread this year. So I went back and read the essay, and I happened to be reading Nine Goblins, too.

And guys, kingship. Reading that essay about what leadership means and watching Sargent Nessilka lead her strange and really barely all-there team through this adventure made my heart swell.  The essay was dissecting Nessilka's leadership--caring (valuing your team) and daring (taking the big risks); making the decision just because someone has to, even if you're likely to be wrong, gambling when you have to--it's all here.  Especially the caring and daring--she doesn't want to go into the abandoned house, but neither does anyone else, so she does it.  But the best part--maybe my favorite thing in the book--is her fatalistic, fed-up caring. So one member of the team, Blanchett, has had a bit of a rough time.  At this point, he carries around a teddy bear, and speaks mostly when translating for the bear. Nessilka respectfully addresses the bear as necessary--and, to be honest, the bear is one of the most valuable members of the team.  At one point she leaves him in charge.

I cannot tell you how much this book meant to me.  It made my heart swell.  I've bought all Ursula Vernon's other T. Kingfisher books now, and I can't wait to read them.  I also sponsor her Patreon (Siderea of the above essay, too, by the way; I should do a post on my Patreon account, because I love it). And I want more.

God, I haven't even mentioned the illustrations!  Digger is a comic, of course, and her kids' books are part comic. I love her illustration and I'm trying to pick a print from her store.  I want a troll--her trolls are the best.  And I left out Castle Hangnail! One of the best books I read last year, straight up.  Also illustrated.  Also for kids.

I'm sorry, this has gone on forever.  It's years of pent up fanhood.  But the point of this is that you should read Harriet Hamsterbone and Danny Dragonbreath to your kids, and Nine Goblins for yourself (and your older kids; there's nothing inappropriate there, though my eight-year-old found it too confusing to listen to). And read some of her online stories. And if you see her on the street, you should give her a hug.  Maybe ask first. Tell her it's from me. 

Dread, Both Existential and Immediate

I don't think I've ever felt such a protracted sense of dread when reading a book.  Emotionally, it was like the most tense parts of a Hitchcock movie strung together for 300 pages, even though there are no more moments of high drama in My Sister Rosa than in any other psychological thriller--if that's what you could call this.

Justine Larbalestier has written some dark books (Liar) and some distant characters (Magic or Madness), but Rosa is a whole other thing. This book is creepy, but not in a horror novel way.  It's about Che, the 17-year-old son of a globe-trotting, super-cool couple who's just moved to New York with his family to pursue his parents' latest business venture.  But what it's really about is, as advertised, Che's sister Rosa.  Because Rosa is a psychopath, and Che seems to be the only one who knows it.

When she was little, they recognized she was not typical and she saw doctors and therapists.  But she didn't like that, and she learned the right things to say, and they declared her fine.  Now, Rosa is the perfect little adorable girl--to everyone except her brother.  She trusts him. She tells him things. She asks him questions.

And Che, god bless him, tries to keep her in check.  He extracts promises about what she won't do. He watches her, and he answers her questions about how to be normal. And he loves her, and also he hates her.

Che lives in such a state of hyperawareness of Rosa that I started to get really twitchy halfway through this book.  The family doesn't have much money, but they live well because the parents work for their best friends, who are incredibly wealthy.  Che's father's family tree is full of violent, arrogant people, so he knows where Rosa comes from, and he understands the risk.  But his parents won't listen to his concerns--they are hardly around--and he doesn't know what he could do to stop her if Rosa decided to do something awful.

As Che settles into New York and he begins to make friends, he watches Rosa make friends with a sense of dread. Again, just so much dread.  And all justified.  It's always on the horizon, always ominous, but so rarely does anything actually bad happen.  Rosa does what works for her, and keeping off the radar is part of what works for her.  But she's a very smart girl, and very curious, and....ooooh, it's just really creepy.

Honestly, I took a page from Jenny and read the ending when I was about a third of the way through the book, because it seemed like there was no way this could end well.  And I will say, it's not exactly a "happy" ending.  It's maybe kind of--cathartic? Like, things are all okay, but the tension that builds and builds and builds over the course of the book is definitely addressed.

