Review – A Companion to Wolves

Posted June 9, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah MonetteA Companion to Wolves, Sarah Monette, Elizabeth Bear

I think a lot of people have read this expecting something it really is not: comfortable LGBT fantasy romance. But while there are gay characters and themes, the main character is more straight than not, and the gay sex goes toward highlighting issues which previous work like Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books ignored. Instead of telepathic dragons and euphemistic sex scenes which turn out okay for everyone because of course the green dragons choose gay men, this explores the complications for gender identity and sexuality. To that end, there’s a lot of dubious consent here: the wolf-brothers’ relationships mirror the wolves themselves. If that’s going to bother you, definitely don’t read this (or read it with caution), because it’s quite deliberately difficult for the main character to navigate and accept. If you’re reading this because you loved The Goblin Emperor — uh, don’t, at least not just for that reason.

However, since I didn’t go into this expecting sappy gay romance, since I’ve read part of Sarah Monette’s Mélusine, I was pretty prepared for this. Having noticed all those issues with the mating sequences in Pern when I reread the first book, it was interesting to see someone deal with it, and also to place it in a context that more or less forced the authors to deal with it. Of course, this is “Iskyrne”, not the Norse world, but it’s close enough, with similar gender politics and social issues to navigate.

The whole thing is an exploration of honour and how Isolfr has to adjust his ideas of honour — and how his father also has to adjust, since that theme runs from the start of the story. It’s not always comfortable and I don’t think there’s really a happy end for Isolfr. There’s just adjustment: everything is worth it for the sake of his wolf. That’s the real emotional core of the story: Isolfr’s relationship with Viradechtis.

The fantasy world is also interesting, although it’s somewhat typical: trolls and (essentially, though not described in this way) dwarves, magical wolves, etc. The set-up for the wolfhealls is essentially the same as for the Weyrs of Pern: protecting the world. The difference is essentially a) in the amount of ice, b) wolves can’t fly, and c) it actually deals with the issues of consent it raises.

I enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t always comfortable. I don’t think the brutality of parts of it are actually intended to be some kind of indictment of the lifestyle, as some reviewers have thought. There are gay couples in the story who have a meaningful and romantic relationship, just as there are characters who don’t have sex with men outside of the breeding cycles of the wolves. It reflects less of an obsession with sexuality, showing more fluidity, which is entirely possible in the society depicted in the wolfhealls.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Dreamer’s Pool

Posted June 8, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Dreamer's Pool by Juliet MarillierDreamer’s Pool, Juliet Marillier

I should’ve got round to this ages ago, I know. I usually enjoy Juliet Marillier’s work, though I don’t always love it (I think Wolfskin and Foxmask didn’t work so well for me), and I read some very enthusiastic reviews about this one. There were one or two aspects that made me pause (a minor character is a victim of pretty serious abuse and rape) and a few people did note that there’s a fair amount of ‘slut-shaming’ in the story, i.e. shaming a female character for being at all interested in sex. It’s not surprising in a medieval-esque setting, as it often comes with the territory, but off-putting in a fantasy world with no reason to include it.

Still, it’s essentially a fairytale set-up: Blackthorn makes a bargain with a fairy to get out of prison, with a number of conditions placed upon it. This frames the story and sets up her relationship with Grim, her obligation to help people, and her slow road to recovery after the depredations of prison and injustice. That then combines with the story of the side characters, Oran and Flidais, who have an arranged marriage but communicated via letters. Yet, when she arrives amidst the tragedy of losing one of her maids, her faithful dog suddenly hates her and she doesn’t behave at all like the bride he expected.

I found the actual mystery aspect of that really obvious; given the mythological, Celtic-ish setting, it was a little tedious waiting for everyone else to catch up to the obvious. There was one issue which surprised me a little, involving the dog Bramble, though I was pleased by that development and how the plot worked out. Flidais and Oran are sweet and naive, and it seemed like everyone would be miserable if things didn’t work out properly. It’s difficult to discuss the plot and the sex/abuse issue without giving any spoilers, so skip the next paragraph if you haven’t read the book and might want to work things out for yourself!

There is a character who has been abused and raped, but it is essential to the story for the things it brings out in various different characters — in Oran and his wife-to-be, in Blackthorn and Grim in their determination to give the girl justice. Likewise, the issue of sex isn’t as straightforward, in my opinion, as other people think. The problem is not that a particular character is interested in sex, but that she acts out of character about it. It’s as important that she isn’t sympathetic to a victim of rape as that she’s proactive about having sex with Oran. It all comes together into a picture of a woman who just isn’t the woman Oran thought he knew from the letters, and that is the important thing. Honestly, the most important clue about her identity is not the sexual aspects, but in her lack of interest in reading and poetry, and her indifference to her formerly beloved dog.

