Dream with Our Eyes Open

Wow, I have been off-course with this. In my own defense, I had a writing project, and also the very rainy weather had me pretty gloomed out.

It seem to me that I read a lot of things, but I'm not recalling much at the moment. One thing I do recall, I will hold for FFFriday instead. In the meantime:

sholio has been doing a C.J. Cherryh read and re-read, so I am going through the Chanur series again. I'm just starting Chanur's Homecoming, which is my favorite of the series.

I grabbed a couple of Zoe Chant's paranormal romances for brain candy: Bearista and Pet Rescue Panther. As far as I can tell, I'm not really the intended audience: I enjoy the action sequences a lot more than the romance. On the other hand, I used to love running shapeshifter characters in tabletop RPG, and that's what these are all about. They remind me of Marjorie Liu's Dirk & Steele novels, in a good way. They're much quicker reads, but they have the same action-team + romance thing going on. I do plan to get the third in this sequence, Bear in a Bookshop.

The 2018 Hugo Reader's Packet was released this past week. It's a good thing I had already read most of the novels, because only a few were included in full this year. Still, it's a lot of books and stories.

One of the books that was included was Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale. Arden is nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. This is a YA fantasy novel based on Russian history and folk tales. I think it will please a lot of the people who liked Novik's Uprooted. Arden is an assured and fairly elegant writer, but the book did have some flaws that loomed large for me (possibly not for others):

1. A new character is referred to by his name several pages before the viewpoint character is actually told his name (and bad on the editor - that should have been caught).
    
2. Most people won't understand the title at all until 75% of the way through the book, and I only picked up half of it sooner than that because I know a little Russian. And the title is still not that great even once you understand what it means.
    
3. Arden completely pushes an annoying but ultimately innocent character under the bus, allowing this character to to die a horrible death. This is not a terribly nice character, but Arden shows us that the character could have been at least 50% of what our beloved heroine was, if not for different circumstances. And that really hit me hard, and I don't entirely trust Arden as an author now, if you know what I mean. Because part of why this character [spoiler: Anna Ivanova]was developed the way she was, was to provide a contrast and foil for the lead. She really seems a victim, and it left me with a bad taste in my brain.

I got two, TWO "Werewolf Marines" stories! And rachelmanija, there are actually four "Werewolf Marines" stories in the Yuletide collection!

My gift:
Sparks (1786 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Werewolf Marines - Lia Silver
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Echo (Werewolf Marines), Charlie (Werewolf Marines)
Additional Tags: Siblings
Summary: Echo and Charlie talk about the future after Prisoner.

My treat:
First Hunt (1826 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Werewolf Marines - Lia Silver
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Roy Farrell/Laura Kaplan
Characters: Roy Farrell, Laura Kaplan, Dale "DJ" Torres, Nicolette Cantrell, Miguel Herrera, Keisha Smith, Russell Kenworthy
Additional Tags: Cabin Fic, Yosemite - Freeform, Huddling For Warmth, Yuletide Treat
Summary: They were born and made for this pure fierce joy.

What have you just finished reading?

Marjorie Liu's Dirk & Steele books are beginning to become like potato chips for me: bet you can't read just one!

On oyceter's rec, I tried Shadow Touch next. Suddenly, for me, Liu has gone from the rather tentative romance author about whom I was "Eh … OK" in Tiger Eye to being very recognizably the author of the Hunter Kiss urban fantasy series (which I have enjoyed very much thus far). I really enjoyed this book, although it was so much harder-edged (particularly in the early scenes in the mysterious research facility) that I got a bit of mental whiplash.

Oyce's other rec was Eye of Heaven. About halfway through it, I suddenly remembered a series of RPG characters I played in my early 20s who were very much like the heroine of this story. Oh yeah! Anyway, the male lead in this book was one of the secondary characters whom I had especially liked in Tiger Eye. There is a lot of complicated Plot Stuff that's building up across the entire series and that is reminiscent of some of the plot elements of the Hunter Kiss series, making me wonder whether subsequent books in Dirk & Steele are going to have transdimensional world hopping and demons too. I'm amused by some of the reviews I'm reading of these: apparently people who like the more typical sorts of romances find these not romantic enough and too violent. Oh well … de gustibus non disputandum est.

I was at Small Press expo for the last 90 minutes of the event the other week, and one of the things I picked up on a blitz through the dealers' room was Back to the Grind, the first collection of Jamie Noguchi's webcomic Yellow Peril. I was attracted initially by the picture of lead character Kane on a recognizable Metro train on the cover and ended up talking to Noguchi, who drew me a cartoon on the inside of the book to go with his autograph. I enjoyed this and will have to catch up on Kane's more recent adventures online.

