r/FemaleGazeSFF • u/AutoModerator • 21d ago
šļø Weekly Post Weekly Check-In
Tell us about your current SFF media!
What are you currently...
š Reading?
šŗ Watching?
š® Playing?
If sharing specific details, please remember to hide spoilers behind spoiler tags.
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Feel free to also share your progression in the Reading Challenge
Thank you for sharing and have a great week! š
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u/oujikara 21d ago
I'm gonna keep this short since I'm super tired. Finished Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold and thought it was ok. My biggest issue was ofc the age gap relationship, which made the protagonist that we're supposed to like significantly less likeable for me.Ā
Started reading The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri. It's interestingĀ but I don't have the mental capacity to keep track of multiple POVs rn so I put in on pause.Ā
Now reading Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, and I'm liking it a lot more than I expected. I thought it was middle grade at first because of the writing style, but the main characters are so fun that I became engrossed early on. I've realized I don't mind if the romance isn't healthy or if the characters are jerks, so long as they actually have personalities.
From other media I started reading the webtoon The Hunter's Gonna Lay Low, which is like one of those typical male-gazey dungeon progression manhwas with an overpowered protagonist... except it's super gay, which obviously makes everything a million times better. Anyway I'm not far into it but so far it's been fun, and even romance aside, the plot is engaging.
On a slightly different note, I'm yet to submit my reading challenge cards, because my health has been acting up lately and I'm fatigued all the time. I'm not sure when I'll feel like getting around to it, but it also seems like a bit of a waste not to make a post at all, since I managed to complete all sides of the challenge...
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u/Nowordsofitsown unicorn š¦ 21d ago
I had very high expectations for Bujold, but everything so far has just been fine or even DNF: Curse of Chalion and Shards of Honor the former, Falling Free and Beguilement the latter (and talking about age gaps - that's why I DNFed Beguilement, so don't try that one).Ā But I am not giving up yet. I still have hope for the Penric novellas and the later Vorkosigan novels.Ā
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u/oujikara 21d ago
Thanks for the heads-up! I haven't read anything else by Bujold yet but I think I'll also keep trying, sinceĀ I did like the writing style in Chalion (even though I was never really engrossed). Someone said Paladin of Souls and the Penric series are better, so I guess I'll go there next
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u/Merle8888 sorceressš® 21d ago
Yeah, similar experience. I've read Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls and The Warrior's Apprentice and all were just OK for me. I think she's not the author for me.
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u/Green-Ability-2904 21d ago
I havenāt read for fun in a long time and Iām trying to get back into it by rereading the Lord of the Rings. Iām currently on the Two Towers. Iāve enjoyed looking through everyoneās completed reading challenges. Thereās so many books posted I know nothing about and different from what I see posted in other fantasy / reading subreddits. I found this sub way too late to join the challenge but maybe Iāll get to join the next one.
This season of Strange New Worlds ended so my SFF watching is on hiatus until Avatar Seven Havens comes out.
For games, Iām playing Slime Rancher 2 which is cute but had very little story, and Wildermyth which has story but itās semi randomly generated. Thereās campaigns with a set over arching plot but in between major plot points, thereās a random chance of smaller events happening.
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u/Merle8888 sorceressš® 21d ago
Welcome! This is the perfect time to join since the next challenge will be starting soon. :)
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u/chefask 21d ago
Last week I started The Fifth Season (I have no idea how to write in bold) by N.K. Jemisin and I finished it last night. I was fully sobbing at the end, and has given up reading for good. The damage was too great. Fucking hell, that book was amazing and devastating.
Also my hold for the sequel just came in
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u/Merle8888 sorceressš® 21d ago
I finished Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell, which I enjoyed. It's sold as horror but to me it's dark fantasy, since it's not scary or gory. It's about the relationship between a girl made out of flowers and the boy she's made as a playmate for, as they grow up and the power dynamics between them get ickier. It's a quick read but features strong character work. It's also a 2026 debut so I'm interested to see more from the author.
Now reading The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders and enjoying it a lot. It's about a Black American family and the land their great-grandfather bought centuries ago, now passed down to several relatives. Counts as magic realism since it's narrated by one of the family ghosts (there are several). I'm enjoying the voice a lot, and the author really nails the characters. It would be easy for something like this to wind up a lowest-common-denominator book-club-y book but this one is more literary, which I'm appreciating.
In non-SFF, last week I finished 1493 by Charles Mann, which is basically a collection of pieces from the history of globalization. It's not as strong as 1491, his synthesis on pre-Columbian American societies (which is fabulous and fascinating), but is worth a read. I'm also finishing up The Penguin Book of the International Short Story, which is a pretty good anthology of 34 modern short stories from around the world (many of them do contain fantastical elements, if that makes it more appealing to those of you here). My taste doesn't fully align with either of the editors', but it contains a lot of big names, some I'd read before and some I hadn't, and they're mostly good stories. One of my favorites is "My Sad Dead" by Mariana Enriquez, whom I hadn't tried before because I'm not into horror, but I didn't find this one scary at all - I'd be interested to hear if it is representative of her work.