There’s a lot of time spent on the characters of Oran and Flidais, but Blackthorn and Grim are really the core of the story: Blackthorn’s trauma, her need for justice, her geas to help people in exchange for freedom. I expect that the second book is going to spend more time with Blackthorn and Grim, and dealing with their partnership and friendship, and I’m all for it. And I really enjoy that Blackthorn’s relationship with Grim is emotionally important to both of them, gives them both stability, and has nothing to do with sex or romance. I hope it continues that way.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Spider-Gwen: Most Wanted?

Posted June 7, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Spider-GwenSpider-Gwen: Most Wanted?, Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez

In the Spider-verse event, it turned out there was a world in which Gwen Stacey was bitten by the radioactive spider, and in the end Peter Parker actually died. The origins are a little murky, because thankfully they don’t rehash the origin story, leaving it just sketched in and suggested. This book has Gwen back in her own universe, leading her normal life… and leading her cop father an awful dance while she’s caped up. Her costume design is really cool (love the hood), and Rodriguez’s art works well — and it was a relief reading this so soon after The Movement, which was typically DC-ian in its gloomy colour palettes.

The story itself doesn’t really get on its feet here, I think; we’re still trying to get used to who Gwen is here and how her world has changed. Like, it turns out Mary Jane Watson is… a bit of a diva. And she and Gwen are in a rock band together. Which Gwen has been kind of letting down and might quit? Maybe? But then she turns up and it’s all good.

At times, it’s a little bit goofy — it might be less so if you’ve read Spider-verse, but suddenly having Spider-Ham (a version of Peter Parker who is a pig, no I am not kidding) appear as Gwen’s conscience is a bit outta nowhere from my point of view.

It’s not groundbreaking, except that it’s another female character stepping up and taking on a big role, and dealing in different ways with the same problems. I loved that Gwen went to speak to Aunt May, for example, and the way they talked things over. It’s not the level of quality of, say, Ms Marvel, but it’s fun and I’m looking forward to the next TPB. (And wondering why my pull list on Comixology has disappeared…)

Rating: 3/5

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted June 7, 2016 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

This week’s theme is “Ten Reasons I Love X”, and for a minute I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to gush about — or I could, but nothing I thought I could come up with a whole list for, or which might be interesting to anyone else.

Then it struck me. So here are ten reasons I love fairytales (and fairytale retellings)!

  1. Something about them has spoken to people for a long, long time. These are really old stories that have been told by consensus, basically — by people deciding on the bits they like and adding new parts and ditching things which don’t make sense anymore. They’re like a well-worn shirt.
  2. They’re still variable. We can still change them. Every day, if we want to. We can tell the same story with different characters (and even read the same stories with different characters) and explore all the little ways we can tweak the meanings, the messages.
  3. They contain all kinds of magic. It doesn’t matter what magic you need, you can probably find it in fairytales. Alchemy? Ask Rumpelstiltskin. Fairy Godmothers? True love’s kiss?
  4. We can use them to ask questions. Like, why would you love a Beast? What’s going on with this story?
  5. They’re suitable for any age. These stories are timeless, and it’s because they contain stuff that appeals to children and adults alike. The child wonders about what’s there to find in the wood, other than the Big Bad Wolf. The adult knows the anxiety of Red Riding Hood’s mother, or the patience of the grandmother, or the hunger of the Wolf…
  6. They can be universal. We could go around collecting dozens of variations on a fairytale, or collect them together and call it an archetype. There’s versions of these stories in so many cultures — doesn’t that say something?
  7. They can be specific. Robin Hood lives in Sherwood Forest, and you can go there and walk where he walked. Or walk past a lake where a fairy came out of the water to marry a human man. This or that glade or grotto, somewhere you know and can visit and touch, has a secret magic.
  8. You always know what’s coming. Once upon a time. A wicked witch. True love’s kiss. Happily ever after.
  9. But they can surprise you all the same. It doesn’t have to happen the same way every time. Sleeping Beauty can fall in love with the Wicked Witch or a stableboy or serving maid. The important part is the kiss, the happy ever after. Cinderella can be an android.
  10. We can make new fairytales with the old formulae. We know how it goes: sets of three, a stepmother, a tiny house in the forest…

For two writers who do really good takes on fairytales, try T. Kingfisher and Robin McKinley… Sarah Pinborough’s retellings are also interesting. And there’s a lot more out there.

