Dragongirl by Todd mccaffrey

I didn't want to hate this one, but I came very close. It was so hard to read. So very very hard. It took me longer to get through than almost any other book I've read-- I think the only thing I can remember suffering through with such a grim stubbornness was, like, Sphere, which I did wind up hating by the end. That one took me nine months to read. This one only took about three, and I read about four other books in the meantime, trying to escape it.

See, I gre up on the Pern books. They were the first adult books I read, after a ha dful of Victoria Holt novels that I quickly lost interest in, and I've followed the series since. When I turned sixteen, my dad gifted me with the whole series up to that point, and it's one of my favorite memories of that timeframe. All Anne McCaffrey's books affected me the same way-- they aren't the most literary scifi, or the most rigorously scientific, and they're often just thinly veiled romances, but they were interesting and complex and open minded and adult, and they always got me emotionally involved in the characters.

This one though, one of Todd's solo ones... It was like beating myself In the face with bad fanfic a lot of the time, and it was like a bad idea of making it into kid lit, but still letting polyamory be okay. It happens at a time in Pern history when we know things are going to end up pretty desolate, too. And worse of all, it sort of steals Lessa's thunder by making her less rare, and preempting some of the daring things she has done / will do. It makes her seem woefully undereducated. Which makes me very sad.

And then it suddenly gets pointed, the characters suddenly differentiate, the writing clarifies and makes morse sense, and it feels like a Pern book, not a poorly-made imitation of one. That's how it should have been all along. It was so refreshing and life affirming to get through that whole mess and find a good and stirring ending, but it was too little, too late... But it piqued my curiosity about the next book, which has no excuse not to be good after 300- odd pages of set up from this book.

Digital domains edited by Ellen datlowl

This is exactly what an anthology is for: a taste of what's out there, and a good sampling of different styles and takes on a variety of topics. There's fifteen stories in here, and all of them are amazing. I sobbed lIke a baby during The Monkey King's Daughter, I felt like I was dreaming during Pansolapia, I was sucked in to each and every story. And there's one from Kelly Link and one from Andy Duncan, and both are excellent writers. Best of all, there's a feeling that the stories, thought all very different, all lean toward the same ending feeling, that they all want to change around the furniture inside your head. It's exactly why I love anthologies, and it's exactly why I love Datlow anthologies.

Amaranth enchantment by Julie berry

This is exactly the sort of book I should have loved. Plucky girl overcoming hardship, clever rogue, handsome prince, evil government official, stranded alien, interesting alternate London and England sort of setting... But it comes out feeling flat and dumbed down, and I just didn't like reading it. It felt like a problem: she wanted the characters to do this and this and this, but they wanted to do their own thing, and so she forced them, and sections of the dialog and narrative are so forced I just hated reading them. And throughout the whole thing, I kept wanting to edit it hard- core, until the end, when I wanted to just rewrite the whole thing. It feels like it got lost in it's own setting sometimes, and like it was extremely dumbed down other times, like the whole book didn't trust preteen girls to understand things, while the plot demanded that the lead go to jail and face the gallows.

I can't abide being ken down to, even when I'm not the target audience, and if I was nine or ten, I'd still want more from this book. ::sigh:: it really does ace a great set up, too.

Shadow hills by anastasia hopcus

I read this one a bit ago, and it's sort of lingering with me, which is great. I could't find any definitive answer about whether it was the start of a series, but it defy itely could be, and I wouldn't even have to relegate it to the category of "guilty pleasure" to justify buying it. It's not perfect, but some of the most noticeable problems I had with it would be fixed if it were the start of a series-- like the fact that the most interesting ideas it brought up in my mind were not even touched upon, like whether there was a connection between Phe's parents and the exiles. And it's better than Twilight, while fitting firmly in the same genre: Phe manages to be in love without losing her identity, she has one to begin with, adults aren't two-dimensional idiots, she stays in school, the love affair isn't abusive, the metaphysical elements are rooted in so ethnic closer to actual lore, the quality of the writing is solid and realistic... I could go on.

The review should be up on NYJB soon. I'm looking forward to her next book!

Second thought: ain't she sweet

You k ow, I enjoyed reading this book, but after the fact, it kind of annoyed me-- to many romance conventions, too many broad strokes, too many southern cliches... And when we studied it in class, that kind of made me not ever want to read it again. J couldn't get over the horrible Geography, but what bothered me most was the end-- how after she reached that required point, what got her to the happy ending was manipulation. And we won't even get into the magical baby.

