Boooooks

[olivermoss]

I am back and both exhausted and also slammed. It might be a minute before I have a spare brain cell to do photos, so I will start with getting caught up with books

No spoilers, I just added in a few LJ cuts since this got long.

The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

The book: Simple, short and effective description of the toxicity and entitlement that runs rampant in Connecticut

Me: OMG, this is so nostalgic!

I picked this up based on a 'judging you based on what your favorite book is' video. the quip for this one was something like 'your ideal TV show is Buffy, but without Xander' It's an urban fantasy based on Yale, which is a honestly a great UF setting. For those who don't know, they do have some secret societies and major politicians have come out of Skull and Bones.

I loved this book, but partially because it really nails where I grew up. I read this while on the train headed east, and that was a wild experience, especially as I started to recognize the scenery outside of the train.

It’s considered dark academia, but where most of what I’ve seen of the genre just sort of hand-waves all the issues with it, this is critical of the power structures and also has more solid world building. Everything I like about it makes it different from what I think typical dark academia is. It’s less escapism and more ‘this shit is really racist’. So, it may or may not be what fans of the genre are looking for, but for me it’s amazing. Or, what leads other people to hate this book makes me want to eat it up with a spoon.


I love the writing so much. I was instantly on board with picking up more my the same writer. When I was looking to see if the author had written anything else, maybe if the next book was out yet, I saw that one of her books is called Six Of Crows. I was like “That’s funny, that’s the same title as…. Oh wait.” So, everyone who told me I should read the books of Grishaverse, guess what?

Smoke & Shadows by Tanya Huff

I was very confused reading this because with every page turn I was like, I've read this before... but I don't remember the overall plot. But I was pretty sure I’d bought it recently and Kindle had no record of me having started it. I don’t have the physical book or audiobook. So, I searched my email inbox and found a very old DW post of mine where I said that ‘Audible made this seem like book 1 in a series, but it’s book 6. At first I was impressed by how complex the relationships of the characters are, but then I realized I was missing stuff I as supposed to know and looked into it’ At the time I was only doing audiobooks due to an injury and the earlier books were not available as audiobooks. So, I’d returned it.

I’ve now bought this book twice thinking it was the start of a series due to how it's listed. Holy fuck. I am actually going to read this from the start at a point. As I am writing this I am in NYC, so I’m moving onto another book I have for now.

The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune

It was okay. It’s a good take on the ‘young girl with powers wanted by government’ trope. The plot and lots of things about it were very good, but the main character is just sort of numb and non-reactive for too much of the story. Being like that at first? Sure, but after a while it starts to feel like he’s missing from his own story. Especially since it's supposed to be a thriller and he's supposed to have certain skills, I really came away from it feeling like he was just checked out and never really chose to be part of things.

I’ve seen this book described as ‘Stranger Things if Steve and Hopper ran off with El’, but it’s really not. It’s a different setting, different era and different characters. Nate is nothing like Steve. Art is nothing like El. Alex has a few things in common with Hopper but is still a fundamentally different character. People get weird with the ‘this is Stranger Things fanfic’ take about this and other media. They don’t get how much ST uses common tropes or draws on Stephen King. Also, being as into Stranger Things as I am, if this was ST fanfic I would have clocked some detail, some sticky fingerprints somewhere in the story.

It’s got some very solid emotional moments between the two main characters who aren’t the POV character, but, yeah, there is a weird distance between us the and POV character.

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

Oof, I wanted to like this. It’s a bit disjointed and jumps around a bit. I don’t typically do this, but I did look up other reviews of the book before posting just to double check that certain things just weren’t resolved. I wanted to make sure I hadn't missed something. Also, I was switching between the ebook and the audiobook and wound up re-reading chunks to make sure that I hadn’t missed stuff due to syncing issues. I hadn’t. I put a chunk of effort into making sure I hadn’t like accidentally a chapter.

To pull from something I saw mentioned in a few reviews, it works a lot better if you think of it as YA instead of horror. In horror you pay attention to certain details, things like the timeline being impossible should be part of what’s going on, but in YA things are just floaty sometimes. The MC’s self-centeredness was just too much for me, no matter the genre.

I am glad I read it, because if there is an author where people have takes on their books for reasons, it’s Chuck Tingle. But yeah, I am good with skipping his serious books from here on out, unless they became book club picks.

A Rival Most Vial by R. K. Ashwick

It’s Lit-RPG but also gay romance.