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Review – Rosemary and Rue

Posted June 6, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of Rosemary & Rue by Seanan McGuireRosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire

I’ve been told to read this series over and over again, for so ridiculously long I think there were only two books the first time (and now there’s nine, with a tenth on the way). Trying to put together a review is difficult: on the surface of it, this is Just Another Urban Fantasy, albeit with a more faerie court type background than a pack of shapeshifters or a coven of witches or whatever (though there’s plenty of potential for all sorts of fairytale characters and mythological beings, and we do see some of them). The main character is tough, determined, a little disillusioned, stubborn, reluctant to seek help…

And yet she’s definitely not Mercy Thompson or Kate Daniels. By about halfway through this, I knew I’d want to pick up more books in the series and follow Toby more. I love all sorts of little things: the fact that she’s essentially a knight errant in the faerie courts, not a lady. The fact that it’s the stubborn detective estranged from their family after tragedy, except this detective’s a woman. The fact that she spent fourteen years as a fish. Her relationships with the people around her (even if she trusts people that pinged my ‘nope’ radar from the beginning, and doesn’t trust the people she should).

Rosemary and Rue is a solid beginning, I think; it introduces you to Toby, to the world, and lets you get to know the rules. I’m more interested with where it goes from here. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why I instantly bought the next book: it just felt like something a bit different, maybe more of a direct answer to the urban fantasy of Jim Butcher than the likes of Mercy Thompson and Kate Daniels (much as I enjoy those books too). In light of that, I’m wavering over what rating to give.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Ashoka

Posted June 5, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Ashoka by Charles AllenAshoka: the Search for India’s Lost Emperor, Charles Allen

Ashoka was an emperor of India who, for around two thousand years, was virtually unknown. After war-like beginnings, he became a Buddhist and began to spread Buddhist values throughout his kingdom, with the hope of conquering neighbouring territories with moral force rather than military force. There’s a certain amount of idealism about this emperor and the good works he may or may not have done, but Allen’s book does show that he seems to have been dedicated to his vision.

However, this book is less about Ashoka himself and more about the search for him — the India enthusiasts, often British people coming over to run the colonies, who hunted down the references, visited the ancient sites, and began to put things together. He’s relatively sympathetic toward those endeavours, with the attitude that if Britain did no other good for India, well, we had these clever people who helped them figure out their own history. I don’t have anything to set against that (although he does often mention local experts in languages and religion), but if you’re sceptical of a colonial narrative, I would say this verges on that territory.

It is a fascinating story, though, and doubly so to me because I know so little of India in either time period. I did sometimes wish I was better at geography, so I could draw more of it together on a mental map, but alas, I couldn’t even sketch the shape of India. Ashoka’s story is definitely worth telling, and so too that of the people who reinstated his legacy, I think.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Finn Fancy Necromancy

Posted June 4, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Finn Fancy Necromancy by Randy HendersonFinn Fancy Necromancy, Randy Henderson

The cover, with the classic gaming-like characters on it, suggests something… I don’t know, playful and referential. A fantasy equivalent to Ready Player One, perhaps. And a lot of people seem to have found that in it, calling it “dark and quirky”, noting the humour and the originality of it. I didn’t find it to be so; I could predict each turn of the story, and the characters didn’t endear themselves to me. The set-up is okay: guy has been imprisoned in an alternate realm for years for a crime he didn’t commit, while a changeling lived his body’s life for him. He gets out, he immediately gets set up again, what’s going on?

The story deals with the past framing at the same time as it goes into the current one, and this seems in many ways to be background for a bigger story to do with Finn’s changeling. That aspect of the plot was actually interesting; but the minutiae of Finn’s love life with women he hadn’t seen for years didn’t work for me, particularly not when he’d spent most of his life lying to one of them, and in the meantime they grew up and he didn’t really, and…

I don’t know, ultimately I just felt like it was completely typical, and I wasn’t drawn to keep reading it. I did, because I bought the paperback and darned if I’m going to waste my money, but if it was from the library I might’ve considered just returning it. There was some references to pop culture stuff — Doctor Who, Star Trek, etc — but it felt… incidental, not really integral to the story. A cute nod more than a necessity. Despite my interest in the changeling story, I doubt I’ll be picking up the second book. It just felt too… mediocre.

In fact, I feel obliged to quote: frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Rating: 2/5

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted June 4, 2016 by Nicky in General / 10 Comments

This has been a less busy week, thankfully, and I’ve got some work done on tackling my backlog — including an epic sweep removing about 70 books from the backlog that I’m no longer interested in, or where I didn’t enjoy the first book of a series, etc. I really should get back to work again, though, because my next deadline is approaching fast…

Oh well, books first!

