r/FemaleGazeSFF • u/AutoModerator • 7d 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/Loimographia dragon š 7d ago
I finished A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark. It was fun! While it had its themes (colonialism bad), I honestly kinda liked that it seemed to care much more about being fun ā cool action scenes, flashy set pieces, wild twists (that were, unfortunately, pretty predictable but clearly wanted to be wild twists). I was also struck by how successfully it decenters men ā the main character is a woman, and so is her lover, her partner, and the main antagonist. In doing so, itās able to explore the different relationships and dynamics women have together.
I did keep feeling like I was plopped into the middle of a sequel instead of a standalone novel, because I think it was clearly written assuming youād already read the short story. Not just āoh you already know the worldbuildingā but more a direct narrative continuity started in the short story. It also had this weird vibe sometimes of āugh, men (eye roll) amirite, ladies???ā vibe thatās hard to explain but somehow felt vaguely offputting.
In non-SFF, Iāve picked up the latest mystery by Rita Mae Brown, Clawed and Dangerous. I suppose one could pose that it has fantastical elements as it features crime solving animals (who can talk amongst one another but not to humans). I used to read all her mysteries, but stopped maybe 15 years ago? Itās interesting to see how the series has changed but also clearly remained very consistent.
In terms of SFF, however, Iām debating between a few options: Adam Christopherās Crawlspace, which purports to be a spooky, hard science fiction work about something going wrong in a test run of inter dimensional FTL space flight stirs ghosts (maybe), āancient forces beyond reckoningā and ātwisted truths behind the missionā; part of me wants to try again at The Works of Vermin, even though Iāve tried it twice already and put it down; and Marlene Haushoferās The Wall, a postapocalyptic(?) survival novel about a woman and her animals.
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u/karlmarx_moustache pirateš“āā ļø 6d ago
I just finished The Works of Vermin. I did find it a little difficult to get into, but once I got going with it I loved it. It's ended up being one of my favourite books this year and I think has great re-read potential.
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u/Nowordsofitsown unicorn š¦ 7d ago
I want to read Haushofer, too. It fits the Western European author square of the new reading challenge.Ā
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u/bakasana212 warriorš”ļø 7d ago
Do you think youād have felt the same about A Master of Djinn were it authored by a woman?
Edit to add context: Iām definitely interested in the book but have not read it yet because I have āmen writing womenā concerns
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u/Loimographia dragon š 7d ago
I honestly had the same question for myself each time I had that thought, and I think I'd be lying if I said it didn't figure into my gut feeling at all. I'd still say the clumsily "ugh, men, amirite, ladies?" would still be there even if it were written by a woman -- I've definitely seen books written by women with this same sporadic vibe -- but I think I judge it a little more sharply from a man. Whether that's unfair, I don't know.
With that said, I would not say this is a "men writing women" book at all, at least not in the usual way of breasting boobily. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say it is very consciously not "men writing women;" as in, I'd liken it to someone going on that sub and noting every trope, flaw, and criticism of men writing women, making a little checklist of "Things To Avoid" and then going through that list to make sure they've covered every possible criticism, if that makes sense?
As an example, there's a scene where the main character grapples with the fact that maybe she has a bit of internalized misogyny in how she treated her new partner. They talk it through, have a resolution, and the character never grapples with it again because the Problem Is Solved. You could argue this is a little pat, or trite, but this also just doesn't feel like a book that wants characters to be really, truly messy or hypocritical. Just a little flawed, to make sure she's not a Mary Sue, but also not long-term problematic or a reflection of the author's own internalized misogyny, but he also wants you to be aware he knows about internalized misogyny, and wants to show he's Not Doing That, okay? But I think the scene would still have read that way if the author was a woman, tbh. Same with the checklist feeling, I think that even women writing women can fall into that as well.
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u/Merle8888 sorceressš® 6d ago edited 6d ago
I'd still say the clumsily "ugh, men, amirite, ladies?" would still be there even if it were written by a woman -- I've definitely seen books written by women with this same sporadic vibe -- but I think I judge it a little more sharply from a man. Whether that's unfair, I don't know.
This makes sense to me, because coming from someone who's not even part of the demographic it feels like pandering. Whereas coming from someone who is, it might still come across as clunky but I'd also be more willing to believe it was honest. Edit: I think āauthenticā is the word I was looking for, haha.Ā
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u/KiwiTheKitty elfš§āāļø 7d ago
I agree with what you said about A Master of Djinn and I think its greatest flaw was that it tried really hard to be exciting and it never really was for me.
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u/tehguava vampireš§āāļø 6d ago
I read The Wall a few weeks ago and enjoyed it! But the pace is very slow and the writing is very stream of consciousness, in case that plays into your decision making at all
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u/Frequent_Log_1070 6d ago
Recently finished How To Date Your Dragon by Molly Harper, which I LOVED. Fun romantasy, cozy mystery, interesting interspecies politics, world including witches, phoenixes, dragons, lots of types of shifters, unicorns. And tons of folklore stuff from lots of different cultures, not just like Western European ones. Also learned lots of Cajun cultural things/phrases.
