A.R. Jarvis's Blog, page 5

SSBB #54: Como se dice…?

 

Shousetsu Bang*Bang is here again! And so is my birthday! (well, technically that is tomorrow). Also, apparently, I’m Writing Again Day. And my comma key is trying to fall off. Which is horrible, as that one is essential.

Anyway, this issue of Shousetsu Bang*Bang’s theme is Como se dice…? so all the stories are about translation or languages or one was written in French. I thought it was a very strong representation this issue, and wish I had more of most of the stories I liked them so much.

So, with no further ado:

Universal, by Domashita Romero: A couple on a spaceship in deep space has their translator break down, and must learn to communicate with no common tongue between them.

That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In Greek, by Hiwaru Kibi: Two boarding school boys, one who purports to know all the best ways to charm girls, and one who hates him.

The Medical Model, by Koiwa Shishiko: A sort of cyborg is electrocuted, which destroys his hearing implants, and he has to learn to communicate in new ways. It was an interesting look at deafness, and communication. It also felt like the story was chapters 1 and 2 of a longer novel, so maybe some day…

Gardelunes, by Matsu Kasumi: C’est en Frances, et je ne le parle pas ensuit. Mais je pence que c’est bien, oui?

Ve Cherinitat ral ve Mofellivun, by juou no zen: The occupant of a single prison cell acquires a cellmate, with whom he has no common language.

Sunrise, by beili and Himawari: A train heist in soviet Russia.

Aidan and the Course of History, by Hyakunichisou 13: This is another one set in that after-the-apocalypse world we’ve seen a couple of times before. This one there’s an artist-guy and a fighter-guy who go to a museum to find what they can learn from the past.

The Exile’s Tale and Other Complete Wastes of Time, by shukyou: A academic of Medieval Literature, who feels he must hide his shameful love of fantasy novels from his peers, meets a handsome, intelligent academic, and they hit it off. But what will the new guy think of his hobby?

Demon Spawn

Hey

I know I’ve been totally flaky lately. I’ve been busy with fun Things likes meetups, and sad things like overall family health decline, and exciting things like starting a container garden on my apartment patio. So I’ve been busy. But I’ve also been reading.

First, earlier this month I read Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat, and its one currently extant sequel. It looks like book three will be out this year, or otherwise very soon, and I can hardly wait. Its a really good series. But, of course, I knew that because a) it’s been out forever and a day and b) before that I read the beginning when she posted it on FictionPress. Pretty sure I read a chapter or two aloud to my pet stegosaurus, but there you go. I will say that I slightly crossed this story in memory with another that is not dissimilar in brief summary, and which also did the on-FP-then-published thing–and that crossbred memory is why it’s taken me this long to read the book, but I’m really glad I got over this. Also, if there are any other homo slashapiens like me out there, that this is somewhat different and far better than what was posted on FP, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, then there’s no hope for you. No redemption. No solace. Unless you go read it right now.

And then, as you might guess from the title, I read a story called Demon Spawn (well, either that or I’m posting about the kids I work with…). Demon Spawn is a WIP posted on FictionPress by the author lostogg. I heard of it through The Slash Pile, which is full of wonderful things.

Demon Spawn begins with the end of a battle, with a demon-possessed kid on one side, and a healer on the other side who had been training to be…I think a paladin would be the easiest explanation of what he would have been, if his brother hadn’t pulled him out of school after their father’s death.

The story is pretty good–I can’t say too much more without spoiling bits, but it’s overall good. And the writing is stylistically nice; easy to read, but not too simple. It has good tone, good imagery, decent world-building (if a bit confusing due to slow-coming new facts).

But. The characters. The Main Characters are both (all? a third MC has just been introduced) fairly solid, possessing of depths, flaws, and bonuses, but nothing in excess…well, okay the demon-kid might be a bit over-powered, but it doesn’t stand out as the author doting impossibly on him, as such things sometimes do.

