What Are You Reading? Second Quarter 2022

[Starkess]

I did the math on my fingers like three times to make sure that April is, in fact, the start of the second quarter!

Just finished listening to The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. It was unbeknownst to me that this was the first Poirot novel (indeed her first published novel) until after I finished. Which makes a lot of sense, because it was good but not great. The mystery itself had lots of red herrings and twists and turns, in true Christie fashion, but a lot of coincidences rather than organic, and at times it was just annoying rather than clever. To me the highlight of the book was the narrator, one Mr. Hastings who is quite humorous in his own blindspots. I did find out after perusing Goodreads that apparently Hastings is also a recurring character, but apparently I have not read any of the other novels in which he appears. Also the audiobook was delightfully narrated with a lovely pompous Belgian accent for Poirot and it was quick and fun listen.

Now I've started on listening to A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair, a fantasy romance retelling of Persephone and Hades. I already kind of hate it and I'm on like the second chapter. It seems like every contemporary fantasy romance follows the same character templates. Dark broody man. "Feisty" young woman who is perpetually angry and spends a lot of time yelling at people in incredibly stupid ways. We'll see how much longer I give this one before tapping out.

[A wilding]

29 minutes ago, Starkess said:

To me the highlight of the book was the narrator, one Mr. Hastings who is quite humorous in his own blindspots. I did find out after perusing Goodreads that apparently Hastings is also a recurring character, but apparently I have not read any of the other novels in which he appears.

The problem with Hastings was that he was always wrong about everything. This typically eliminated at least one red herring in each story and so hampered Christie's plotting. This led to him gradually being dropped. Though she did have some fun with him, notably - warning, a massive spoiler for Dumb Witness/Poirot Loses a Client -

Spoiler

... in which Poirot gathers together all the suspects for the denouement. Hastings looks around the room and thinks "one of these people was the murderer, but I had to admit that I still had no idea who it was". It then of course turns out that the murderer is not present after all.

 

[Underfoot]

Just finished The Fires of Vengeance, which is the second in Evan Winters' The Burning series. Fast paced, gripping, and mostly enjoyable, though the grimdarkn elements are becoming a bit too gratituous for my taste. Prose and dialog improved a lot in the second.

I'm convinced (and don't know why) that we're getting the story from the evil side of the existential war(s), and we - and they - don't really know it. Something about the demon-world and the dragons and the Cull and the fight against the xideen just doesn't add up in a way that could allow the Omehi to be "the good guys," especially given how reprehensible their society is. Looking forward to finding out, but also not mad I have to wait for the next one, could use a break from the violence and cruelty and gore. 

[Zorral]

I don't recall whether Victor Lavalle's The Changeling (2017) has come up on this thread.  If any of you all have read it, I would be more than appreciative to see your thoughts on this novel.  I am reading it for Reasons; it seems no accident there's a stylistic and structural resemblance of sorts at least to Marlon James's series -- moreover James blurbs Lavalle's.

For myself, so far as I've read into the novel, it's almost disconcerting how many of the locations are part of my daily life and have been for years.  And then there's the further confusion, that the author, whom I've never met, is friends with two of my friends.  Reading this has me feeling off-balance. This is fiction, but my own real world keeps penetrating the narrative!

[Wilbur]

I listened to William Gibson's Bridge trilogy this past week - all three are surprisingly short books in audio form, reminding me that publishers formerly were willing to publish novels of a reasonable length.

Although when they came out, I was a little disappointed in the milieu of the Bridge trilogy, being a lot closer to our own reality, the writing holds up very well.  Furthermore, Gibson is frankly prescient in how he predicted what life would look like today.  The first in the series rewarded my current reading with a rich sense of alternate history rather than science fiction, almost like Virtual Light could very easily have been our own future in a slightly different timeline.  The Bridge itself as a place / setting is powerfully present, coming across almost as a character in itself, and I like stories with strong senses of place.

Of all three books, the middle book, Idoru, is the weakest as a stand-alone novel.  The characters are good, and they all work hard within the plot.  The conclusion of the story is not specifically conclusive, and as a reader I wanted to ask, "So what?"  However, the ending of the final book, All Tomorrow's Parties, closes out a lot of the character arcs from Idoru in a strongly satisfying manner.  So much so, in fact, that it almost makes me think that the two books form a tight, single story.

