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September and October books, not counting a few things returned unfinished to the library. [They weren't notably bad, they just didn't grab me.]
Trumpet, by Jackie Kay, is a widow looking back on her marriage, while dealing with intense grief and with prurient curiosity from journalists who have learned that her husband, a jazz musician, was biologically female. (I put it that way because the story is mostly told by the widow, and she uses "he" for her late husband throughout, even when discussing helping him wrap his chest so nobody would figure out that there were breasts under his clothes.) The story is partly about their life among other jazz musicians, and dealing with her family's reaction to her interracial marriage, and partly about mourning and the difficulties of dealing with people who are trying to fit you into their narrative. (This is based on a true story. Recommended by someone on LJ, but I don't remember who.)
I've read three of Sarah Monette (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
truepenny)'s novels in the last two months. That's actually three books of a four-book arc, with the fourth promised next year. Melusine, The Virtu, and The Mirador. I like them, despite being sure I wouldn't want to spend time with either Felix or Mildmay--and the first two books are entirely in their voices, and the third is about 2/3 them and one-third Mehitabel, an actress who I think could be pleasant company and who we met earlier*. The world-building is excellent, and Monette makes it possible to sympathize with Felix and Mildmay, because she shows us some of what made them who they are, even without liking them. From one angle, the story seems to be a very long demonstration of the importance of communication, and the idea that actually talking to people might help.
There are odd bits of French and Greek in the books. Nothing essential: you don't need to know what the names of the months mean, though I was amused to see that most republican of calendars associated with a monarchic past. I also find myself wondering whether the wizards who built and are using the Khlo&ium;danikos are going to have to pay for it, and in what coin, and what 300 years of usurious interest would look like.
I seem to have gotten over, or at least be prepared to make exceptions to, my refusal to read the existing parts of unfinished series when it's clearly one story in several books, rather than continuing characters or situation. (I've been trying to avoid cliffhangers when it's possible that the characters will be on that cliff forever, since Philip Jose Farmer took years to go back to Riverworld and pretended that there'd been no cliffhanger at the end of the preceding book, nor indeed any of the events in that book.) I don't know if this exception will extend to writers I don't know personally.
I picked up Elizabeth Moon's Marque and Reprisal because I liked the book it was a sequel to, Trading in Danger. Space opera again, with bodies all over the place, and the viewpoint character trying to figure out who has it in for her family and why. Fun, much the same vein as the first except bloodier. Kylara's self-examination wasn't entirely convincing to me, though "is there something wrong with me that I enjoyed killing, even in self-defense?" is not an unreasonable question. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that at the end of the book, the heroine is still alive, and nothing has been resolved, plot or psychology.
Neil Gaiman's short story collection, M is for Magic, was fun; nothing that is jumping out a month later and saying "remember me!" There's a Lafferty pastiche, which I'd read whencattitude originally bought the book.
Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver), is a loosely linked collection of stories, science fiction if you squint. They're Qfwfq's tales of space-time, dinosaurs, would-be romance, moon milk, predicting the future [our present and recent past], the shape of space-time. They're fun, but Qfwfq's ongoing attempts to find romance--and his shallowness about it--wore on me. (The deliberately unpronounceable character names are less so if you're willing to treat w as a vowel.) No attempt at consistency from one story to the next.)
Matt Ruff's Fool on the Hill is fantasy, more or less, about a bunch of people, dogs, cats, and sprites, mostly in and around Cornell. I found it a little too metafictional: it doesn't actually make arbitrary bad things happening to your characters more convincing for them to happen because an in-the-book storyteller/demigod decides to make their lives difficult because it will make a good story. It has good bits--including Puck flying a model airplane, with a real engine and weapons--but it didn't hold together for me.
Terry Pratchett's Making Money has a "more of the same" feeling--it's definitely a follow-up to Going Postal in terms of characters and situation, though the postmaster breaking into his own post office--because he's getting bored on the right side of the law--works. Pratchett is still good at what he's doing, but Moist von Lipwig knows that the Patrician is putting him in basically the same situation for the second time. There's a good Igor in this one.
