... & the first books of 2010
Jan. 24th, 2010 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionKitty's House of Horrors - Carrie Vaughn. Werewolf talk radio host Kitty Norville has been invited to take part in the first supernatural reality show, which takes place on a remote ranch in Montana. She's expecting manufactured drama but hopes hanging out with some of her old friends, also invited to participate, will help make it worthwhile. Then it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill them all.
I loved this. Vaughn manages to make this fun, funny, & at the same time more clever than might be expected. She doesn't pull any punches, either, with the body count. Sad!
I love the Kitty books for a lot of reasons, one of them being how Kitty struggles to balance her wolf nature with her human self (Vaughn doesn't use were-creatureness as a yawnworthy gross excuse to have weaker females be dominated by men by default, something I've seen elsewhere & disliked). I also love the little pack Kitty has built around her, & how, while trying to promote peace between supernaturals & humans, she also just wants to keep herself & her chosen family safe. There's more of that here, but also unfolding is conflict on a grander scale:war between supernaturals, war between humans & supernaturals, & Kitty is getting drawn into it for both reasons: to promote peaceful relations generally, & also b/c she realizes if she doesn't join the fight, her family will continue to be at risk. Love it. When is the next book coming out??
Also: CORMAC YAY! I vote for werewolf polyamory plz. (That's why there's fanfic, I know...)
Thoughtcrime Experiments: Nine Stories - Edited by Sumana Harihareswara & Leonard Richardson. There were a few stories I didn't like (but there always are), but the rest included a charmingly fluffy story about water pixies in a NYC apartment; a very snarky take on Santa Claus (balm to my bah-humbug soul at this time of year); noir about a dead Martian ambassador & an addictive drug; & a story about a polyamorous family in space. Actually I was again pleasantly surprised at how many POCs show up in these stories. Another excellent feature was an appendix on how the editors pulled together the anthology (in order to encourage others to do it--they also included a sample contract).
Cape Storm - Rachel Caine. The most recent installment in the Weather Warden series has our heroine, Joanne Baldwin, fighting to keep yet another Demon Mark from turning her into a baddie. This time she's on a cruise ship trying to outrun/defeat a whopping storm that's been sent after her. This series is generally fun & full of thrills--I love the scientific descriptions of how the ability to alter the weather works--& nothing new here on that front. There was a WTF moment when Caine describes an Asian woman as being something like "thin like a restaurant greeter" or something random & kind of jacked-up like that. Ugh.
From Dead to Worse - Charlaine Harris. I find the Southern Vampire books very comforting to read; I love Sookie, & how Harris portrays small-town Southern working-class life with sympathy & realism (& not condescension). The books regularly make me laugh out loud--I love Sookie's voice. This installment features wars being averted among both the Weres & the vamps, & Sookie--as per usual--surrounded by men who want to sleep w/her (this never annoyed me as much as it does some other readers; & Harris' canon magical reason for why this is makes me giggle). Very enjoyable.
An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots - Edited by Lorraine M. Lopez. An anthology of just what the title & subtitle says. There are some powerful pieces here, & the book seems to do a good job at being racially diverse, but by the end I was kind of wishing for more pieces that weren't just about the cultural disconnect of being in academia. But I realize that many women writers end up there, & fair enough to focus the book. One piece I particularly found thought-provoking was Bich Minh Nguyen's essay about the privilege of not having a television: how working-class immigrant families, for example, rely on the TV for important information on how to navigate their new culture, & when she got to college & encountered people who disdained TV, she realized they were all from backgrounds that meant they were never in a position where such information was either foreign to them or not provided automatically.
I loved this. Vaughn manages to make this fun, funny, & at the same time more clever than might be expected. She doesn't pull any punches, either, with the body count. Sad!
I love the Kitty books for a lot of reasons, one of them being how Kitty struggles to balance her wolf nature with her human self (Vaughn doesn't use were-creatureness as a yawnworthy gross excuse to have weaker females be dominated by men by default, something I've seen elsewhere & disliked). I also love the little pack Kitty has built around her, & how, while trying to promote peace between supernaturals & humans, she also just wants to keep herself & her chosen family safe. There's more of that here, but also unfolding is conflict on a grander scale:war between supernaturals, war between humans & supernaturals, & Kitty is getting drawn into it for both reasons: to promote peaceful relations generally, & also b/c she realizes if she doesn't join the fight, her family will continue to be at risk. Love it. When is the next book coming out??
Also: CORMAC YAY! I vote for werewolf polyamory plz. (That's why there's fanfic, I know...)
Thoughtcrime Experiments: Nine Stories - Edited by Sumana Harihareswara & Leonard Richardson. There were a few stories I didn't like (but there always are), but the rest included a charmingly fluffy story about water pixies in a NYC apartment; a very snarky take on Santa Claus (balm to my bah-humbug soul at this time of year); noir about a dead Martian ambassador & an addictive drug; & a story about a polyamorous family in space. Actually I was again pleasantly surprised at how many POCs show up in these stories. Another excellent feature was an appendix on how the editors pulled together the anthology (in order to encourage others to do it--they also included a sample contract).
Cape Storm - Rachel Caine. The most recent installment in the Weather Warden series has our heroine, Joanne Baldwin, fighting to keep yet another Demon Mark from turning her into a baddie. This time she's on a cruise ship trying to outrun/defeat a whopping storm that's been sent after her. This series is generally fun & full of thrills--I love the scientific descriptions of how the ability to alter the weather works--& nothing new here on that front. There was a WTF moment when Caine describes an Asian woman as being something like "thin like a restaurant greeter" or something random & kind of jacked-up like that. Ugh.
From Dead to Worse - Charlaine Harris. I find the Southern Vampire books very comforting to read; I love Sookie, & how Harris portrays small-town Southern working-class life with sympathy & realism (& not condescension). The books regularly make me laugh out loud--I love Sookie's voice. This installment features wars being averted among both the Weres & the vamps, & Sookie--as per usual--surrounded by men who want to sleep w/her (this never annoyed me as much as it does some other readers; & Harris' canon magical reason for why this is makes me giggle). Very enjoyable.
An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots - Edited by Lorraine M. Lopez. An anthology of just what the title & subtitle says. There are some powerful pieces here, & the book seems to do a good job at being racially diverse, but by the end I was kind of wishing for more pieces that weren't just about the cultural disconnect of being in academia. But I realize that many women writers end up there, & fair enough to focus the book. One piece I particularly found thought-provoking was Bich Minh Nguyen's essay about the privilege of not having a television: how working-class immigrant families, for example, rely on the TV for important information on how to navigate their new culture, & when she got to college & encountered people who disdained TV, she realized they were all from backgrounds that meant they were never in a position where such information was either foreign to them or not provided automatically.