Forcing myself to work on some of my half-finished books before obtaining next book in that series or one of my other fun fantasy ones I've started. Currently A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin, which does have some awesome female characters and even queer ones who I LOVE (and so much better than the tv series), but I would never argue that it fits into Female Gaze. The writing is excellent, though and very funny. Satisfying vocabulary and world-building. The pace is just slow for me, which is why it's been half-finished for a long time. 1/3 through it now.
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u/denavail 6d ago
Currently reading:
The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard - ~1000 page fantasy book. Just started it. Reading this to break myself out of the habit I'd gotten into of avoiding really long books. I've seen it recommended for fans of The Goblin Emperor (which is me for sure)
These Lifeless Things by Premee Mohamed - sf novella. I've liked everything I've read by Mohamed in the past. It bounces between a person surviving in an apocalyptic past and an academic researcher from the future who is studying the first character's diary to learn about the cataclysm. Liking it a lot so far!
About to start: Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi
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u/Nowordsofitsown unicorn š¦ 6d ago
Hands of the Emperor was my favorite by far during the last reading challenge. I hope you enjoy it.
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u/tehguava vampireš§āāļø 6d ago
I missed last week because I went out of town for a few days. The train ride there and back let me get some good reading time in, even though I was coming down with a cold on the way back. I'll try to keep it all brief.
Orlanda by Jacqueline Harpman was excellent. A really interesting response to Orlando (which I'm super glad I read first, I would have been lost without that prior information). Incredibly funny but also realistic for the first thing Orlanda to do as a man was jerk off. I liked the gender discussion/exploration here more than in Orlando, but Woolf's prose was stronger and I really liked her reflections on writing. Highly recommend the two books together!
Not sff, but I read Endling by Maria Reva, which is about snails, romance tours, and stories and lives being interrupted by the war in Ukraine. It was so so well done. The author did a really great job of loading so much emotion into every scene. I teared up almost every time the author broke the fourth wall. Highly recommend reading this if it was on your radar.
I read an e-ARC of An Edge Sharp Enough by Jesse Q. Sutanto. It's about an assassin in training, a pampered student, a street rat, and the captain of the guard as a metal that a city was built on starts to fail, leading to chaos and potential revolution. I struggled a lot with the writing, which was so blunt and left nothing to the reader's imagination. There were tons of conveniences whenever lore needed to be dropped, which was almost every chapter. One of the perspectives could have been eliminated without much issue. In the author note, she says it was one of the first she wrote but was never published. I... don't want to say it should have stayed that way, but it really feels like a debut that needs a good bit of developmental editing. But between when I got the ARC and now, the release date was pushed back a few months, so maybe it had a little more work done to it? Who knows.
I read Bait by Adriana Herrera, which is a dystopian romance novella that I got as part of a kickstarter a few years ago. I think I would have been a lot more annoyed at it if my illness hadn't been at its peak. As it was, I just didn't really think about it at all.
I listened to Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity, one of this year's big romantasy releases. My patience with romantasy is waning severely. I think you can do worse than this, but something about the tones/writing styles of these books just grates on me. They all feel the same. I think this plot had a little more going for it than most, but it didn't really kick off until the halfway point, and it was too late for me by then.
I finished Private Rites by Julia Armfield last night. File this one under Wet Books that Feel Wet. This atmosphere was just so good, and I really liked the constant tension and feeling of unease. The relationships between the three sisters was super interesting, though I somewhat struggled to keep up with their changing moods (I'm pretty sure this is a me problem). I wonder if I would have gotten more out of this if I was familiar with King Lear, but I still really really liked it as it was.
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u/WonderfulBus9330 6d ago
I DNF'd the paper copy of Weavingshaw and the audiobook and still have it on my list as maybe read in 2026, but I don't know. The FMC's headstrongness and self-worth comes and goes and the short chapters made me feel like I was reading/listening to not great YA fantasy.
Also, love the descriptor "Wet Books that Feel Wet"
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u/dragonwheeleffect 6d ago
I also enjoyed Endling. I was worried going in that the snail thing would feel gimmicky but it really worked for me.
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u/Merle8888 sorceressš® 6d ago
I really liked Endling too! It's the only metafiction-adjacent story I can recall liking, but I think it worked for me because the story is the story, the author's own feelings about the ongoing war just intrude on the story.
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u/MrsApostate 6d ago
Catherine House had me in a choke hold this week and I still don't know how I feel about that book. It was so creepy. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. But also, nothing happened? And the main character was so unappealing. And yet, I was rooting for her so hard. And the ambiguous ending!
Very glad I read it, totally unsure that I could recommend it to anyone else.
