Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 24

My April Reading Log

Fiction:
I finally read The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth by Sarah Monette. I have had this book since it came out, and every time I saw it, I would think, “ghost stories are scary! I’ll read that later!” Then one weekend I just started reading and I went all the way through with only minor stops for doing stuff. It wasn’t scary in the way I feared it would be scary. The scary was perfectly within my tolerance! My favorite thing about the series of stories were t...

My March Reading Log

Fiction:
The Immortals: Olympus Bound by Jordanna Max Brodsky was a strange but intriguing mixture of Olympian gods with a suspense novel involving serial killings. The Olympians are fading away as they live in the modern world, gradually losing their powers, and some losing their minds as well as their memories (altered by human myth-telling). Artemis is the implacable protagonist, living in New York City and protecting women but not really managing to deal with new technologies or making ne...

My February Reading Log

Fiction:
Taking the Lead by Cecilia Tan is a contemporary romance with BDSM, first in a new series. The heroine and her sister have inherited their gazillionaire grandfather’s secret Hollywood BDSM club, and the hero is a rock star who’s fallen for the heroine and who happens to be dom to her sub. The characterization is terrific and I love that they have multiple problems going on: keeping the club secret is a big one, but the heroine is also trying to fight her way through the Old Boy Netwo...

My January Reading Log

Fiction:
Vulcanization by Nisi Shawl is the awesomest steampunk story ever; Leopold II of Belgian Congo colonialist infamy wants to rid himself of visions of the people he’s victimized, using a strange device. After reading King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild a while back, this story is especially satisfying. Shawl has a steampunk novel coming out in September from Tor: Everfair. I am so excited!!!

Here is my enthusiastic preview o...

My Arisia 2016 Schedule

I’ll be attending Arisia January 15 – 18, 2016 in Boston. My panel schedule is below.

Friday, 5:30 pm, Bulfinch
“Guilty Pleasures: The Fast and the Furious”
After appearing to be stalled (so to speak) post-Tokyo Drift, the Fast & The Furious franchise has taken off over the last decade to become a monstrous success. There are few guiltier pleasures, but also few major action movies that regularly feature women and people of color, and certainly few that get praised by the likes by Roxane Gay....

My December Reading Log

Fiction:
There’s Something About Ari by L.B. Gregg was novella length, I think, a m/m romance that never took off for me, though I did finish it.

I picked up another in a long-running series. Obsession in Death by J.D. Robb was fairly rote, but it was ideal for circumstances in which I was constantly being interrupted. I was very happy each time a new characters/s had to be updated on the crime; that was very helpful in re-orienting me to the story.

And I finally read A Stranger to Command by...

November Reading Log

Fiction:
A Trifle Dead by Livia Day is a humorous small-town mystery. I enjoyed all the quirky characters and the to-me-unusual setting of Hobart in Tasmania; there’s also a lot of excellent, excellent food description, as the first person narrator owns a cafe and likes to experiment. I feel smug about the mystery because I figured out who the villain was, but that didn’t impair my enjoyment. The only thing that annoyed me a little was the Scottish character whose dialect was written out.

Aft...

Book Sample-palooza

I’m going to have some time to read over my Christmas holiday, so I went through my wishlist and downloaded a whole slew of samples (see below). I will report back once I get through them all! In the meantime, if you have read any of these books and either loved or hated them, feel free to let me know in comments.

I can no longer remember who recommended most of these to me. All of the authors are new to me except for Daniel José Older and Kate Elliott.

—The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai As...

My Philcon 2015 Schedule

I’ll be at Philcon in Cherry Hill, NJ this weekend. My schedule is below.

Sat 11:00 AM, Plaza I
“The Legend of Korra” Victoria Janssen (moderator), Brandon Wright, Laura Kovalcin, Hakira D’Almah, Savan Gupta

While its prequel show “The Last Airbender” had strong appeal for both younger and older fans, Korra – with its older cast and more mature themes- was clearly not intended just for children. Set seventy years after the events of The Last Airbender in a world heavily influenced by both the...

October 2015 Reading Log

October was a pretty sad reading month for me! I was extremely busy, which was part of it, and I seem to be in a bit of a fiction slump as well. The only fiction I finished was 1) a sequel and 2) a book for anonymous review, but I did finish a nonfiction book I’d been working on for months.

Fiction:
I started, but did not finish, The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, an author recommended to me by Gardner Dozois way back before this novel even came out. It seems to be a space opera caper nove...