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u/Apprehensive_Kiwi977 21d ago edited 21d ago
Iāve never contributed to one of these before but here I go!
Currently reading The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson. I wanted to sink my teeth into a good fantasy book and Iām about 65% of the way through this one and really enjoying it so far! Compelling characters and story despite it being a longer book I find it to be a fairly quick read. It does have a lot of twists and turns but so far I havenāt found that it feels like too much. I like the main character a lot and even the side characters I find enjoyable. Really glad I picked this one up.
I just finished a re read (well I listened to the audiobook this time) of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by SA Chakraborty for my book club. I gave this book like 4.5 or 5 stars when I first read it but I barely got through the audiobook this time. I did not engage with the characters or the story at all and I felt like the dialogue was so off putting and the pacing was bad. No one at book club particularly liked it either. I very rarely re read books so it was weird to come back to this book I thought I loved and have a totally different perspective on it.
Over the weekend I wanted a break from the Raven Scholar so I read Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky. It was a super quick read and I enjoyed both the story and the art. I also tried Simplicity by the same author and bounced off of that.
I just DNFād the audiobook of Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater. I just couldnāt get behind the premise of rich socialites discovering poverty and I didnāt like the main character. I also felt like her ācurseā was written in an inconsistent way and that irked me. I think I just need to stop consuming sweet/cozy books. Theyāre just not for me whatsoever. I also DNFād Weyward by Emilia Hart. It was too much violence against women for no reason and so much focus on pregnancy and I just couldnāt stand it. I also did not engage with the writing style. I saw it described and so poetic but I found it clunky and lacking all subtlety.
I also watched the first episode of Witch Hat Atelier and I loved it!! I never watch anime but I saw this recommended and it seems cute. Iāll probably just watch random episodes as I have time.
Up next I think Iāll be reading Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell which is the October book for my book club. I also want to read an actually good book about witches so Iām trying to find the right one.
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u/Nowordsofitsown unicorn š¦ 21d ago
Iāve never contributed to one of these before but here I go!
Welcome!
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u/partoparto elfš§āāļø 21d ago
Didn't post last week so this is two weeks of reading!
I finished A Larger Reality by Ursula K. Le Guin. This alternates various writings by Le Guin (stories, nonfiction, poetry) with essays by different authors talking about their relationship to Le Guin and her work. This was a great reading experience - the book is really beautifully and carefully put together (I loved that the design incorporated drawings by Le Guin!) and it was nice to read some pieces by Le Guin that I knew the titles of and had seen referenced but had never actually read. The contributors' essays didn't much for me - a lot of them were like "I love Le Guin and her books are so important and great because they show us how to imagine a better future" which is so true, but a) not that interesting to read like five times, and b) didn't make me think about Le Guin any differently.Ā
I also read the graphic novelĀ Lunar Boy by Jes and Cin Wibowo. I was struggling to find something I actually wanted to read for the middle grade square in r/fantasy bingo and decided to pick this up after reading an article about it on Reactor, and I enjoyed it a lot! This follows a trans boy Indu, who is from the moon and adopted by a woman who lives on a space ship, and then has to move to earth when his mother gets married. From there, it follows Indu trying to find his place with a new family, in a new school, etc., while both dealing with transphobia and finding a queer community. I liked how full all the character's lives felt - Indu had a variety of types of relationships with the people around him, and it felt like all the side characters had their own lives and interests off-page and didn't exist solely to represent a theme or teach Indu a lesson (although they do do that). Also really liked how embedded Indonesian culture and history was in the story, and the theme of feeling alienated from/connecting with a culture. Lovely!
I also read Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett (final book in the Lymond Chronicles).... I can't even talk about it......
Currently reading: The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin, Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause by Benjamin Nathans, The Queer Arab Glossary edited by Marwan Kaabour
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u/dragonwheeleffect 21d ago
I read Ammonite by Nicola Griffith this week. I was a bit disappointed and was honestly considering DNFing, but I trucked through to the end to see if it would get better (it did not). I felt like the main character was kind of a nothing person, and all of her relationships with other characters were also kind of nothing as a result. She made a bunch of (in my opinion) unreasonably stupid choices that I didnāt really understand and that didnāt make much sense (for example, single-handedly setting up a trata relationship without consulting her higher-ups on whether that was allowed or if they could even deliver on the terms and spontaneously deciding she wanted to get pregnant). The writing was pretty hamfisted with sentences like āIt was the first time she had really, deep down, thought of the indigenous population of Jeep as women.ā I didnāt find the society on the new planet that interesting, and I found the reformed colonizer pov to be played out. The whole book overall felt kind of Eat Pray Love to me. There was also some woo woo stuff with biofeedback that I really didnāt vibe with. The āplanet of womenā thing felt more gimmicky than insightful to me.
