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kittydesade) wrote2020-02-12 11:33 am
kittydesade) wrote2020-02-12 11:33 am
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I thought I was just sleepy, and was prepared to be annoyed because I went to sleep mostly on time last night, but now I'm both sleepy and cold and alternating between sniffly and stuffy-nosed, so I think what I actually am is getting a cold. So I'm still annoyed, but for a different reason. And I still have to go to bed early.
Whatever. As long as I'm better in time for Cirque this weekend I'll be content, because this is apparently the year of many performances including Cirque hopefully twice, the Hu, Apocalyptica, and Lacuna Coil. I'm really excited for all of this. I'm happy they're touring near enough to us, I'm excited to see new bands I've enjoyed for literal decades, yikes. I'm really happy to see the Hu in concert again. They're from Mongolia. I didn't think I'd get to see them live once let alone twice. I'm happy and excited and I will not start this off on a bad omen by going to see Cirque with a cold. It's their Cirque on Ice show, I forget what it's actually called.
I said I was going to talk about what I'd been reading, didn't I. Well, I had no idea how to go about picking next books so I'm mostly going back through in order of most recently bought, back to the beginning? Or till I figure out a different order. New releases that I pre-ordered going to the top of the stack, exceptions made for when I bought the first in a series and discover I want to read more, etc. Currently I'm alternating one book in the Strongbox Chronicles by CE Murphy, and one book in the Glamourist series by Mary Robinette Kowal. Because the last several books I read were dark or heavy or both and I am in dire need of something light. Ish. Light for me.
The last book I finished was The Book of M by Peng Shepherd, a post-apocalypse story where the apocalypse is an epidemic of forgetting. First you lose your shadow, then you start to forget, then you forget you need to do things like eat or drink or breathe, then you die. It's more magical and mystical than that, and the forgetting is tied to some other stuff that's happening and in the end people find a way to somewhat reverse it, but by then millions and millions of people obviously are dead, either from forgetting or from the secondary effects. I liked it! But oh boy there was a lot of heavy emotional stuff. A lot of the named characters died. Some of them in particularly ugly ways.
Before that is was Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland, which just came out and which is a sequel to Dread Nation, the only zombie fiction I've had in a long time that didn't give me the sense of dull hopeless despair zombie fiction usually does. Deathless Divide came a lot closer to that. But I did finish it eventually, and I did enjoy it. Of note are some of the discussions of race in a particular period and scientific ethics.
Before that, Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Which was an interesting juxtaposition, the tone was much lighter but the book was a near total party kill. The setting is science-fiction but the style of writing is very much fantasy. And it's about necromancers. I bought it a while back but hadn't read it, but then it was recommended to me particularly by the author of Nanoshock and Necrotech who thought I would like it, presumably because the heroines are alike (and they're right, and it was so true, and I laughed so much ten pages in when I realized) so if you like a sort of Spider Jerusalem-y heroine in a gothy necromancer setting, this book may be for you.
Before that, Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow. I go back and forth on this one. I enjoyed it, not enough to get very excited about it, didn't hate it enough to stop, someone described it as being "very twee" and that's true to an extent, it is very fond of its devices, and... Eh. I think if I'd left it until more now I would have enjoyed it more because it'd be a welcome light break from the rest. Or maybe it'd be too light. IDEK. Read the first couple chapters and see if it's right for you.
I read Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi and all of the content warnings for race issues, specifically Black issues, and the titular riot the titular baby is born during is the Rodney King riot. Which, I later learned looking up things, was right around the time but a year later than the DC Cinco De Mayo riots. Which explains a lot why I felt punched in the chest by this book. It was good! I read it in two sittings. But, punched in the chest. Do not read unless you're up for getting emotionally punched in the chest.
I read Shadows of Athens and Scorpions in Corinth by JM Alvey, which were a nice pair of relatively lighthearted mysteries set in ancient Greece. The hero is a playwright turned detective by having a body literally dropped on his doorstep, and it's a murder mystery with all that entails. Hopefully there will be more, I enjoyed them.
And then I started out the year with reading the Queens of Innis Lear, which is the King Lear story but told in a fresh, Europe-analogy setting from the point of view of the three daughters, plus some magic. It was fun, it wasn't light but it wasn't as heavy as half of the rest of what I've read this year, it's... if you want the modern inheritor to Mists of Avalon, Tessa Gratton is probably it. Without all the fucking yikes that goes with Marion Zimmer Bradley these days, I mean in graceful, ornate but not burdensome prose retellings of old stories. Quite good. Looking forward to reading Lady Hotspur, I may cram that in between the current serieses I'm reading. ...seseses.
