false10151142true5716045read2true2718433currently-reading7true2718432to-read65false2753443fantasy29false2753442speculative-fiction22false2753441comics20false2753459modern-earth18false2753460relationship-driven15false3576264non-earth13false2753458past-earth12false3576263future-earth6false3610785alternate-earth4false3576272contemporary-fiction4false2753444nonfiction3false4171772short-stories2false5453937fairy-tale1false7257086urban-setting0false7257079norse-myth
<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'On the Edge']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/80863297
On the Edge (The Edge, #1)
byIlona Andrews bookshelves: currently-reading,
fantasy,
modern-earth,
relationship-driven
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<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'Lilith's Brood']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/80863204
Lilith's Brood (Xenogenesis, Books 1-3)
byOctavia E. Butler bookshelves: currently-reading,
future-earth,
speculative-fiction
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<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'The Charmed Sphere']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77664619
to: The Charmed Sphere (Misted Cliffs, Book 1)byCatherine Asaro bookshelves: fantasy,
non-earth,
relationship-driven
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'Treason's Shore']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76207528
Treason's Shore (Inda, #4)
bySherwood Smith
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<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'The Novels of Tiger and Del, Volume I']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74850126
The Novels of Tiger and Del, Volume I (Paperback)
byJennifer Roberson bookshelves: fantasy,
non-earth
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<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'Bitten']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74849790
to: Bitten (Women of the Otherworld, #1)byKelley Armstrong bookshelves: fantasy,
modern-earth,
relationship-driven
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<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'Unseen Academicals']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74848895
to: Unseen Academicals (Discworld, #37)byTerry Pratchett bookshelves: fantasy,
non-earth,
urban-setting
I was a bit nervous about reading this book, since PTerry (the author) had mentioned starting to be off his game a bit since his diagnosis with Alzheimer's (boo!). On the other hand, I found it refreshing.
It's a bit like [ Moving Pictures] or [ Soul Music] in that a phenomenon is sweeping the city of Ahnk-Morpork, or rather, has been, and both the movers and shakers (the wizards) and the little people (in this case, the various folks that keep the university running) are affected.
But the story isn't just a sports story. We also get more fantasy satire, the commentary about social classes and the fashion industry, and cameos from previous Disc characters -- Brother Oats was mentioned, Lady Margolotta makes an appearance, and we even get Rincewind out of his comfy retirement. (He gets to stay within the city bounds, this time, and in the realm of minor character.)
Plus, as I mentioned, it's nice to see the city from a new POV, that of the new characters. I like Ahnk Morpork, and as much as I like Moist and Co. and the Watch and the Wizards and Vetinari, I like seeing new things as well.
One nitpick is that the US hardcover version seems to confuse football with football -- the game mostly seems to be what America calls soccer, but the copy-writers seem to think of it like football. (Granted, the street version probably could be compared as a combination of a fight and any game whose point is 'get the ball over to one side'.)
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<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'Rosemary and Rue']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/69927973
to: Rosemary and Rue (October Daye, #1)bySeanan McGuire bookshelves: contemporary-fiction,
fantasy
For a book that managed to hit a rough spot with me on the first page, I liked Rosemary and Rue.
The rough spot was in the pronunciation guide. The author (or someone) noted that kitsune* was pronounced kit-soon, when the closer pronunciation would be kee-tsoo-neh -- Japanese transliteration doesn't leave silent letters. For that matter, I wasn't too thrilled with the use of a kitsune character in a book about fairies, because it felt like an afterthought to have a Japanese fox-spirit in a book about mostly British/Irish-patterned fairies, using a lot of the same rules (i.e. no iron, magic dissolved by the dawn, etc.). (For that matter, why are the ancient fairy courts in the San Francisco area like the ones from English/Irish/Scottish legends, rather than using legends that were common in the Bay Area? I mean, some of the pure fairy characters were living there before the Spanish even showed up and named the place after Saint Francis. I could see some of the fae names being ones that are tied to the meaning, not the sound -- so Lily would be Yuri to a Japanese-speaker and Lirio to a Spanish-speaker.)
