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Oct. 4th, 2008 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionFirestorm - Rachel Caine. The storyline continues to drag for me, even though things are picking up, what w/the impending end of the world & all. I get tired of hearing about Magical Djinn Daughter Imara, for one. Plus… I dunno, I like when Joanne is at full strength & able to go around screwing w/the weather. Getting bogged down in philosophical debates about protecting the world, having her powers muffled, etc. not so exciting. Plus I really hate Eamon, the psycho abusive boyfriend dude, who still, it is maintained, loves Joanne's sister Sarah despite treating her like shit. Um, not love, folks.
Thin Air - Rachel Caine. I hate amnesia storylines. I really do. Caine manages to make this one more interesting, although the interesting bit doesn't come in for a while, leaving me to slog through Joanne trying to figure out what the hell is going on & who she is. This book is still way better than the last one, though, & I really wish the friggin' library would get in the new one!
Also, I just want to clarify that part of the reason I love these books--despite the seemingly-standard trappings of fatphobia along w/the love for fashion, etc.--is that Joanne is totally kickass. But not in an annoying Mary Sue sort of way; she can't do everything, & sometimes she's taken down. She gets by w/a little help from her friends. But she's amazingly tough on her own, & smart-mouthed, & is refreshing in that her love of fashion doesn't make her a boring ditz (as I've seen in some chick-lit); I like seeing women who can love fashion & the way they look & also want really hard to save the world.
Funny Boy - Shyam Selvadurai. Wonderful novel. Arjie, the narrator, is the titular "funny boy," growing up gay in Sri Lanka during a time when the Tamil-Sinhalese tension explodes. I got this from the library after reading an excerpt in Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America, & was just as drawn in. Smart & moving, & also now I have to see if Selvadurai has any other novels out.
Waiting to Be Heard: Youth Speak Out about Inheriting a Violent World - The Students of San Francisco's Thurgood Marshall Academic High School. Moving in parts, a little naïve & obnoxious in parts--generally what you might expect from such an anthology. That sounds like damning w/faint praise, but it's not--I'm just in a hurry to write this book up so I can pack it. :P
PopCo - Scarlett Thomas. My third read of this novel (first time here; second time here) finds me even more in love with it. Definitely a comfort read; definitely my current favorite book. It hits my buttons in so many ways, & gets me intrigued by things I am normally not interested in (math!). Nothing more coherent to say right now, but the past two times I read the book I was a bit more verbose.
Night Child - Jes Battis. I wanted to like this book, about Occult Special Investigator Tess Corday, so much. Battis first came to my attention when I saw a post of his online somewhere that indicated he wrote paranormal stuff & was also progressive—not the only one, but I've seen so many paranormal authors post crap about how they're on Slim Fast again b/c OMG THEY'RE FAT or how they're not feminists or blah blah, so this alone made me remember Battis' name. And the acknowledgments to the book ends w/this, which is 100% awesome:
And, indeed, the best friend of main character Tess is a gay guy, & there's kinky stuff & blah blah blah. Of course I'm so cranky, I immediately wondered why the main character couldn't be queer (she notes a few times that she's not), instead of just the sidekick (although I know there are tons of books in this genre that would never give a queer person even that much airtime & love, natch).
But somehow the book didn't grab me; Tess' obsession w/the death of her best friend during adolescence is logically compelling but not, to me, emotionally so, & when Tess becomes super-attached to adolescent-in-trouble Mia Polanski because of this, it just didn't read as authentic to me. Also, Tess' attraction to evil necromancer dude Lucian Agrado is a fairly standard plot point in paranormals, but somehow it's not as hot as when, say, Kelley Armstrong does it. I may end up reading the next book, but... I dunno. It left me kinda cold.
