Mostly reading
Oct. 7th, 2013 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThings achieved today that were on the list: Read
Things achieved today that were not on the list: dishwasher, laundry
need better list.
Things read recently:
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold.
I spent pretty much the whole book going :-D
and feeling like of course that was the only way...
also, even though it files a certain favourite pairing of mine neatly into het relationships by the end, given that their wives outright suggested a more complex arrangement, it does not exactly shut the other possibilities down. :-)
There were repeated uncomfortable references to uncertainty about the current gender of one transgendered character. After surgery on Beta they're legally male now, even though it took a decision in the highest court on Barrayar since they're the first to try it; but people more than once were making jokes about them maybe counting as female, but then whoever they were talking to would say no they do not. I ... was of two minds. Barrayar being the benighted backward multiply prejudiced hat that it is, those are actually mild and supportive comments. But, it's... embarrassing? Uncomfortable, anyway, that the author put them in. They fit the characters, but feel wrong to the readers, I reckon. Teasing Ivan about his previous romantic history while inviting his new wife into his social circle, fair enough. Making those particular jokes? Not so much. It felt like speed bumps whenever it happened. I can't remember how many times it came up though.
This book did reinforce my feeling that she flinched when writing Cryoburn. There's something that happens right at the end of Cryoburn that I thought needed to be the inciting event and emotional heart of the book, but I reckoned the author would be too sad of it to write it that way. This book is again set before that sad event. So I think she really very doesn't want to go there. Which is understandable, cause authors spend even more time with their favourite characters than readers do, and readers already spend rather a lot there. But it made this book feel weird at the end, because instead of being a book about how life goes on, it just leaves the characters in the run up to the sad thing. On the other hand, setting a romp like this any time shortly after the sad thing wouldn't work either. So I don't know.
This was a book with a heart though, that dragged its characters through some emotional work they needed to do, so it feels proper.
Finished reading the Bifrost Guardians, by Mickey Zucker Reichert. that took quite a long while because they were boring and annoying. I looked on librarything and I gave them a lot of stars last time I read them. This time I'm not inclined to give very many stars at all. The last book relied on changing the rules of magic to give the characters an out, and I didn't like the way the rules were set up either before or after, so it was a stupid annoying cheat. Also one of the characters got killed with very little fanfare or point. They weren't treated like a main character really, despite presence in multiple books. And guess what gender they were? Also I complained in the first book it never bothered showing us why the girl would love the guy, and in the last book there's like a plot point that sets it up as being evil to even wonder why someone would love someone. love just is and doesn't need any reasons. which, okay, but, I still remain baffled as to why she'd fall in love with someone whose main distinguishing features are screaming flashbacks, sulking, and sudden violence. I mean, finding that baffling seems reasonable. Also it set up the rules of magic to mean that life was chaos and chaos was evil, like the more chaos you had the more evil you were, completely involuntarily. Meaning the more life you have the more evil you were? And actually yes, because the pregnant lady got to be more evil because the baby was growing strong with chaos energy. What? Seriously, what? That... who even... what? So I don't know what they were doing with their magic metaphysics but I'm having none of it. Book was boring when it wasn't outright objectionable. May sell it.
Today I read Fifth Quarter, by Tanya Huff. The name makes sense because there's a religion that divides everything into quarters, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and can sing to spirits from each of those quarters, and then they discover a fifth kind of spirit and have to redo their worldview. There was a necromancer raising the undead to be his family, and there was a guy who swapped bodies whenever he was about to die so someone else died instead and he stole their body, and yet there were no actual bad guys in the cackling and setting out to be evil sense. Everyone made sense from their own point of view and they acted from a combination of wanting to stay alive and of wanting to not be lonely. Love and survival. All kind of sad by the end.
There was lots of running around and exciting action, but I found it a bit difficult to stay with because one of the major emotional hurdles the point of view characters has to deal with is a sister trying to deal with fancying her brother. Like, there's multiple times she notices in detail how hot he looks. She feels ick about it, but keeps noticing. And then her brother's spirit comes to live in her head, and her brother fancies himself, and keeps trying to persuade her to have sex with his body. Or at least to have sex while he's in her. It is worlds of ick and also yuck and creepy. Incest is a problem. Thankfully though the book knows it's a problem. (I have previously read books by other authors and given up on them swiftly and with throwing, because they present the problem as 'fancies brother' and the solution as 'ignore societal strictures', and no.) The problem is the two of them have been raised so entangled and reliant on each other and without other support structures that this other manifestation has developed. The solution is getting out of that bad pattern entirely. Also, and I know all this is spoilers, but I'm not sure I'd have started reading it if I knew about the incest stuff so I'll spoiler it happily: she never does shag him. So the book knows it is a problem and resolves it by sorting them out into better emotional places so they go off with other people.
There were a lot of levels to the horror stuff and the necromancy and body theft stuff, and it tangled up with how the siblings had been raised to be assasins for an empire that didn't actually care they wouldn't live very long, and required them to never leave or have children of their own. The loneliness and trapped terror and death inherent in how they were raised got explored or paralleled in the necromancy plot. It was good adventure stuff.
I just would probably rather have skipped it, on account of ick. Even though untangling the ick and making all well again was the point of the journey.
But I'm about to go pick up the next book in the series, because I've liked almost all the other Tanya Huff books I've ever read, except for the very first one she published which was merely written kind of awful. Which is kind of encouraging really, I should re-read people's first books more often, only reading the latest releases can be a bit depressing when I think about trying to write.
I do like about Huff that gender roles are equal even in fantasy worlds and bisexuality or being gay is always a possibility. Just randomly. Not to make a point or anything, just, people shag people they like, and refuse people they don't like, and work things out between them. It's sort of a relief, reading worlds like that. Breathing room.