No, the real problem is the secondary characters, who seem to react to things in very contrived manners. Actually, so do the MCs at times, but it’s less distinct. For example, the Bother of the Healer made it very clear at first introduction that while he thought it was odd Healer was gay, he didn’t mind a whole lot. But when Healer started to hook up with someone Brother was suddenly angry and demanded they pretend they weren’t. He also did that “oh, so now you have to marry so you aren’t seen as gay” thing– mostly so that a different secondary character could arrive at their location. Who also acts one way and then another based on what reactions the author needed to shift the plot along, rather than based on the character she displayed during the first few chapters of meeting her.

There’s also something confusing about timing in the book. Partly it was a geography issue (three hours to the boarder of the kingdom?), and partly one of awkward mini-flash-backs and tiny forward jumps, but it confused me at times.

But, like I said at the start, this is a pretty good read. I’ve been laughing with it a lot, and generally the events are appealing– especially when taken individually, whatever that might mean. I plan to continue to read this as more is posted (sounds like the author has slowed down a lot), and I think that will help with the issues that bother me (I won’t remember if he’s Supportive Brother or Disgusted Brother from one month to the next anyway).

Pentamerone

I’m still here, I’m just hard to see.

Pentamerone (the?) by Giambattista Basile, is probably the most racist and sexist fairy tale book I’ve read. You tack a ‘recently’ on there, because my memories of certain books has faded, but at the very least Pentamerone could give them a run for their money, especially in the ‘sexist’ category.

The “meta” plot (if you will) is that there’s a pretty white princess, and she almost rescues a prince, then takes a nap before finishing. While she’s resting, an ugly black slave comes, completes the ritual, rescues the prince, and gets to marry him. The sleeping princess wakes to find what’s happened, and then sets a curse on the black slave (who is apparently a “slave” even though she’s now a princess?), which makes her want to hear stories, especially from the white princess. Trying to fulfill her wishes, the prince calls all these story tellers to visit, and then we switch to story-mode and get to hear all their tales. While most of the stories were not racist, that was mostly because they dealt only with white European characters, and when a non-white character would be introduced or mentioned, holy hell this book went way out of it’s way to degrade them; mocking, poor language, insults…the whole nine yards.

There was one story, this collection’s version the bear-by-day-prince-by-night story, except he wasn’t a bear. He wasn’t even a monster. He was a “black Slave.” At first mention a “handsome” one, then at second mention an ugly one. And after she lit the candle and figured out he was white, the princess spent half the remaining story lamenting how horrid his black-form was, how awful and accursed, yet how fine and heavenly his lily-white skin was; oh woe that he must shed his white skin for black.

I’m going to stop there because even writing all that is damaging my soul. The last story the tellers tell– I must assume it’s the Original White Princess’ tale, although there’s not actually any connecting text between the stories to make it clear who was telling what– is that awful Three Citrons one, which I have yet to see told in a non-racist way, although the best one could hope for beyond that is classist, to be honest. And the Black Slave/Princess gets unnerved by hearing a story similar to her own, and the prince figures out what was going on and they push her off a cliff or something. I don’t know, I was so happy to be near the end, I didn’t retain much of what was going on.

So that was the racism; fairly typical for it’s era, if a bit heavy handed and insistent and REALLY OBVIOUS about it. Not to mention nasty as fuck. But what about the sexism?

Well, that was a more complicated situation, and it took me most of the book to figure out why it felt just so really, really, unusually awful. See, most of the women start out strong. They try to change their class, are given the choice of who to marry, make independent decisions, solve all the puzzles, and so forth. So I was really confused why I would find tales about such women to be horridly offensive.

And then, somewhere in the middle I realized that the answer was really obvious. Every strong woman who tried to do something for herself got punished for it. Her impossible requisites for a husband landed her a monster. Her secret affair with the prince landed her nearly killed by her step-sisters. Her curiosity loses her the (horribly black) man of her dreams. I know that this is a fairly typical motif in fairy tales, but every time these switched from ‘strong woman’ to ‘foolish female’ mode felt like a punch to the gut.