Che is just a guy, going to the gym, falling for a girl, navigating a new city--and waiting for his sister to maybe murder someone.  I am going to be shaking off this dread for days to come.  Excellent and creepy as hell.

Impending Possession

Excellent title: The Impending Possession of Scarlet Wakebridge-Rosé. I liked it SLIGHTLY better before I noticed the accent mark on "Rosé;" I think it scans better without that emphasis, but that is neither here nor there.

Scarlet is haunted, and she's trying to figure out why, how, by what.  There's a presence hovering around the corners of her life, a shadowy, threatening figure. Her work is suffering, her marriage is on the rocks, and her relationship with her teenage daughter isn't doing much better. She's desperate to figure out what it is and get rid of it, and when psychiatrists can't help her, she finds herself in church. She's a lesbian who was raised Catholic but hasn't been to church in years, but she has nowhere else to turn.

At church she meets Father Angelo, an exorcist with the requisite Haunted Past. She doesn't tell him about her problem at first, but his assistant Kelton realizes that Scarlet has some ability to detect powers and recruits her to help with the exorcisms. Eventually they hook up with Dante, Father Angelo's first supernatural tutor, and they try to help Scarlet sort out her demon problem.

I got this book from Netgalley for an honest review, but if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have finished it.  It felt like a stretched out short story, and none of the characters was very likeable.  With Scarlet, the implication is that the demon that's been haunting her has been interfering with her emotions and that's why she's been fighting so much with her wife and daughter, but that's hard to tell, since she seems to pride herself on being a hardass workaholic in the best of times.  Kelton is a one-note homophobe who is almost a caricature of a villain--which is weird, since he's supposed to be, technically, a "good guy."  Father Angelo's got a dark past, but he appears to have spent 30 years not thinking for himself at all, which comes across as very weird given that he's an exorcist.

The characters kind of thump along from one scene to the next; information about the demon unfolds, and there are past life regressions, and some of the demon logic doesn't make a lot of clear sense to me. Like, if a demon threatens you into saying some words in another language, does that count as promising something of your own free will?

This felt kind of like an early draft of something that could have been much better, if a lot of motivations had been sharpened up, and if all the characters' "humanizing" flaws had been balanced with humanizing virtues as well.

Great title, though. A long, kind of complicated title is a bold choice and almost always worth it.

Always Forward

Hello! I have been lounging through my vacation and reading like a fiend and consuming SO MANY best-of lists and end-of-year blog posts (I LOVE THEM) and just taking it easy.  But the reading like a fiend has combined with the best-of lists to make me feel guilty about never quite being ready to do a best-of list at the end of the year.

So, to fend off the guilt and yet participate in this listy time of year, AND to partake of the New Year spirit in non-binding resolution style, I bring you:

The Top 10 Books Even I Can't Believe I Haven't Read Yet

1) The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin. This one almost doesn't count, because I just started it, but I loved the Inheritance trilogy and so very many people have loved this, I have no doubt it's going to blow my mind.  And it's our pick for work book club this month, which I think is going to challenge us and give us a nice meaty conversation. So look just getting started and already something is half checked off!

2) Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear. I wanted to read this well before it came out--butt kicking old West magic steampunk ladies of the night. Whenever I see the cover I get tingles.

3) Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone.  This one I think I've waited for because the plot--investigating the death of a god--sounded a little too much like a couple of others that I've read and loved. I know it will be very different from City of Stairs and The Broken Kingdoms, but I definitely needed to leave some space between one reading and the next. But this is the year!

4) The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater. I'm trying not to fill this list up with sequels, because I am behind on so many of my favorite series. But this is one that I think I have to get on top of, because the first one snuck in under my radar and went from "okay, I'm reading and enjoying this" to "this book is having a profound impact on my understanding of human beings" almost while I wasn't looking. So yeah, this one makes the cut.

5) Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett. The only Patchett I've read was State of Wonder, and I loved it.  This is the one that everyone talks about, and the Jennies (Jennys?) mentioned it in their gift recommendation podcast a few weeks ago.  But really, what happened was that Brenda sat down with my Kindle and sorted through the 400-something books on there, bumping the ones she couldn't believe I hadn't read to the top. On this one she and I entirely agree.