Received to review:

Cover of Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

I’ve been interested in this for a while, particularly since my mother actually writes to Yoon Ha Lee regularly, and I’ve read The Fox’s Tower and enjoyed the stories in it.

Books bought this week:

27281393 26792189 Cover of Last First Snow by Max Gladstone

I wasn’t 100% in love with The Sin-Eater’s Daughter, but I love the covers of these books and I’m curious enough… Kameron Hurley’s The Geek Feminist Revolution is obviously going to be awesome, though I don’t know how much new content it contains (since I’ve read We Have Always Fought). Aaaand the Max Gladstone means I have all the books so far, until the next one is out.

Reading wise, it’s been a relatively light week. The M.C. Beaton books aren’t even that great, but they were just the right brain candy for me at the time.

Books finished this week:

Cover of Snobbery With Violence by M.C. Beaton Cover of So You Want to Be A Wizard by Diane Duane Cover of A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner Cover of All For Love by Jane Aiken Hodge

Cover of Hasty Death by M.C. Beaton Cover of Sick of Shadows by M.C. Beaton Cover of Our Lady of Pain by M.C. Beaton Cover of Lucky Planet by David Waltham

Reviews posted this week:
Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean. It took me a long time to really get into this, and then suddenly at 85% it made things work. Also, love the setting. 4/5 stars
Spider-Woman: Spider-Verse, by Dennis Hopeless and Greg Land. Fun enough, and if you didn’t bother with Spider-verse in general, this does give you some info. Involves a lot of the Spider-ladies! 3/5 stars
The Sudden Appearance of Hope, by Claire North. A very interesting one-sentence idea (“what if nobody could ever remember you?”) combined with a technology thriller type plot. 4/5 stars
The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner. More complex than the first book, The Thief, this pushes the characters we’ve already been introduced them and develops them beyond the thumbnail sketches we had before. It was a reread, so maybe no surprise I loved it. 5/5 stars
Hawkeye: Rio Bravo, by Matt Fraction and David Aja. This run of Hawkeye has been fun, and I appreciate a lot about it, but I think the storytelling style wasn’t ideal for me. It relied a lot on the art, and I am not a visual person. 3/5 stars
Tales from Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin. My main comment on this one is that you really need to read ‘Dragonfly’ to understand The Other Wind. 4/5 stars
Flashback Friday: Debatable Space, by Philip Palmer. Fun and compulsive read, even though it didn’t seem like it would be my thing at all. 4/5 stars

Other posts:
Top Ten Beach Reads. Except I was difficult about the theme, because I don’t do “beach reads”.

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Review – Debatable Space

Posted June 3, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Debatable Space by Philip PalmerDebatable Space, Philip Palmer

Originally reviewed July 5th, 2012

Randomly selected in the library. the narrative is annoying — very fragmentary, many different narrators and time periods, rapid POV switching — and the typography makes me roll my eyes (I don’t need a page of the letters d o o o o o w n dripping down the page to get that she’s falling). The characters are universally unlikeable; the main female character egotistical and self-justifying, the main male character smug and unprincipled. There’s a lot of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. None of this is my thing.

And yet. I loved it. I gulped it down practically whole. I was on the edge of my seat. The book has an undeniable energy and joy which swept me up despite myself. It made me root for the characters despite the fact that they are all incredibly flawed. There are sciency infodumps and I do not mind. There’s a deus ex machina and it just made me whoop.

I’m sure it has other flaws, but while reading it, I couldn’t care less. That, in my view, is a good book — and I’m very glad I picked up two more books by Philip Palmer on the same whim.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Tales from Earthsea

Posted June 2, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of Tales from Earthsea by Ursula Le GuinTales from Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin

If you read nothing else from this collection, you should grab this to read ‘Dragonfly’. The other stories fill in bits and pieces of the background, or use the world to tell a new story that is small in scope compared to Ged’s. ‘Dragonfly’, on the other hand, is necessary (to my mind) to really understanding The Other Wind, and should definitely be read first. It introduces a character who becomes important, and events which are referred to throughout the novel.

As for the writing of the stories themselves, well: Ursula Le Guin’s prose is as fine as you would expect, and the words are precise and crisp and each placed exactly right. The glimpses of history and other places which we get in these stories is worth the price of entry, too. I think ‘Darkrose and Diamond’, for instance, is incredibly slight compared to Ged’s story, but on the other hand it does reflect on some of the same themes as Tehanu. As does ‘Dragonfly’, in different ways.

Rating: 4/5

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