October 2007 books

[jinian]

Some lame one-line and even one-word reviews this time. Ask if you're curious!

The Mirador, Sarah Monette. Absolutely in favor of Mehitabel POV. Felix felt really off, and I am concerned. Next one please!

The Iron Tree, Cecilia Dart-Thornton. I enjoyed the author's last purplish fantasy trilogy, but this one is a bit much. The Girl not only has a heritage of stunning beauty, tragic madness, and woeful death, but her entire female line has built-in eyeshadow. (Am not kidding. Could not have come up with that myself.) You also get comparisons of things like hair to rich gravy, and something I noted only as "galactic daisy?!" which really is probably enough information. I actually enjoyed this one too, but I think it was too far over the top for me to read any more of them.

Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik. Time has given me distance from the phenomenon that is Temeraire, but I think a new book (soon!) will have me right back there in it regardless of historical absurdity.

Extras, Scott Westerfeld. Entertaining, with reasonable use of reputation economy concept. Nowhere near Westerfeld's best.

Joy In Our Cause, Carol Emshwiller. Bizarre stories must be read with wide spaces between lest despair or mania grip the reader.

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, V.S. Ramachandran & Sandra Blakeslee. 50books_poc #8. Good pop science with really great stuff about phantom limbs in particular.

The Stars Compel, Michaela Roessner. The historical fantasy continues very interesting, though with less food. Much more of a cliffhanger ending than the first book, and much less sign of any sequel.

Cruddy, Lynda Barry. 50books_poc #9. Really disturbing illustrated novel with tarry black humor around the edges.

The Gecko's Foot, Peter Forbes. Pretty good review of "bio-inspired" materials science.

Rebel Sutra, Shariann Lewitt. Far-future society on other planet, good women, good relationships.

The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross. Entertaining.

Designing Tessellations, Jinny Beyer. Pretty great even just reading through; I really want a copy so I can work through the exercises (in my vast amounts of free time).

Recovery Man, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. These continue to be good popcorn.

Horizons, Mary Rosenblum. A compelling space-spy thriller.

The Floating Island, Elizabeth Haydon. I have never read Haydon's books for adults, as they suffer from the taint of That Cover Artist, The Wheel of Time Guy. This was really entertaining YA, though, and I may seek them out if I can get past the learned aversion.

Keeping the Moon, Sarah Dessen. Dessen love!

Dragonhaven, Robin McKinley. I can see why people didn't like this, but I do, very much.

Ha'Penny, Jo Walton. I can't decide which character I feel sorriest for. Very well done scary alternate history.

After School Nightmare v1-3, Setona Mizushiro. We all knew I had gender buttons, but this one is pushing something I didn't realize I responded to. Will let you know when I figure out what it is.
Bleach to ch296, Tite Kubo. Okay, 296 made me think to myself "cool!" -- I guess I'll keep reading a while longer.
Claymore ch1-8, Norihiro Yagi. Not actually okay with reading scans of this licensed translation. Library? It's pretty cool so far, though it'll need to branch out soon.
Hellsing v4, Kohta Hirano. Continues insane.
Mushishi v2, Yuki Urushibara. Continues quiet, beautiful, and magic-geeky.
Nana v7, Ai Yazawa. Continues extremely engaging.
Y: the Last Man: Motherland (ch48-53), Brian K. Vaughan et al. Continues interesting, with a low rage quotient.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

You also get comparisons of things like hair to rich gravy

... blah blah blah maple syrup

Tell me more about these:

That Cover Artist, The Wheel of Time Guy

Designing Tessellations, Jinny Beyer. Pretty great even just reading through; I really want a copy so I can work through the exercises (in my vast amounts of free time).

Dragonhaven, Robin McKinley. I can see why people didn't like this, but I do, very much.

Ha'Penny, Jo Walton. I can't decide which character I feel sorriest for. Very well done scary alternate history.

[oyceter]

Oh, will be interested to hear more about After School Nightmare when you figure it out!

[neile.livejournal.com]

We read an amazing percentage of the same books, which I'm sure is no surprise to either of us.

Except I can't see how anyone could not love Dragonhaven, but that's just me.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

At least healthy hair can look like maple syrup. Gravy is a weird color and so much less appetizing (to me; actually the characters were subsistence-level enough that gravy might be high praise).

That Cover Artist, The Wheel of Time Guy

Apparently his name is Lawrence Schwinger. He does fantasy paintings in a distinctive style (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000FFJRI6/) that allows me to say when looking at the book cover, "There's the first-level fighter, that one's clearly a mage, I bet he's a prince in disguise," etc. He clearly reads the books or gets plenty of info on them, that's not the problem. The problem is that, almost always, the kind of books that get Schwinger covers have proven to be terrible. The Xanth books were another big series that he did a lot of covers for. It takes a very good recommendation to get me over the Schwinger hump to actually brave another of these dire books.

Designing Tessellations
So cool! I don't remember all that it had in it now, but it went through different ways of tiling a plane and how to develop shapes that will do it. Making representational tessellations is a minor ambition of mine, partly for baby-quilt fodder.

Dragonhaven
As I understand it, people don't like this book because not enough happens. The main character gets stuck nursing (somewhat literally) a baby dragon during most of the book, and it's a really evocative picture of what intense activity mothering can be. I imagine some people also find it weird because the character is a teenage boy, but I find that fascinating, despite the narrative faux pas of a protagonist who's totally wrapped up in something else while important plot events happen around him.

Ha'Penny
The first of these books is Farthing, and Jo is papersky. The alternate world is one in which Britain chose to sign a treaty with Hitler rather than fighting, and it's fucking scary. Anti-Semitism all over, creepy government stuff, nasty political intrigue. Ha'Penny is about a Shakespearean actress with highly placed sisters, who gets sucked into revolutionary/terrorist activities, and the police inspector from the first one, who's hiding his homosexuality and his partner, and being duly blackmailed. Might be more disturbing than you want to read, but I have them both if you want to read them sometime.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I think people are expecting a more standard narrative style from Dragonhaven. Many of the same people failed to love Sunshine, which I think is less far off the beaten path; they generally cited "tone" but I think the real issue is that the story's a funny shape.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

My dorky networking heart loves it when you two post about books to each other :)