But I did like the metafictional feel of that end, even if it did feel a little like little women.

gradschool: ain't she sweet?

This semester's required reading was Aint She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

I don't usually read romance novels any more (the first adult books I read were Victoria Holt's historical romances, but I transitioned very quickly to scifi, which I started at the same time), though I know the names of the main authors from my mom and from looking through my gramma's here-take-some-books bags. Oh, and A always had a huge selection of those twenty-something-working-girl-who-likes-to-shop books, but I've only read Bridget Jones and maybe one other. Did I read Devil Wears Prada, or just watch the movie eighty times? I don't remember.

Anyway, I meant to take a little time reading this book and post my reactions as I went, maybe every few chapters, but that sort of didn't happen. I read the whole thing in under twelve hours. That was my reaction.

A more official review:

Romance as a genre seems to have a sort of redheaded-stepchild opinion of it in the mainstream view, but this book proves that even a genre that contains things like the new-book-every-month Harlequin series can produce something fresh and strong that exists on it's own merit even if you take out the required love scenes. The romance, while the center of the story, is not the point of the narrative, but the result of it: Sugar Beth was not a nice person when she left home and now she's coming back to deal with all the heartache and ruin she left behind, and that's the point of the story. It's about how the past damages the future and how we get through that to where we need to be.

The characters are solid and distinct, for the most part (though the SeaWillows kind of blend together or come out a little one-note when they're all in the same room), and fit together the way real people do, in shifting hierarchies informed by everything that's come before and supported by mutual friendship and love, hindered by mutual grudges, changed by time but not rewritten. Fifteen years is a long time, and this book captures the distance covered in that time really well.

Additionally, as the story moves on, it becomes a little metafictional, which I always love: having a writer as a main character makes it easy, and even if the end had a little bit of a Little Women feel to it, it was the happy ending the genre requires, and it was suitable.

My only quibble is that the last third of the book went faster than the previous two-thirds, and it would have been nice to have as much time as the rest of the book got to react and ponder and guess outcomes... although that also would have meant wallowing in Sugar Beth's personal anguish, when a lot of the charm of the rest was that she doesn't really do that-- she's strong and stubborn and desperate and still manages to be principled and daring and responsible for her past actions. She's the sort of woman we kind of hope all horrible high school rich bitches can become, and she earns her happy ending.

I especially liked the characters of Sugar Beth and Colin-- even in the beginning when they don't even like each other, they fit together and draw together in a way that seems honest and organic, and the fact that they fall for each other makes perfect sense because of it.

The structure is the classic trial-of-the-heroine story, but it's handled in such a way that it seems like it's all free will-- you don't see the framework of the plot showing through and you believe the characters when they make their decisions and choose their paths. The inevitability of romance means they had to eventually wind up together, but nothing says it had to go this well or make this much sense. Nothing says it had to heal the whole town as it patched up the battered psyches of the two mains, either-- and that's what makes it above the rest of the genre and lets it cross over into something that could be labeled 'epic' almost, the fact that it's not just the story of these two people, but the story of the whole town and a little bit of the generation before them. It's aware of it's own context and it lets all that play out, while keeping it personal and realistic and intimate.

Good choice of a representative, Romance Division!

book : snot stew by bill wallace

This is a very-young-reader sort of a book; took me about 45 minutes. But it's surprisingly sweet, and not really preachy at all.

It's a book about two kittens who are taken in by a family after they've been abandoned by their mother when she leaves them to start another family. At first, they're scared, and then as they settle in, it shows the life of the family from the point of view of these little cats-- and the family doesn't seem all that great from that view. The brother, Toby, misinterprets the way the kids behave as a game, and when he tries to play like them, he becomes a horrible bully, and he doesn't stop until a dog nearly eats him and he has to be saved by his sister, Kikki.

And that's about it. Short, sweet, telling kids not to be a bully, and pretty darn charming along the way.

book 14: city of ashes, cassandra clare

Wow. I read this one so fast I didn't even take time to do any In-Reading Notes-- so fast that I started yesterday from chapter, like, three and finished it about three this morning.