*character name added afterrivka's review reminded me of it
Trumpet, by Jackie Kay, is a widow looking back on her marriage, while dealing with intense grief and with prurient curiosity from journalists who have learned that her husband, a jazz musician, was biologically female. (I put it that way because the story is mostly told by the widow, and she uses "he" for her late husband throughout, even when discussing helping him wrap his chest so nobody would figure out that there were breasts under his clothes.) The story is partly about their life among other jazz musicians, and dealing with her family's reaction to her interracial marriage, and partly about mourning and the difficulties of dealing with people who are trying to fit you into their narrative. (This is based on a true story. Recommended by someone on LJ, but I don't remember who.)
I've read three of Sarah Monette (
truepenny)'s novels in the last two months. That's actually three books of a four-book arc, with the fourth promised next year. Melusine, The Virtu, and The Mirador. I like them, despite being sure I wouldn't want to spend time with either Felix or Mildmay--and the first two books are entirely in their voices, and the third is about 2/3 them and one-third Mehitabel, an actress who I think could be pleasant company and who we met earlier*. The world-building is excellent, and Monette makes it possible to sympathize with Felix and Mildmay, because she shows us some of what made them who they are, even without liking them. From one angle, the story seems to be a very long demonstration of the importance of communication, and the idea that actually talking to people might help. There are odd bits of French and Greek in the books. Nothing essential: you don't need to know what the names of the months mean, though I was amused to see that most republican of calendars associated with a monarchic past. I also find myself wondering whether the wizards who built and are using the Khlo&ium;danikos are going to have to pay for it, and in what coin, and what 300 years of usurious interest would look like.
I seem to have gotten over, or at least be prepared to make exceptions to, my refusal to read the existing parts of unfinished series when it's clearly one story in several books, rather than continuing characters or situation. (I've been trying to avoid cliffhangers when it's possible that the characters will be on that cliff forever, since Philip Jose Farmer took years to go back to Riverworld and pretended that there'd been no cliffhanger at the end of the preceding book, nor indeed any of the events in that book.) I don't know if this exception will extend to writers I don't know personally.
I picked up Elizabeth Moon's Marque and Reprisal because I liked the book it was a sequel to, Trading in Danger. Space opera again, with bodies all over the place, and the viewpoint character trying to figure out who has it in for her family and why. Fun, much the same vein as the first except bloodier. Kylara's self-examination wasn't entirely convincing to me, though "is there something wrong with me that I enjoyed killing, even in self-defense?" is not an unreasonable question. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that at the end of the book, the heroine is still alive, and nothing has been resolved, plot or psychology.
Neil Gaiman's short story collection, M is for Magic, was fun; nothing that is jumping out a month later and saying "remember me!" There's a Lafferty pastiche, which I'd read when
cattitude originally bought the book.Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver), is a loosely linked collection of stories, science fiction if you squint. They're Qfwfq's tales of space-time, dinosaurs, would-be romance, moon milk, predicting the future [our present and recent past], the shape of space-time. They're fun, but Qfwfq's ongoing attempts to find romance--and his shallowness about it--wore on me. (The deliberately unpronounceable character names are less so if you're willing to treat w as a vowel.) No attempt at consistency from one story to the next.)
Matt Ruff's Fool on the Hill is fantasy, more or less, about a bunch of people, dogs, cats, and sprites, mostly in and around Cornell. I found it a little too metafictional: it doesn't actually make arbitrary bad things happening to your characters more convincing for them to happen because an in-the-book storyteller/demigod decides to make their lives difficult because it will make a good story. It has good bits--including Puck flying a model airplane, with a real engine and weapons--but it didn't hold together for me.
Terry Pratchett's Making Money has a "more of the same" feeling--it's definitely a follow-up to Going Postal in terms of characters and situation, though the postmaster breaking into his own post office--because he's getting bored on the right side of the law--works. Pratchett is still good at what he's doing, but Moist von Lipwig knows that the Patrician is putting him in basically the same situation for the second time. There's a good Igor in this one.
*character name added after
rivka's review reminded me of itTags: