sophia_sol | Entries tagged with pub date: 2018

A mystery novel starring a female lawyer in 1920's India, the premise immediately intrigued me.

The book goes back and forth in between two times in the life of its main character, Perveen: 1916/1917 as a young student, featuring her difficulties in school and in her relationship, and then in 1921 as she gets caught up in a murder case featuring three widows who are observing purdah (exclusion from men).

The author was inspired by the two real-life first female lawyers in India, during the era she's writing about, which is really cool. And I loved how the author wove threads throughout the book about the issues of women's rights and how they were being addressed in India at the time. And it doesn't take too much of a didactic modern view; for example, the narrative is understanding of why women might voluntarily choose to observe purdah.

Also: Perveen's best friend is queer! NICE.

I liked Perveen a lot, and the complexities in her relationship between her and her father, and her and her white English friend during an era of British rule in India. And Perveen is believably both capable and really rather young and inexperienced.

And I loved being immersed in the setting, 1920's India is not a place I've read much about before!

The biggest negative about the book is that the prose felt kinda awkward to me, but as I got more into the story it stopped feeling as intrusive even though I never really stopped noticing. And overall I definitely enjoyed the book.

But also: sometimes you finish a book and then you're done, but sometimes a book won't leave you alone. This, unexpectedly, turned out to be one of the latter. For several days after I finished, all I wanted to do was spend more time in the world of the book and in Perveen's life! Both the period that was skipped while she was at school with Alice, and then whatever happens after the end of the book. And ao3 was no help. Alas.

I was initially interested in this book because I remember Nicole Chung's writing fondly from the days of The Toast. This is her first book, a memoir focusing on her identity as a transracial adoptee.

Born to a Korean immigrant couple in the USA and raised by white adoptive parents in a very white community, Chung experienced racism in her community and experienced pressure to be a "good adoptee". But as an adult, and especially after she began expecting her first child, she realized she wanted to learn more about the family she'd been born to, and went searching. And found some answers, and the story was, of course, complicated, because humans so often are.

A well-written story and a thoughtful one.

But most of my feelings about this book are about my teenage cousin. I come from a white family, and one of my sets of aunt-and-uncle (also white) adopted an Asian baby girl once upon a time. This cousin of mine, like Chung, grew up in an extremely white community, and I can tell you that my cousin has even experienced racism from her parents, not just her community at large. And I've worried about her for years, but have never been close enough to, like, be a support. Or even to know what she really thinks about her adoption.

My cousin's a young adult now who recently left home to go to university, and I spent the whole time I was reading this book wishing I could shove it into her hands for her to read, for her to get affirmation that if she has complicated feelings about her adoption or her family IT'S OKAY, THAT'S ALLOWED. It would be really presumptuous of me to do so though, so I don't think I can. But I hope that like Chung, my cousin can (if she hasn't already) grow into finding her authentic feelings on the topic of her adoption and her racial identity, whatever those feelings happen to be.

These are the two sequels to Hate to Want You which I read recently, and the things I loved about that first book continue to hold true through these ones. EXCELLENT. And I was even interested in the romance between the leads of Wrong to Need You! (Still too much sexual attraction though. :P)

Wow, this is a powerful book. It's a memoir by a woman only a few years older than myself, which is weird, that I'm approaching an age that's old enough that people can already be writing memoirs by this point.

But that's not what I really care about with this book.

The author grew up in rural seclusion, raised by parents who were the sort of radical separatists who thought the Feds are out to get everyone, and that doctors and hospitals are evil, and the end times are coming, and by no means is a child to set foot in an actual school. Her family was loving, but challenging, in some extremely real and awful ways.

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All in all: a very worthwhile read, which isn't something I often say about massively popular bestsellers getting recommended by famous people.

Set in the same world as Chambers' other two novels, but all three are stand-alones that you don't have to read the others to understand.

My emotional involvement in this instalment was a little slow to start. This book has approximately a zillion viewpoint characters it swaps between. (Okay, more like, uh, 6 or 7 or something like that I think?) And I am just SO BAD at names and at keeping characters straight so each chapter switch it was like "so who is this again???" Which kind of interrupts one's ability to be swallowed by a book.

Like the others in the series, this book is low on plot. It's basically about showing you a snapshot of a culture experiencing a time of transition, introducing you to the various ways different sorts of people experience what's going on, allowing you to see and understand that culture through many eyes.

The cultural context in question: the group of humans who continue to live on the generation ships which humanity used to get to this part of space, even though there are now plenty of well-settled habitable planets available to live on. Now that these humans have access to a) alien technology, b) alien money, and c) planets, how does that change the self-sufficient and communal life of the Exodans aboard their ships? And how much is it desirable to change?