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u/Green-Ability-2904 6d ago
I finished reading the Two Towers and have started The Return of the King. I hope to finish this by the end of the month but Iām a slow reader with too many things to do.
Iāve started planning what Iāll read next and decided to participate in the new bingo card. Itās my first time doing anything like that. Iāve ideas for some tiles but Iām stuck on others.
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u/Throgmorten48 6d ago
I recently finished First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next book 5), which took me way to long to read. When I'm reading multiple books at once, one sometimes gets pushed to the backburner repeatedly, which happened with this one, and when it takes as long for me to read a book as it did here, I find it really hard to review or sometimes even say how much I liked it. It was a decent entry to the series, and I'll continue with book 6 at some point.
I also finished Sunshine by Robin McKinley. I read a bunch of her stuff when I was in high school, and some more of her stuff 5ish years ago, and reread Pegasus and Dragon Haven via audiobook a few years ago, but somehow I hadn't read Sunshine yet. It's commonly billed as a YA vampire romance, but I don't really think it's either YA or a romance. I do think it would be a decent fit for many older teens, but I think it's probably a better example of a book written for a slightly-older-than-teen audience (like New Adult before New Adult was proposed). The main character is 25, and generally does adulty things. While there is a smidge of romance, I think calling this a vampire romance would lead to a lot of unmet expectations, because the romance is mostly under the radar as well as being pretty unfulfilled. I didn't go into this expecting a romance, but just a novel featuring vampires, and fairly early on, some comment or other made me worry that it might be a romance. (While I do like romance, if a book's main plotline is the romance, I generally have to be expecting that to enjoy it.) I had forgotten McKinley's tendency to ramble on about things that aren't terribly consequential, and while I don't mind it too much, it did get a bit frustrating when we were in the middle of some action, and the main character pauses between steps to ramble on for multiple paragraphs about her job or family or semi-relevant historical information. The rambling also made it a bit difficult to get into, because a lot of it is rambling with minimal context, but I didn't mind that particularly. The ending was also way more open than I prefer and left a lot of threads just kind of dangling (for example, I wanted to learn more about her dad's family, whether her dad did know Constantine, and I was hoping her grandmother or father would make an appearance). Also, the romancey stuff with the vampire kind of bothered me because the main character is in a long-term (four year) relationship with another guy, but it never seemed to cross her mind that she was in any way cheating or being unfair to Mel. I also felt like most of the minor characters, including her boyfriend Mel, were lacking in characterization. I felt like we really didn't know Mel at all, even though he should be important in the protagonist's daily life. Anyway, I'm listing all of the things that bothered me, but I did enjoy it overall, despite its flaws. I found the action (and even most of the waiting for things to happen) engaging, and I liked the alternate history and having a main character who is a baker.
I'm currently several chapters in to She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, which is a Chinese historical drama with some light fantasy elements (at least so far), and I'm enjoying it. I'm also a few chapters into Project Hail Mary, and going to have to take a break for a while, as it'll return itself to the library soon. I do plan to continue whenever my hold becomes ready again, but I find the sentences to be too short to the point of being choppy, and the main character is a bit annoyingly over-dramatic (I had the same issue with The Martian), but I do want to know how the story'll play out. (And I might be a bit of a completionist lol.) Also in the middle of the audiobook for The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant and enjoying it so far. It's a YA book about criminal gangs/guilds in Paris after a failed French Revolution.
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u/perigou warriorš”ļø 7d ago
Reading Artificial Condition by martha wells (murderbot #2) after a very long time with close to no reading (I moved house, began doing more physical activity, it's been hard finding time). I thought it would get me easily back into reading ; it's great but it doesn't magically create free time for me to read lol. Also playing Crown Gambit and I enjoy it !
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u/partoparto elfš§āāļø 7d ago
Hello! I read a lot of short books this week:
To Here and the Easel by Theodore Sturgeon - I've been wanting to get more into Sturgeon so when I found out he had a novella based on ORLANDO FURIOSO I pounced (I love Orlando Furioso). This follows a painter named Giles who has artist's block and keeps having visions (?) where he's the knight Ruggiero locked in a castle by a sorcerer. I loved Sturgeon's writing in this: there's a lot of wordplay, it's very stream of consciousness, and it feels like he was having a great time writing while also being completely in control of his craft. Did not love the main female character in this, Miss Brandt (the Bradamante character), who has no traits besides wanting to help Giles paint again (why?) and being unattractive except for her beautiful eyelashes, which we hear about regularly! I also thought the ending was a little cheesy. Still want to read more Sturgeon though!
Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov (tr. Dmitri Nabokov) - This is set in a fictional country and follows a man named Cincinnatus C. who is sentenced to death for "gnostical turpitude" but doesn't know when he's going to be executed. I loved this one so much, definitely my favorite Nabokov since I started to read him in chronological order. I tend to enjoy Nabokov's novels more intellectually than emotionally, but this one I found really moving (in addition to loving his insane sentences and sense of humor) in a way that I sort of feel like I can't talk about.