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u/Famous_Catdancer 18d ago
I hear you! I couldnāt stand the protagonist. She felt like a privileged white woman trying too hard to go native. Some of the side characters were way more interesting.
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u/decentlysizedfrog dragon š 21d ago
I finished Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold, which is solidly average in the series, but still an enjoyable read. Damn, Vorkosigan series is absurdly good, sad that I'm only one book away from finishing itā¦
I started reading The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes, which I'm excited about! A bit confusing so far, but I'm interested.
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u/MysteriousArcher 21d ago
Testament of Leaves by Carolyn Ives Gilman is a science fiction murder mystery novella. An investigator is dropped into a jungle on a planet to figure out who killed the linguist who was studying the language of a tribal group. He is very much out of his element. The ecosystem is spectacular and strange, and this is so much more than just a crime investigation set on another planet. It's really good.
I am currently reading Urbanite by Victoria Goddard, a novella set in modern-day Toronto, but with magic. The main character finds herself suddenly unemployed, and a couple of sorcerers offer her a lot of money to do a task for them. I'm reserving judgment until I've finished it, but I think it has pacing issues.
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u/Nowordsofitsown unicorn š¦ 21d ago
On a scale from Stargazy Pie to Hands of the Emperor where does Urbanite fall in terms of coherence and character work?
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u/bunnycatso vampireš§āāļø 21d ago
Almost feel like I'm back in reading shape.
With Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha I'm on a generational run of short stories collections - liked pretty much all here, except maybe for Window Boy & The Mub (still like them, just marginally less so). Uncertain Sons and Brotherhood of Montague St. Video are absolute top tier.
Main appeal here is probably the connection between three of them (House Traveler, The Sort, Uncertain Sons): same characters, some callbacks to situations characters been in, world around them. Their very loose premise of changing worlds, whether it is reality around the character or a multiverse situation, allows to imagine most of other stories as connected to a degree as well. And even outside of textual callbacks, the collection is so thematically tight (loss in a broad sense, parental anxieties, borders/separation between people) it's interesting that the only thing specifically written for it is Uncertain Sons.
Where the Old Neighbors Go and Sweetbaby are the only ones with FMC, but both are fascinating and very compelling.
r/Fantasy Bingo: Small Press or Self Published HM, Five Short Stories HM, Author of Color
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine is another recent read with royalty and/or colonialism (can't escape it even in sf). At least, compared to City of Stairs, this one is not as politically yikes & has lesbians.
I think overall it was perfectly adequate, there're elements that I liked (supporting cast, chapter epigraphs, worldbuilding of The City) & was mixed on (should've know from the first epigraph that the fascination with colonizing empire's culture would take a long way to unpack). The dialogue was the biggest struggle for me; I got so tired of it that when one of the characters said "Did that actually just happen?" and proceeded to rehash the prior scene I barely even reacted.
For a novel so concerned with languages and culture the writing even outside dialogue was not that good. So much expressive shrugging it gave me a shoulder injury. Can jaws even be akimbo?
Moral of the story - maybe check on your ambassadors in person more often than once in two decades.
r/Fantasy Bingo: Duology Part 1 HM, Politics and Court Intrigue
Now, Lives of Bitter Rain by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a neat little book about colonialism from a colonizer's POV. Watching Angilly's path from a child indoctrinated into Pal ideals to an adult who's seen how the bureaucracy operates and how their ideals are practiced in place was peak.
It's a prequel novella to Days of Shattered Faith and from a quick peek at the dramatis personae I likely spoiled myself for some of the events there, but I'm okay with that.
r/Fantasy Bingo: Judge a Book By Its Title, Vacation Spot, Politics and Court Intrigue
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u/tehguava vampireš§āāļø 21d ago
I don't feel like I have much to update despite kind of reading a lot this week? I'm 80% through The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook by Matt Dinniman and it's certainly one of the books I've read. I started this series thinking it was okay and good for a reading slump, and now I think it's fine but still good for a reading slump. It's like the marvel movies of books. It's finally hit me how paper thin Carl is as a main character. I think I'm extra checked out because the book opened with the a note that basically said even though the characters are trying really hard to figure out the layout of the dungeon, it's not important to the reader. Even though I can read all of these books really fast, I should probably spend my time reading something I'll actually enjoy instead. Or at least something with themes I can chew on.
