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Currently Reading - 8 Oct 14
Oct. 8th, 2014 03:55 pmCompleted Reads:
Kaleidoscope, ed Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios
Anthology of diverse YA SF and Fantasy. I'm not sure I'd have labelled this as YA if it hadn't done so itself. Yes the protagonists are pretty universally YA, but the writing is no less complex than I'd expect in short fiction targeted at an adult audience. I'm not quite sure how many of the authors are themselves diverse, but clearly a considerable number are. There are 20 short stories here, standouts for me were:
Kaleidoscope, ed Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios
Anthology of diverse YA SF and Fantasy. I'm not sure I'd have labelled this as YA if it hadn't done so itself. Yes the protagonists are pretty universally YA, but the writing is no less complex than I'd expect in short fiction targeted at an adult audience. I'm not quite sure how many of the authors are themselves diverse, but clearly a considerable number are. There are 20 short stories here, standouts for me were:
- Cookie Cutter Superhero, Tansy Rayner Roberts: An Australian schoolgirl wins the chance to become a superhero, but how can she be both a superhero, and true to herself, having been born with one hand.
- The Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon, Ken Liu: a Chinese schoolgirl spends a last night with her girlfriend before she flies off to America, but they find themselves literally swept up into a Chinese legend about starcrossed lovers
- Chupacabra's Song, Jim Hines: A vet's daughter, who we're clearly expected to assume is somewhere on the Autism Spectrum, finds herself caught up in a plot involving magic-weilding chupacabra hunters. I'm politically opposed to magical-crip stories, but this makes a better job at it than most.
- Signature, Faith Mudge: A disabled Australian woman, of South Asian origin, fights to save the bookshop where she works from a creature out of legend.
- Vanilla, Dirk Flinthart: An Australian girl of Somali origin finds acceptance in the alien kids who join her school, with very unexpected results.
- The Lovely Duckling, Tim Susman: Told via emails and phone transcripts, an American teen finds a way to outwit her father, who is adamant no daughter of his is going to shapeshifter school
- Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and Tell, E.C.Myers: An American high-schooler with mental health issues finds herself caught up in the scene around a new designer drug.
- The Truth About Owls, Amal El-Mohtar. A girl from Lebanon, being brought up in Edinburgh, struggles to find her identity until she visits the local Owl centre.
Shifting Shadows, Patricia Briggs
A collection of short stories from Brigg's Mercy Thompson series, mostly not featuring Mercy.
A collection of short stories from Brigg's Mercy Thompson series, mostly not featuring Mercy.
- Silver: a novella which tells the story of how Bran and Samuel became werewolves and how Samuel first met Ariana, which forms the backstory for the novel 'Silver-Born'
- Fairy Gifts: set in the author's home town of Butte, Montana and involves a vampire summoned home to settle a century old debt.
- Gray: another story about a vampire coming home, in this case one desperate to rebuild the home she lost when she was turned.
- Seeing Eye: revolves around Moira and Tom, the witch and werewolf couple who play a big part in the novel 'Hunting Ground', as their two family histories entangle them for the first time
- Alpha and Omega: This is the set-up novella for the spin-off series of the same name, featuring Bran's youngest son, Charles, roving troubleshooter for the werewolves, and Omega wolf Anna. I'd already read it in the collection it originally appeared in, but didn't object to reading it again (as it was almost the only story I liked in that collection, this is definitely the better place for it!).
- The Star of David: David Christiansen, the werewolf who found himself on the wrong side in 'Moon Called', and had the courage to do something about it, gets a chance for personal redemption with his estranged daughter.
- Roses in Winter: This picks up on a side-story in 'Blood Bound' about the very young werewolf Kara, who finds herself caught up in werewolf politics. Fortunately she has ancient and powerful werewolf Asil the Moor on her side.
- In Red, With Pearls: Gay werewolf Warren, Mercy's best friend, investigates when someone sends a zombie after his lover Kyle.
- Redemption: This story revolves around Ben, a major character in the Mercy books, and we finally find out why he has such a problem with women. Parts of the truth are a lot darker than I expected (and I was expecting dark).
- Hollow: A new story about Mercy, set in the aftermath of 'Night Broken', the latest novel. As Mercy contemplates closing up her garage after the damage wrought on it during the novel, she finds herself dragged into resolving a haunting.