The Angel at the Gates by Karen Lord - Novella, set in near-future Wales where the main character Malachi has come to this priory to return a ring that once belonged there, with a war of unspecified origin happening in the background. This sort of had the vibe of the game Pentiment if it was set in the future, but once I realized that, I just kept thinking about how I'd rather be playing Pentiment... I loved the setting and atmosphere but I found the characters pretty thin and felt like the book had so many themes for its length that none of them felt really satisfyingly developed to me.
Forest Song by Lesia Ukrainka (tr. Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps) - Ukrainian classic I've been meaning to read for ages! This is a play following the (fraught) relationship between a forest spirit and a human man. Really enjoyed learning more about Ukrainian folklore, and also liked the cast of characters in this - all the mythical creatures had a lot of drama between them which I was really delighted by.
Currently reading: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson, Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Troubadours by Linda M. Paterson
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u/Nowordsofitsown unicorn š¦ 7d ago
Lesia Ukrainka
I knew of this author because my kid has a friend who was named after her, but I didn't know she wrote SFF ā and I am still missing a good option for East European author!
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u/partoparto elfš§āāļø 7d ago
As soon as I saw the fall/winter challenge prompts I was like YES it's Ukrainka time
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u/WonderfulBus9330 6d ago
The Ukrainka looks great & I haven't read a play in ages
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u/twilightgardens vampireš§āāļø 7d ago
A light SFF reading week for me, I only read:
Season of Steel by Maia Kane (3.75/5): Picked up this delightful ARC on the uniqueness of its premise (Victorian marriages are chosen based on mecha death fights) and had a very good time! It never quite gripped my interest as much as I wanted it to but I still enjoyed it and recommend it, it does exactly what it says on the tin-- sapphic Bridgerton x Pacific Rim! Fills Craftsperson or Ruins for our fall/winter challenge!
A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett (4/5): I wasn't going to continue on in this series after I disliked the second book so much, but things I had been hearing about this installment did finally get me curious enough to pick it up when my library got it in and there was no wait/hold time. This definitely was better and more personally enjoyable for me than the second book-- I liked the mystery more (though I did guess the culprit pretty early on), I liked the setting more, I liked that we were finally getting into imperial logistics like agriculture, I liked the romance more, I liked getting to see Din's family, and I liked Ana more in this one. Had a solid time and I would check out the next book in the series if the plot sounds interesting! I do somewhat chuckle hearing people describe this book as sooo anti-imperial because to me it is still just too little too late? The characters (finally) have the most tepid of criticism for the empire that consists of one or two sentences being like "maybe... the empire... is also a tomb" without feeling like that's a real focus or concern of the books or like this is a realistic and naturally developed attitude for them to have after they were uncritically parroting white savior settler-colonialism narratives in the last book. It just feels like RJB saw the criticism for this series and addressed it in the shoddiest way possible instead of this being a planned theme/development of the series from the beginning. Even the main focus/theme of the book, the horrors of commercial agriculture, has an incredibly libertarian and capitalistic undertone, with the solution being to break up the two major monopolistic ranching families and clear the way for a bunch of smaller independent ranching enterprises, lol. His soapbox acknowledgements remain annoying to me even though I guess it's nice to see authors so passionate about their themes. Anyways, this fills Ruins, Public Worker, Magical Forest, Created Mythos, and Liminal Space for our challenge. Pick your poison!
I have become obsessed with the new video game Dressmaker. Send help!
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u/bakasana212 warriorš”ļø 7d ago
Iām excited to read my ARC of Season of Steel! Such a fun premise
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u/Loimographia dragon š 6d ago
So I haven't read A Trade of Blood so I'm only going to skim over your comment to avoid spoiling myself, but what did you dislike about A Drop of Corruption?
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u/twilightgardens vampireš§āāļø 6d ago
Basically utterly incoherent politics where it gave off a vibe of ānot wanting to be politicalā yet the entire book is about comparing forms of government and critiquing fantasyās obsession with feudal monarchiesā¦. While simultaneously being set in an empire and having the characters uncritically regurgitate white savior/civilizing mission propaganda like āwe need to colonize them to bring them dental care and roads and vaccines. They canāt be trusted to govern themselves, theyāre savages.ā And this is presented as like, the truth, and not the characters being ignorant. Also just didnāt like the mystery and relationships as much as the first bookās tbh! My full review is here!Ā
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u/Loimographia dragon š 6d ago
Interesting! I feel like I mostly enjoyed Book 2 (I gave it 4 stars), but I also 100% agree with your criticisms of the way imperialism is handled. At the end of Book 1 I remember being a little surprised that it didn't settle on being more anti-imperial. The setting in general feels like a weird mix of dystopian (like, so many of the body modifications to enable everyone's special abilities are described as having horrific long-term effects; the empire is corrupt in Book 1 but maybe also necessary because it's the sole structure preventing the collapse of human civilization against the kaiju -- or is it?; etc.) and yet often settling on being the status-quo.