Into the Wild - Sarah Beth Durst. Julie is a tween girl with Rapunzel as her mother. No, really. Rapunzel, as it turns out, broke out of the Wild—the magical land in which fairy tales are perpetually reenacted, in a neverending hell for the inhabitants--& now is a suburban mom. Also escaped from the Wild (which is now reduced to a small tangle of vines under Julie's bed) are people now known as Goldie, Cindy, & Ursa (one of the Three Bears). Rapunzel herself owns a hair salon & is more usually known as Zel. Julie is cranky about having a fairy-tale mother & weird vines under her bed. I was wary at first, because this setup is way too cutesy, but the book became much more interesting once the Wild becomes free & begins taking over the town & trapping people inside its stories.
Maybe it's because I've been reading too much Fruits Basket & Kare Kano lately, but the theme of being unable to change, doomed to make the same mistakes over & over—whether because of your DNA/family heritage, a curse, or being trapped inside a fairy-tale loop—is incredibly affecting to me. I really enjoyed watching Julie figure out how to defeat the Wild & prevent everyone from their grim fairy-tale fates, & I also loved hearing about how kickass Rapunzel was to spearhead the breakout from the Wild to begin w/.
Gale Force - Rachel Caine. Caine sure knows how to ratchet up the oh-shit-o-meter. I was relieved, after being slightly disappointed w/the last few Weather Warden books, to be pulled along for the crazy ride w/this latest installment. Even more props to Caine for being able to do that w/a book in which a large part of the plot rests on a wedding—something I have grown to detest in paranormals (well, that & the baby thing), because it seems so wearily inevitable.
Out of the Wild - Sarah Beth Durst. Not as fun as Durst's first book; while she's telling a story about change, & who can change & why, it starts out dragging, because Julie's long-lost fairy-tale father (the prince of Rapunzel, Julie's mom) is suddenly spit out of the Wild, the vicious, relentless fairy-tale land that Rapunzel & many others escaped from, &... well, Prince (as he gets dubbed) has adjustment problems. He can't stop acting like a hero, dashing off to rescue a damsel in distress even if it means abandoning his true love, who just got turned into a pumpkin. His pigheaded predictability ought to induce sympathy—he doesn't know how to be anything but a hero, was never allowed to be--& yet it just irked me. In the end I enjoyed the book, but not nearly as much as the first one.
Thin Air - Rachel Caine. I hate amnesia storylines. I really do. Caine manages to make this one more interesting, although the interesting bit doesn't come in for a while, leaving me to slog through Joanne trying to figure out what the hell is going on & who she is. This book is still way better than the last one, though, & I really wish the friggin' library would get in the new one!
Also, I just want to clarify that part of the reason I love these books--despite the seemingly-standard trappings of fatphobia along w/the love for fashion, etc.--is that Joanne is totally kickass. But not in an annoying Mary Sue sort of way; she can't do everything, & sometimes she's taken down. She gets by w/a little help from her friends. But she's amazingly tough on her own, & smart-mouthed, & is refreshing in that her love of fashion doesn't make her a boring ditz (as I've seen in some chick-lit); I like seeing women who can love fashion & the way they look & also want really hard to save the world.
Funny Boy - Shyam Selvadurai. Wonderful novel. Arjie, the narrator, is the titular "funny boy," growing up gay in Sri Lanka during a time when the Tamil-Sinhalese tension explodes. I got this from the library after reading an excerpt in Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America, & was just as drawn in. Smart & moving, & also now I have to see if Selvadurai has any other novels out.
Waiting to Be Heard: Youth Speak Out about Inheriting a Violent World - The Students of San Francisco's Thurgood Marshall Academic High School. Moving in parts, a little naïve & obnoxious in parts--generally what you might expect from such an anthology. That sounds like damning w/faint praise, but it's not--I'm just in a hurry to write this book up so I can pack it. :P
PopCo - Scarlett Thomas. My third read of this novel (first time here; second time here) finds me even more in love with it. Definitely a comfort read; definitely my current favorite book. It hits my buttons in so many ways, & gets me intrigued by things I am normally not interested in (math!). Nothing more coherent to say right now, but the past two times I read the book I was a bit more verbose.