Also, for those of us who are familiar with the Bay Area, the worldview of many of the local characters on the bridge is ironically funny.  Since several of the Bridge viewpoint characters started off in The City, their consideration of the people on Treasure or on the Oakland side as a bunch of cannibals and cultists is only slightly exaggerated in comparison with contemporary views from the western side of the Bay.  It is too bad that Gibson never provides any character views of the people inhabiting the valley.

[mix_masta_micah]

20 hours ago, Zorral said:

I don't recall whether Victor Lavalle's The Changeling (2017) has come up on this thread.  If any of you all have read it, I would be more than appreciative to see your thoughts on this novel.  I am reading it for Reasons; it seems no accident there's a stylistic and structural resemblance of sorts at least to Marlon James's series -- moreover James blurbs Lavalle's.

For myself, so far as I've read into the novel, it's almost disconcerting how many of the locations are part of my daily life and have been for years.  And then there's the further confusion, that the author, whom I've never met, is friends with two of my friends.  Reading this has me feeling off-balance. This is fiction, but my own real world keeps penetrating the narrative!

Read it and love it. Read the Horror at Red Hook by HPL for further context. 

[Starkess]

On 4/6/2022 at 2:02 PM, Starkess said:

Now I've started on listening to A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair, a fantasy romance retelling of Persephone and Hades. I already kind of hate it and I'm on like the second chapter. It seems like every contemporary fantasy romance follows the same character templates. Dark broody man. "Feisty" young woman who is perpetually angry and spends a lot of time yelling at people in incredibly stupid ways. We'll see how much longer I give this one before tapping out.

I managed to finish this but it did not get any better. In fact it got significantly worse because it turned into a mix of half-smut, half-book. Nothing against smut, but I just don't want that when I'm trying to read a book. The tropes continued to trope, the author never developed what was a halfway-interesting fantasy premise, and I found the whole thing pretty lackluster.

Next up, listening to The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.

[Iskaral Pust]

I really enjoy these threads to hear quick takes and recs from everyone but I’ve been very lazy about posting my own.

I have a long list since I last posted, so I’ll split these over a few posts.  After re-reading Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy uninterrupted, I’ve meandered since into other genres for variety. 

Treacherous Strand by Andrea Carter is a cozy mystery set in the extreme northwest of Ireland (inside the Republic, if that matters).  This is the second in the series and was pretty enjoyable once again.  The first person POV is female, the relationships and social patterns in the small village seem realistic, and the setting is current day and doesn’t try to be twee or saccharine (like many cozy mysteries).  I’ll continue reading this series.

Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart is literary fiction and the first novel I’ve encountered set during COVID lockdown.  It takes place in upstate New York as the protagonist and his family host urbanite friends as a refuge from the early days of COVID raging through NYC.  This is very much written in the style of a Russian novel (and I believe the author is Russian), well aware of the flaws in the various characters and delving into their relationships with an almost claustrophobic closeness.  It’s witty and clever but I thought it was ultimately limited by the plot and the arc for the characters.  Worth a read for something different but I didn’t love it.

The Sentinel is a Jack Reacher novel I purchased in a daily deal, written by Lee Child and Andrew Child (his son?).  About as good as any Reacher novel: very formulaic, well written, and it cracks along at pace.  All of my past reservations about the Reacher character still stand — vigilante knight errant homeless drifter helps & falls into bed with damsel in distress far out of his league — but they’re still an enjoyable read once in a while.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

I've been doing a reread of Patrick O'Brian with a couple reference books which has been pretty enjoyable but slow.  Since it's gotten me acclimated to the late 18th early 19th century lingo and jargon I cracked open Pynchon's Mason & Dixon .  I'm a little over halfway through it and enjoying it very much.  There are laugh out loud moments in almost every chapter, and I think Dixon is my favorite Pynchon character I've come across so far (unless you count the automaton duck?)  

  It's super dense in parts.  This has been somewhat mitigated by reading it at home and then listening to the same chapters I just read the next day at work.  The narrator on the audiobook is amazing and I've definitely picked up a few things I missed on the actual reading.  I definitely prefer this book so far to other Pynchon.