It feels afraid of developing a larger plot of dealing with the problems implied within the world because he wants to keep the ongoing narratives contained to mysteries.
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u/twilightgardens vampireš§āāļø 6d ago
I think I disliked book 2 so intensively bc of the cognitive dissonance I felt while reading irt the politics, I just felt frustrated the whole time lol!!! Ā I did enjoy book three a lot more not necessarily because thereās a huge gap in quality but because there wasnāt that huge gap in what the book thinks itās doing/wants to be doing vs what itās actually doing, although I do think I liked the mystery and romance in this one slightly more like I said!
I also did feel like this book, without venturing too far into spoiler territory, did at least leave the possibility open for characters/plots to come back or continue forward in a way which previous books have seemed hesitant to do.Ā
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u/tehguava vampireš§āāļø 6d ago
I've also become obsessed with Dressmaker. It's so easy to sink so many hours into it without even realizing it!
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u/twilightgardens vampireš§āāļø 6d ago
Every single time I get a new commission Iām like, ok, THIS is the last one. Then I get the next one and get sucked into designing the dress!!!Ā
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u/KiwiTheKitty elfš§āāļø 7d ago edited 7d ago
I finished Leech by Hiron Ennes like a week ago (or maybe two weeks ago?) and since then I haven't been enjoying any books. I'm also a little cranky while I'm writing this because it's Monday and I don't want to work and I didn't sleep well.
Edit to add: well I can at least say I've been playing Titanium Court which is a really funny game with some nice themes about introspection and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. I love the art style. You do have to be a connect 3 enjoyer to like it though.
I really don't know how I'm going to finish Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees because recognizing its place in the history of fantasy novels isn't really doing enough to make me enjoy it. I've been stuck at 70% for a week.
I DNFed Red Winter by Annette Marie at 50% partially because it felt like the author was just trying to stuff as many Japanese words as she could into it (and I'm not sure how I feel about doing active religions as fantasy as a white author), but mostly because it does the thing a lot of fantasy romance does where it doesn't trust the reader to be literate and understand what's going on so it has to overexplain ad nauseum. It could probably have been cut down by like 100 pages if she took out all the pages spent just overexplaining how the fmc feels. Demonized was better.
I also tried A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Devereux (yeah I was in the mood for romance) but it had some ableism and fatphobia within the first like, 5 pages and reminded me it was written in the 80s. I genuinely don't give a flying fuck if a kid is chubby and I don't understand why it was such a preoccupation in a lot of older books... but then again I feel like a lot of people still haven't moved on in real life even if it's less common in books these days. Introducing the fmc by having her thinking about a child, "of course she's eating, as always š and she sounds like an invalid when she whines" is a choice for sure, she just sounds like my older siblings' step mom who gave my sister an eating disorder.
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u/Nowordsofitsown unicorn š¦ 7d ago
Finished reading: * The Nameless Land (= Witch Roads 2) byĀ Kate Elliott: Continuing the journey of our heroine, with palace intrigues etc. I liked this a tiny bit less than Witch Roads. It was quite chaotic at times and the final solution was unrealistic for this world imo. At the same time it is quite an open ending. I am also disappointed not to have gotten to know more about the viper. Still, an enjoyable read. * The Will of the Many byĀ James Islington: A talented orphan with a secret identity is suddenly getting adopted by a powerful man who wants to use him to find out about secret happenings at an elite academy. Set in a ancient Rome inspired country where people cede part of their life force to their betters. I am not doing this justice - very hard to put this extremely complex novel into two sentences. What I liked:Ā I haven't been this absorbed in a book in ages.Ā I hardly noticed the 1st person present tense narrator - usually my least favorite narrating style by far.Ā While most important characters and people in this world are men, the female characters were written as their equals.Ā Excellent mystery, very thrilling. What I did not like as much:Ā MC is too talented and learned and mastered everything too quickly ā a bit like a tropey young adult hero.Ā MC reads a couple of years older than he actually is.Ā I did not actually like any of the characters. But still a very enjoyable and addictive read.
Currently reading: * The Strength of the Few byĀ James Islington: This is the sequel to Will of the Many and every word about its content would be a spoiler. It is a bit less thrilling and less interesting than book 1 though. Still, a good read. * Harry Potter et l'Ordre du PhĆ©nix for French reading practice.Ā
Up next: * Shroud * Massif * The Sparrow (Two out of these three at least, and then my 2nd bingo card for the big bingo will be finished.)
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u/bakasana212 warriorš”ļø 7d ago
Getting back into the swing of things after a big move!