Things achieved today that were not on the list: dishwasher, laundry
need better list.
Things read recently:
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold.
I spent pretty much the whole book going :-D
and feeling like of course that was the only way...
also, even though it files a certain favourite pairing of mine neatly into het relationships by the end, given that their wives outright suggested a more complex arrangement, it does not exactly shut the other possibilities down. :-)
There were repeated uncomfortable references to uncertainty about the current gender of one transgendered character. After surgery on Beta they're legally male now, even though it took a decision in the highest court on Barrayar since they're the first to try it; but people more than once were making jokes about them maybe counting as female, but then whoever they were talking to would say no they do not. I ... was of two minds. Barrayar being the benighted backward multiply prejudiced hat that it is, those are actually mild and supportive comments. But, it's... embarrassing? Uncomfortable, anyway, that the author put them in. They fit the characters, but feel wrong to the readers, I reckon. Teasing Ivan about his previous romantic history while inviting his new wife into his social circle, fair enough. Making those particular jokes? Not so much. It felt like speed bumps whenever it happened. I can't remember how many times it came up though.
This book did reinforce my feeling that she flinched when writing Cryoburn. There's something that happens right at the end of Cryoburn that I thought needed to be the inciting event and emotional heart of the book, but I reckoned the author would be too sad of it to write it that way. This book is again set before that sad event. So I think she really very doesn't want to go there. Which is understandable, cause authors spend even more time with their favourite characters than readers do, and readers already spend rather a lot there. But it made this book feel weird at the end, because instead of being a book about how life goes on, it just leaves the characters in the run up to the sad thing. On the other hand, setting a romp like this any time shortly after the sad thing wouldn't work either. So I don't know.
This was a book with a heart though, that dragged its characters through some emotional work they needed to do, so it feels proper.
Finished reading the Bifrost Guardians, by Mickey Zucker Reichert. that took quite a long while because they were boring and annoying. I looked on librarything and I gave them a lot of stars last time I read them. This time I'm not inclined to give very many stars at all. The last book relied on changing the rules of magic to give the characters an out, and I didn't like the way the rules were set up either before or after, so it was a stupid annoying cheat. Also one of the characters got killed with very little fanfare or point. They weren't treated like a main character really, despite presence in multiple books. And guess what gender they were? Also I complained in the first book it never bothered showing us why the girl would love the guy, and in the last book there's like a plot point that sets it up as being evil to even wonder why someone would love someone. love just is and doesn't need any reasons. which, okay, but, I still remain baffled as to why she'd fall in love with someone whose main distinguishing features are screaming flashbacks, sulking, and sudden violence. I mean, finding that baffling seems reasonable. Also it set up the rules of magic to mean that life was chaos and chaos was evil, like the more chaos you had the more evil you were, completely involuntarily. Meaning the more life you have the more evil you were? And actually yes, because the pregnant lady got to be more evil because the baby was growing strong with chaos energy. What? Seriously, what? That... who even... what? So I don't know what they were doing with their magic metaphysics but I'm having none of it. Book was boring when it wasn't outright objectionable. May sell it.
Today I read Fifth Quarter, by Tanya Huff. The name makes sense because there's a religion that divides everything into quarters, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and can sing to spirits from each of those quarters, and then they discover a fifth kind of spirit and have to redo their worldview. There was a necromancer raising the undead to be his family, and there was a guy who swapped bodies whenever he was about to die so someone else died instead and he stole their body, and yet there were no actual bad guys in the cackling and setting out to be evil sense. Everyone made sense from their own point of view and they acted from a combination of wanting to stay alive and of wanting to not be lonely. Love and survival. All kind of sad by the end.
There was lots of running around and exciting action, but I found it a bit difficult to stay with because one of the major emotional hurdles the point of view characters has to deal with is a sister trying to deal with fancying her brother. Like, there's multiple times she notices in detail how hot he looks. She feels ick about it, but keeps noticing. And then her brother's spirit comes to live in her head, and her brother fancies himself, and keeps trying to persuade her to have sex with his body. Or at least to have sex while he's in her. It is worlds of ick and also yuck and creepy. Incest is a problem. Thankfully though the book knows it's a problem. (I have previously read books by other authors and given up on them swiftly and with throwing, because they present the problem as 'fancies brother' and the solution as 'ignore societal strictures', and no.) The problem is the two of them have been raised so entangled and reliant on each other and without other support structures that this other manifestation has developed. The solution is getting out of that bad pattern entirely. Also, and I know all this is spoilers, but I'm not sure I'd have started reading it if I knew about the incest stuff so I'll spoiler it happily: she never does shag him. So the book knows it is a problem and resolves it by sorting them out into better emotional places so they go off with other people.
There were a lot of levels to the horror stuff and the necromancy and body theft stuff, and it tangled up with how the siblings had been raised to be assasins for an empire that didn't actually care they wouldn't live very long, and required them to never leave or have children of their own. The loneliness and trapped terror and death inherent in how they were raised got explored or paralleled in the necromancy plot. It was good adventure stuff.
I just would probably rather have skipped it, on account of ick. Even though untangling the ick and making all well again was the point of the journey.
But I'm about to go pick up the next book in the series, because I've liked almost all the other Tanya Huff books I've ever read, except for the very first one she published which was merely written kind of awful. Which is kind of encouraging really, I should re-read people's first books more often, only reading the latest releases can be a bit depressing when I think about trying to write.
I do like about Huff that gender roles are equal even in fantasy worlds and bisexuality or being gay is always a possibility. Just randomly. Not to make a point or anything, just, people shag people they like, and refuse people they don't like, and work things out between them. It's sort of a relief, reading worlds like that. Breathing room.