Next up in the queue are Laura Beukes' Zoo City, Djibouti by Elmore Leonard, and Mama Poc: An Ecologist's Account of the Extinction of a Species.. The author, Anne LaBastille, is local to my area.  It's her documenting the Extinction of the giant grebe in Guatemala over a 25 year period.  

[Fragile Bird]

I mentioned in the last thread that I had clicked on an app that was being advertised on my Facebook feed that seemed geared to werewolf fantasy. I've now spent the last month falling down that rabbit hole (er, crawling in that wolf den?) reading some absolutely appalling fiction, while also stumbling across some decent reads. A second app popped up and I bit (see what I did ). The app is called Dreame (free in the app store) and has many different genres of books. It seems to have originated in Asia and many of the authors are not native English speakers, hence some of the appalling chapters I've sampled, bad spelling, bad grammar, lousy context. Lots of werewolf fiction, and other supernatural critters. Lots of billionaire fantasy as well ("Sold to the Billionaire", "The Billionaire's Prodigal Wife", even crossed with werewolves, "Sold to the Lycan Billionaire Prince" I kid you not). It's also largely PTR, Pay to Read, but if you join their Facebook page and check in every day, you get free coins to buy chapters with. I have actually purchased coins, learning to get 90% discounts. 

They used to have a "free" button you could click but it disappeared with the last update, I guess too many people clicked on it. However, once you join their Facebook page you see constant posts from people looking for free books and people share their favourites. You also see rants from authors telling people not to publish on the site because they pay so badly (only 8% of coins spent). You also see rants about the appalling quality, and people get into amazing verbal fistfights, along the lines of "don't you know these are amateurs, how dare you criticize them!" and "many of these people are not native English speakers, how dare you complain about spelling and grammar!". But they want you to pay for their appalling grammar, that's a problem, sweetie! Also, "many writers speak Tagalog, and there are no pronouns distinguishing sex in that language, don't complain about them getting he and she mixed up!" It has been interesting.

Soft porn and harder-core porn is very popular. Wolves like to fuck. A lot. Apparently. It's all very formulaic. In fact, it's like most of the authors picked up a couple of Sarah J. Maas books and just copied her sex scenes. I mentioned how boring that has become for me, and I heartily agree with what Nora said in a post up above. In fact, I feel like Murderbot. You may recall that in All Systems Red when it talks about all the tv serials it downloads and watches, Murderbot comments about skipping over the sex scenes. Murderbot explains it's a security unit with no sexually related parts, if it had them it would be a sex bot. But even if it had them, it says, it was pretty sure it would skip the sex scenes. I can relate with that comment 100%.

In any event, if you are curious I can recommend some free books worth reading. One of the first books I came across and read a big chunk of before I lost it (I'll explain that) is a book with the terrible name Rebirth of the Fallen Princess. The girl on the cover looks like Daenerys Targaryen. A book you are reading does not get saved to your library until you spend PTR coins, or unless you click on the heart that will pop up at the bottom of the page, something I didn't know. It will also show up in "Viewed" but books disappear after a very short time, like two days. I lost my first few viewed books that way. I recovered the book by posting a description on Facebook and asking if anyone knew the title, posts you see all the time. Anyway, this book is so well written I'd buy it at the bookstore. The book opens with the main character, the daughter of the 2nd most powerful family in the kingdom, waiting in their ruined palace for the king to arrive with his armies. She's his wife, the queen. She was married to him as a teen. Her family has famously been the most loyal family to the king for centuries, but shortly after her marriage to the prince her father was framed for the king's murder and a terrible war starts. She walks out to greet the king and tells him she will surrender herself to end the war, on the condition her family is allowed to live safely in exile. He agrees, and they ride off to the capital where she will be executed. She's literally on her knees at the chopping block when a rival duke rides in with a "gift" for the king, the heads of her family members on pikes. She leaps off the execution stand and proceeds to throttle the king (note - the family play the role of royal protectors and she's a trained assassin) but with her family all dead she stops because she doesn't want his death to be final nail in the coffin of her family's reputation. The executioner then stabs her with his sword, and the king holds her as she dies, swearing he did not break their bargain. He actually kills her to end her suffering. She wakes up in a strange white palace, which she assumes is the afterlife but is actually the home of the ancient gods. The gods are so ancient people in her time have forgotten their names. They don't have the power to send her to the afterlife to join her family and she can't stay there because her soul will gradually disintegrate, but they can send her back in time with all her memories intact. She wakes up on the day she will be going to the capital to be introduced to the king's 2nd son, the one she married in the previous life. She has already been trying to figure out how to do things to prevent the war, and a couple of relatively minor steps she takes change everything. She's then faced with trying to react to ongoing events that didn't happen in that previous life, as she realizes that the kingdom is still heading towards war.