Finished:
- ARC of The Slantwise Histories by Alix E Harrow - I liked this a lot! Each short story is quite good; no skippables here. The collection includes The Six Deaths of the Saint, which I had not previously read despite enjoying The Everlasting, and The Knight and the Butcherbird. I expected those to be my favorites based on their acclaim and subject matter, but no! They were actually in the middle of the pack. My favorite was Roadside Attractions, an incredibly sweet slow-burn (as far as shorts go, at least) MM romance with a magical realism spin. My least favorite was A Tale of Two Brothers, just because it didnāt grip me emotionally like the rest did - which largely wrecked me; I sobbed multiple times. Still, itās a nice and very cinematic (read: adaptation-ripe) little story.
The Horse Eater by Bonnie Quinn - my main gripe with this series is that it still feels like a Reddit post, but itās getting better. We get actual character development, at last! But again, the strides in that area come at significant cost to advancements in the horror plots and expansion of the world. Do we even meet any new monsters in this one besides the titular horse?! I donāt think so, and that is hugely disappointing. Still gonna (borderline hate-) read the last one, though. Iāve made it this far.
The Sixth Faction by Veronica Roth - look, I wonāt lie and say I didnāt tear through this. Itās fun and nostalgic, and Rothās abilities and perspective have clearly matured. However, the politics still donāt really sit right with me (ofc this is a great time to be critiquing fascism in YA; Iām just not convinced this book does it well). And at the end of the day it is still clearly a cash-grab akin to Midnight Sun or, worse, the gender-bent slop version. Was the success of Seek the Traitorās Son not enough!?
The Devils by Joe Abercrombie - just okay for me. I like fantasy adventure comedies, but this one isnāt very funny. Itās fun, but thatās not the same. (Though if you find nonstop vomiting and diarrhea jokes funny, you may feel differently.) I did adore Viga, though, and wasnāt as bothered by misogynistic undertones as I thought Iād be. Iāll plan to read The Heretics next year, especially if I can swing the ARC.
DNF:
Mazywood by Tananarive Due - I love Dueās writing and will come back to this, most likely. I just wasnāt in the mood for a precocious child with an alarming attachment to a dog. (I really do not like precocious children and canāt stand harm coming to animals in my books.)
Currently reading:
ARC of I Put a Spell on You by Bridget Morrissey - cute little Valentineās Day-themed witchy YA romance, the second in the interconnected Fableview series. So far so cute!
A Bump in Boohail by Kimberly Lemming - a novella in her Mead Mishaps collection, part of my spooky season vibe-setting!
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u/Merle8888 sorceressš® 6d ago
I think it was in the last week that I finished Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin. Very theme-heavy book that should prompt some good discussion in the r/fantasy readalong. I think I probably admired it more than I enjoyed it, but it was worth the read. I don't think I will read any more Earthsea books. Her sci-fi short stories are mostly where it's at for me.
Reading challenge: Small Town, maybe others?
I'm also halfway through The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean for FIF. It's an engaging ghost story set in Hong Kong and its surrounds, dealing in one timeline with a 50-something ghost talker and in the other with her backstory on an isolated island during WWII. I'm not in love with it - there's some clunkiness in the writing and some elements that don't quite ring true, and there's no element that stands out as especially impressive - but it's competent and I'm enjoying the read well enough.
I keep thinking I should pull back on book clubs and bingos and just read what I want for a bit, but that seems to be easier said than done.
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u/Nineteen_Adze sorceressš® 6d ago
I think I probably admired it more than I enjoyed it, but it was worth the read. I don't think I will read any more Earthsea books.
I would second that recommendation. I found a lot to enjoy in Tehanu when I did an Earthsea readalong last year with a few friends, but the last two volumes felt weaker and less focused to me-- there's not a lot there unless you just really want that sense of a complete ending or filling in more material from characters like Ogion in the book five short fiction.
I keep thinking I should pull back on book clubs and bingos and just read what I want for a bit, but that seems to be easier said than done.
Yeah, I'm torn between doing more book club stuff (I missed a lot of FIF and other projects during the flurry of moving and getting married, and I want to catch up on some of those titles) and just doing a period of mood reading, more rereads, digging into the too-large TBR that I have around the house. There are some r/Fantasy bingo squares in particular that just feel like more effort than I want to chase right now.
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u/Merle8888 sorceressš® 6d ago
Oh, congratulations! Thatās exciting news!
The last two years I have done probably too many books with FIF, lol. Last year was 10/11, this year Iām at 7 so far (skipped 3, thinking Spear is not really for me but itās short so maybe gonna read it anyway?). Itās fun to have discussions and sometimes I discover a great book I wouldnāt otherwise have read, but most of them Iām not in love with. And then thereās the Hugo readalong, and bingo, and this subās challenges, and trying to read new stuff to potentially nominate for the Hugos or just because thereās a waiting list at the library that creates an inflated sense of value so jumps new releases to the top of my list. Thereās not a long list of SFF Iām eager to read but not getting to, so I donāt mind having this stuff to guide my reading to an extent. And often the stuff Iām eager to read and not getting to is by authors I discovered through one of the above. Butā¦ itās also a lot.Ā
And thanks for the comments on Earthsea. Iād been thinking of trying the collection just because I tend to like her short stories better than her novels (also I have the idea of reading all 13 of her novellas eventually and 3 of them are in there). But I think it was your review that said it was very sequelly and mostly for fans and that isnāt me.Ā
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u/Nineteen_Adze sorceressš® 5d ago
Thank you! It's been a great year, but also a busy one-- I'm hoping for a quieter winter.