Interesting questions, and interestingly addressed. Having the many viewpoints definitely aided with what this book was trying to do. But it also meant that as a reading experience it didn't work for me as well as Chambers' previous books. Which is too bad. But "not quite as good as the others in this series" is not at all the same thing as "not very good" - this is a good book, and certainly worth reading!

I did find that things picked up for me after ( a certain spoilery thing happened )

Sequel to The Calculating Stars. This duology is an alternate-history about humanity making a genuine effort to get a space colony started in the 1960's, and it is excellent. I loved the first book, and I love this one too. Everything I said in my first review still holds true for this book as well.

I particularly loved in this book, though, the details of life in space - the various challenges experienced because of space itself, as well as the difficult interpersonal dynamics made even more complicated by being stuck in a small spaceship together for so long.

I did have some frustrations though. ( Read more... )

This is the first ever time I've read a historical "crossdressing" book wherein the AFAB person who dresses in read-as-male clothing turns out to actually explicitly have gender feelings and I for one was PUMPED to finally find one! I didn't have to read against the text at all to see the main character as genderqueer!!!!

Honestly this is the biggest selling point of the book imo so if that sounds appealing to you, go for it. Everything else about the novel was...perfectly fine. Nothing spectacular, imo, but solidly enjoyable.

Okay so this is a Regency romance novel in which a foundling, upon whom has been bestowed the unfortunate name Charity Church, pretends to be a man named Robert Selby in order to help the dead Robert's sister find an advantageous match. Charity-as-Robert ends up spending a bunch of time with an overly-duty-focused Marquess, Alistair, who at first wants nothing to do with the Selbys or with anyone or anything else that might be seen as anything other than perfectly respectable.

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The sequel to The Collapsing Empire. Like that book, this one is interesting, readable, lightweight, and I don't particularly care about any of the characters at all. Not my favourite kind of book but a perfectly reasonable way to pass the time. I do very much want to know what's going to happen next though, so I guess I'll be reading the next one too.

Wooohooo I finally got my hands on the latest book in the Rivers of London series! I've been seeing conversations about the book going down in the fandom so I'm glad to have finally been able to read it myself.

Unfortunately pre-reading so much in the way of other people's discussions of the book leaves me feeling like there's not a lot to say in my own review, whoops. It was a really good book, an excellent addition to the series! I had a lot of feelings about a lot of things! I'm sorry I can't figure out how to be more explicit/descriptive in what I thought!

These two books are really the first and second half of the same story so I’ll review them together. This is a darker story that takes place in the same world as Swordheart, though a little bit earlier in the timeline. (The aftereffects of what happens in these two books are clear in Swordheart!)

A rag-tag group of mostly-criminals is sent off on what’s probably a suicide mission to stop a war by finding out the source of the horrifying enormous destructive living automatons sent out by the opposing side of the war.

The two main viewpoint characters are a woman who mainly works as a forger, and an ex-paladin wracked with guilt who was once possessed by a demon and killed a bunch of nuns while possessed. (He’s no longer possessed, but the dead demon still lurks in the back corners of his mind.)

Also on the mission are an amoral assassin and a 19 year old misogynistic scholar-monk. Eventually they get a gnole too.

I didn’t love this book as much as some of Ursula Vernon’s writings, but I still really enjoyed it - even a book that’s not really my thing is a good time when it’s Vernon writing it. (The kind of book that has an assassin as a major character is just really unlikely to ever do it for me. Also I don't have paladin feelings, and this book was written in direct response to Vernon's frustrations with how paladins are usually portrayed, so.)

But the book does have fascinating worldbuilding, interesting characters, the usual Ursula Vernon delights. I was particularly interested in gnole culture, and in Learned Edmund’s character development!

I wasn’t a huge fan of the romance aspect of this duology, idk. It just didn’t quite work for me. Probably because I lack the aforementioned paladin feelings. But it wasn’t as major an element as in Swordheart so it was fine.

Overall a worthwhile read.

A romance novel by Ursula Vernon! I am extremely charmed and delighted. I mean, obviously I was going to be, it is impossible not to enjoy the things she writes.

This is a romance novel about a middle aged woman and an immortal dead guy trapped in a sword. Which like. I AM THERE FOR THE PREMISE but then the execution absolutely backs it up too.