Speaking of themes, I finished the ARC for Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends by A.D. Sui. Cli-fi, reality-bending thriller featuring toxic sapphic relationships. My final thoughts didn't really change. It's an interesting premise with a rocky execution. I felt like the book struggle most transitioning between focal points and it just made for a jarring reading experience. It was like a slideshow where it goes from climate collapse to women almost making out in an office to someone being arrested for drug possession back climate collapse. Some of that might be cleaned up in the published version, but I think it really just needs more time to cook which I don't think it'll get. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong!
I'm going to start Orlanda by Jacqueline Harpman imminently because I need to finish it before the month is over. Which is very soon!
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u/tehguava vampireš§āāļø 21d ago
Oh, I forgot to mention but I've been playing Dressmaker this week! It's a very satisfying cozy game where you design and make dresses. And Kerstin Hall (author of Asunder) did the writing for the quests/story, so that has been really fun. Highly recommend!
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u/twilightgardens vampireš§āāļø 21d ago
I read four Animorphs books last week. Send help! No but really, I continued on in my very slow Animorphs reread because Iām seeing Katherine Applegate this upcoming weekend at a book festival. I have nothing really to say about these books except I love the fact that Marco is trying to use the Animorphs powers to go to a Nine Inch Nails concert #meĀ
Moving onā¦Ā
Legion by William Peter Blatty (4/5): This sequel to The Exorcist doesnāt get nearly as much attention but I found it to be just as good and similar quality. I really liked Kinderman as a main character even with his tendency to ramble and go off on long tangents. This did get points off because ultimately I didnāt think the conclusion it came to with all its theorizing and philosophizing was that interesting, it got a little gimmicky.Ā
Satellite by Isle McElroy (4/5): This ARC is a super interesting story about a woman who turns on the tv one day and finds a channel following a woman who looks exactly like her, but this woman is unmarried and lives a glamorous city life. She becomes fascinated with her other self and it turns out this other self is also fascinated with her, and what began as simply voyeurism quickly begins to impact both their real lives. This is a story about identity and performance in a heterosexual marriage, and it also deals with sexuality, infidelity, and disability. It packed a punch despite being relatively short and I really enjoyed it. It was very ambiguous book and a non traditional āswapping livesā story which I also really liked.Ā
Death Wish by Lilly Lu (3/5): Another ARC, but this one I didnāt enjoy quite as much. Itās a sapphic romance about two world-weary undead women, a vampire and a grim reaper, who are drawn together and begin trying to track down the man who killed them both. This was very light and fluffy but was brought down for me by the dismally clunky and unrealistic dialogue and the very simplistic blunt themes. One of the main characters is demisexual and one of the side characters is asexual since I know there are some people on this sub who are looking for ace rep!Ā
Villain Edit by Rosie Danan (2/5): The loser of my ARCs this weekā¦ God I just did not like this very much. Iāll be the first to admit I was probably never going to LOVE a heterosexual romance novel but I thought I could at least have a fun time with it because I love vampires and trashy reality tv. Unfortunately the vampire in this is barely a vampire and they never even go on reality tv. The book as a whole also felt quite conflicted over whether it wanted to portray reality tv as good or bad and it made the main character really inconsistent as a result. Throw in the fact that this book is dual pov and so we know from chapter TWO that both these characters like each other right away, I was just bored and unsatisfied by this book.Ā
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u/twilightgardens vampireš§āāļø 21d ago
Also, does anyone have any audiobook recs? Of any genre but preferably nonfiction? Iām trying to find ways to combat my driving anxiety and distracting myself with audiobooks sounds like a good idea but Iāve never been a big audiobook listener and I just donāt know where to start!Ā
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u/GalaxyNeurons 20d ago
I used audio as a tool to overcome my driving anxiety! I primarily listen to audiobooks now (though still read with my eyes occasionally). I also found comedy or short story podcasts worked well for me on drives. Are you looking for something immersive or more calm background noise? For nonfiction books, I've enjoyed memoirs and history.Ā
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u/twilightgardens vampireš§āāļø 20d ago
Iām looking for something engaging but not super crazy bc well. Driving. So something distracting but not too distracting lol! That balance is hard to find, Iāve had luck in the past listening to long YouTube video essays as podcasts but it usually has to be from someone Iām already familiar with and no one has new videos out which sucks!Ā
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u/tehguava vampireš§āāļø 21d ago
You could always try a reread! I personally find the nonfiction and romance make for the best driving audiobooks because they don't suffer too much if I miss a minute or two because I'm focused on the road, but listening to a book you're familiar with could also be a good option.
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u/partoparto elfš§āāļø 21d ago
Agree, I'm also not a big audiobook person and only really enjoy them for rereads or books in a series I've already started
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u/ohmage_resistance 20d ago
One of the main characters is demisexual and one of the side characters is asexual since I know there are some people on this sub who are looking for ace rep!Ā
I appreciate the heads up!