Actually, the disconnect makes me think that these stories might have been altered as they were transliterated or translated, because if they’d been around a while in the “WOMAN BAD” versions, all the corners would have softened, you know? And given the eras of fairy-tale social obsessions, that would make sense if a ham-handed author “fixed” things for the “modern” reader. So I wouldn’t mind checking out a different translation, or a different book of tales from ….uh…Venice?, but I wouldn’t read the whole book like I did with this one if my theory turned out to be wrong.

Some other notes about the book: Every story began with a spoilery paragraph which explained what the moral of the story would be, and how awful the woman was in it. I didn’t notice it at first, and then I started just skipping the damn things. The stories all ended with a rhyming couplet that simplified the moral. I don’t think I read any of those at all.

There was the version of Sleeping Beauty where two twins “magically appeared in the castle, we know not how” after the prince visited her, and then when she sought out the prince later, his “stepmother” was very angry to learn that he had a lover (and two beautiful children whom he treated as his own). So that means exactly what it says, of course.

There was another story where the “stepmother” is again infuriated by a lover, but this one was raped by a king–oh god. That story. The king was a bad king, so a sorceress usurped his throne, so in revenge he started killing all the women of the area he was exiled to. But one woman was so pretty he …I don’t recall if it said he “married” her or not, but it was something like that. Anyway, he tries to bury her alive, but that doesn’t work (a bird saves her?), so he blocks her up in a tower over the kitchen instead to die there. She is kept alive by her trusty bird and has a son. At the bird’s advice, she lowers the son into the kitchen, and he gets to be the king’s page, the “stepmother” tries to get rid of the son, but eventually that backfires and she dies, the mother is rescued or rediscovered or whatever, the Sorceress (who is unspecifically evil, but probably doesn’t go ’round raping and killing for funsies) is disposed of, and the king regains his throne. The murdering, raping king who was originally overthrown for being bad at his job.

There were some really f’ed-up things in this book. I would not recommend you read it. Unless you already hate anyone who isn’t a white man. Or can find a version that is more…better.

Outside by Lucy Kemnitzer

Not Actually the Outside referred to

Outside by Lucy Kemniter is a fantastic read.

I’ve actually been a fan of the author for some years–she’s Plumblossom on Fictionpress.com, which is where I first found her. Or perhaps it was where she found me, because we had a bit of a mutual-fan/almost-friend thing going on for awhile. Which I believe fizzled because I had mostly stopped writing, and which I no longer know how or when it started.

I’m a big fan of Lucy, but if you’ve never read her work you should be warned that her writing style is very unusual. I can’t quite explain how or why, but when I try to do so I find myself trying to tell people that her sentences are inside out (and really, so is her whole story line). It’s like the message is still there, and it makes sense when you think about it, but the way she’s put it is like no other. This used to be a serious barrier to reading her stuff, and there are�� things that I’ve started and had to stop and come back later when I could handle it.

But somehow, once you get past whatever magical twisting of language it is that she’s doing (or perhaps even because of it), her stories are some of the most emotionally moving and intricate and amazing things that I’ve ever read. And this book was no exception.

It’s a sci-fi novel set mostly on a certain station, focusing on the scientists; a superior one who likes to work “inside” or on the station, and a junior one who is desperate to get “outside” or off to study exoplanets. It’s a story about the romantic dance that they go through, about how they try to advance their careers, and about how things don’t go as planned, because Kemnitzer is very much a “for want of a nail” author, and nothing ever goes as planned.

The story deals elegantly with some difficult topics, leaves space for each character to save themselves (even if they need a bit of help), and runs off of incredibly human mistakes.

I highly suggest you give this book a try, and probably a really solid try, since her style is so odd. If you do, you will not be disappointed.

SSBB #53 Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Thankfully not this year.

It’s that time of the month again…what? no, not that time of the–THE TIME WHEN SHOUSETSU BANG*BANG UPDATES, asshole.

And we’ve made it all the way to issue #53 (collectively, anyway, I believe that I have more than 53 issues myself). This theme was Planes, Trains & Automobiles. This was a fairly short issue, overall; once I found the time to start reading the stories, I was done almost before I knew it. Only two of the stories were two-parts, and even those seemed to be on the short side of the two-part length options.