6) Fly By Night, by Frances Hardinge. People have been telling me to read Frances Hardinge forever, and I finally read Cuckoo Song a while back and they were right.  But this is the one they keep selling me on, and this is the one I want to read, and this is the one that I just got from Netgalley, so no excuses!

7) A Darker Shade of Magic, by V. E. Schwab. Elizabeth read ONE V.E. Schwab book and became a "buy this author's books automatically" fan.  This is enough for me. I have to read one; it was this or Vicious, and lord knows I love a good trilogy.

8) Walk on Earth a Stranger, by Rae Carson.  I liked The Girl of Fire and Thorns much more than such a straightforward, standard YA fantasy trilogy seemed to deserve.  It was compelling, and it was tight, and I loved the setting and the main character's determination to become less of a hot mess than she was at the beginning of the book.  Add that craftsmanship to the Western setting of this one and I've been meaning to read it for ages.  Apparently it's the year of the old West for me!

9) Feed, by Mira Grant.  I am SO far behind on this one.  She's started a follow-up series to the completed series that everyone read a million years ago.  But I was off zombies for a while there.  I think I'm ready to dive back in by jumping back to the best I can find.

10) Behind the Throne, by K.B. Wagers.  I was a quarter of an inch from picking this book up when a dozen other reading obligations landed on me and I was beckoned away.  But I will come back, because I need to read about a super-competent spaceship captain who has to go into politics.  I love it when people who are not meant to be in politics have to go into politics.  Best books ever.

Honorable mentions will all go to series in which I'm shamefully far behind--I have read not even a third of the Vorkosigan saga; I am at least three books behind on Dr. Siri Paiboun; Sharon Shinn's Elementals series has two more books out, and I've never even picked up Mystic and Rider (which was another one Brenda pushed to the front of my Kindle); Ursula Vernon has a bunch of books as T. Kingfisher that I haven't read yet. As I flip through my Kindle, the list goes on and on and on.

But I will leave it here, because this is a good solid approach to January.  And hey, I'm two full chapters into The Fifth Season.  Progress already!

Best Second In a Triolgy Ever

Book club loved Illuminae so much that Gemina was the next choice, and thank god because 1) weren't we all dying to read it? and 2) I needed a densely action-packed page turner to balance my other reads and my state of mind.  It was just the roller coaster I wanted it to be.

As I was reading Illuminae, I wanted to talk all the time about the big questions the book posed, about the lies an organization tells to keep its constituents safe, about the renegade whistle blower and whether being right means everyone needs to know everything, about the needs of the many vs. the needs of the few--I could go on.  Gemina didn't raise that kind of question nearly as much--it was a much more personal story, about a few humans against a few humans.

I still want compulsively to talk about it, though, only this time I want to talk about it as a work of craftsmanship. I want to discuss how in the world the authors built this incredibly intricate machine full of moving parts. In Illuminae, the hits just kept on coming; in Gemina, the pieces were there, laid out for you, and you watched them click together.

The story takes place at the same time as the first book--the Illuminae characters are fleeing toward the Heimdall station, where they can jump through a wormhole back to a busier part of space and be rescued. Gemina is about all the awful things that are happening on Heimdall during that time--the intended cover-up on the attacks from the first book.  Heimdall is taken by a team of commandos, and on one level, it's pretty much just Die Hard in space.  Plus terrifying space worms and a malfunctioning wormhole.

The parts that go into this! To make the assault team interesting bad guys, individual people, and sometimes almost likeable, in spite of everything--that alone is not a simple task.  (There are photos of the team in the book; the fact that they are all hotties in their early 20s who look like vampires from Twilight--and that the team leader literally looks like one of the specific vampires from Twilight, may be the weakest part of the book.)  

This face just screams "head commando"

You've got a hero and heroine who are about as far from Kady and Ezra as you can get--if Kady is the goth geek girl at the back of the class, Hanna is the prom queen who is also a black belt in marital arts.  Ezra is your boy next door clean cut good guy; Nik is a fast talking hustler who's not quiet bad enough for his crime syndicate family.

And Ella.  Oh, Ella, who is a delight. I will spoil nothing, but I love Ella very much.

