Currently Reading - 9-Sept-2014
Sep. 9th, 2014 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidgillonCompleted Reads:
Indexing, Seanan McGuire
Special Agent Henry Marchen and her team of survivors are our last line of defence against the powers of fairy tales, and their own stories bear witness to the power of the narrative - it's a Grimm job, but someone has to do it (sorry!). The concept sounds like it should be light and fluffy, but there's a core of darkness and cost in these tales, just like a fairy tale should have.
Half-Off Ragnarok, Seanan McGuire
The third InCryptid novel, this one focussed on Alex Price rather than his sister Verity. The only continuing character is Sarah his cuckoo (it's a cryptid species) cousin, but she's very damaged after the events of the previous novel and not the full-up team member she was for Verity. Alex is trying to run an undercover basilisk breeding programme at the zoo where he works, while keeping his cryptozoological activities hidden from his Australian maybe-girlfriend; then people start turning up dead, and part petrified, and the hunt is on, but is Alex hunter, or hunted? It's a fun read rather than a deep one.
Mission to Mahjundar, Veronica Scott
I've been looking out for books with disabled characters in major roles and came across an interview with the author where it's mentioned the female lead is blind. The way she talked didn't fill me full of optimism for how she would handle disability ('I knew a blind girl once, she was sooo inspiring'), but the book was cheap so I thought I would give it a try. It's an old fashioned planetary romance, rugged hero is sent to regressed world on mission, is roped into taking blind princess to her wedding given everyone is out to kill her. Said princess is doing the face-feeling thing within two pages of having met him, during an assassination attempt, and the ultimate cure is inevitable (though the author does actually have a viable explanation for the cure). The societies they travel through are very cliched - effete Sinbad-ish empire, coarse Mongol clans, brutal human-sacrificing Aztec hillfolk. Overall it feels very much like a Golden Age pulp, not a contemporary work and it has to be read as a romance rather than strongly SFnal (and it keeps veering into fantasy). I was particularly disappointed in how disability was handled, even with low starting expectations, as every time something difficult comes up the princess either gets her vision back, throws herself into the arms of the ruggedly thewed hero and lets him handle it, or both.
Reading Right Now:
Shaman's Crossing, Robin Hobb
Completely stalled on this. I'll probably make an effort to finish it while I'm away, but at the moment it looks extremely unlikely I'll pick up the rest of the series.
Pratchett's Women: Unauthorised Essays on the Female Characters Of Discworld, Tansy Rayner Roberts
A set of collected blog postings, running to about 76 pages, on Pratchett's female characters. Very cheap, £1.22 from Amazon, but it's an enjoyable reflection on the way Pratchett's creation of female characters has developed through the series.
Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley
A fantasy set in a very non-standard secondary world. I've dipped far enough into this to know I'm impressed with the worldbuilding, though there's a little too much bouncing between viewpoints for my liking. I'm saving it for my long train journey on Thursday.
Upcoming:
I'll definitely be re-reading Scalzi's Locked-In while I'm away, I completely missed the non-gendering of the protagonist first time around and want to see how well it holds up at second read/what else I've missed. Also waiting to be started is Kaleidoscope, the diverse YA SF anthology, and John Hornor Jacobs' new fantasy The Incorruptibles. I read the Amazon sample before downloading the full book and it feels like elements of the Old West and the Indian Wars crossed with something more British Empire - maybe Australia? - but with some unique fantasy elements that may draw more on Faery - characterising the 'stretchers' as elves meet Native Americans is probably doing it a disservice, but I haven't read far enough to know for certain what is going on. And I need to get around to Siege Perilous, the last book of the Mongoliad.
Indexing, Seanan McGuire
Special Agent Henry Marchen and her team of survivors are our last line of defence against the powers of fairy tales, and their own stories bear witness to the power of the narrative - it's a Grimm job, but someone has to do it (sorry!). The concept sounds like it should be light and fluffy, but there's a core of darkness and cost in these tales, just like a fairy tale should have.
Half-Off Ragnarok, Seanan McGuire
The third InCryptid novel, this one focussed on Alex Price rather than his sister Verity. The only continuing character is Sarah his cuckoo (it's a cryptid species) cousin, but she's very damaged after the events of the previous novel and not the full-up team member she was for Verity. Alex is trying to run an undercover basilisk breeding programme at the zoo where he works, while keeping his cryptozoological activities hidden from his Australian maybe-girlfriend; then people start turning up dead, and part petrified, and the hunt is on, but is Alex hunter, or hunted? It's a fun read rather than a deep one.
Mission to Mahjundar, Veronica Scott
I've been looking out for books with disabled characters in major roles and came across an interview with the author where it's mentioned the female lead is blind. The way she talked didn't fill me full of optimism for how she would handle disability ('I knew a blind girl once, she was sooo inspiring'), but the book was cheap so I thought I would give it a try. It's an old fashioned planetary romance, rugged hero is sent to regressed world on mission, is roped into taking blind princess to her wedding given everyone is out to kill her. Said princess is doing the face-feeling thing within two pages of having met him, during an assassination attempt, and the ultimate cure is inevitable (though the author does actually have a viable explanation for the cure). The societies they travel through are very cliched - effete Sinbad-ish empire, coarse Mongol clans, brutal human-sacrificing Aztec hillfolk. Overall it feels very much like a Golden Age pulp, not a contemporary work and it has to be read as a romance rather than strongly SFnal (and it keeps veering into fantasy). I was particularly disappointed in how disability was handled, even with low starting expectations, as every time something difficult comes up the princess either gets her vision back, throws herself into the arms of the ruggedly thewed hero and lets him handle it, or both.
Reading Right Now:
Shaman's Crossing, Robin Hobb
Completely stalled on this. I'll probably make an effort to finish it while I'm away, but at the moment it looks extremely unlikely I'll pick up the rest of the series.
Pratchett's Women: Unauthorised Essays on the Female Characters Of Discworld, Tansy Rayner Roberts
A set of collected blog postings, running to about 76 pages, on Pratchett's female characters. Very cheap, £1.22 from Amazon, but it's an enjoyable reflection on the way Pratchett's creation of female characters has developed through the series.
Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley
A fantasy set in a very non-standard secondary world. I've dipped far enough into this to know I'm impressed with the worldbuilding, though there's a little too much bouncing between viewpoints for my liking. I'm saving it for my long train journey on Thursday.
Upcoming:
I'll definitely be re-reading Scalzi's Locked-In while I'm away, I completely missed the non-gendering of the protagonist first time around and want to see how well it holds up at second read/what else I've missed. Also waiting to be started is Kaleidoscope, the diverse YA SF anthology, and John Hornor Jacobs' new fantasy The Incorruptibles. I read the Amazon sample before downloading the full book and it feels like elements of the Old West and the Indian Wars crossed with something more British Empire - maybe Australia? - but with some unique fantasy elements that may draw more on Faery - characterising the 'stretchers' as elves meet Native Americans is probably doing it a disservice, but I haven't read far enough to know for certain what is going on. And I need to get around to Siege Perilous, the last book of the Mongoliad.
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