Several “accidental themes” appeared throughout; magic being I think the most important, but also podcasts were mentioned at least twice (I take notice, as a podcaster myself), and–I guess I don’t know if this counts as a theme or what, but I noticed it, and want to point it out; there was an unusually high ethnic representation among these stories. There’s usually some, but I think most of these stories featured at least one non-white. EDIT: Okay, I counted from what I could remember and got only four out of nine, but that’s still pretty good, considering.

Boys Keep Fucking Up My Car by shukyou: A guy with a crappy rust-bucket keeps repaying car repairs with sexual favors, despite repeated proof that it’s a terrible idea. Hot and heartwarming.

Flashes by Renaissance Makoto J.: In two parts. This was one about magic; a magician making trains vanish in very dramatic ways, and the magic-obsessed fan who follows his career. I still want to know how he did it. Stupid fiction, being non-real in reality while being real to itself.

Five Hours to Chicago by Kimy�� Tabibito: Two guys driving from Vermont to Chicago (through Michigan? isn’t Michigan out of the way for EVERYTHING? why would you ever go through Michigan?), spend the night in a truck stop, and get up to some things. Curious and sweet, left me wanting more of the story.

Woodward Avenue by Aosora Hikaru: A man who inherited a very fancy classic car from his uncle wants to get it back into shape to go in a fancy car parade (cruise?), and the mechanic he ends up with …both is and is not what he expected. This was pretty hot and interesting, had some nice character development for such a short story.

Railfans by Iron Eater: Two old friends reunited over miniature railroads. Fairly basic, but clever at points, and overall enjoyable.

A treatise on the mating habits of Bibliothecarus bibliothecarii by Himawari: Two librarian podcast hosts meet up at a conference. Something about this one was not quite on for me; I don’t know if it was content or style, but it wasn’t great, IMHO.

The Journey by Hyakunichisou 13: An odd little spoof of The Moth, about a guy’s journey through severe anxiety, with a side of romance. I think I enjoyed it more for what it represented than for what it was.

The Bus Driver; or, An Accidental Meeting by Zetto Rio: A bus driver gets a new regular rider. As a constant user of public transportation in the form of buses, I found this one to be entirely erroneous, and almost a little bit creepy. Although I’m also positive it wasn’t meant to be, and was more likely just written by someone who doesn’t ride many buses–or who’s buses are fundamentally different from the ones I ride. I think overall it would have been better if I hadn’t had real-life context of bus riding that I couldn’t shake.

A Genealogy of Magic by Kuruma Ebi: Saving the best for last, again, I see. Little to do with transportation vehicles, but much to do with traveling; a magic-obsessed young man visits the ancient family home of his magician friend, wonderful, magical insanity ensues. Hot, witty, a bit under-explained (not that I’m complaining), but a full-fleshed and interesting world.

Laser Visions

It’s a TIE-fighter. Totally relevant.

 

And we’re at the very, very last story. Which I ironically began just when I received the preliminary email from the group that creates these about the 2016 Don’t Read in the Closet Event. So. I maybe cried a little.

I also would like to add a belated paragraph here (because I wrote this days before I posted it for no conceivable reason) wherein I casually mention that I submitted a prompt for a story in the 2015 Don’t Read in the Closet Event. I will not be writing anything, but I submitted a prompt. And that alone took me like two hours. So. I will be reading at least one author-letter next year, and having High Expectations for what comes of it.

But anyway, back to the final review:

For the last story I saved one by an author I knew that I liked, because reading a bad story last would have ruined the whole thing for me (in much the same way that books of fairy tales that end with poems about dead babies do). So the story I elected to save was Laser Visions by Kaje Harper.

I’m pretty sure that what I’ve read by the author previously was all sci-fi, so I figured ‘lasers’ probably meant…shooting gun battles in deep space or something. But I was, unsurprisingly, wrong.

It’s still sci-fi, but the sort that’s set on Earth and only a (realistic) hundred years into the future, so they had what cell phones might turn into, and self-driving cars, and…laser beams that can record what you’re saying. And, you know, spirit walking.

