A Dance in Blood Velvet, Freda Warrington

My review of the first book is here.

I still feel kind of weirdly ambivalent about these books. Everything the copy says about the lush gothicness, it’s true; I find the prose really compelling, something sweet and syrupy and addictive. It engages all the senses, it draws you into its dark embrace… it is exactly the rich velvety experience promised by the titles: A Taste of Blood Wine, A Dance in Blood Velvet, The Dark Blood of Poppies…

I was a little ambivalent with the first book because of the fear that it was going to glorify the vampirism as some kind of true love, some kind of real romanticism. In a way, it does: Karl and Charlotte do truly love one another, and they’ll come through their trials to find each other again. But at the same time, it never shies away from the monstrousness, which is in part what makes it so compelling. Their power, hypnotic, sensual; their pain and separation from humanity. It’s done well, that constant push-and-pull, their dependence on humanity, the way they may kid themselves they feel above.

“Fierce, intolerant and possessive” is how Charlotte describes their love — there are no illusions here about it. I think I’m okay with that, as long as the books continue walking this line between monstrous and sympathetic. Andreas, for example, is one character who seems to fall on the other side of the line in his sheer self-absorption. Ilona, in her amoral gloating about what she is, the way she plays it to the hilt. Charlotte and Karl aren’t perfect either, but they try not to fall into that, and it works to make them interesting characters.

Now what I’m not sure about is the mythology; the angels, or whatever they are, and Violette/Lilith. After Kristian’s fall in the first book, it seemed like it was going a more rationalist route with Charlotte’s beliefs, and then there was a ton of occult stuff in this book. I’m gonna read The Dark Blood of Poppies, though, definitely; if Warrington can keep me uncertain but riveted through two books, I’m along for the ride with the next two.

Rating: 4/5

The Death House, Sarah Pinborough

I mostly skimmed this book, because the whole creeping fear of the illness thing… it gets to me. It’s one of the things my anxiety does to me: just a constant sense that my body is a ticking timebomb, and sooner or later, something will go wrong. I don’t need the idea of a test to tell if you’re Defective, a whole society that condones locking people who have that gene away. So, yeah, I mostly skimmed this one.

It’s not a bad story, actually. I wasn’t sure, from the concept, but I did find myself getting absorbed and stopping to read some sections. The writing is pretty good — there are some really gorgeous bits, particularly at the end. That last line, “I’m not afraid” — ahh. Lovely.

The creepiness and suspense, well, what with trying to avoid the details of the illness and so on, I didn’t really get a full sense of that. Neil Gaiman blurbed it, though, so you can see what kind of audience this is aiming at, the tone that it goes for. In this case, bear in mind that the rating I give it is a compromise between how good I think the book is (probably four stars) and my discomfort with the subject matter (two stars), since I rate things according to my personal enjoyment.

Rating: 3/5

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling

Back to my Harry Potter reread! Woo. This was always my favourite of the four books I’ve read, and I was actually a little reluctant to finish it and move on to the next. I enjoyed Harry’s relationships with Lupin and the brief glimpse of his relationship with Sirius, and the way that their inclusion expands the world a little and gives us a hint of Harry’s parents’ lives, and also of the dark frightened world before Voldemort was defeated.

The Dementors, to me, are more frightening than Voldemort. At least as far as I’ve read in the books, he can’t take away your capacity for hope, even if he plunges you into despair. The Dementors… the moment when Sirius cringes in front of them, near the end, is horrible. They’re the first real signs of a darker touch to the wizarding world; something that can’t just kill you, but can steal your soul — Voldemort can’t do that.

The teenage drama of Ron and Hermione is… less fun. I gather it pretty much carries on as it is, and that maybe it’s meant to foreshadow their relationship being different to the relationship with Harry, and it’s not really an aspect I’m interested in. Honestly, I’m not particularly fond of the idea of any pairing up in these books — unless it’s Sirius and Lupin. Uh.

Enjoyed the reread, though I’m not sure I enjoyed it to the same extent I used to.

Rating: 4/5

Poison, Sarah Pinborough

This is a difficult book to decide about, for me. I like the narration, the way it’s written; it’s deceptively simply written, with that fairytale like tone, and yet there’s a lot of rewriting going on. It’s not just the sexual content, but also the ambivalent attitude to the same. There’s casual sex, sex for power, shameful sex… You’d think it would be sex positive, with the powerful figures of Snow White and Lilith, but it really isn’t; sex is a thing that people seem to use to control each other, it’s just taking of power.

I’m not a big fan of all that, though I’m thinking that probably wasn’t what the author wanted a reader to take away from the story. But the ambivalence isn’t just about the portrayal of sex: it’s also about Lilith, the wicked stepmother. She’s young, she used to laugh, and Snow wants to get through to her… but she’s transforming into something wicked. There’s a commentary there on power and powerlessness, too. Sometimes it seems like we’re meant to pity Lilith, to believe she’s doing things wrong but wishing she could get them right. Sometimes she just seems hateful. The line isn’t walked delicately enough to keep both sides in sight.

There’s also all the allusions to other stories — Aladdin, Hansel and Gretel — which felt too obtrusive to be clever, to me.

I’m planning to read Charm, and maybe Beauty as well, and that might help me figure out what to think.

Rating: 3/5

One Night in Sixes, Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson

I can’t remember who picked this for the SF/F bookclub, but I’m definitely going to be interested to chat about this one and find out whether they’d read it first, or whether they recommended it because they wanted to read it and it sounded interesting. Because it’s not badly written as such, and the world is pretty interesting, but nonetheless I had problems.

For example, I don’t know what’s gotten into publishers putting glossaries and dramatis personae at the back of books — Tor did it with The Goblin Emperor, so I know it’s not just Solaris — but I read this with only half a clue who and what everyone was. The glossary didn’t actually help much after the fact, to be fair, and it wouldn’t have been easy to turn to in an ebook anyway, but perhaps it would’ve helped. The problem is that the book is basically set in an alternate North America (I think?), but it was absent the kind of clues needed to contextualise that.

I’m still not clear on whether this was alternate history or set in the future or what, and I don’t know enough about North American history to pick up on any clues there were for that sort of thing. It plunges straight into the byplay between the characters — which is actually pretty good, especially the tension between Elim and Sil — and doesn’t give much chance to grasp the broader details.

Which, to be fair, I don’t think you entirely need to know, at least not in the first 10% of the book, when you’re busy establishing character. But there were politics here I didn’t understand, words that were either made up or not English which I had to guess at, etc. While the actual writing was easy enough to follow, I just couldn’t connect the background stuff into anything coherent.

And, since I wasn’t fond of the characters for themselves, this actually ended up being just a stream of words which I didn’t really take on board. If people at the bookclub want to talk about plot and character, I’m rather afraid I’ll be stuck.

Rating: 1/5