Reading Wednesday (partial)

pantryslut posted a Reading Wednesday, and reminded me that I haven't in a while, because I haven't been getting through a lot of books. But I read more when I'm traveling and spending less time at the computer, so:

Recently finished: The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan. This is a sequel to A Natural History of Dragons, I think a bit stronger, and I'm fairly sure could stand alone. These are set in a fantasy/alternate world, with geography similar to ours but different names and similar but not identical cultures, and dragons. The narrator is a woman who is fascinated by dragons, and managed to overcome a lot of cultural sexism to be able to travel and study them, but it's not an "OK, you're one of the boys now" thing. She is accepted by certain people but still has to deal with assumptions about appropriate roles and male superiority. She is also thrown into a variety of politics, involving tropical nations both trying to fend off "Anthiopean" colonial powers, and conflicts among those nations, in the course of trying to study the dragons. It felt to me as though Brennan handled the different cultures well; it helps that her narrator is respectful of the analogue-African people she is visiting (she doesn't like all of them, but she dislikes them for individual reasons, as with the people she dislikes from other colonial powers, or within her own family.

I also read another of the Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael books, but my notes on that are on my home computer.

I am dipping into a Theodore Sturgeon short story collection (like the Brennan, one of adrian_turtle's books. Not sure yet what I will read on Amtrak on Friday; something on the kindle.