There’s not too much more that I can say without ruining something, because it’s a book of secrets and mysteries. And there’s nothing to complain about, not really. Although now I feel like I need to dig up something…oh, I know, the intensity-climax came just after the middle of the book, and then the secondary climax was…anti. Not really a let-down, just on the too-easy side of things.

But overall it was a fascinating well-balanced book with lots of intensity, a fairly hot (and slow-burning) romance, a well-executed plot, a smidgen of sex, and a few bittersweet moments. It was good. You should go read it.

The Rake, the Rouge and the Roue

At least one is a red herring

I’d been saving this one for near the end because it is far and away the longest of the stories. That unfortunately meant that I’d built a set of expectations around The Rake, the Rogue and the Roue by Eric Alan Westfall which were doomed to be crushed under the reality. But reality is a funny thing, and this tale did not so much fall short of my expectations as side-step them entirely.

I’m not going to tell you what I thought this might be, but instead I will focus on what it is. And that is a very long, very good, very period, very filthy novel. And I mean filthy in probably every way you can think up.

It’s set in a ‘alternate England’ where gay sex is legal (but still frowned upon)–it felt to me like being gay in the 1990s (as represented by the media, and my childish memories), minus AIDS, and set back in England in the early 1800s. So free, easy, and carefree– at least until the “neddy-bangers” show up. Or your dad finds out and disowns you. Or your neighbors find out and ‘cut’ you the next time they see you.

The period language was a bit dense, but fun, since I don’t have to read it all the time. It also …improved the sex for me or something, since I read way more smut in this book than I am wont to do. Way more. I don’t know that I skipped very much at all. And this book was about 90% sex. They were having sex, thinking about sex, planning sex, talking about sex, or mourning not having had sex for seven pages CONSTANTLY. There was one short scene where they did not have sex (because the one character went to see his accountant), and then there was a longer scene later where they didn’t have sex because the rather heart-wrenching Plot Twist bore down upon their necks for a bit. But then they had some more sex, so it worked out in the end.

And it was all filthy, crude, nasty, unapologetic sex, too. Which I guess is good.

So, you know, I can’t even begin to guess if you should read this. I’m not even sure if I should have read it. But I liked it.

Going Home

Hang in there.

This is the second of the last four:

Going Home by Kris Ripper was another slave/”alternate history” fic which I expected to hate and cast from me in disgust and moral superiority. And it was another slave fic that was disappointingly good. Damn it.

The premise of this one is that slavery had resurfaced in the modern world, and then been again made illegal. The story tells of two characters; a slave, and his former master, who seek to be reunited after they were forcibly separated by the guys who went around freeing the slaves. And it’s also a BDSM tale of a sub trying to get back to his dom.

If you gave me only that much of a description, I would scoff and turn away, but this story was way more than that. It had some strong female characters, a reasonable society set-up, and the two characters trying to find each other, not only physically, but also emotionally–as the slave learned how to be free, and the master learned how to be an equal.

But I do have a few complaints. One was that the characters hovered just on the edge of SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DEAL WITH IT whining. I occasionally felt that I was being awfully tolerant of their moods and general BS as I read, which will (or perhaps should) turn away a few people.

The second complaint was that there were so many things that the author could have used as the Plot Stick for the story to resolve around, but the first few (the reunion) were glossed over, and the second few (them starting a new living) were side-stepped, and then the next set of possible conflicts were gleefully chased off with a stick in favor of– well. I’ll let you read it to find out, but keep in mind that I found it a bit less than it could have been.

So overall I thought the book was really good, and it was an interesting look into things like consent and Dom/Sub situations, and what makes being a sub different from being a slave. It didn’t really answer anything, but it did a good job of teasing out the questions. It’s a good read, and I’d suggest you at least check it out.

Stranded By Lies

Hey people,

Sorry for the radio silence, but I wanted to finish Love’s Landscapes before posting. Also, I got lazy.

There were only four stories left worth reading (was I at seven? the others failed hard), so I decided to give each one its own entry. So the next four posts will be individual stories.