It’s a very solid book, I just don’t know if I fully click with Lit-RPG, or maybe this style of Lit-RPG? A lot of cozy fantasy rubs me the wrong way, and this doesn’t. That aspect feels more solid and earned than in anything else I’ve read in the cozy genre. I don’t want to damn it with faint praise, I think for some readers this might be The Book they’ve been looking for. In a lot of ways it’s fantastic, just not quite my thing.

Basically, if you wanted to like Legends and Lattes but didn't, maybe had some 'not sure about that' type reactions, I’d highly recc at least giving this a look.

Children of the Night by Mercedes Lackey

This is actually a prequel to her earlier Di Tregarde stories, setting up Lenny, Andre and some Guardian worldbuilding, and also retconning earlier world building. I wish I'd made notes on the retconning, but I actually started this right after Burning Water, but my collapse of interest in playing GW2 meant less time listening to audiobooks so I wound up with a big gap between when I started and now.

She was very early to the urban fantasy trend especially when it involves grittiness and smooching vampires. I've been told my whole life that other authors pioneered the genre, but when I read those earlier UF books they are pretty much portal fantasies. A lot of the weaknesses of the book are just from being a very early example of something that later became a very developed genre. There is still a lot of off-screen stuff, most notably the Nightflier situation, but when I was younger I liked the feeling that these books existed in a larger world and that there were more stories out there. The romance has unusual pacing, but I kinda like that about it.

However, she is still very weird about Romani people. The book isn't as moralistic and know-it-all as Burning Water, but it's still got that while also not being consistent. It's like the book wants to speak from a strong viewpoint on how the world works, but hadn't actually figured out that viewpoint yet. Also, weird jabs at people into BDSM again.

It was a weird book to revisit, as I read it so much when I was young that at times I remembered what the next sentence was going to be. How much she'd impacted how I write is like... while I was listening to this I felt like I was going back to an old, overly wordy, style of writing (and maybe talking?) like... like a New Yorker hearing a New York accent and falling back into it.

Audiobook specific note: I overall love Traci Odom's work on the series, but I hate her voice for Andre. She really vamps up the French accent.

Comments

[dine]

Smoke & Shadows is actually the first in that series, but it continues from the Blood Price series, following some characters in a different setting. it's been many years since I read either (though I generally preferred the Smoke and ... books), but having some of the backstory probably increases appreciation. I definitely recommend almost all of her stuff I've read!

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I assume that the Smoke books being more popular why it's recced as a starting point a lot, but I didn't do well trying to start mid-stream like that. I am going to read from the start as soon as I get a chance. I've got book club stuff and also Andrew Joseph White is going to be at a local bookstore, so I want to read something by him before the event

[mistressofmuses]

Ninth House is on my TBR, and I'm excited for it! (The Six of Crows duology is the only thing by her I have read.) I think there's also a sequel to Ninth House, but I can't remember what it's called.

Bummer about Camp Damascus. Also on my TBR, so we'll see how that one goes when I get there.

I feel like I was trying to get some Tanya Huff books for my mom one year, and ran into a lot of struggle figuring out where different books fell within various series. Maybe I'm confusing that with a different author I was trying to help her fill back-catalogue holes for, but since that's happened to you twice with this specific book by this author... feels familiar.

And oh, Children of the Night. So much nostalgia, but... yeah, I can't be surprised about some things not aging terribly well. I'd absolutely have to put that one on a "major early influence" list, though.

[olivermoss]

The sequel to Ninth House is Hell Bent, which I've started. It looks like that will be a trilogy.

The Smoke & books seem to be a sequel series to the Blood books, but the are all a bit hard to get a hold of and a lot of places seem to want people to start with the later books. I did not do well starting there. I am determined to get through the series as soon as I get a chance, but also I've got book clubs and also Andrew Joseph White is going to be at a local bookstore soon so I want to read something by him first.

I loved Children of the Night, and it's hard to be early to a trend, so I don't want to be too critical. But it was hard to miss that like in Burning Water, she had no real idea how to even find the problem, and then the problem turned out to have multiple points of connection to her life.

[mistressofmuses]

Hell Bent! That's the one! Once I read Ninth House, I'll probably also get Hell Bent. Glad to know it will likely be a trilogy!

Ah, I see. I know that sometimes it's a case of "the author really improved later in their career; starting with later books is a better reading experience." But... not if there are issues of plots and characters that were introduced earlier that you're expected to know about to read the later ones! Ugh. Granted, I do tend to be a completionist, but I really hate the idea of trying to start a series in the middle! I hope you do get a chance to get the rest of the books and read them in order!