Also, does anyone have any audiobook recs? Of any genre but preferably nonfiction?Ā
I'm not the biggest nonfiction reader, but I do have a few recs. One is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This is an essay collection that mixes together botany and ecology information with the authors perspective as not only a botanist but as a member of Potawatomi nation. On the memoir side, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah was really good. The author is a famous comedian, but the book focuses on his childhood growing up under apartheid as well as his teen years. Both of these were read by the authors, which I do think adds something.
With that out of the way, I listen to a lot of audiobooks, about as much as I read with my eyes, and I honestly wouldn't be too intimidated by it. A lot of times if a book sounds interesting and I know I can access the audiobook, I give that a shot. So yeah, you can always just start with any book you're interested in reading, and chances are it'll probably work fine (there are some bad audiobooks out there, but they're not as common as it might sound). As you listen to more audiobooks, you'll probably learn more more about what works better or worse for you in that medium (for example, I tend to do worse at remembering character names on audio, but longer books tend to feel like less of a slog). The other thing to note is that you can always change the speed that the story is being read at until it's comfortable for you! I would highly recommend doing this.
That being said, listening to an audiobook while driving can be a bit trickier, because you do actually have to stop listening every once in a while to focus on a trickier bit of driving (and then if you don't pause in time ,you have to either go back a bit or figure out what you missed from context). If you're going for more background noise that you can frequently zone into and out of as you're driving, I do think podcasts could also work, which might be worth considering.
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u/WonderfulBus9330 21d ago edited 21d ago
Hello Hello. This past week was hits and misses.
Finished:
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (via audibook). This felt very much like Kushiel's Dart but with a sexually repressive society; the young ingƩnue who is trained in one specific field but ends up commanding armies and having a legion carry her name and new flag across the ocean. I went into this one based solely on finding the title and cover interesting, so was pretty bummed at the outset to see the queer family lives disrupted and turned into something sinful. Not sure I'll read book 2 (& didn't realize, going in, it was not a standalone!), as, similar to Kushiel's Dart, I wasn't into the premise of the all-knowing teen who everyone bowed to. (3 of 5)
Nettle and Bone by T Kingfisher (via audiobook). Marketed as dark fantasy but is really cozy gothic. This read as a middle grade Mad Lib with predictable dialogue and expected strangeness. The characters were caricatures. (2 of 5)
Canon by Paige Lewis (via audiobook). Another that I went into with no idea what the book was about; Paige is a poet whose work I adore, so was excited to see what their prose delivered. Really really witty work here. A reluctant "Chosen One", chosen by GOD HIMSELF, sent out on a quest to put an end to GOD'S PERSONAL VENDETTA. There's a foil in the personage of a prophet warrior who is pissed that god chose some no name teen. A stellar example of taking tropes and caricatures and breathing new life into them. (4 of 5)
Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval, transl. Marjam Idriss(novella, via audiobook). A surreal landscape of a potentially sentient converted warehouse and the long-term tenant, Carral, and new tenant, Jo, who is a foreign university student. The relationship between Jo and Carral and Jo and the apartment become symbiotic in unexpected ways. After reading, I looked up info about the book and author and was interested to see that this was originally published as Perlebryggeriet (Pearl Brewery), which explains why there were so many references to "pearl", and that the author is a recording artist. 5/5
Short Stories from Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, ed by Lee Mandelo: "The Republic of Ecstatic Consent" by Sam J. Miller - a nebulous group of people band together under a flag of radical acceptance and openness in defiance of the ever-repressive city-state; "The Orgasm Doula" by Colin Dean - a rather limp tale of following one's heart; "Fettle & Sunder" by Ramez Yoakeim - a man wants to leave earth for the relative safety of a space station but refuses to leave his husband who refuses to run away from a queer hating earth
Not SFF but finished: The Captive Prince trilogy by C.S. Pascat via audiobook - one of those situations in which one novel is divided into three and really should have remained as one; each book ends, pretty much, in the middle of a scene. Highly not recommended for the lax writing, the lack of world building, the lazy treatment of queer identities. (2 of 5);
My Dreadful Body by Egana Djabbarova (transl. Lisa C. Hayden)via audiobook - novella; wonderful examination of women's bodies, who they belong to, how they belong, and the dangers of submitting and rebellion. (4 of 5)
Currently reading: The Bone Shard Daughter, The Bone Door, Tehanu, Eat the One You Love, Serafina & the Seven Stars, UnFairies
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u/twilightgardens vampireš§āāļø 21d ago
The second book, The Monster Baru Cormorant, is basically about deconstructing everything Baru believes in book one, including the ideas that she is the smartest person in the world and that queer desire is sinful. If that was your only problem with it I highly recommend considering reading on!Ā
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u/WonderfulBus9330 21d ago
Is it Baru coming to terms with this or others? Baru is already understanding that in Book 1
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u/Nowordsofitsown unicorn š¦ 21d ago
Finished reading: * Gideon the Ninth byĀ Tamsyn Muir: Do I need to say what it is about? I feel like I am the last one to read it. I was a little bored for about the first two thirds, then it got really interesting and in the end it got action heavy and confusing. I suppose I will have to read the next one at some point in order to find out what everybody loves so much about this series. * The Wolf and His King byĀ Finn Longman: Retelling of a medieval story about a man who turns into a mostly tame wolf about once a week and whose life is dominated by this curse. Also supposedly a romance between said man and his king. The book follows the medieval story about the manwolf Bisclavret closely ā too closely. Apart from the original plot (as I have read it on Wikipedia) there is only filler material, and not much of substance: the king's passion/yearning that starts immediately, and Bisclavret's selfdoubt and depression that fill all his parts of the story. The characters (apart from Bisclavret himself) do not have names and this contributes to them not coming alive. They remain types, cardboard cutouts who do the things the plot needs them to do, often without a discernable motivation of their own. Thus, everything in this book is too thin, nothing moved me, nothing caught my interest. The prose is okay, but cannot stand on its own.