Whatever. As long as I'm better in time for Cirque this weekend I'll be content, because this is apparently the year of many performances including Cirque hopefully twice, the Hu, Apocalyptica, and Lacuna Coil. I'm really excited for all of this. I'm happy they're touring near enough to us, I'm excited to see new bands I've enjoyed for literal decades, yikes. I'm really happy to see the Hu in concert again. They're from Mongolia. I didn't think I'd get to see them live once let alone twice. I'm happy and excited and I will not start this off on a bad omen by going to see Cirque with a cold. It's their Cirque on Ice show, I forget what it's actually called.
I said I was going to talk about what I'd been reading, didn't I. Well, I had no idea how to go about picking next books so I'm mostly going back through in order of most recently bought, back to the beginning? Or till I figure out a different order. New releases that I pre-ordered going to the top of the stack, exceptions made for when I bought the first in a series and discover I want to read more, etc. Currently I'm alternating one book in the Strongbox Chronicles by CE Murphy, and one book in the Glamourist series by Mary Robinette Kowal. Because the last several books I read were dark or heavy or both and I am in dire need of something light. Ish. Light for me.
The last book I finished was The Book of M by Peng Shepherd, a post-apocalypse story where the apocalypse is an epidemic of forgetting. First you lose your shadow, then you start to forget, then you forget you need to do things like eat or drink or breathe, then you die. It's more magical and mystical than that, and the forgetting is tied to some other stuff that's happening and in the end people find a way to somewhat reverse it, but by then millions and millions of people obviously are dead, either from forgetting or from the secondary effects. I liked it! But oh boy there was a lot of heavy emotional stuff. A lot of the named characters died. Some of them in particularly ugly ways.
Before that is was Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland, which just came out and which is a sequel to Dread Nation, the only zombie fiction I've had in a long time that didn't give me the sense of dull hopeless despair zombie fiction usually does. Deathless Divide came a lot closer to that. But I did finish it eventually, and I did enjoy it. Of note are some of the discussions of race in a particular period and scientific ethics.
Before that, Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Which was an interesting juxtaposition, the tone was much lighter but the book was a near total party kill. The setting is science-fiction but the style of writing is very much fantasy. And it's about necromancers. I bought it a while back but hadn't read it, but then it was recommended to me particularly by the author of Nanoshock and Necrotech who thought I would like it, presumably because the heroines are alike (and they're right, and it was so true, and I laughed so much ten pages in when I realized) so if you like a sort of Spider Jerusalem-y heroine in a gothy necromancer setting, this book may be for you.
Before that, Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow. I go back and forth on this one. I enjoyed it, not enough to get very excited about it, didn't hate it enough to stop, someone described it as being "very twee" and that's true to an extent, it is very fond of its devices, and... Eh. I think if I'd left it until more now I would have enjoyed it more because it'd be a welcome light break from the rest. Or maybe it'd be too light. IDEK. Read the first couple chapters and see if it's right for you.
I read Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi and all of the content warnings for race issues, specifically Black issues, and the titular riot the titular baby is born during is the Rodney King riot. Which, I later learned looking up things, was right around the time but a year later than the DC Cinco De Mayo riots. Which explains a lot why I felt punched in the chest by this book. It was good! I read it in two sittings. But, punched in the chest. Do not read unless you're up for getting emotionally punched in the chest.
I read Shadows of Athens and Scorpions in Corinth by JM Alvey, which were a nice pair of relatively lighthearted mysteries set in ancient Greece. The hero is a playwright turned detective by having a body literally dropped on his doorstep, and it's a murder mystery with all that entails. Hopefully there will be more, I enjoyed them.
And then I started out the year with reading the Queens of Innis Lear, which is the King Lear story but told in a fresh, Europe-analogy setting from the point of view of the three daughters, plus some magic. It was fun, it wasn't light but it wasn't as heavy as half of the rest of what I've read this year, it's... if you want the modern inheritor to Mists of Avalon, Tessa Gratton is probably it. Without all the fucking yikes that goes with Marion Zimmer Bradley these days, I mean in graceful, ornate but not burdensome prose retellings of old stories. Quite good. Looking forward to reading Lady Hotspur, I may cram that in between the current serieses I'm reading. ...seseses.