There are a lot of aspects of Children of the Night that I do see becoming more codified parts of the genre later on. Urban fantasy became such a THING, it really is interesting to see examples from earlier on, before it had all the expected conventions it has now. The book absolutely still sticks out to me in a lot of ways, from specific lines, to the way scenes were set, to how I still think about characters and relationship arcs. There are parts of it that have stayed SO clear in my head, despite it being a decade+ since I read it most recently, and more than 20 years since I read it the first time.
(You mentioned in the post the ways in which the book made it clear that it was set in a wider world... I genuinely loved that, even though I do see how it strays a bit too much into the "why is all this stuff offscreen?" problem. But same as you said, I liked the feeling that this was just one story out of a world that had been going before the book started and would carry on after the last page.)
But yeah... a few definite weak points, though a bit understandable when pushing a genre that didn't exist the same way at the time.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, there was just way too much backstory for me to get through that book, despite how many times I've been told to start there.

It's weirdly harder for argue for the good points of a work, especially one with things that can easily be picked apart as flaws. She really nailed something people wanted, even if she was working on what the format even was. There are good parts, and even the janky parts work in various ways. Being unpolished kinda works for it.

[mistressofmuses]

It's a shame when an author has a rocky start (or maybe just an... average start) and their later work is much better. I can understand "oh, this is where the series gets really good!" as advice... but there's so much missing information and context to try and jump into a series in the middle. Some things stand alone well enough, but a lot really don't.

It's true! I know I pretty much always have an easier time explaining why something *doesn't* work for me than I do explaining the good points. I do think that there's a lot of charm in the slightly unpolished aspects of the book. (I also think that may be part of what DID make it work so well for me when I was younger, though I'm not completely sure I can articulate why.) I do think that a more polished version of the story, with some of the weirder bits, the bits that didn't age great, the invented-foreign-mythology stuff, etc. "fixed" or removed, something that made it fit neater into the now-established genre conventions, might produce a technically "better" work... but I also don't think I'd necessarily enjoy that hypothetical alternate version nearly as much.

[olivermoss]

The replies I get about the weird continue to be weird, which is worrying but at this point I am determined. I tried started with the Smoke books and just could not handle starting there.

Also, there is what I think of as the 'solved problem paradox' <- maybe this has an actual name, but it's just what I call it. Once people figured out how to make a good superhero movie, it seemed obvious and we had a boom of those films. But, trying to explain why it was great is hard and will mostly fall on deaf ears. Once you know the answer, it seems simple and obvious. Like putting the answer to the riddle next to a riddle, it's hard to explain how hard the riddle was. Children of the Night is arguably super early days romantasy, which is huge now but took a lot of writers a lot of work to figure out how to put the pieces together right.

[mistressofmuses]

I don't know if there's another word for it, but I know exactly what you mean. After the trial and error is mostly done, and a genre is established, it's just sort of... "common knowledge" what works, and so it all seems like it should have been obvious all along. (Similar patterns exist outside of writing and genre. Most creative fields probably have something along those lines.) But it is hard to get people to understand what it was like before those conventions existed, before we had the "ideal" formula to make it work.
Romantasy has had a huge boom now, but it's true: there are quite a few older things that are like... proto-romantasy, and are also where I think a lot of the desire for the genre came from... but in terms of the current meaning of the word, it took a long time to narrow it down to exactly the "right" configuration.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, same thing definitely happens outside of writing. Any time something a solved problem people just don't get what it took to get there.

A lot of people just like to be in denial about how hard writing, and a lot of stuff, actually is

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah. It's weird to watch that sort of immediate amnesia every time it happens.

That is certainly painfully true. More than almost anything else, I feel like writing gets devalued as "anyone can do that." People deciding what aspects of genre and style and character and whatnot are "obvious" just adds to that. (Other fields get that attitude too, for sure, but writing seems to get it particularly badly.)

[eller]

YESSS! I also loved Ninth House - though I thought it was pretty standard Dark Academia content-wise. My impression is, the modern stories in the genre are generally more critical of the Let's Glorify British-inspired Elitism And Colonialism vibes some older "genre classics" give off. What made this one special was... more in terms of storytelling structure. I really loved the structure. XD

[profiterole_reads]

I think you can start at Smoke & Shadows. It's a completely different story. The other books are about Vicky, so Henry is the common point, even though Tony appears too.