Posted February 16, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Adventures of Monkey Girl and Tiger Kite, Kai Schalk
Received to review via Netgalley
This is a very short ebook — I’m not sure how long in words or pages, but it was a very quick read. It’s pretty fun and refreshing, in that it has a diverse cast with Chinese and LGBT characters, it’s a superhero story dominated by female characters, and it takes none of these things too seriously — even the teenage crush, which may or may not come to something, but turns out not to be as important as friendship anyway.
It is a very brief story, the more so because it includes flashbacks to the background of the characters, but all the same, it’s cute and fun. I did feel that with a more mature writing style, it might have felt like more; you can pack so much into a short story if only you know how.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, queer fic, SF/F
Posted February 15, 2015 by in General / 23 Comments
I think this would be a nice one to go viral: a post in which we celebrate the tropes we love instead of griping about the ones we don’t (which are, no doubt, someone else’s favourites). So thanks to Kaja from Of Dragons and Hearts, here is a post about tropes which are, so to speak, my cup of tea.*
- The loveable rogue. Locke Lamora, I am looking at you right now, but also looking further back into my reading past: Jimmy the Hand, Crowley from Good Omens, Gaiman’s Marquis de Carabas… And perhaps best of all, though not from books: Captain Malcolm Reynolds.
- The paladin. Joscelin Verreuil. Captain America.
- The second son. Faramir. Arutha. Verity Farseer. Josua from The Dragonbone Chair. I don’t know what it is, but I tend to prefer the younger brother.
- Heists. You have a really clever plan, you say? Morally dubious, you say? As long as it’s fiction, I’m along for the ride.
- Superheroes. Uh. I’m not sure this even needed to be said. But not just guys like Steve Rogers, who have been altered for it, but the people who make themselves into heroes, too, like Hawkeye.
- Moral ambiguity. Nobody’s perfect, and while a character who is a total bastard just isn’t fun for me, it’s nice when a character isn’t a total angel.
- Guilty conscience. Perhaps especially when it’s not really that person’s fault. Like, say Steve Rogers blames himself for Bucky’s death — it’s not really his fault, he’s in no way a bad guy, but the fact that he can believe this makes him that bit more human and believable.
- Dragons/elves/aliens are nothing like humans. Capricious, commanding, nothing like the regal/wise/enlightened creatures we expect? Interesting!
- Friends like brothers. “I’m with you till the end of the line.” Gaaah. Gaaaaaah. Or Marcus and Esca, Locke and Jean, Fitz and Nighteyes, Dean and Castiel…
- Secretly in love. Shut up, I am not a ginormous softie. I’m not!
*I may be British, but I don’t actually like tea. Chamomile tea or fruit teas, maybe. Mostly not.
Tags: books, comics, Jacqueline Carey, Marvel, Robin Hobb, Rosemary Sutcliff, Scott Lynch, Tad Williams
Posted February 15, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments
Fatale: Death Chases Me, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips
Someone recommended me this, based on the fact that I like noir fiction and I enjoyed Brubaker’s run on Captain America. It’s a mix of noir and horror, and just on those grounds, I don’t think it really worked for me. The femme fatale trope can be fun, but I never really got into this. Maybe it’s a bit too much of a mash-up of genres for me? And I didn’t feel that they used the form to best effect: there were so many text boxes telling me what was going on, and everything was so dark and dingy I wasn’t really keeping track of characters properly.
There was some gorgeous art, mind you, and I can imagine some people falling over themselves for this one. But not me.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Ed Brubaker
Posted February 14, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments
The Periodic Table, Eric R. Scerri
I picked this up to help me get to grips a bit more with electron shells, and especially sub-shells, which I need to know for my OU course but are a step further that I learnt back in my GCSE. But really, it focuses more on the history of the periodic table, on the people who developed the most common versions and why it’s useful. There is some explanation of why the periodic table works and why it’s useful, but it didn’t really get me any further toward understanding it. I’m still left with “there are sub-shells because we say so”.
