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Well, maybe it does take being knocked on my ass by illness to make me post. Or to make me read slowly enough to think about books as I go, or something. My thoughts are too long for Twitter reviews, so here are longer and less coherent musings for you.
Commitment Hour, James Alan Gardner. So this is what a gender exploration novel looks like with essentialism turned to MAXIMUM. Post-diaspora Earth, different areas with different tech levels, rural town in which every child swaps sexes every year until commitment at 21, when they choose male, female, or "neut" (actually a perfect functional hermaphroditism, i.e. the most impressive technology in the book including star travel). Guess which of those the Patriarch who set up their society hated worst. There are interesting moments here, but I got really tired of the main character being a thorough ass and frequently being "possessed" by their opposite-sex "soul" when they needed to briefly not be. The ending is the weirdest thing I've read in a long time, and I'm not just talking about the murder spree.
A College of Magics, Caroline Stevermer. I always remember how much I enjoy this book, but I always forget how sad it makes me. Jane is wonderful; Faris is fine; her adversarial relationship with her uncle is fantastic. The school hijinks are fun and charming; the magic of Greenlaw is frustratingly mysterious but still works for sense-of-wonder; the other magic of the world is never adequately explained. Slut-shaming the villain does not endear anyone else to me, including the author. And Faris gets adventure and competence and heights of magic, but her unbelievable romance is not worth what she gave up to get to it, and I feel like Stevermer workshopped creepy body-swap concepts with Andrea Host.
Commitment Hour, James Alan Gardner. So this is what a gender exploration novel looks like with essentialism turned to MAXIMUM. Post-diaspora Earth, different areas with different tech levels, rural town in which every child swaps sexes every year until commitment at 21, when they choose male, female, or "neut" (actually a perfect functional hermaphroditism, i.e. the most impressive technology in the book including star travel). Guess which of those the Patriarch who set up their society hated worst. There are interesting moments here, but I got really tired of the main character being a thorough ass and frequently being "possessed" by their opposite-sex "soul" when they needed to briefly not be. The ending is the weirdest thing I've read in a long time, and I'm not just talking about the murder spree.
A College of Magics, Caroline Stevermer. I always remember how much I enjoy this book, but I always forget how sad it makes me. Jane is wonderful; Faris is fine; her adversarial relationship with her uncle is fantastic. The school hijinks are fun and charming; the magic of Greenlaw is frustratingly mysterious but still works for sense-of-wonder; the other magic of the world is never adequately explained. Slut-shaming the villain does not endear anyone else to me, including the author. And Faris gets adventure and competence and heights of magic, but her unbelievable romance is not worth what she gave up to get to it, and I feel like Stevermer workshopped creepy body-swap concepts with Andrea Host.