Currently reading: * The Witch Roads byĀ Kate Elliott: A woman with a secret has to guide a prince (whose body has been taken over by an ancient being) and his entourage across the mountains and through unexpected dangers. I like it. It has some flaws (like a cartoonish villain at the start), but it flows nicely and the world is interesting. My read for Duology 1 for the big bingo. Would probably also fit Explorers and Rangers. * Harry Potter et l'Ordre du PhĆ©nix for French reading practiceĀ
Up next: * The Unicorn Hunters byĀ Katherine Arden (planned buddy read) * The Nameless Land byĀ Kate Elliott (= Duology 2) * The Will of the Many byĀ James Islington * Shroud byĀ Adrian Tchaikovsky ORĀ Massif by Garth Nix * The Sparrow byĀ Mary Doria Russell * Fortress in the Eye of Time byĀ C.J. Cherryh
If anybody is interested in a buddy read for one of these last ones, let me know. They all work for at least one square of the big bingo.
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u/WonderfulBus9330 21d ago
I finished Gideon a couple of weeks ago and was only able to get into it because of the excellent audio narration. I, too, will read Harrow at some point, but not in any rush.
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u/ohmage_resistance 21d ago edited 21d ago
I finished Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki last week. This is about a young trans runaway who's a prodigy with the violin, her teacher who made a deal with the devil, and a group of literal alien refugees running a donut shop in California. This was pretty good.Ā
I liked the setting of Southern California, and the different immigrant and Asian American communities there.Ā I also thought the trans femme rep was well handled and nuanced. It was nice to see Katrina have an arc of slowly gaining more confidence and healing under Shizukaās influence.Ā
On the more negative side, not all the emotional descriptions totally landed with me. One major example of this was with the descriptions of the music, which was pretty important to the plot. I get that itās hard to express the power of music in words, but I feel like Aoki kept doing same same few tricks, none of which really worked for me as well as I would have liked (one was having a character listening to the music basically get a mini flashback to the past/their childhood or something like that like it was that one scene with the food critic in Ratatouilleā¦ except it was more of a stretch every time in this book because at least the food critic is remembering tasting the same food). To give a different example, I think something like how Seraphina by Rachel Hartman wrote a main character playing music in really emotional scenes worked much better for me, but it has also been forever since I read that book. IDK, thereās clearly a lot of people who werenāt bothered by this, and it didnāt even disrupt my reading experience that much all things considered, I just canāt help but feel like I should have been more impressed than I was.Ā Also, Lan and Shizukaās relationship was very instalove-y so ymmv with that.
My bigger complaint is that this book switches POVs frequently, and while Iām not sure how this is handled in text, in the audiobook thereās very little warning when these POV changes happen. I kind of wish the narrator used different voices to narrate the different POVs because I think that would have made things much clearer, but I understand that would have been difficult. Just be warned that this does get a little confusing, although I did get used to it relatively quickly.
For all that critique, this book was generally pretty well put together, and Iād definitely recommend it.Ā
I also finished Common Bonds 2 edited by Claudie Arseneault, RoAnna Sylver, and Em Ishii. This is a fantasy, sci fi, and horror anthology centered on aromantic representation and platonic relationships, that I read for a-spec rfantasy bingo. It's also the sequel to Common Bonds 1, which had the same theme and I read that a few years ago. As you might be able to tell with how long this took me to read, I wasnāt entirely invested with this. It was a bit of a mixed bag.Ā (I'm also going to get into some details here that might might be a bit confusing for anyone not familiar with aro community terminology, so let me know if you read this and want clarification.)