Halla’s been her great-uncle’s housekeeper for years, and when he finally kicks the bucket he leaves her estate to her. Which would be fine and dandy except....the rest of the family does not agree with this outcome of his will. So Halla’s locked in her room to Think About What She’s Done in order to make her marry her cousin so that her aunt can have control over the estate.

And then she discovers that if she draws an old sword decorating the wall in her room she’ll get a strange man showing up in swirl of blue lights! Who says she’s his bearer and he’ll protect her!

Obviously they then run away together in order to find a lawyer to back up the reading of the will. As you do, because Ursula Vernon’s characters tend to be sensible about things.

Road trip time!

And then even more road trip time once they pick up the lawyer, who’s a delightful nonbinary religious person who becomes a major secondary character.

I...I don’t know how best to describe the appeal of Vernon’s writing, but just something about how she approaches writing - the characters, the plot, the descriptions, the sense of humour, etc - just really really works for me. I wish I could explain better why this book is so good and you should read it!

(One of the details though that I really loved about this book was Sarkis’s belated realization of Halla’s protective strategy of acting like a stupid woman not worth anyone's time when she's faced with dangerous men, and how when he first met Halla she was doing exactly that to him. Amazing. I love Halla so much.)

I’m extremely grateful to skygiants’ effusive review of this book because otherwise I probably would never have bothered picking it up. But it’s so good!!!!!

This is a novella about queer families and magic and being outside the cultural/religious norms of December's Christmas celebration season.

Layla and Nat are both polyamorous queer people, and they have a partner in common - they are both dating a magician named Meraud. After Meraud disappears because of magic reasons, they have to work together to get him back, and in the process come to understand and appreciate each other more.

I love how different Layla and Nat are from each other, and how understandable it is that they would dislike each other at first despite me very much liking both of them. Layla has a wife and kids and and is doing her best to be generally respectable. Nat is genderqueer, blue-haired, has important emotional connections with other also very-obviously-queer people, and is living his best queerest life that he can.

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So I have been watching Hank Green be a person on the internet for......a lot of years. I started watching the Vlogbrothers channel (which he does along with his brother John) in January 2009 which is, dear lord, very nearly 10 years ago at this point.

This is Hank Green’s first book. At first I wasn’t planning on reading it because it didn’t really sound like my kind of thing, but then Hank did a video of himself reading the first chapter aloud and I found myself interested. So I got the book from the library and read it!

This is a book set in the modern world (modern USA no less) about internet fame and alien communication. Which, of those three points of data about the book, only one is actually calculated to appeal to me (ALIENS). But Hank Green is nonetheless good at being fairly consistently compelling, so I enjoyed the book anyway.

One of the things that struck me is that it very much reads like a thing Hank Green wrote. Which, as may be evidenced by how many hours of my life I’ve spent listening to him talk on youtube, is not a bad thing to my mind. But it does read as kind of all being one voice, which means that the dialogue does not quite come across as believable conversations.

When I was about a third of the way into the book I went onto wikipedia to spoil myself for where the book was going because I like spoilers, and then found myself rather annoyed at one of the directions the book ends up going in. I almost gave up reading the book at that point, but I stuck it out and just skimmed past the plot point I disliked, and in the end I’m glad I did.

The thing I don’t like....okay so this requires a little background. ( Read more... )

This is the second book in James Alan Gardner’s new series of modern-day superheroes in southern Ontario. Still don’t care about superpowered fight scenes and vampires and train heists and stuff, still have FIVE MILLION FEELS ABOUT THESE CHARACTERS AAAAAA.

The first book, All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault, was the origin story about four roommates who become superheroes. This one takes place ten days later, as they’re all working to get used to what it means to be superpowered. Each book is from a different one of their POV’s, and I believe the author intends to write one book for each character.

K, who was the POV character of the first book, is very self-analytical and interested in ideas on the nature of constructed identity. Also ze is genderqueer and I love zir very much.

Jools, who’s the POV character of this book, is…..a lot less self-analytical and a lot more of a hot mess. BUT I LOVE HER TOOOOOO!

Um. Yeah okay no I have nothing else to say about this book. I love the characters to a ridiculous degree, I want to keep hanging out with all of them, I can’t wait till the next book comes out (hopefully we do get a next book!), the end.

The person who’s been the artist for all of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl up to this point left after the last volume, and someone new started here. I miss Erica’s art so much! The new person is good too, much better than I was fearing when I heard there’d be a replacement artist, but nobody can live up to Erica Henderson.

But that aside, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl continues to be a TOTAL DELIGHT. God I love this comic. In this volume: escape rooms! the nature of personal growth and redemption! friendship! the best ever sense of humour! LOVE IT.