It's a damn fine fantasy read, and Avyanna is one kick-ass heroine. Apparently Dreame holds writing contests for it's authors and one was Rebirth of the Heroine Writing Contest. (note - this is not a werewolf book)

Another good free read is The Last Wolf Prince, which is a werewolf book. The book opens in a time where werewolves have been defeated in a war with shapeshifters who showed up from out of the blue (their origin does get explained). Werewolves everywhere are basically caged in as slaves all over the world, and the shapeshifters, called the Faceless Ones, spend one month each year letting some loose in the forests to be hunted down and killed. They are always hunting and killing werewolves somewhere as they travel from territory to territory. Werewolves are, of course, humans with wolves in them, and had cities and communities and lives that parallel regular humans. A group of scientists secretly develop a time machine that they believe can send one person back in time to the period when the Faceless Ones showed up in their country, 400 years ago. The last wolf prince negotiated a treaty with them but was assassinated. Our intrepid heroine is being sent back to prevent his death. The scientists have no idea if it will work and have no way to retrieve her because they only have enough energy for a one-shot chance, so she'll be trapped in the past. A really excellent fantasy story.

My final suggestion has an urgent timeline. When authors first introduce a new book they are allowed to post free to read until a certain amount of time has passed, and then afterwards only the first 5 or 6 chapters are free and the rest are PTR. There's a book I'm just loving that will go to PTR on the 15th, and I don't know if that means at midnight somewhere or at noon or what, so there are basically two and half days to read the 47 chapters posted so far. The book has another horrible title, Sold to a Hybrid Prince. It's a supernatural world book. The world was once human, and for some unknown reason mutations started to happen and vampires, werewolves, lycans and other creatures started to be born. As time progressed the stronger, more powerful creatures took over control and humans became their servants. The supernatural are called the Superiors and the humans are called the Inferiors. Many humans still have decent lives serving the Superiors but there are always the poor in every land who suffer the most. They can be beaten and used and other humans will turn a blind eye. And with vampires around, they become a source for feeding. The Hybrids are Vampires who were cursed by an enemy, and they turn into horrific werewolves once a month at the full moon and generally go on killing rampages. The main characters so far are Allister, the hybrid prince of the title, and Xyla, a human who was sold by her mother at age 15 to a lycan who used and tortured her for a week and then sold her to a pet shop for a mere $25 because she was so damaged. She's been caged in the pet shop for 6 years (yeah, right?) until she's bought to be a pet for the prince, as she has his rare blood type. Pets are humans kept for vampires as a continuous supply of blood. Some are treated badly, some are treated very well. This is actually a rather sweet (what, a human kept as a vampire pet?) love story with constant twists showing up. I don't know if it will or will not have a happy ending, but a lot of people love the book so far. I gather from some comments I've seen that the pet idea is used in vampire books, I had never seen it before. Werewolves have been enough of an obsession  so far, thanks.

I have also read that some of the Dreame books have been reviewed on Goodreads, although I haven't looked. And that a bunch of authors have moved to sites that pay more, and have gone to print or to Kindle. I kind of imagine this as the kind of place the author of 50 Shades of Grey started publishing. Most of the books are like Harlequin romances, formulaic and badly written. For that matter, it feels like the author of Bridgerton either read stuff here or wrote for them, the two Bridgerton books I've read (picked up at the remainder table) were like books I've seen on Dreame, though I have not read the second book which is supposed to be the best.

Anyway, I also read a lot of books from the library and need to update the 1st quarter thread and this one with those mainstream books.

