Things I Read During July

Things I Read During July

Not bloody much. Ain’t entirely sure what happened. But at any rate, here it is:

Kate Elliott – Spirit Gate (7/10, didn’t finish)

I’m kind of sad that I didn’t like this enough to finish it, because it had all these clever little flourishes that I dug. Like the way it seemed to be setting up the eagle reaves as a Pern-y wish fulfillment companion animal thing, and then described the eagles as “smart as pigs… but no smarter.” Or the way the author killed off the putative main character at the end of chapter 2. Or how the most impressive force for maintaining order in the Hundred is actually totally weak-ass and only has power to the extent that the populace thinks they do.

But I read for characters, not world-building, and I ultimately didn’t give enough of a shit about these people to keep slogging. Mai was boring and over-perky; Mongol captain Anji was boring and perfect; Mai’s brother was boring and dumb-ass; and Joss showed a bit of promise, but not enough, and his dead ladyfriend was totally going to get better. About the only guy I really liked was The Snake, a total asshole who just happened to be on the right side and good at his job. But alas, there was no way he was gonna carry the remaining half of the book, so I stopped. Too much other good stuff on my plate.

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Dep’t of Lessons Learned by Learning Lessons: Made-up swears often sound extremely silly. Use them sparingly, make sure they roll off the tongue, and leaven any made-up blasphemies with some good old-fashioned pissing fuckshits.

Elizabeth Bear – Ink & Steel (7/27)

This was a pretty great half of a book! I just picked up the other half (Hell & Earth) yesterday, so I’ll do a real review once I’ve actually read the whole thing. In the meantime, if you’ve been looking for an Elizabethan secret history / famous playwright RPS in which folk get kidnapped by faeries and at least one famous historical figure becomes Lucifer’s bitch, I think we may finally have the book for you.

Jeanette Winterson – Sexing the Cherry (7/31)

Mind, gutter, out, k thx.

So this was… odd. And I’m not sure I really liked it. It’s a book about loneliness (among a few other things), and Winterson is damn adept at evoking it, but beyond the immediate sensory and lyrical pleasures of the book, I’m still trying to decide whether there’s anything in there that’ll stick with me. I guess we’ll see.

J.R.R. Tolkien – Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham (7/31)

My dad read these to me as a kid, and I promptly forgot all about them until I found a copy for 75¢ at the MPL Friends of the Library store. (Man, do I miss the MPL Friends. The TRL Friends shelf is complete ass, and I always show up to their mega-sales too late to score the good stuff.)

Anyway, this book consists of two cute little tales that have nothing at all to do with Middle Earth, the latter of which was the occasion for teaching young Nick what a blunderbuss is. They’re fun, especially Giles of Ham. Also, they’re interspersed with these wild medieval illumination-influenced illos, with a quaint disregard for perspective and all kinds of slim and sly and winsome figures making strange hand gestures.

various authors – Shadow Unit: extras (various times)

So now we’re back to the incremental drip of character development, as ‘twas before the novellas started airing. (Except less coy, which is nice.) I’ll be interested to see what’s left of Chaz in the second season—poor guy is in a hell of a state in both timelines.

(Right, yeah, the LJs are quite a bit ahead of the vignettes, so the extras right now are following two timelines at once. Which is kind of fun.)