Like, I said, moving parts. Gemina is in many ways (though not page count) a smaller book than Illuminae. There are fewer individual players acting, and though there aren't actually that many fewer elements in the big bubbling cauldron of plot, most of the action plays out on a hand-to-hand combat level. This is about an assault team taking the station and the renegades stopping it; there is a lot more at stake and a lot more balls in the air, but this is a book about boots on the ground.

I'm going to say it officially; I think this is the best second installment in a trilogy that I've ever read.  It doesn't sag at all.  It doesn't suffer from trying to force some kind of weak stakes to tide us over while we set up the pieces for part 3.  It doesn't suffer from giving us a new set of characters--quite the opposite--though it also gives us a some time with some of our favorites from the first book.  It advances the overall plot while working perfectly well on its own level.

Best. Sequel. Ever.

Page to Stage

I've been reading Fingersmith on a hard deadline, almost frantically, because we had tickets to a new play at the American Repertory Theater in Harvard Square. I've read a couple of Sarah Waters books before--The Little Stranger and The Paying Guests--and loved them both, in very different ways. But I listened to them both as audiobooks, and I'm surprised to find that this made a difference in my enjoyment.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The combination of smart, twisty plotting and gorgeous, literary writing is really irresistible. But I think I might have enjoyed an audiobook more. Waters has a way of describing things perfectly, with such precise, clean, readable prose, but in great detail.  What I've found for myself is that when a narrator has a strong voice but there are parts of the story I find slow, the actor who's reading them can bring a lot to me.

But then, maybe I just felt the stress of my timeline, because of the play.  I can tell you that the play felt the stress.  The book is, not action-packed, but full of incident.  Each part builds to the next, and while you can slim them all down, you can't cut any of them--the introduction to Sue's life in the Borough at the beginning of the book is as important to the plot as it is to the flavor and character and can't be ignored.  It's a story of many acts, and plays may only have so many.

I have a few quibbles with the production, as well--they could have used amplified audio; I sometimes had trouble hearing through the accents--but mostly, it's that it felt like an adaptation.  There's something about watching an adaptation of a book you know, a feeling that they're trying to hit the important beats of the book, rather than make its own story.  I've always assumed this is because a book has a lot more space than a movie--you can't squeeze as much into a movie as you can into a book.  There are exceptions--Harry Potter movies work well as movies, in my experience.  But your standard BBC adaptation of a Jane Austen or Charles Dickens novel is more about hitting the moments you know--summarizing the story--than working on its own, sometimes.

This play suffered from that.  It hustled from plot point to plot twist, scrambling through the memorable lines and moments to keep them all in. There was also a bit of a problem with tone--they added a lot of humor, which worked well by itself to alleviate the grim tone of the story (which is not as pervasive in the book). But it made the whole thing feel very uneven, especially the secondary characters and some of the darker themes.

The book, though, is full of great twists and thrills, an enormous, ongoing tension, and a really sweet love story.  I wish I had read it at a time where I had more bandwidth to give it, or that I had listened to the audiobook. I'm going to position my next Sarah Waters novel more carefully in my lineup.

Comfort, or No Apocalypses for a While

I think there are two reactions, bookwise, to the current political situation.  Some people are stepping up in their reading--reading about politics, social justice, and activism.  Aarti's been posting some amazing, thoughtful reviews this week.

I, on the other hand, am going the other way.  I am avoiding the real world in my reading life--which meant actually dropping a couple of books I was in the middle of, because they were too much about oppressive regimes or fear-mongering charmers who turn the world against your heroes.

Instead, I'm thinking comfort reads.  I was already reading Sarah Waters's Fingersmith, but it's been my go-to this week, because the whole story is so immediate and intimate.  Sue may be a thief, but she's plucky and smart, and reading the book, you could believe that there were only two houses in the world--the little pawn shop and the great dank manor.  I also love an imposter story, and a thief pretending to be a lady's maid seems like the best thing ever. Mike and I have tickets to see the show at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge in a few weeks, so this is kind of perfect to read right now.

I have also turned aggressively in a nunward direction.  In following Jenny's recommendation of the book The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio, I wound up in the nun aisle of the library, which of course means I walked away with more than I bargained for.  So I just finished a book called New Habits: Today's Women Who Choose to Become Nuns, by Isobel Losada.  The book was published in 1999, so most of the women were interviewed when I was in college, and there have been a lot of changes in the Catholic church since then.  This book very much made me want to find an even more recent book on a similar subject.