Ob. Disclaimer: Yes, I want non-European/Abrahamic folktales and mythology used in my fantasy. But when it feels like everything is built in a European (British/Irish) foundation and the rest of the world's beliefs are added in after the fact, it kind of makes me want to see the other way around, outside of East-Asian comics/animation.
Now that I've gotten my rant out of my system, let me just say that I did like the book. I have a weakness for fairies and one for urban fantasy, and the setting was interesting. So, we have an urban fantasy setting -- sandwiched within and in between the mundane world are the fair folk, who have gateways to their own kingdoms and the occasional tryst or marriage with mortals, sometimes leaving a changeling child. Changelings pretty much occupy the lowest rung of fairy society -- add in the fact that as soon as the magical glamours that all changelings are born with fade, they get told to choose whether to be a human or a fairy. The 'human' choice usually ends up with the kidlet dying and the fairy choice usually ends up with them sprinted off to the Summerlands until they can be trusted enough to throw up glamors. It is unsurprising that changelings end up kind of fucked up, and usually end up finding some kind of protector who may or may not be benevolent.
Toby Daye (her mother thought 'October Daye' was a cute name) had been doing pretty well for a changeling. She had a PI job, managed to become a changeling that earned a knighthood in a fairy court, and had a human husband and daughter (who didn't know Toby's ancestry or that some of her cases were for the fairy Duke she owed fealty towards, so life wasn't perfect). Then she gets turned into a koi and lost for fourteen years while trying to chase down the Duke's missing wife and daughter -- not a spoiler, since this happens in Chapter 1. Husband doesn't understand what happened, Toby can't face her old boss/liege-lord and life is hard when the mortal world declared you legally dead. So she's all 'fucking fairies, I'm gonna live a mortal life', which seems to involve finding a low-end job that lets her be nocturnal and not have to deal with the fact she doesn't look quite human unless she throws up a glamor.
The fairy world respects this choice and Toby is left alone to wallow in her own failure...
Of course not, since otherwise there wouldn't be a story. Toby is dragged, kicking and screaming, back into politics when a fairy noble is killed and she gets geased into finding the murderer. The plot is interesting, and Toby is an interesting character, trying to cope with the fact she crawled her way up from the gutter and, when things were finally going right, everything went crashing to pieces. She's a little less cracked by the end of the book -- well, kind of -- but the book leaves a lot of threads dangling for a sequel.
Also, for all my ragging on the book in the opening parts of this review, I like some of the elements -- rose goblins, for example, which are cat-sized creatures made of petals and thorns. I'd rather like hearing more about the non-humanoid branches of fairie -- we get the rose goblins and kelpie mentioned. Also, folks like the Selkie and the Cait Sidhe (humanoid-cat shapeshifter fairies that live half-feral in the streets of San Francisco). (Heck, that makes me kind of want to collect animal-spirit folktales and write something myself, but I digress...)
So, I think this is one for the 'pick up the sequel when it comes out' pile.
--
* Japanese for fox, but when used in English it has the connotations of fox-spirits.
--
ETA: I am told by a friend that the author uses the correct pronunciation of kitsune when speaking. Said friend suggested that the pronunciation guide was added by the publisher to deal with all the types of fairies. In which case, I apologize to the author, and want to roll my eyes at the publisher.
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<![CDATA[Rebecca added 'A Spell for the Revolution']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/69483125
to: A Spell for the Revolution (Traitor to the Crown, #2)byC.C. Finlay bookshelves: fantasy,
past-earth A Spell for the Revolution is the second book in a series of American-Revolutionary-War historical fantasy. The series premise is that the witch hunts of Salem actually did target some people with special abilities, who were forced underground. Nearly a hundred years later, witches still persist in secret. The protagonist, Proctor Brown, is a young man trying to balance his service in the local militia (which is rapidly heading towards armed rebellion against the British troops) and his engagement to a local merchant's daughter (who isn't too thrilled by the thought of armed rebellion). He's also able to see the future, something his mother helps to hide. Anyway, and there will be spoilers for the first book here...