The Heart of Valour, Tanya Huff
Book three of Huff's Valour series. Torin Kerr is a senior Marine NCO in a future where there is an ongoing war between the Confederation and the Others. The Confederation is split in three, with the three 'younger' races (Humans, Krai and Taykan) recruited to do the fighting. No one knows why they're at war, the Elder races aren't talking, and every attempt at diplomacy ends with dead diplomats. The first book was basically a re-run of Rourke's Drift, with Torin in the Colour Sergeant Bourne role, the second saw her sent to rein-in a political glory-hound of an officer commanding the initial exploration of a Big Dumb Object style unknown spacecraft. The third book opens with Torin newly promoted to Gunnery Sergeant, and stuck at HQ lecturing on the Silsviss, the new species she brought into the Confederation (and eventually the Marines) as a result of the standoff in Book 1. The opportunity to ride along on a training exercise as aide to an officer who has just undergone some experimental rebuilding is too much of a temptation to turn down, but then the exercise turns all too real and Torin finds herself stuck with keeping a platoon of half-trained recruits alive.
Justice Calling,
A Murder of Crows, Books 1 and 2 of the 20-Sided Sorceress, Annie Bellet
Short urban fantasy novels (both about 150 pages), where the protagonist, Jade Crow, is a gaming shop proprietor who has been hiding out for a couple of decades from her ex-lover/mentor, having discovered he just wants to eat her heart (which is how sorcerors like him, and her, gain power). The first novel involves someone attacking her town's population of shapeshifters, which brings in the requisite hunky love interest in the form of a shapeshifter lawman. The second novel involves an attack on the family/cult who exiled Jade when she didn't turn into a Crow-shifter at puberty, cue requisite messy family history expose. Jade's magic system is interesting, she's largely self-taught and when she needed a theoretical framework to build on, she picked Dungeons and Dragons - there are a lot of gaming references in the text. They're both light reads with perfectly adequate writing, I read these two back to back and I've have gone on to the third one, but that isn't out until next week, with the fourth following relatively quickly afterwards - looks like they've just been added to Amazon en masse.
Witch Hunt, S M Reine
I picked this up in the bundle Nine By Night, which is on Amazon at £1.02. One of those is the first of the Annie Bellet stories above - which I'd already bought, but even so if I get one decent read out of the bundle it will be a bargain, and this one was pretty reasonable (you actually get the entire novel in the Amazon sample). No complaints about the writing and the worldbuilding is pretty good - I particularly liked the suburb of LA that got annexed to Hell in the 60s. Basic setup is a male witch policing magical crimes for a secret law enforcement agency, who wakes up with the proverbial dead girl in his bathtub and needs to find a way to prove his innocence. There are a couple of major plot issues, but it's still a reasonable read for 12p....
Reading Right Now:
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
Well not actually reading as such, but I will be as soon as I shake this damned headache!
Nine By Night
Yet to read in the bundle: Death's Servant, CJ Ellison; Torrent, Lindsay Buroker; Spark, Anthea Sharp; Rook, JC Andrijeski; Arcadia's Gift, Jesi Lea Ryan; Wild Night Road, Kara Legend. I probably wouldn't have picked any of these up separately, but if there's one good read in here I'll be pleased enough.
Temporarily Stalled:
Keeping it Real, Justina Robson
Need to get back into my routine, as this has been my slow morning wakeup book, and there's been too much other stuff going on.
Upcoming:
The Witch With No Name, Kim Harrison. The final book in the Hollows/Rachel Morgan urban fantasy series. Damn, I'm going to miss Rachel :(
Valour's Trial, Tanya Huff. 4th of the Valour series.
Witch Hunt (Gryphonpike Chronicles 1), Annie Bellet
Looks like standard DnD derivative fantasy, which I wouldn't normally bother with, but currently free on Amazon and I liked her two Jade Crow books. I also grabbed 4 or 5 short stories by her that are likewise free.
Glitter Mayhem, ed John Klima, Lynne M Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas - anthology, I picked this up because it has a Seanan McGuire story from her InCryptid series. Hadn't gotten much further, but I notice a couple of overlaps with authors who impressed me in Kaleidoscope, so maybe I'll pick it up again.
Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley
The Incorruptibles, John Hornor Jacobs
Siege Perilous, E.D. de Birmingham
Brilliance, Marcus Sakey
Feminist, Queer, Crip, Alison Kafer
Book three of Huff's Valour series. Torin Kerr is a senior Marine NCO in a future where there is an ongoing war between the Confederation and the Others. The Confederation is split in three, with the three 'younger' races (Humans, Krai and Taykan) recruited to do the fighting. No one knows why they're at war, the Elder races aren't talking, and every attempt at diplomacy ends with dead diplomats. The first book was basically a re-run of Rourke's Drift, with Torin in the Colour Sergeant Bourne role, the second saw her sent to rein-in a political glory-hound of an officer commanding the initial exploration of a Big Dumb Object style unknown spacecraft. The third book opens with Torin newly promoted to Gunnery Sergeant, and stuck at HQ lecturing on the Silsviss, the new species she brought into the Confederation (and eventually the Marines) as a result of the standoff in Book 1. The opportunity to ride along on a training exercise as aide to an officer who has just undergone some experimental rebuilding is too much of a temptation to turn down, but then the exercise turns all too real and Torin finds herself stuck with keeping a platoon of half-trained recruits alive.
Justice Calling,
A Murder of Crows, Books 1 and 2 of the 20-Sided Sorceress, Annie Bellet
Short urban fantasy novels (both about 150 pages), where the protagonist, Jade Crow, is a gaming shop proprietor who has been hiding out for a couple of decades from her ex-lover/mentor, having discovered he just wants to eat her heart (which is how sorcerors like him, and her, gain power). The first novel involves someone attacking her town's population of shapeshifters, which brings in the requisite hunky love interest in the form of a shapeshifter lawman. The second novel involves an attack on the family/cult who exiled Jade when she didn't turn into a Crow-shifter at puberty, cue requisite messy family history expose. Jade's magic system is interesting, she's largely self-taught and when she needed a theoretical framework to build on, she picked Dungeons and Dragons - there are a lot of gaming references in the text. They're both light reads with perfectly adequate writing, I read these two back to back and I've have gone on to the third one, but that isn't out until next week, with the fourth following relatively quickly afterwards - looks like they've just been added to Amazon en masse.
Witch Hunt, S M Reine
I picked this up in the bundle Nine By Night, which is on Amazon at £1.02. One of those is the first of the Annie Bellet stories above - which I'd already bought, but even so if I get one decent read out of the bundle it will be a bargain, and this one was pretty reasonable (you actually get the entire novel in the Amazon sample). No complaints about the writing and the worldbuilding is pretty good - I particularly liked the suburb of LA that got annexed to Hell in the 60s. Basic setup is a male witch policing magical crimes for a secret law enforcement agency, who wakes up with the proverbial dead girl in his bathtub and needs to find a way to prove his innocence. There are a couple of major plot issues, but it's still a reasonable read for 12p....
Reading Right Now:
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
Well not actually reading as such, but I will be as soon as I shake this damned headache!
Nine By Night
Yet to read in the bundle: Death's Servant, CJ Ellison; Torrent, Lindsay Buroker; Spark, Anthea Sharp; Rook, JC Andrijeski; Arcadia's Gift, Jesi Lea Ryan; Wild Night Road, Kara Legend. I probably wouldn't have picked any of these up separately, but if there's one good read in here I'll be pleased enough.
Temporarily Stalled:
Keeping it Real, Justina Robson
Need to get back into my routine, as this has been my slow morning wakeup book, and there's been too much other stuff going on.
Upcoming:
The Witch With No Name, Kim Harrison. The final book in the Hollows/Rachel Morgan urban fantasy series. Damn, I'm going to miss Rachel :(
Valour's Trial, Tanya Huff. 4th of the Valour series.
Witch Hunt (Gryphonpike Chronicles 1), Annie Bellet
Looks like standard DnD derivative fantasy, which I wouldn't normally bother with, but currently free on Amazon and I liked her two Jade Crow books. I also grabbed 4 or 5 short stories by her that are likewise free.
Glitter Mayhem, ed John Klima, Lynne M Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas - anthology, I picked this up because it has a Seanan McGuire story from her InCryptid series. Hadn't gotten much further, but I notice a couple of overlaps with authors who impressed me in Kaleidoscope, so maybe I'll pick it up again.
Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley
The Incorruptibles, John Hornor Jacobs
Siege Perilous, E.D. de Birmingham
Brilliance, Marcus Sakey
Feminist, Queer, Crip, Alison Kafer
