still so much backlog...
Feb. 23rd, 2014 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionBut here's a start, anyway:
Corsets and Clockwork: 13 Steampunk Romances - Edited by Trisha Telep. This was a much better anthology than that giant paranormal romance one I read before this. Not that this was perfect, but at least somewhat more interesting! I was also interested to see the idea of steampunk taken much further, chronologically, than I've generally seen it before (note: I don't actually read a lot of steampunk, so there you go) -- there's a story about a Polish girl during WWII, for example. Anyway, I am a terrible book blogger in that it's been so long since I read this that I've mostly forgotten the book except that I enjoyed it mostly more than I feared, haha.
Working Stiff - Rachel Caine. So creepy, holy moly, so creepy. Don't read if you are freaked out by discussion of suffocation, for example (I am, & yet I read this, mostly b/c I didn't know that would come up so much). Bryn Davis starts a new job as a mortician, & in short order discovers that someone is selling a drug that brings corpses back to life (temporarily, thus making the beneficiaries dependent on the supplier of this drug), as well as becoming one of these corpses herself. SO CREEPY, seriously, even though it's been months since I read this I don't think I can bear to go into more detail. I do like Caine's books in general -- well, the Weather Warden books (didn't really get into the Morganville Vampires series) -- which is why I gave this a try, but honestly, I don't think I can bear to read the next one in this series.
Must Love Vampires - Heidi Betts. This was rife with the consent issues that are common in a lot of paranormal romances involving vampires. I mean, even for the genre I felt like they were quite prominent. If you can manage to ignore/read around them, this was mostly a fluffy brainless read, enough of a distraction to read but pretty easily forgotten. The writing was sometimes embarrassingly awkward. Anyway, the plot revolves around twin sisters in Vegas, one of whom is a showgirl & one of whom is somewhat of a tabloid journalist, & two rich vampire brothers, who also happen to live in Vegas. I think you can see where things go from here.
The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna. Hilariously dark Finnish novel that follows Vatanen, a disgruntled journalist from Helsinki who quits his job, leaves his wife, & roams around rural Finland in the company of an injured hare he rescues when his car hits it. There's logging & murderous bears & mockery of Swedes & Americans & a lot more. The humor is super-dry, as you might expect. This made me laugh a lot -- & it didn't have the depressing ending I was fearing. One thing that bugged me is that the translator converted all the money mentioned in the book into pounds, something he mentions he did in order not to disturb the reader's pleasure by making them convert the markka -- offensive & ridiculous on multiple levels, not least which of course that many readers now might not have a good sense of what the pound was worth in 1994, when the book was translated.
Corsets and Clockwork: 13 Steampunk Romances - Edited by Trisha Telep. This was a much better anthology than that giant paranormal romance one I read before this. Not that this was perfect, but at least somewhat more interesting! I was also interested to see the idea of steampunk taken much further, chronologically, than I've generally seen it before (note: I don't actually read a lot of steampunk, so there you go) -- there's a story about a Polish girl during WWII, for example. Anyway, I am a terrible book blogger in that it's been so long since I read this that I've mostly forgotten the book except that I enjoyed it mostly more than I feared, haha.
Working Stiff - Rachel Caine. So creepy, holy moly, so creepy. Don't read if you are freaked out by discussion of suffocation, for example (I am, & yet I read this, mostly b/c I didn't know that would come up so much). Bryn Davis starts a new job as a mortician, & in short order discovers that someone is selling a drug that brings corpses back to life (temporarily, thus making the beneficiaries dependent on the supplier of this drug), as well as becoming one of these corpses herself. SO CREEPY, seriously, even though it's been months since I read this I don't think I can bear to go into more detail. I do like Caine's books in general -- well, the Weather Warden books (didn't really get into the Morganville Vampires series) -- which is why I gave this a try, but honestly, I don't think I can bear to read the next one in this series.
Must Love Vampires - Heidi Betts. This was rife with the consent issues that are common in a lot of paranormal romances involving vampires. I mean, even for the genre I felt like they were quite prominent. If you can manage to ignore/read around them, this was mostly a fluffy brainless read, enough of a distraction to read but pretty easily forgotten. The writing was sometimes embarrassingly awkward. Anyway, the plot revolves around twin sisters in Vegas, one of whom is a showgirl & one of whom is somewhat of a tabloid journalist, & two rich vampire brothers, who also happen to live in Vegas. I think you can see where things go from here.
The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna. Hilariously dark Finnish novel that follows Vatanen, a disgruntled journalist from Helsinki who quits his job, leaves his wife, & roams around rural Finland in the company of an injured hare he rescues when his car hits it. There's logging & murderous bears & mockery of Swedes & Americans & a lot more. The humor is super-dry, as you might expect. This made me laugh a lot -- & it didn't have the depressing ending I was fearing. One thing that bugged me is that the translator converted all the money mentioned in the book into pounds, something he mentions he did in order not to disturb the reader's pleasure by making them convert the markka -- offensive & ridiculous on multiple levels, not least which of course that many readers now might not have a good sense of what the pound was worth in 1994, when the book was translated.