I'm also thinking of rereading Shining Through, by Susan Isaacs, one of my longstanding comfort reads.  I think watching people be heroic in World War II--especially in a world of clear good guys and bad guys (without ignoring that the good guys were no always as good as you wish they were) might be right up my alley right now.

And finally, I'm avidly reading a Buffy fanfic that is so good I can't even tell you.  Just yesterday I caught up on he published chapters; it's near the end, but from now on I have to wait a chapter a day like everyone else.  It's called Otherwise, by one of my favorite fanfic authors, Sigyn, and it's sweet and hard at the same time.  It's a time travel story--sort of--which often just end up being wish fulfillment, "if I knew then what I know now" stories about how much better things would have turned out if the characters had done what we wanted them to.  But this is about might-have-beens, and about what you lose by dwelling on what you already lost.  I love Sigyn's older Buffy, who is harder, but also much stronger in her feelings and sense of self.

So, sweethearts, this is what I read when my heart doesn't know where to turn.  What about you?  I am always looking for another comfort read.  I think it will be a while before I read any dystopian fiction.

Review: Everything Belongs to the Future

Note: This post was written several days ago.  This book is truly excellent and amazing, but I think it would have devastated me if I'd read it today. There's a lot of anger about haves and have-nots here, and right now it's hurting my heart to think about any subject like that.  You should read this book, but if you feel like I do, you might want to wait a couple of weeks.
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There are so many levels on which to love Everything Belongs to the Future that I almost don't know how to talk about it. It's about politics and terrorism and friendship and power. It's about haves vs.  have-nots and about innocence and the health care system and time.  I want to unpack the whole thing and lay it out for you, but I can't do that without spoiling it (and the slow unfolding of details here is so beautifully crafted that I can't bring myself to spoil any of it).

In this future, there is a drug that halts aging.  If you take the fix--one pill every day--you will essentially stay healthy and not age indefinitely.  But of course, the drug company can charge a fortune for it, and does, and so only rich people--and those who are chosen by them as great artists, musicians, actors--can afford the fix.  The rest of the world muddles through outside their inner sanctum.

So right there, you have a very basic fact that I've always thought was interesting about the gap between rich and poor; a lot of what the rich have is time, in a lot of ways.  They can afford to pay others to do tedious, time-consuming parts of day-to-day life--someone to clean your house and mow your lawn. A drive instead of a long bus commute, a job that gives you paid sick days so you can take care of your health.  There are a thousand little ways in which money buys you time.

This is only the tiniest pinpoint of light in the constellation of this novella's thoughtfulness.  Ask about terrorism and betrayal and sacrifice and you imagine a huge, sweeping story, but this is about a bunch of poor kids trying to make their way in the world and maybe make the world a little better.  Every character in here is smudged and shining, broken and beautiful.

Laurie Penny did something here that I want to talk about--every moment that slides past you in the book is worth stopping over and examining, whether it's the politics and economics of the food truck, or the real fraught intensity of making out with someone so as not to get caught doing something worse, or what it means to be an old woman in a world where that is theoretically optional.  I wish I could do a book club about just this book.

Many deep thank yous to Netgalley for my review copy.

Romancing My Heart of Stone

I need to stop reading romance novels that do not come recommended by people who know what they're talking about, like Sarah.  And I really need to stop being tempted by romance novels on Netgalley, because I'm far too picky and far too inexperienced to choose things that fit my very niche romance needs.

The Lady Who Drew Me In is a novel by Thomasine Rappold, third in a series but I didn't realize that till I was almost done and there was nothing lost there at all.  It's the story of Daisy, a young widow of an older, not particularly loving husband who can draw images from other people's minds. This has caused trouble in her life before and she's sworn to herself not to do it again.  Then handsome rogue lawyer Jackson turns up with a case where her talent might be the only thing that can save a little boy's life. So now they're embroiled in an adventure.

Daisy has a soft spot for kids--she desperately wanted children but her older husband was controlling and frigid (of course); now she wants to start a day home for poor children. She really likes kids. Kids are her thing. Kids.  One thing leads to another, and yada yada yada, Daisy and Jackson have to get married. But it's cool--they'll get married, have fun sex, not get emotionally involved, solve the mystery, and then go their separate ways, right?