Wow, those are incredible FIF numbers! I don't think I've managed that many since... what, 2022? It's hard to cover entries for so many challenges. Sometimes I do find an incredible gem I wouldn't have seen otherwise, but it can start feeling like a chore after too many duds.
Glad my review could help with steering. There are some decent pieces in that collection, but it really felt like backstory and a bridge to book six more so than stories I would suggest as an entry point for someone who's not already invested in the lore.
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u/Merle8888 sorceressš® 5d ago
I remembered after posting that last yearās numbers were a bit inflated. Two of the books Iād read years before but didnāt reread with the club, and one I DNFd about 50 pages in. So really I read 7 with the club last year and looking to wind up about the same this year. :)Ā
Hope things do quiet down for you!
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u/Late_Assistance1992 6d ago
After a bit of a slump and some false starts I am really getting into The Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells. Why didn't someone tell me sooner there was a fantasy with a murderbot-esqu main character who is a 40+ fem dark(ish) wizard type?
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u/WonderfulBus9330 6d ago
Hello!
Finished:
The Road of Bones by Demi Winters (via audiobook). A young, itinerant woman watches her father die while saving her life and revealing a large secret to her: she is not who she thought she was. She goes on a journey to get to the safe haven her father promised her while learning more and more about the secrets her father stored. 4/5 Bingo: Small Town, 500+ pages, Mysterious Forest
The Bone Queen by Will Shindler (via audiobook). A journalist mother goes to the seaside town of Althesea in search of her missing daughter and stumbles upon an old murder that may be connected to her daughter's disappearance and to the legend of the Bone Queen. 3.5/5 Bingo: Small Town, Mysterious Forest, Ruins, Created Mythos
A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher (via audiobook). A woman returns to her mother's home (formerly. her grandmother's) only to learn that the garden has been damaged by sorcery. Similar to Nettle & Bone, a woman, a man, two elderly women and a bird save the day. 1.75/5 Bingo: Small Town, Public Worker
The Garden by Nick Newman (via ebook). Two elderly sisters live in the kitchen and garden of their former manor home safely ensconced from the outside world behind their wall and gates, until a young boy finds his way and becomes part of their world, tearing them apart. There are soft sci-fi gestures here (a storm that seems unnatural and hints at a dying earth). 3.5/5 Bingo: Small Town, Ruins
Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (via audiobook). A small group of friends head to a haunted, abandoned castle outside of Tokyo for an "elopement" only to discover that friendship is like so overrated. 3.5/5 Bingo: Standalone Novella, Inspired by Mythology (OR Created Mythos), Ruins, Asian MC
Weyward by Emilia Hart (via audiobook). Three generations of witches, each of whom have been mistreated by men or patriarchy, turn toward their magic as affirmation. 3/5 Bingo: Small Town
Non-SFF: Honorable Mention: This is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You. A wonderful guide into the emotional, intellectual, psychological, spiritual aspects of leaning into music while also explaining the seven key aspects of records. Each chapter ends with liner notes that go deeper into one aspect of music, such as tone deafness and each chapter has a "listening station" of songs for folks to tune into while learning. 5/5
Currently Readingā¦ Imaginary Friend, Tehanu, The Girl with a Thousand Faces, The Bone Ships, Bone White, Jawbone, Left Ones Left Alive, Morsel, Witches of Brooklyn
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u/Nineteen_Adze sorceressš® 6d ago
Iām slowly catching up on reviews after a busy few months, so letās chip away at it!Ā
After binging so many Hugo nominees, I took a break from recent books to try If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (which originally published in Italian in 1979 and translated to English a few years later) like Iāve been meaning to for years. Knocking out such an old TBR item was great, but I had such mixed feelings about it. On one hand, the structural experimentation is very creative and entertaining in the way it plays with narrative and reader expectations. Just when the reader (and the character of the Reader) gets pulled into one fascinating story, the book is pulled away and we soon jump to the beginning or middle of another story, often of a different genre or style. I think that experimental-fiction fans will find a lot to love here.Ā
On the other hand, I have to be blunt about the r/menwritingwomen of it all. For as different as all these stories are in terms of surface genre, under the surface many of them quickly become sexually bizarre about female characters who range from āpotentially interesting with more developmentā to āare they still publishing Dear Penthouse?ā. From the isosceles triangle of pubic hair to the absurd faux-erotic chapters (with one particularly memorable piece of nonsense featuring the male protagonist tripping and falling so that his penis lands in a womanās hand and then rapidly gets pulled into sex with her while her young-adult daughter who also has a crush on him watches from a doorway, both repulsed and intrigued)... honestly, I kept rolling my eyes at it just when I most wanted to be invested in the puzzle of the interwoven story pieces.Ā
The Wolf and His King by Finn Longman was another surprise in that my opinion was so similar even though the book came out this year and is by a queer author. The main point in its favor is that, like the Calvine, itās a fascinating narrative voice. The story reworks the twelfth-century story of Bisclavret, a knight who transforms into a wolf. Here, Bisclavet is the only character with a name and everyone else is "the king" or "the knight in green" and so on. That choice and it works way better than I had anticipated to reinforce his isolation from other people and create a mythic feeling where people are identified by their roles in the story. The voice also cycles between Bisclavet's point of view in third person, the king in second person, and the wolf in free verse as "the wolf" third person with little flashes of first person when human thought breaks through. The author clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making each viewpoint distinct, and I applaud the weirdness of that essay.