[Wilbur]

20 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I mentioned in the last thread...

You are doing the Lord's work by venturing into such an environment and then providing us with a report on your experience.  I admit to laughing out loud a couple of times while reading your account of the Facebook group and the stories therein.

[Fragile Bird]

56 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

You are doing the Lord's work by venturing into such an environment and then providing us with a report on your experience.  I admit to laughing out loud a couple of times while reading your account of the Facebook group and the stories therein.

The Lord moves in mysterious ways!

[Iskaral Pust]

On 4/13/2022 at 2:08 PM, Fragile Bird said:

The Lord moves in mysterious ways!

With a lupine loping gait?

[Iskaral Pust]

Three more of my recent reads:

Ironically, Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones is a werewolf horror blended with a coming-of-age amidst poverty in the geographic and socioeconomic margins.  There is a lyrical rhythm to the prose but I eventually got bored and dropped it.

The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman is a fantasy novel (and first in a series) with a humorous first person narration using plenty of snark and wry, dark humor.  I really enjoyed that aspect.  Unfortunately the setting, plot and characters are a D&D cliche, and I got bored with the story bumbling along through random D&D scenes.  Not enough narrative structure or depth.

Gone To Dust by Matt Goldman is mystery novel in his Nils Shapiro series, blending a noir-ish PI with a police procedural set in Minneapolis*.  The main character is a self-righteous loudmouth with some echoes of Jack Reacher, but a lot more plausible.  I’ll try another in this series.
*I notice the frozen northern Midwest featuring in quite a few mystery/detective novels these days.  Is this the American equivalent of Scandi noir?

[williamjm]

I read Leigh Bardugo's King of Scars. I had mixed feelings about it. I liked the characters and it was interesting to see things from the perspective of some who had been supporting characters in previous books, but I felt the plotline wasn't as compelling or entertaining as in the Six of Crows books. There are two plotlines which don't really interact at all, I thought Nina's plotline with its mix of mystery and prison escape elements was the more interesting of the two but I thought that Nikolai and Zoya's plotline was weaker. In some ways it's an odd complaint to make about a fantasy story but the extensive discussions and revelations about how magic works in the world ended up being a bit dull.

I'm now reading Ben Aaronovitch's latest Rivers of London book, Amongst Our Weapons. As with the previous books in the series it is very enjoyable to read so far.

[Zorral]

Still listening to The Fell Sword, the second in Cameron's Traitor Knight cycle.

The scope of this Fantasy Counterpart Cultures seems to be continually expanding, as does the number of characters who all have their own stories. More often that not, we hie off to these newer, non-primary characters' stories for a while before returning to what may (or may not?) be the primary arcs.  In that sense it feels like reading Herodotus's histories of the Persian Wars.  It is further confusing as several of the primary characters have more than one name, not least the Traitor Knight himself: the Red Knight, the Captain, the Magus Ducas, Gabriel. On top of it the author goes by more than one name!

There are pages of lovingly compiled lists, the descriptions of everything military and its function, and how it works, military gear, military administration, military drilling, military culture and customs -- not least those governing the individual pay out of wages to the forces.  It's seldom too, we go more than two or three pages without pages of a battle or a fight, described in passionate detail of who does what, to whom, and with what. The naming and the lists remind me first of Malory's Mort d'Arthur, in which each (noble) participant in a tourney or a battle or a procession is named, his arms, gear and horse described, and also some bits from Homer.

At one point something like a magic-negating space is mentioned, where the students who study workings, spells, etc. go to get rid of workings that didn't work, are malformed, wrong.  A character idly wonders in passing, "Where does that power go after being rid of.  It's got to go somewhere."  Which made me wonder if the Wild is where that power goes, since so many of the creatures there seem oddly malformed.

I listen while working out only, which is why it is taking me so long.  This audio version has the reader? readers? doing much more 'actorly' voice impersonation of the characters, quite a few of which are more than disconcerting.  Particularly the French voices.  Whenever that psychopath Galle, Jean de Vraill, 'speaks' I think I've fallen into a typical Monty Python program -- such a caricature of a French accent. On the other hand one gets the sense that in this alternate fantasy earth history, Cameron the Canadian is aware of certain issues in the real world, as in this world the Albans despise the Galles and vice versa.