So, useful for background and history, less so for actual chemistry. Onward, I guess!
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction
Posted February 14, 2015 by in General / 16 Comments
How’s everybody now? I really need to post an update on the #ShelfLove challenge — I’ll probably schedule that for Wednesday, since Sunday is going to be about celebrating the things I love in fiction, a la Kaja’s ‘Totally My Cup of Tea‘ post. In short: I’m still doing well. No books bought by me this week, though my Valentine’s gift from my partner was one (one!) book which I’ve been wanting for a while… Tahdah!
I’ve also had quite a few review copies this week, which was cause for plenty of squee:
And if anyone is mouthing off about the lack of female superheroes, they should just take a look at my pull list — this is stuff that came out just this week.
Which reminds me that I should post about my pull list sometime. And see if I can get hold of some more comics featuring Anya Corazon/Spider-girl. Not long till the first issue of Spider-Gwen!
Lest we forget, I’ve also been to the library. I worked out how many library books I had last week and went on the attack this week, but somehow I always seem to find another book I want.
The Mary Stewarts and Michael Moorcock I’ve read before, but I’m trying to take in all of Elric so I’m starting from the beginning, and Mary Stewart is just comfort reading for me. The Galaxy Game I received a while ago as a review copy and didn’t get round to, so I’m making sure to show my interest now. And Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a book I’ve meant to read for a while, and even own — somewhere.
How’s everyone doing? Still sticking to your resolutions and behaving yourselves now 2015’s in its second month?
Tags: books, comics, Marvel
Posted February 13, 2015 by in Reviews / 7 Comments
Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
Review from August 12th, 2011
I found Moon Over Soho more compelling than Rivers of London, somehow. It was a bit unputdownable, which is a quality I’ve been missing in my books lately, so that’s nice. Yeah, Peter’s led round by his dick here, too, and fails to think about things because he’s too busy having sex with them, and yeah, he’s got serious manpain over Leslie, who he also makes do all his menial work, but… The plot moved at a decent pace, and set up some plot threads which will no doubt be ongoing.
It still reminds me of the Dresden Files, and I’m still not enamoured of the treatment of the female characters, but it didn’t irritate me as much as I expected — I think I’ll continue reading this series. (Mind you, I didn’t give up on the Dresden Files right away, so there’s still time for it to annoy me.)
I read it more or less all in one go — in three sessions, in one day — so that’s definitely a bit better than the first book, which took me seven reading sessions over just over a week’s time. So if you were only planning to pick up Moon Over Soho if it was better than Rivers of London, showing that bit of improvement, well, it does.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: Ben Aaronovitch, book reviews, books, crime, Flashback Friday, SF/F
Posted February 12, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments
Tempting the Gods, Tanith Lee
I keep thinking I haven’t read any Tanith Lee, but I think this is my third now. She has an interesting writing style: lush, rich, layered. Insinuating. I’m not always a fan of the darker themes that seem to run through her work (I disliked White As Snow because of the rape theme, for instance), but I can’t deny how lovely her writing is. Sometimes it’s a little too much, like a cake that’s too dense and too sweet. It reminds me a bit of Catherynne M. Valente’s work, though more solid.
As you can tell, her language is tactile, sensual; you can’t help describing it as a physical thing.
Some of these stories were just right for me, though. I loved ‘Death Loves Me’, ‘After I Killed Her’ and ‘The Lady-of-Shalott House’, for instance. She does enchantment so well, weaves the plots of her stories so carefully that you can almost see the solution before you get there, and yet it doesn’t feel predictable. Just right.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, short stories, Tanith Lee
Posted February 11, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments
Blackbeard, Angus Konstam
Another entry in “Nikki picks up the most random stuff at the library”, though this might’ve been around the time Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag came out, when I also picked up a book on George Washington I haven’t read yet… In any case, this turned out to be a bit disappointing. There’s a wealth of information here about pirates in general, their ports and habits and motivations, and yet it all seems to work out to a big heap of nothing when it comes to Blackbeard. The conclusion seems to be he’s more myth than man, because what we have of him was witnessed by terrified victims and the authors of sensational tales — i.e., not the most likely group to stick to the truth and nothing but the truth.