And if there was something in Love’s Landscapes that you thought I should have read, but I didn’t review it, you can shoot me a note, and I’ll look into it. Most of what I skipped was terrible, but I’d give it another go on request. My eventual review might be rather scathing, though.

Anyway, here’s the first of the last stories:

Stranded By Lies by Finn Marlowe is another Love’s Landscape story.

It is set-up as a sci-fi/paranormal story with BDSM elements (though more to the SM end of that, if I understand correctly). Basically there’s a guy, and there’s a bunch of aliens that secretly live on earth, and the guy is wanted by the aliens because Reasons, some of which are not really his fault. The Love Interest is one of the aliens–or a half-alien, technically. Oh, and the aliens are stuck on Earth unless this guy helps them.

The story began with a sex-scene, which was discouraging. And the characters took plenty of breaks for plenty of sex, which is not my favorite, but at least it was never at those crucial We’re being chased by three different monsters with only seven minutes to save the world moments. And there wasn’t really a deadline, so we could meander and read about the sex and I wasn’t ready to stab anyone. So it wasn’t that much of a detraction, but there was a lot of sex.

And there were other things–like handy descriptions–that were just about missing. Yes, we got almost all the information needed by the end, and I could puzzle out (or not worry about) the rest of it. And also, yes, I’d rather things be under-explained than over-explained, but there were times when I wanted to shake the info-hoarding characters (who were probably about to go have sex) and get them to explain a few things to each other so I could perv on that, instead of them having sex again.But, overall, the plot was plotted decently. Perhaps even remarkably well, given the amount of smut. And there was a set-up for a sequel. Will I read the sequel? Time will tell, but chances are it will have to find me, rather than the other way ’round.

LL #17

17 entries? Boggles the mind. AND I have only EIGHT STORIES LEFT. I might yet get to finish them before the new ones come out!

On Edge by T.C. Blue: A really, really interesting take on a high-school/college frenemies story. I can’t…I don’t think there’s anything I can say without spoiling it, but damn it was unexpected and awesome.

Cataclysmic Evolution by Alicia Nordwell: This one pretty much pegged every sci-fi genre ever in one fic (minus wars, I suppose). It was definitely a journey tale, rather than a plot one (it’s not where you go, it’s about the journey). I enjoyed it, but the end I believe the best way to describe it is to say that I bought the end, but I did not pay very much for it. Which was on the sad sad side of things, because the science up until then had been pretty damn sound. The romance was sweet, though, and the science aspect of it intriguing at first.

Jagged Rock by Willow Scarlett: This started as a college/band fic, then turned into a college/band fic, that starts with high school flashbacks. And then morphed into a college/band fic that was actually a high school fic, with werewolves. And even then I wasn’t opposed to it, but there were lots of weird little things (does Minnesota have mountains? Has the author ever actually taken a picture? Would anyone really hug a wild wolf on a first date? Even if they didn’t know it was a date, and the other guy said it was okay?) that built up and up until I realized I could go read something better.

See You Smile by Dawn Sister: So, you know those high-school romance fics, the ones that are written in first-person, with a narrator best described as a fluff-headed imbecile? Where the narrator coos, squees, salivates over hot guys, has few to no redeeming traits, and will unexpectedly wander into talking about chickens taking over the world? This seemed to be one of those fics. Except the narrator was supposed to be FORTY-FIVE YEARS OLD. Yeah. So. I got about 3% of the way through that.

Where Willows Won’t Grow by Lia Black: This was almost a random and fun sci-fi fuck-fest (don’t you love those?), but with a bit too much rape and horrible things to make it a truly guilt-free sci-porn experience. BUT, it was really good. Satisfying. I don’t know if anyone else has a similar experience, but sometimes, when I read stories about the horrible, horrible aspects of human nature (well…usually it’s non-human demons/aliens/whateverians representing human nature allegorically), I leave them with a surprising hope and love for humanity. I don’t quite understand it (“Sure every character in this book was raped horribly, but aren’t humans wonderful?”), but this was one of those stories. So it’s not a light anything, but it’s also curiously uplifting in its darkness.