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Well I kind of disappeared from view here for a while! I just got kind of tired and overwhelmed. But some rest has done me good and I'm back with another book post. Today's book thoughts are for two novellas by the same author that I read back to back so I figured I might as well post them together.
A Duet for Invisible Strings, by Llinos Cathryn Thomas
A nice little fantasy f/f novella, featuring two musicians. I liked it a lot, and I loved Heledd, and the slow reveal of what was going on with her. But the ending felt pretty abrupt, and the off-balance power dynamics throughout made me feel uneasy about how this relationship will work out - Heledd looks up to Rosemary so much, sees her as the one who is competent and in control, and there's a ten year age gap and they met when Heledd's pretty young and also she works for Rosemary. Which would have been fine, if the book was interested in exploring how these power dynamics affected their relationship, but it wasn't. So I wanted to love this book, but it wasn't quite there for me.
Sparks Fly, by Llinos Cathryn Thomas
Unfortunately this one works for me even less than A Duet for Invisible Strings. This one is a sci-fi f/f novella, featuring two women who work in a zero-gravity performance art form, one as a performer and the other as a teacher.
I struggled with understanding the performance art form in question - the performers are in antigravity pods, and the display seems to be mostly about the light coming from the pods? So it feels like there's much less scope for the artistry of the performer, if it's just about zooming around in little space pods while the performer isn't even visible. And it even talks about how it's possible to program the pods to do the routine themselves! So what's the performer in there for then?? It sounds like the only art is in the choreography, and the performers are just there for no reason.
It's possible I'm not properly visualising or understanding the art form, but as it is, it just didn't make sense to me. So that was one major barrier to me, that I couldn't appreciate the thing that these two women had dedicated their lives to.
The other issue, which is even more important to me, is that the shift in relationship dynamics between the two of them felt off to me. It's an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers storyline, but honestly both of them start out fairly unlikeable in how self-centred and arrogant they each are, and their shift to first appreciation of each other and then love feels to me unearned from what the reader is actually shown on the page.
It's too bad that neither of these two novellas worked for me! But I really liked the short story I've read by Llinos Cathryn Thomas before ("Storm Story" in Consolation Songs), so I'm not going to give up on giving her a try just yet.
A Duet for Invisible Strings, by Llinos Cathryn Thomas
A nice little fantasy f/f novella, featuring two musicians. I liked it a lot, and I loved Heledd, and the slow reveal of what was going on with her. But the ending felt pretty abrupt, and the off-balance power dynamics throughout made me feel uneasy about how this relationship will work out - Heledd looks up to Rosemary so much, sees her as the one who is competent and in control, and there's a ten year age gap and they met when Heledd's pretty young and also she works for Rosemary. Which would have been fine, if the book was interested in exploring how these power dynamics affected their relationship, but it wasn't. So I wanted to love this book, but it wasn't quite there for me.
Sparks Fly, by Llinos Cathryn Thomas
Unfortunately this one works for me even less than A Duet for Invisible Strings. This one is a sci-fi f/f novella, featuring two women who work in a zero-gravity performance art form, one as a performer and the other as a teacher.
I struggled with understanding the performance art form in question - the performers are in antigravity pods, and the display seems to be mostly about the light coming from the pods? So it feels like there's much less scope for the artistry of the performer, if it's just about zooming around in little space pods while the performer isn't even visible. And it even talks about how it's possible to program the pods to do the routine themselves! So what's the performer in there for then?? It sounds like the only art is in the choreography, and the performers are just there for no reason.
It's possible I'm not properly visualising or understanding the art form, but as it is, it just didn't make sense to me. So that was one major barrier to me, that I couldn't appreciate the thing that these two women had dedicated their lives to.
The other issue, which is even more important to me, is that the shift in relationship dynamics between the two of them felt off to me. It's an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers storyline, but honestly both of them start out fairly unlikeable in how self-centred and arrogant they each are, and their shift to first appreciation of each other and then love feels to me unearned from what the reader is actually shown on the page.
It's too bad that neither of these two novellas worked for me! But I really liked the short story I've read by Llinos Cathryn Thomas before ("Storm Story" in Consolation Songs), so I'm not going to give up on giving her a try just yet.
