Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 7

My November Reading Log

Fiction:
The Lady And The Tiger by copperbadge is original fiction in the Shivadh universe, also published under author name Sam Starbuck; it features a romance between Lady Alanna Daskaz and the Duke of Shivadlakia, Gerald ben Eitan, known as Jerry. When the duke of nearby Galia dies, Alanna and Jerry, close friends since childhood, travel there as an official delegation. Alanna investigates the succession, looking for an unknown heir, while Jerry reveals unexpected competence in her support, i...

My October Reading Log

Fiction:
A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker was my TBR Challenge book for October.

System Collapse by Martha Wells is the new Murderbot book. I won’t spoil anything here! I definitely recommend reviewing the previous volume (Network EffectMutiny on the Reliant by WerewolvesAreReal is a Temeraire AU in which Laurence and newly-hatched Temeraire are set adrift and end up in charge of a pirate fleet, as one does.

Declensions by dustorange explores Dick Grayson’s, or in this story Rasit Grisijo’s...

#TBRChallenge – Once Upon A Time…: Spear by Nicola Griffith

Spear by Nicola Griffith is an Arthurian novella about Peretur (Perceval) set in 6th century Wales, with a lot of realistic detail of everyday material culture, armor, weaponry, and the diverse peoples inhabiting the island after the reign of the Roman Empire. For example, Bedwyr (Bedivere) is of African ancestry, and Llanza (Lancelot) is brown-skinned. The most notable change from the usual Arthurian mythos is that Peretur is a lesbian woman, disguised as a man in order to fight with Arthur and...

#TBRChallenge – Danger Zone: A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker was written and published before the COVID-19 pandemic, which makes the similarities to the early days of it that much more striking. In a United States very similar to our own, after a series of disasters, large congregations of people are forbidden by law. Years later, virtual experiences have taken the place of concerts, sports events, and school for most people who survive. This book is about how people cope with the restrictions, and the difficulties an...

My September Reading Log

September involved some travel and other transitions for me, so I spent almost all of it reading a single series.

Fanfiction:
The Desert Storm by Blue_Sunshine and its sequel series are well over a million words of Star Wars time travel AU: when Luke and Leia are small, Ben Kenobi is caught in a sandstorm on Tatooine and ends up in his own past, when Anakin Skywalker is only three or four. Ben takes Anakin and his mother Shmi to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, not revealing his identity because hi...

#TBRChallenge – New Author: Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson

Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson, published in 1937, is a charming small town novel about Barbara Buncle, who needs money to continue to support herself and her former nanny. After considering raising hens, she instead writes a novel about her charming small town that hews too closely to the real lives of her neighbors, despite her introduction of a magical plot element that changes her characters’ lives. Once the book is published and becomes popular because of its compulsive readability, m...

My August Reading Log

Fiction:
The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer is first in a long series of British girls’ school stories set in the Tyrol in Austria; the Chalet School is explicitly British, in that the Austrian students strive to follow the traditions of English school stories such as playing pranks, celebrating the headmistress’ birthday, and playing cricket. Originally published in 1925, there’s not really any mention of World War One, but a fair amount of colonialism in India plays into the stor...

#TBRChallenge – Tropetastic!: Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell

Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell is the second book by this author, a standalone set in the same universe of The Resolution, but in a different star system with different characters. The paperback edition is to be released under Tor Books’ new romantic line, Bramble. The balance of romance/science fiction is more towards the science fiction side than Maxwell’s first book, Winter’s Orbit.

This review includes some general plot spoilers.

Ocean’s Echo features telepaths, one of my favorite science f...

My July Reading Log

Fiction:
These Prisoning Hills by Christopher Rowe is an atmospheric novella set in a post-apocalyptic Kentucky. The United States, or at least some of the Southern states, have been devastated by a war with an AI, who created the Voluntary State of Tennessee and destroyed swathes of the environment with weird composite creatures and colossal weapons with human cores. The humans fought back with their own cyborgian soldiers. Meanwhile, the Appalachians were stripped of their natural resources an...

#TBRChallenge – Opposites Attract: A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys

A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys has solarpunk, hopepunk, and friendly aliens who nevertheless have a different perspective on saving your planet versus leaving it behind. As I’ve loved all of Emrys’ previous novels, I snapped this one up and was so impatient to read it that I went out of order on this challenge and read it back in April. I was extremely pleased to find the book is in conversation with Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy. There are references to Star Trek as a human refere...