furyofvissarion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
furyofvissarion) wrote2011-01-09 04:27 pm
furyofvissarion) wrote2011-01-09 04:27 pm
Entry tags:
the last books of 2010!
Gullstruck Island - Francis Hardinge. This YA fantasy novel could've potentially said some interesting things about colonization & race, but I nevertheless finished it uneasy & convinced that no tropes were being interrogated after all.
Of Wind & Sand - Sylvie Berard, translated by Sheryl Curtis. Possibly the worst book I read all year. Painfully bad writing (that I don't think could entirely be chalked up to the translation) about human colonists on a desert planet, & their culture clashes with the lizardlike aliens that live there.
Slightly Behind & to the Left - Claire Light. A slim collection of short stories. I enjoyed how they featured POCs unobtrusively, like it's just normal to have nonwhite characters (yay!). I did like these stories but felt they suffered a bit from trying overhard to be Wacky! Science! Fiction!
Total Eclipse - Rachel Caine. The last of the Weather Warden books. I've said it before: I love this series; Caine excels at ratcheting up the oh-shit-o-meter w/her over-the-top weather magic hijinx. And I really love how Joanne & her best friend Cherise are what appear to be extremely shallow women -- they love fashion, fast cars, & hot guys -- but they're both smart, would kill (or die) for their friends, & are tough as hell. In this last book especially I loved Cherise for bringing the "you don't have to be magical to kick ass & help save the world" stuff -- shades of Diane Duane's Carmela. I will say that I continue to be disturbed by how Caine describes non-white characters -- not enough for me to stop reading, but I twitch every time she talks about, for example, black Djinn Rahel as exotic or dangerously beautiful or whatever. Caine attempts to convey how very alien the Djinn are to human ways of thinking, but to my mind, she lays on the exoticism much thicker w/Rahel than w/Venna, the white Djinn who chooses to look like the Tenniel version of Alice in Wonderland.
Of Wind & Sand - Sylvie Berard, translated by Sheryl Curtis. Possibly the worst book I read all year. Painfully bad writing (that I don't think could entirely be chalked up to the translation) about human colonists on a desert planet, & their culture clashes with the lizardlike aliens that live there.
Slightly Behind & to the Left - Claire Light. A slim collection of short stories. I enjoyed how they featured POCs unobtrusively, like it's just normal to have nonwhite characters (yay!). I did like these stories but felt they suffered a bit from trying overhard to be Wacky! Science! Fiction!
Total Eclipse - Rachel Caine. The last of the Weather Warden books. I've said it before: I love this series; Caine excels at ratcheting up the oh-shit-o-meter w/her over-the-top weather magic hijinx. And I really love how Joanne & her best friend Cherise are what appear to be extremely shallow women -- they love fashion, fast cars, & hot guys -- but they're both smart, would kill (or die) for their friends, & are tough as hell. In this last book especially I loved Cherise for bringing the "you don't have to be magical to kick ass & help save the world" stuff -- shades of Diane Duane's Carmela. I will say that I continue to be disturbed by how Caine describes non-white characters -- not enough for me to stop reading, but I twitch every time she talks about, for example, black Djinn Rahel as exotic or dangerously beautiful or whatever. Caine attempts to convey how very alien the Djinn are to human ways of thinking, but to my mind, she lays on the exoticism much thicker w/Rahel than w/Venna, the white Djinn who chooses to look like the Tenniel version of Alice in Wonderland.