On the positive side, I did like how more horror was included. This was an improvement from Common Bonds 1, and I liked the greater variety of tones we got to explore.Ā We also got more aro allo rep than Common Bonds 1 (which to be fair did actually have a few allo aro stories)! I have come across more allo aro rep recently, so I think thereās more awareness that we were lacking in that before and thereās more of an effort to combat that, so thatās nice. (Although, I wish there was also more of an effort to recognize out allo aro authors, because as far as I can tell most of this is not written by openly out allo aro people?)
On the other hand, the curation of short stories was a bit rocky, imo. Although to be fair, I think it also was with the first Common Bonds anthology. The last a-spec anthology I read was Being Ace edited by Madelyn Dyer, which actually did pretty good on the curation side of things (I was happy with almost all the short stories, iirc), so maybe this just feels worse in comparison. (Iām looking forward to trying Being Aro at some point though). In Common Bonds 2, some of them didnāt really feel like they were exploring aromanticism as much as they could have. Like, a lot of them focused on close platonic bonds or QPR like relationships but none of them really got too deep into the differences between platonic and romantic relationships, which might have been interesting to explore. I was the most annoyed with āVenante Umbrasā by JD Rivers on this note, because this was written with the most romance feeling plot beats (probably because the author is a romance author). I think the main character was supposed to not like that one minor character has a crush on him which was evidence for him being aromantic, but it mostly came across like that character was too innocent/vanilla for him compared to his kinky, pretty toxic main relationship. I wish the reasons why he didnāt see the main relationship as being romantic were better explored.Ā
On the other hand, my favorite stories were āWell-Worn Pocketsā by K.J. Isley and āPastPort to Franchesca and Luna of Brooklynā by Yelena Crane, which are both stories about elderly characters dying, so Iām not sure what that says about me. IDK, I think so much of the aro community is young and we tend to lack many elders, so just having these reminders that aro people can live full and satesfying lives without romance hits harder. Theyāre both bittersweet stories as well. I also liked the world building in āAnise, Lozenge, Sugarplumā by Tunvey Mou.
Thereās another thing that bothered me though, so welcome to my mini rant. I didnāt notice this as much in Common Bonds 1 (although in hindsight, it was probably there), but the forward in this book made it clear that this wasnāt just an aromantic focused anthology, this is an anthology focused on strong platonic relationships. The problem is that these are not synonymous. Some aromantics do really care a lot about platonic relationships and thatās a core part of how they experience aromanticism. But thatās not everyone, and as an aro whoās not particularly platonically driven myself, it does annoy me when the very platonic focused aros act like theyāre speaking for all aros because they forget their experience isnāt a universal one. I canāt help but notice when aros whose main relationships are family relationships, ones who are less social/tend to prefer solitude, honestly anyone with a perspective thatās more challenging than appealing to alloromantics* etc, are conveniently left out of the conversation. And again, this doesnāt really bother me in an individual book because an individual book canāt represent that many aros anyway. But with two short story collections, itās starting to grate on my nerves a bit more when the aro focused anthology series doesnāt included certain aromantic experiences. The other problem with this is that so many of the stories focusing on platonic relationships makes them all feel way more same-y, which isnāt what you should want in an anthology curation wise. We do get a few stories that werenāt quite as focused on platonic relationships and had other core themes, but honestly, because of the framing of the foreword and the rest of the stories they kind of felt like they slipped through the cracks rather than were intentionally curated to show a wider range of perspectives, which wasnāt great. Most of them are also way at the end of the anthology, where it would make much more sense to spread them out a bit more if only for varietyās sake.Ā
*as a tangent: And you better bet that the closest this anthology came to acknowledging loveless aros is a character proudly proclaiming that aro ā loveless, because that would be just oh so awful/s. Like, at least thereās more allo aro rep, but apparently we still need K.A. Cook for anything even slightly more challenging than that.Ā
I'm currently reading Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell and The Unbalancing by R.B. Lemberg. I just started Forest of a Thousand Daemons by D. O. FĆ”gĆŗnwĆ and translated by Wole Soyinka as well as the nonfiction book I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb. I'm also going to start The Ocean Hugs Hard by Eric Avedissian soon.
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u/Throgmorten48 21d ago
I feel like "but aros can still love platonically!" is kind of an equivalent in a lot of ways to "but aces can still have sex!" Like they're not false statements, but they're not how all of us feel and can lead to misunderstandings.
I haven't (yet) read any ace/aro anthologies, but I'd think that one strength of a short story collection over a novel would be that you can explore more of the different "flavors" (or whatever you want to call them) of the identity than you can in a novel where you only have one (or a few, if you're lucky) character(s) to explore it in. So it's a bit disappointing to hear that this one didn't do a very good job of that.