It’s interesting to get an idea of what does survive from the period, but most of it is very flimsy, and it makes it worse that Konstam will introduce it, dismiss it, and then still build other suppositions on it. For example, he establishes that there’s no proof beyond gossip for Blackbeard being a Bristol boy, and then goes on to build a whole theory about his piratical career on the basis of him being a Bristol boy. The two theories then prop each other up, neither very substantial. Not good practice!
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction
Posted February 10, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments
Sailor Twain, Mark Siegel
I wasn’t a fan of the art at first, and the main character remained kind of distractingly comical-looking for me, but it grew on me. The charcoal look is great, suits the setting perfectly, and for all that Sailor Twain himself looks a little odd, some of the characters are beautifully done. Including, of course, the mermaid. Funnily enough, I read this just the day before I read Brubaker’s Fatale: Death Chases Me, and the whole enchantment aspect seemed pretty similar; a shared theme bridging two dissimilar graphic novels.
The mythology… I could wish it was delved into a little more. We get what we need to know and no more, and I still had plenty of questions — it felt like the rules were made up for the story, rather than the story bending to the rules, which is a pet peeve of mine, really. You’ll always convince me more easily by writing out your rules and then constraining your story within them.
It’s a very quick read, for all that it looks really chunky, and some of the character backstories are really interesting. I don’t know, though; I found myself wishing for more depth, in the end.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, SF/F
Posted February 10, 2015 by in General / 12 Comments
This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is ‘Top Ten Things I Like/Dislike When It Comes To Romances In Books’.
Top Five I Like:
- Intensity. I like to see some give and take. The ability to say ‘you’re wrong’, yell at someone, and still have them respect you.
- Communication. Talk. To. Them. (The flipside, miscommunication, tends to really embarrass me — I’m easy to embarrass.)
- Forbidden love. Actually, this has to be done right, but I spent most of my academic study on Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde. Rosalind Miles’ take on both failed for me, but Steinbeck did Lancelot and Guinevere in a lovely way, and I’ve played with both stories in my own writing.
- “I see who you really are.” The classic is, of course, Beauty and the Beast.
- Equal partnership. Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle might not be the most popular couple in the Arthurian canon, but they’re my favourite by far. Challenged to tell another knight what women want most or be killed, Arthur flounders. A really ugly woman comes to court and says she will give the answer — if Sir Gawain marries her. He says yes, of course, and she gives the answer that saves Arthur’s life: “sovereignty”, the power to choose for oneself, is what women most want. So the wedding goes ahead, but on their wedding night, Ragnelle turns out to be a beautiful young maiden. She asks Gawain whether he would rather she be a beautiful woman in the daytime, when everyone can see her, or at night, when only he can. He lets her choose — which breaks the whole spell she’s under, because he has given her “sovereynté”. It’s maybe the most equal partnership in Arthurian literature, because it’s not from courtly literature where a knight is supposed to worship his lady, and yet it still gives power to the female partner, and shows him respecting her.
Top Five I Dislike:
- “You are a precious little flower and I will protect you.” Enough said.
- Stalking = love. Just say no.
- Keeping secrets. I guess that’s often related to #1, but yeesh, come on, be honest. (Circumvented if this has consequences, though. Like in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.)
- Insta-love. Still needs saying, apparently. Which is actually where people fall down for me even if the things I mentioned above are alright!
- “I’m too low/high in station to marry you.” This can be played well (come on, I like Jane Eyre), but after a certain era, the class implications become too awful.
And if you’re really curious, you can read ‘The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle’ for yourselves here; someday I will both translate the original into modern English, and write my own novel based on it, if I get all my dreams.
Tags: Arthurian, books, Patricia A. McKillip, Top Ten Tuesday
The Adventures of Monkey Girl and Tiger Kite, Kai Schalk