Nothing unexpected or even really troubling there.  The mystery is actually pretty great, with suspicious townsfolk and sabotage and clues. Jackson is trying to be a better person, Daisy Loves Kids. And they fall in love but of course they can't tell each other--actually, this book is a lot better than some in this respect, in that they often tell each other things that they overhear or why they're being reserved or whatever.

I think the biggest weakness is that there is a lot of internal monologing about how much they love and want each other.  I mean, you expect a lot of emotional thought processes in a romance, but there's no actual forward motion in the feelings department, but a lot of repeated thoughts about how much the love and want each other in spite of all that stands between them.  I'd estimate that it was fully a third of the word count of the book, which was way too much.

That said, those parts were pretty skimmable, and I truly did like the mystery.  I had hoped that the spirit writing thing meant that this would be a slightly magical universe, but it wasn't; it was more like the spiritualism fad of the Victorian era was actually real.  So it wasn't as special as I'd hoped, but it wasn't bad.  Not the highest praise, I'm afraid, but solid.  And thanks to Netgalley for the review copy. And advance thanks to Sarah for further romance recommendations.

The Opposite of the Literal Best

Just after the amusing, charming, and edifying pleasure of whimsical nonfiction that was Unmentionable, I was so excited to have the opportunity to follow it up with The Science of Game of Thrones--pop science themed around one of my favorite shows! Perfect follow up to pop history themed around one of my favorite authors!

Yeah, but no.  I mean, not that I had a lot of hope that there would be a lot of actual science to talk about in GoT.  Dragons, white walkers, the Wall, and how long does winter last?  There's not a lot to work with here.  But the fact is that I will take any excuse for a good science niblet, so all you really needed to do is put a little theming around the edges.

Alas, it was not meant to be.  First, Helen Keen's sense of humor is not my cup of tea.  Maybe it's how very British it is, but there's a combination of silliness and mean spirit that I just can't connect with.  She reaches REALLY far to make silly puns, makes fun of people's names and bodies and hobbies.  And while yes, people who speak Klingon recreationally are an easy target, she doesn't tease them in a fond or respectful way.

Even the science, though, is a little--well, rough around the edges.  I was kind of hoping for a set of deep dives into areas that are touched on in the story, but there was no deep dive at all here.  No topic is covered for more than a couple of pages, and some of the concepts are kind of a reach to associate with the show.

Take wildfire.  This is a burning substance that is used in war (Tyrion fires it at Stannis's invading army to defend King's Landing) and it's horrible.  So how does that work?  Now, the Mythbusters would have tried to come as close as they could to it, chemically, which I think would have been interesting.  Keen took a different tack and went with something more historically related than scientifically and talked extensively about napalm.  Okay, that's definitely an acceptable angle.  But first: napalm isn't funny, which I think she struggled with.  And second, it wasn't a very interesting history of napalm.  It was more like a compare and contrast of napalm vs. wildfire, which is not that edifying, since a) I know they're different, and b) wildfire isn't real.

My favorite parts were about the genetics of inbreeding and about possible astronomical (am I the only one who always wants to write astrological when I mean science and not horoscopes?) causes of a winter of unpredictable and dangerous length.  Those were the two sections where I felt like I really learned something. In the wild, inbreeding can actually be beneficial to animal populations--in an environment where weak individuals die off quickly, the "good" genes are the only ones left pretty quickly (though scientists admit this is hard to test, since by the time your population is so low that everyone's inbreeding, you're just on big rockslide away from extinction). And winter could be caused by something besides the orbit of the planet--passing through clouds of space debris that changes the way the sun strikes the planet--which would account for the unpredictability.

But most of it ended up being fake history lessons, and I hate fake history lessons.  I'm all there for worldbuilding, but stories about war machines and the history of armed combat that touch on but don't elucidate how war happened in the real world as an excuse to basically ramble on about Westeros with a lot of bad puns...I was very disappointed.

And now, I shall go read a bunch of the nonfiction suggestions from Jenny at Reading the End, which will make me smarter and happier as a person, I bet.