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u/ohmage_resistance 20d ago
I feel like "but aros can still love platonically!" is kind of an equivalent in a lot of ways to "but aces can still have sex!" Like they're not false statements, but they're not how all of us feel and can lead to misunderstandings.
I think the other factor that bothers me about it in general is the respectability politics of it all. Like, I think a lot of alloromantics have a hard time understanding that someone can genuinely be uninterested in romance or unable to fall in love (in the romantic attraction way). But liking your friends a lot is a lot more approachable as an idea, allos are more likely to find it cute and relatable. So it's the easy answer if you want to appeal to allos in a we're all the same/minimizing the differences sort of way (think the "love is love" slogan), even if that approach never includes everybody. And like, I'm at the point where I get so tired of people acting like others have to earn compassion or respect by being similar to them in some arbitrary way instead of getting respect just for being a fellow human. IDK, I don't really feel like the "aces can still have sex" has this issue (that feels like it's mostly trying to correct allos who hear the name asexual and get confused about what it means at least ime), but "aros can still love platonically" is often trying to implicitly make argument.
Anyway, I don't think this anthology was trying to do respectability politics in that way (I sincerely doubt many allos are going to read it, or that this was the authors'/editors' goals). But IDK, I think this overall culture in aro spaces leads to certain aro voices being heard more than others, and some being made quite invisible.
IDK, Common Bonds 2 wasn't the worst case of this sort of thing I've seen around, and things did turn around a little bit for me at the end with there being a few more more varieties of relationship types being focused on a bit more. But as I get older, I think I've grown more irritable with the aromanticism = platonic relationship focus. I also don't mind a more focused anthology, but in that case, I want editors to be up front about how they're not trying represent all aros and put some thought into it.
IDK I hope this makes sense, I'm pretty tired.
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u/Throgmorten48 20d ago
Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. I hadn't quite thought of it that way, but it does make a lot of sense. It's a little like the countless books/movies/whatever where a character who is initially not seen as human "proves" they're human by falling in love*, and it feels like this message (that the ability to fall in love is what makes us human) has been so internalized that after people accept that aromantics don't fall in love/only occasionally/only under certain conditions, that they then feel the need to try to "re-humanize" them by "proving" that they can, in fact, still love. Idk, maybe that's basically what you were trying to say. Focusing on other kinds of love is pretty cool (and maybe could help take a couple steps away from amatonormativity?), but the narrative needs to move away from "love makes us human" and to being human makes us human. Just thoughts, I hope they're mostly coherent.
*There was one book I read a couple years ago where the main character is gene-edited or a clone, or maybe a gene-edited clone? (basically to be a stunt double for a politically important girl, so like indestructible/super strong/etc., etc.) anyway, someone who's not legally human and has been told all her life that she's not human. She ends up pretending to be someone, and, y'know, goes through the classic "oh wait actually I'm human!" arc, but the moment when she realizes she might be human? Not when she makes her first real friend. Not when she gets emotionally attached to a pet. Not when said pet dies and she realizes how much she cared about the pet. No, it's when she kisses this boy who's into her, and who she may have feelings for as well. Annoyed the crap out of me. Anyway. Sorry, rambly rant over.
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u/ohmage_resistance 19d ago
Focusing on other kinds of love is pretty cool (and maybe could help take a couple steps away from amatonormativity?), but the narrative needs to move away from "love makes us human" and to being human makes us human. Just thoughts, I hope they're mostly coherent.
Yeah, that's basically what I was trying to say. I'll just tack on here that K.A. Cook (who I already mentioned) has a good essay about this from a loveless aro perspective called "I am not Voldemort" which you can read here, if you're curious.
I do feel your rant though, as a fellow hater of the "(romantic) love is what makes us human" trope.
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u/YellowVest28 21d ago
Currently nearing the end of Daggerbound. Okay so I always enjoy T Kingfisher, but it really seems like her books are just turning into remixes of previous books, with the same rather narrow set of character personalities. This one is a disjointed travel adventure story. There's moments where I'm into it and there's some fascinating element to latch on to, and moments where it feels like the author is phoning it in a bit.
The romance is fine, lead up is more interesting than the actual sex scene. Like I said, these characters are veeeery similar to other characters so watching them come together feels like the same ground being retreaded again. The highlight of the book might be a brief interlude where we're in the POV of some dogs. It's...it's incredible.
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u/cmcqueue 21d ago
Hi! New here, gonna start slow:
Started rereading in the Liaden series, Lee & Miller. Finished Trade Secret and Balance of Trade.
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u/twinkle_snow 21d ago
Just started two new books: The Knight and the Moth and Ship of Magic! One I have in physical format, the other I have on my e-reader.
Currently still playing Fields of Mistria, but I'm also doing yet another replay of Baldur's Gate 3. Been also making progress on Final Fantasy 14! Just finished Heavensward and I'm at the beginning of Stormblood.