some books or something
Nov. 15th, 2016 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraGoldenhand, Garth Nix, 2016. Ties off threads from Clariel and the novelettes "The Creature In The Case" and (less directly) "To Hold The Bridge" as well as being a direct sequel to Abhorsen. This being Nix, there are some good settings and sequences here (that was true in Clariel too, despite my general lack of enthusiasm for that book, and this one is definitely more enjoyable), but it definitely felt like a "late book" for a series, as the momentum and creative energy winds down and runs out. If you love the characters you'll probably enjoy seeing them in action again and knowing they get closure on a bunch of fronts, but if you didn't feel like you needed to read "Creature in the Case" you can probably continue to ignore everything after Abhorsen without fear you're missing something great.
I did really like this bit: "No one is going anywhere until we sit down and I hear everything I need to know," said Touchstone firmly. "Why does this family forever run straight at the first enemy that sticks up its head? We need planning! Forethought and planning, which is based on actually sharing all the knowledge you lot have gained in Death or the past or wherever you have found it!" This from the literal berserker.
Full Fathom Five, Max Gladstone, 2014. Third in publishing order of the five-going-on-six-book Craft Sequence; chronologically after both Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise and does involve some characters/situations from those books. Creative energy still going strong for Gladstone at this point in his series, at least. The legal-thrillers-but-with-magic aspect of these means that they're pretty satisfying (truths discovered, injustices rectified) and the magic makes for some good wow in the worldbuilding. There was a bit in the middle of this one I found profoundly moving. I remember that when I read the first two back-to-back I felt like that was too much of the same thing at once, so I'm not going to rush out to catch up on books four and five of the series, but I definitely look forward to reading them when it seems like a good time.
Hold Me, Courtney Milan, 2016. In the contemporary series that started with Trade Me. You can analyze all the dimensions to these fantasies - women get the courage to take what they want! wealthy, powerful men feel lucky that these women give them a chance! but they're really well done, and aren't most books peddling some kind of fantasy of power/justice/hope/what have you. Milan writes her characters with a lot of sympathy and nuance and real-life Stuff to deal with - this whole series seems to be shaping up to have a theme of emotional vulnerability. So it's heavier, than, like, Crusie (although there's definitely still some wackiness here, including a secondary character whose future book I can't wait for). Also the couple in this one is a trans Latina woman and a bi Asian dude, which is just *neat*, like, I'm not really up on the self-published contemporary scene but I know I've never found a trans character on the romance racks at the library.
I did really like this bit: "No one is going anywhere until we sit down and I hear everything I need to know," said Touchstone firmly. "Why does this family forever run straight at the first enemy that sticks up its head? We need planning! Forethought and planning, which is based on actually sharing all the knowledge you lot have gained in Death or the past or wherever you have found it!" This from the literal berserker.
Full Fathom Five, Max Gladstone, 2014. Third in publishing order of the five-going-on-six-book Craft Sequence; chronologically after both Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise and does involve some characters/situations from those books. Creative energy still going strong for Gladstone at this point in his series, at least. The legal-thrillers-but-with-magic aspect of these means that they're pretty satisfying (truths discovered, injustices rectified) and the magic makes for some good wow in the worldbuilding. There was a bit in the middle of this one I found profoundly moving. I remember that when I read the first two back-to-back I felt like that was too much of the same thing at once, so I'm not going to rush out to catch up on books four and five of the series, but I definitely look forward to reading them when it seems like a good time.
Hold Me, Courtney Milan, 2016. In the contemporary series that started with Trade Me. You can analyze all the dimensions to these fantasies - women get the courage to take what they want! wealthy, powerful men feel lucky that these women give them a chance! but they're really well done, and aren't most books peddling some kind of fantasy of power/justice/hope/what have you. Milan writes her characters with a lot of sympathy and nuance and real-life Stuff to deal with - this whole series seems to be shaping up to have a theme of emotional vulnerability. So it's heavier, than, like, Crusie (although there's definitely still some wackiness here, including a secondary character whose future book I can't wait for). Also the couple in this one is a trans Latina woman and a bi Asian dude, which is just *neat*, like, I'm not really up on the self-published contemporary scene but I know I've never found a trans character on the romance racks at the library.