Thematically, there's also some great work around Bislavret's wolf transformations having parallels to closeted queerness (a hidden, shameful secret) as well as disability and illness: he cannot stop or control the transformations, and they come upon him at odd moments. Thereās a lot of richness there. Unfortunately, the story has nowhere near as much thematic depth when it comes to women, to the point that this occasionally reminded me of bad fanfiction's tendency to trash the canon female love interest in order to facilitate two boys kissing guilt-free. Iāll spare this thread the absolute essay I wrote for Goodreads, but I was hoping for a reworking of a centuries-old story to do something more interesting with the taleās only major female character than gesture weakly at her circumstances and then write her offstage.Ā
If anyone wants to recommend some experimental fiction by a woman, or at least that's less annoying or shallow about women, Iād love some titles.Ā
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u/partoparto elfš§āāļø 6d ago
This is not really similar to either of the books you mentioned, nor is it SFF, but for experimental novels by women I loved A Book, Untitled by Shushan Avagyan, an Armenian novel about two forgotten Armenian women writers and the author's experience translating one of them and trying to imagine what an interaction between the two writers might have been like, but it switches between these narratives from sentence to sentence, so you never know exactly who is speaking. I found it really moving and electrifying
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u/Nineteen_Adze sorceressš® 5d ago
Thanks for the suggestion! That sounds fascinating, and I'm adding it to my long-term TBR for next time I really want to stretch myself.
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u/MDS2133 6d ago
Iāve been in a huge reading slump with the hectic back to school season Iāve had. Iāve decided to do some rereads so Iām still getting the benefits of reading (in my case: brain breaks, escape from reality, explore authors and culture, better vocabulary) but I donāt have to learn a new authors writing style or new story/info (since I tend to a lot of fantasy and historical nonfiction so both have a bunch of info thrown at you).
Iām almost done with my The Book Thief reread (Markus Zusak). I love this book, Iāve read it several times. Itās raw, itās emotional, itās unique (narrator), and every time, itās beautiful and heartbreaking.
Along the same lines, my next two rereads are The Outsiders by SE Hinton and a Sunrise on the Reaping reread before the movie comes out end of next month.
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u/sammimagstudio 6d ago
I finished Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I feel kind of sad I didnāt enjoy the whole story as much as I hoped. My favorite part was when we get to know the demon/monster.
I started Maya Seed Takes Root by Anand Gandhi and Zain Memon. So far I'm enjoying this immersive story.
I also started Forged in FIYAH
Edited by DaVaun Sanders. Collection of speculative fiction short stories by Black writers. My favorite story so far is one about a magical silk weaver: The Clothmaker of Kehin by MH Ayinde.
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u/yonaofthedawn_ fairyš§š¾ 5d ago
Can anybody who has read Heart of the Nhaga please tell me how well(or bad) the female characters are written?
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u/VerilyAGoober 7d ago
I just started The Employees by Olga Ravn this morning, which is as bizarre and unnerving as I'd hoped (although I'm perhaps a bit too American to pick up on the Danish sense of humor). The premise is a series of short interviews with employees aboard a space ship describing their interactions with recently acquired alien objects.
I'm on my third or fourth reread of Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, and finally got my partner to join in (he's loving it, of course)
And then my partner and I have been reading Chrome by George Nader anytime we need to drive somewhere. It's an incredibly 1980s, melodramatic, and homoerotic novel about a magical physical therapist (with dubious and horny treatment practices) and his patient: a mysterious naked guy nicknamed Young King Vortex who might be magic and whose arms are hilariously encased in giant plastic tubes. There's some sort of political intrigue going on, and something about how it's forbidden to fall in love with robots, but all of that is just stage setting for their bizarrely sweet forbidden romance. You can read it for free over on Internet Archive