About half way through this second volume I am suspecting this work is stranger than I initially realized. 

[Starkess]

Finished The House in the Cerulean Sea and found it all a bit meh. Sure it's sweet and feel-good but actually do you feel all that good after eating a bowl of ice cream for dinner? Although the book seemed to be marketed as "adult", it felt more like MG to me. A really really long MG. That never had a single surprising thing happen in it. It was all very twee and neat and all the bad things are dealt with at such a remove that they never really feel all that bad at all. Not terrible, but I wouldn't rush out and read it unless it's really your cup of tea.

Next audiobook I have lined up is Endurance by Alfred Lansing. I'm not always into non-fiction, but I'm hoping this will be interesting!

I am s-t-r-uggling to finish Age of Ash. I pick it up from time to time, read a few pages, maybe a chapter, then check how far along I am in the book and think "seriously, only XX%?" I see that bones of an interesting story but I think the choice of POV characters has so far been a hindrance. But maybe this is all just a sort of extended prologue and things will get interesting soon?

[Plessiez]

5 hours ago, Starkess said:

I am s-t-r-uggling to finish Age of Ash. I pick it up from time to time, read a few pages, maybe a chapter, then check how far along I am in the book and think "seriously, only XX%?" I see that bones of an interesting story but I think the choice of POV characters has so far been a hindrance. But maybe this is all just a sort of extended prologue and things will get interesting soon?

As somebody who quite liked the book myself, I'd say that if you're not interested within the first hundred pages or so (and arguably sooner) you're probably not going to find the rest much of an improvement.  There's definitely a wider plot happening in the background that the POV characters aren't fully aware of yet, but the book is really about those characters more than anything else.

[LongRider]

12 hours ago, Starkess said:

Next audiobook I have lined up is Endurance by Alfred Lansing. I'm not always into non-fiction, but I'm hoping this will be interesting!

I've read this book and found it to be an incredible, true story of survival.  The hardships, the efforts of captain and crews, and really, the endurance, wow, it's great.  What you're missing by listening to it is the photos that come with the book, however, they are online if you're interested, so easy to look up.

I hope you enjoy the book, it's such a compelling story.

 

[Ormond]

On 4/19/2022 at 10:30 PM, Starkess said:

Finished The House in the Cerulean Sea and found it all a bit meh. Sure it's sweet and feel-good but actually do you feel all that good after eating a bowl of ice cream for dinner? Although the book seemed to be marketed as "adult", it felt more like MG to me. A really really long MG. That never had a single surprising thing happen in it. It was all very twee and neat and all the bad things are dealt with at such a remove that they never really feel all that bad at all. Not terrible, but I wouldn't rush out and read it unless it's really your cup of tea.

 

Well, it definitely was my cup of tea. I thought it was one of the best books I've read in years. My book club (comprised of gay men over 50) read it (because of me, it was my turn to choose the monthly selection) and they all seemed to think it was one of the best books out of the six we've read so far in our short existence, and most of them aren't particularly fantasy fans like I am.

I'm not sure I'd call it MG but it surely is really at least YA -- it won the Alex Award, from the American Library Association, which is given to the book which was marketed as adult fiction which is most suitable to be read by the YA target audience. I am sure the main reason it was marketed as adult rather than YA is just because the two main characters are men in their 40s instead of the teen or early 20s characters that are the heroes of most YA. I thought it did a fantastic job with showing the development of a relationship between two adult gay male characters. (One of the few problems I had with it was that it was exactly the opposite in terms of two adult lesbian characters, whose relationship suddenly pops up out of the blue.) And personally I found it refreshing to read a fantasy where the bad things that happen aren't overwhelmingly grim. The House in the Cerulean Sea also won the Mythopoeic Award, so Tolkien and C.S. Lewis experts certainly thought it was a great book. 

In terms of the food analogy, I guess I don't read any fiction for "dinner". If reading fiction feels like eating something just because it's good for you rather than because you really like it, it's not particularly effective as entertainment. If I'm reading something primarily to learn things (which to me would correspond to "dinner"), nonfiction works better.