Night Child - Jes Battis. I wanted to like this book, about Occult Special Investigator Tess Corday, so much. Battis first came to my attention when I saw a post of his online somewhere that indicated he wrote paranormal stuff & was also progressive—not the only one, but I've seen so many paranormal authors post crap about how they're on Slim Fast again b/c OMG THEY'RE FAT or how they're not feminists or blah blah, so this alone made me remember Battis' name. And the acknowledgments to the book ends w/this, which is 100% awesome:
Finally, I hope that this book finds its way into the hands of queer and questioning youth around the world and that they find characters within it who matter to them. You are never alone.
And, indeed, the best friend of main character Tess is a gay guy, & there's kinky stuff & blah blah blah. Of course I'm so cranky, I immediately wondered why the main character couldn't be queer (she notes a few times that she's not), instead of just the sidekick (although I know there are tons of books in this genre that would never give a queer person even that much airtime & love, natch).
But somehow the book didn't grab me; Tess' obsession w/the death of her best friend during adolescence is logically compelling but not, to me, emotionally so, & when Tess becomes super-attached to adolescent-in-trouble Mia Polanski because of this, it just didn't read as authentic to me. Also, Tess' attraction to evil necromancer dude Lucian Agrado is a fairly standard plot point in paranormals, but somehow it's not as hot as when, say, Kelley Armstrong does it. I may end up reading the next book, but... I dunno. It left me kinda cold.
Into the Wild - Sarah Beth Durst. Julie is a tween girl with Rapunzel as her mother. No, really. Rapunzel, as it turns out, broke out of the Wild—the magical land in which fairy tales are perpetually reenacted, in a neverending hell for the inhabitants--& now is a suburban mom. Also escaped from the Wild (which is now reduced to a small tangle of vines under Julie's bed) are people now known as Goldie, Cindy, & Ursa (one of the Three Bears). Rapunzel herself owns a hair salon & is more usually known as Zel. Julie is cranky about having a fairy-tale mother & weird vines under her bed. I was wary at first, because this setup is way too cutesy, but the book became much more interesting once the Wild becomes free & begins taking over the town & trapping people inside its stories.
Maybe it's because I've been reading too much Fruits Basket & Kare Kano lately, but the theme of being unable to change, doomed to make the same mistakes over & over—whether because of your DNA/family heritage, a curse, or being trapped inside a fairy-tale loop—is incredibly affecting to me. I really enjoyed watching Julie figure out how to defeat the Wild & prevent everyone from their grim fairy-tale fates, & I also loved hearing about how kickass Rapunzel was to spearhead the breakout from the Wild to begin w/.
Gale Force - Rachel Caine. Caine sure knows how to ratchet up the oh-shit-o-meter. I was relieved, after being slightly disappointed w/the last few Weather Warden books, to be pulled along for the crazy ride w/this latest installment. Even more props to Caine for being able to do that w/a book in which a large part of the plot rests on a wedding—something I have grown to detest in paranormals (well, that & the baby thing), because it seems so wearily inevitable.
Out of the Wild - Sarah Beth Durst. Not as fun as Durst's first book; while she's telling a story about change, & who can change & why, it starts out dragging, because Julie's long-lost fairy-tale father (the prince of Rapunzel, Julie's mom) is suddenly spit out of the Wild, the vicious, relentless fairy-tale land that Rapunzel & many others escaped from, &... well, Prince (as he gets dubbed) has adjustment problems. He can't stop acting like a hero, dashing off to rescue a damsel in distress even if it means abandoning his true love, who just got turned into a pumpkin. His pigheaded predictability ought to induce sympathy—he doesn't know how to be anything but a hero, was never allowed to be--& yet it just irked me. In the end I enjoyed the book, but not nearly as much as the first one.