(Also a brief mention of Squirrel Girl’s childhood friendship with Ana Sofia* which I am SUPER PUMPED ABOUT and I just want Doreen and Ana Sofia to STILL BE FRIENDS AND PART OF EACH OTHER’S LIVES, one small mention merely WHETS MY APPETITE FOR MORE)

*Ana Sofia is Doreen’s best friend from the middle-grade novels about Squirrel Girl by Shannon and Dean Hale.

The latest novel by Naomi Novik, another in the fairy-tale-inspired style of Uprooted. This one is...kind of a Rumpelstiltskin story and kind of the Cinderella variant wherein the dead mother helps her daughter through a tree planted over her grave, and kind of a bunch of other stuff as well.

It's told in rotating first-person POV mostly focusing on three young women (Miryem, Wanda, and Irina) but occasionally going to other people including Irina's nursemaid, Irina's husband, and Wanda's younger brother.

Each of the three main young women have their own priorities and their own plotlines, but their stories intersect and affect one another significantly.

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This last week I read seven romance novels in a row without noting down any kind of detailed thoughts about any of them to write proper posts about, because it was That Kind Of Week. I'll come back and finish tidying some of my backlogged book thoughts for posting later but figured I might as well just throw these up since I won't be able to make proper posts of them.

1. After The Wedding, by Courtney Milan - a reread of a truly excellent one, still adore it, still deeply want to know everything about Theresa's story following this novel because I care wayyyy too much about Theresa.

2. Briarley, by Aster Glenn Gray - a m/m retelling of Beauty and the Beast which was absolutely lovely and I approved of just about every choice the author made in how to adapt the original story.

3. Sweet Disorder, by Rose Lerner (Lively St Lemeston #1) - small-town politics involving a young widow being encouraged to remarry for voting reasons but she has her own personal stuff going on too, liked it a lot.

4. True Pretenses, by Rose Lerner (Lively St Lemeston #2) - a reread, still totally delightful, love everything about it.

5. Listen to the Moon, by Rose Lerner (Lively St Lemeston #3) - really interesting marriage-of-convenience story about a valet-turned-butler and a maid, really wish I'd had the wherewithal to write down more detailed thoughts about this one because it super deserves it, very much worth the read.

6. A Taste of Honey, by Rose Lerner (Lively St Lemeston #4) - sweet and cute but it didn't really speak to me.

7. The Blue Castle, by Lucy Maud Montgomery - an old favourite comfort-read which I don't allow myself to reread too often anymore for fear of wearing out the story in my mind but the situation was deserving of a reread and it hit the spot as it always does.

I recently caught up on Squirrel Girl trades that are out so far! Which means I've now read volumes 6, 7, and 8 and am up to the equivalent of issue #32.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 6: Who Run the World? Squirrels, by Ryan North

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The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 7: I've Been Waiting For A Squirrel Like You, by Ryan North

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The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Volume 8: My Best Friend's Squirrel, by Ryan North

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A middle grade novel about Squirrel Girl, sequel to The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World. These novels act as kind of prequels to the comics about Squirrel Girl. This is another fun, charming book like the last one, which again I don't love as much as the comics but I still enjoyed.

This one is about a new mall being built in Doreen's neighbourhood which seems kinda suspiciously tied to Hydra maybe, and also about the importance of speaking up for your emotional needs in your friendships.

The main plot I could take or leave, but I am Very Invested in Doreen and Ana Sofia's friendship, and rather sad about the apparent evidence in the comics from the complete lack of mention of Ana Sofia anywhere that their friendship eventually ends!! (I mean obviously in the comics I am ALL FOR Doreen's current circle of friends and most especially Nancy whom I adore, but what happens to Ana Sofia????)

One other feature of this novel is that it's in part about Doreen's attempts to learn the skills for talking down villains instead of fighting them, which is cool since that's something she does a lot of in the comics, but it was kind of odd that after Doreen started reading books about conflict resolution she got worse at it - I think the point of this in the narrative was mostly just to make jokes but it kind of came across like this book is saying that it's not a skill that can be taught? Which is lies, it totally is!

This was a really good book!

It's a prequel to a novelette available for free online, The Lady Astronaut of Mars, when the protagonist of the series, Elma York, is an old woman.

The Calculating Stars takes place in Elma's younger days. The basic premise: in the 1950's, after a major meteorite impact, humanity makes a rather more concerted effort to colonize space than in our history because it suddenly seems kinda urgent to get off-planet. Elma, a pilot, wants to be one of the first astronauts, despite the rampant sexism of the era working against her.

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