AND … I finally finished E. Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods! Arrrgggh. Nesbit generally seemed to respect her juvenile characters, but not in this volume. The kids are constantly getting into scrapes that are, to me as an adult, completely transparent. You can see the foolish errors coming from the first couple of paragraphs of any given adventure, and the eventual denouments are equally predictable. Also, I get tired of narrator Oswald's constantly put-downs of the girls in the little gang, and even though tomboyish Alice is usually described more kindly than the others, she still comes in for a lot of criticism and patronization. It's quite different from the children in the Five Children and It and its sequels, where eldest sister Anthea was a valued member of the group and little Jane's pouting and lack of fortitude were attributed to her age more than to her sex.

What are you currently reading?

Fanfiction, mostly. As noted elsewhere, I've been loading a lot of old favorites onto my iPad Mini.

I'm also about halfway through volume 3 of the manga House of Five Leaves. I'm enjoying it to some extent, but the art style is driving me nuts. I'm having a lot of trouble telling about half of the male characters apart, and that means I lose a lot of the impact of the various little criminal episodes and character revelations.

I have downloaded Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead, which I had on my Amazon wish list (I don't remember whose review got me interested) and which was on sale for $2.99, as well as (free) The Count of Monte Cristo, which (shockingly, I suppose) I have never read, and which lady_ganesh recommended. Also, smilaraaq just passed me a steampunk romance to try ... it's by Meljean Brook, whom lawless523 was just recommending the other week.

What have you just finished reading?

Busy week!

C.J. Cherryh's Russalka, which had a more interesting and touching ending than I remember. As is common with Cherryh, I could see ideas and issues that she has tried again or previously in other works, which doesn't bother me: they're interesting ideas.

Also, vol. 8 of Ooku by Fumi Yoshinga. This is still a cool series, and beautifully drawn, but I want more slice-of-life Yoshinaga (like Antique Bakery and Flower of Life) or yaoi Yoshinaga (like Ichigenme … The First Class Is Civil Law). I wonder whether she'll ever go back to her roots that way?

Then I read the first volume of the manga version of Durarara!. My reaction is basically "What the hell was that?" The story thus far has seesawed back and forth between cheery high school comedy and urban dark fantasy. I imagine it will take a couple more volumes before I can even tell whether I like it or not.

Volume 2 of House of Five Leaves was interesting, although the mangaka's distinctive drawing style is beginning to wear on me a little. Although it couldn't be more different in style from Fruits Basket, I'm having the same sort of difficulties telling characters apart.

Finally, I just finished Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire, the sixth October Daye book. I really liked it. I think it's partially because it is now definitely an ensemble cast. Given that it's written from Toby's POV, she has to be the center, but she has collected an extended family-of-choice that I very much like. So now there's only one more book available: Chimes at Midnight, which just came out a few weeks ago. And then I'll have to wait for one volume a year, according to her website: three more volumes, coming out 2014 - 2016.

What are you currently reading?

And still limping through The Wouldbegoods by E. Nesbit. I only read bits of it when I have nothing else to read, but I am determined to finish it.

I downloaded the first Marjorie Liu "Dirk & Steele" book, Tiger Eye. It's my first straight paranormal romance (as opposed to Liu's harder-edged urban fantasies about demon hunter Maxine Kiss), and for about the whole first chapter I wanted to thrown it against a wall for what I assume were romanticism elements. As an example, when Our Heroine is retreating through a crowd, and the whole scene has been from her POV, she's suddenly described as getting through the crowd "gracefully." Because, you know, when someone is worried about retreating from potential danger, she of course spends time thinking about how gracefully she does it. (Mary Sue, phone home.) But I'm getting much more interested in it as we get into the heart of the book, including everything from the comedy of trying to make a very tall exotic-looking man inconspicuous in Beijing (and trying to find normal 20th century cosmopolitan clothes to fit him, since he showed up looking like an extra from a Conan story) and the family-of-choice aspects of the firm. And the constantly broken-off almost-sex scenes aren't any more over-the-top than a lot of fanfiction. It's like Liu was really unsure of what she was doing for the first couple of chapters and then got into it more whole-heartedly.

What do you think you'll read next?

Uhhh … another problem for another day. I do have two novels in hand that I got off the bring one-take one shelf at work, but I'm not itching to start either one: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which was recommended by a colleague. Anyone have opinions on either of them?