Proctor is finally discovered by the local magic community and the network that helps them find training and safe haven -- like the network that would later help transport escaped slaves northward, it was mostly run by the Religious Society of Friends. Unfortunately, the Covenant, a group of European witches interested in making the revolution fail, notice Proctor and assume the Americans have recruited supernatural talent, so they target the safe haven. Proctor decides that he can't sit by and let people be killed, so he takes action, and discovers this conspiracy of the Covenant, who want to stop the Americans because they want to use the British Empire as a focus to Rule the World. Or something.
... Anyway, the sequel takes place in the fall of 1776, where Proctor and Deborah (the daughter of the safe house owners in the first book) are trying to keep their charges safe. When they find out the Covenant is going after an orphan boy with a talent*, Proctor and Deborah book it to Long Island. They encounter the Continental Army under Washington, and discover that the Covenant cursed them by shackling ghosts to any soldier in the field. Proctor and Deborah have to come up with a way to lift the curse before the weight of the ghosts causes a catastrophic defeat or the Covenant's agents kill them. (And also rescue their original target.)
Now, I was a bit leery of the books series, because well... I'm American. I know that, all other things being equal, I'll take an American side in a conflict -- in other words, it's easy for me to feel sympathy for the patriots in the Revolutionary War and harder for me to root for the British. Having Our Heroes be Patriots and the Bad Guys be Europeans (or a southern Loyalist slave owner in one case**) doesn't pose much moral complexity for me. (For that matter, it seems like most non-fantasy lit about the Revolutionary War that I read as a kid has Patriot protagonists.) Add in that the Bad Guys are Bad Guys -- helping a nation become a superpower so you can use it as a focus for your magic and control non-witches, drawing power off of the unwilling, enslaving spirits of the dead, raising demons. It's not even a case where both sides are equally underhanded. I might even tolerate it more if it was not!America and not!Britain, but painting a historical conflict in terms of Good and Evil bothers me. I'm contrasting something like the Temeraire series***, where nations don't appear to be any more good or evil than others. It could be worse -- it could be a current conflict.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the in the second book. While I realize some historical events and persons are going to show up, this felt a bit silly. So, General Washington was involved, because he's the leader of the army. And Thomas Paine, writer of revolutionary pamphlets, plays a role in the solution to the central conflict. And the Battle of Trenton and other conflicts fought in the NYC/New Jersey area during the summer and fall of 1776, and the fire in New York City. But the point where Proctor and Deborah ran into Nathan Hale on the road in Long Island, figure out he's a spy for the Americans†, and then later see his execution (and the whole 'I regret I have but one life to give for my country') thing, was where my disbelief snapped -- it just came across as the writer trying to make every event that happened in the area something that the protagonists saw. (I mean, I might have even bought it if Hale was only mentioned, or they didn't run into him on the way to the city -- but at that point, it just got a bit silly.)
So, I think both are going to PaperBackSwap and I won't bother reading the next one.
--
* In the previous book, a Covenant spy kept a slave around and drew off her talent. It was generally figured out that's why they were so powerful -- they were stealing from others.
** One thing with having many of the minor protagonists being Friends or friends of Friends means that you don't have to deal with the moral issue of slavery as much as you might otherwise have to. Or, for that matter, shitty treatment of women.
Temeraire features a British cast in the Napoleonic era where Napoleon is portrayed as an honorable enemy, France becomes more progressive on dragons' rights (copying China), and the British admiralty are willing to purposefully infect the dragons of Europe with a deadly disease if it ends the war. The human protagonist smuggles the cure to France because, to him, unleashing a biological weapon on conscript soldiers and noncombatants is WRONG, then returns to get imprisoned for treason. And then France invades England, and his superior officer/lover yells at him for risking his career when someone would have eventually leaked the cure. For that matter, even the protagonist (who is portrayed as semi-enlightened for his era), shows some racist and sexist attitudes, and it takes him a book and a half to realize that his dragon and best friend is essentially a slave conscript-soldier and the only place where he could live free was halfway around the world from Britain.
†Because he is apparently the worst spy ever. Seriously, they spend five minutes with him and see right through his cover story, without use of magic. How anyone expected him to check out troop movements in occupied territory is beyond me. Granted, historically Hale was caught, but writing his exposure as a spy because he was easy to read bothers me.
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<![CDATA[New Fanship update]]>