It's another great one, and this is quickly becoming one of my favorite series. It makes me sad that there's only the one after it; I don't know if she's planning more, but it has the feel of a trilogy. Even so, this one mostly manages to hold up as it's own story, and manages to mitigate Middle Book Syndrome, where there's not beginning and no end-- this one starts a little after book one and ends with them prepping for book three, but everything in between is it's own storyline-- there are parts where you can see the foreshadowing leaking through (the silver-haired lady and Maia mostly), but they foreshadow while fitting into the overall arc, and that makes it okay.

My only complaint is that the book seems to think it's still Clary's story when it's really Jace's and Simon's; alot of the time, they're fighting or plotting or dealing with their issues, and Clary's just sort of standing there, gaping. There isn't alot for her to do in certain parts of the book, but she tags along anyway like a little sister (which I guess is fine, since she's Jace's little sister), and then, again, doesn't have much to do. But that doesn't mean she's ignored: she's dealing with her conflicting and conflicted feelings for both boys, and the surfacing of some unusual abilities that shouldn't be possible and are probably the result of tampering, and even though it isn't given time to sink in, she's starting to act more like a Shadowhunter, and hopefully that will go somewhere. Clary's too cool to constantly be needing boys to protect her.

The ending was... a little convenient. It's the middle of the story, about to go into the big showdown that will be the last book, so it's understandable, but the answer to her mom's problem is sort of just handed to her, which annoys me (and means it isn't what I thought, which both entertains me and annoys me, because the way I thought it would go, it could have been a really great little moment of fairytale perfection in this amazingly complicated and flawed world).

If you don't want spoilers, stop here, because I'm extrapolating.

Here's what I think will happen:

- Simon and Maia will try to be the Romeo and Juliet that stop the vampire-werewolf war; it'll be more interesting if they don't work as a couple, but do work as a diplomatic team, because there's really no solid reason why they can't get along except that weres are like dogs and vamps are like cats, and it's tradition that you don't share your hunting grounds with another predator. Issues of choice and free will keep coming up, and it would be nice to see both sides choose to be sentient beings.

- It looks like Jace is going to be shown to not actually be her brother, but that that's yet another of Valentine's mindgames. The romantic in me thinks this is great, but the plot-diva in me thinks it's needlessly complicated unless there's a really great payoff for it in the end. Also, I like Simon better, even though he's already fallen into Duckie Pergatory, and it seems he'll never win Clary's heart the way he wants. I'd be willing to bet that Jace actually is a Wayland, switched out for his actual kid who was "a monster". I'd also be willing to bet that there's something faerie about Clary.

- Clary needs to start kicking ass. Seriously. She needs to get some training, and she already seems to be tapping into her natural instincts, and that's a good thing.

- Valentine will manage to detstroy the Clave, but not the cause. They'll beat him at the last minute in some horrible battle where Clary and Jace's awesomeness combine, and probably the fractured Downworlder alliances come together, and they'll stop him and get back the Instruments-- and then they'll have to rebuild, with most of the older generation gone, and they'll bring the Clave back better and stronger.

- Hopefully hodge will come back in some way that redeems him. Adults in these books are as complex as the kids, and the kids are only just learning that fact, and everyone is so hurt over his betrayal-- and he didn't die; he just disappeared into the crowds, and who knows what he's been doing.

- Alec needs to come out. And he needs to accept Magnus. They're sweet and pretty together.

And if any of these guesses are wrong, then I can just write fanfic.

in-reading notes: green rider, 2

I'm having trouble with this book. It's inconsistent, action is vague, and the structure is kind of basic-- short sentences, odd word choices, poor description and an idea that she didn't research how things work very well. I could have edited this into a really wonderful book, and I think that fact is annoying me. That, and I just can't bring myself to leave a book unfinished, and that the story is actually interesting enough that I don't want to leave it.

I just wish it was better. I can see what it wants to be, and it's bothering me that it isn't there.

There are two other books after this one, and I'll have to read them to get the rest of the story, so here's to hoping they aren't as beginner-y.

in-reading notes: perdito street station

I've only read the intro so far, but it's s striking difference from the last book. I finished Dead Until dark and wasn't ready to be done yet, so I started the next book on the pile, which was this one, and it's like night and day. The sentances are better, the words used are better, the descriptions are more complete and clearer and more interesting, the whole feel of the piece is better. And it's a relief. I like my crap fic, but I like good books more, and after two moderately frustrating vampire romances, it's good to have. And it's already lining up with the way City of Bones was, and I don't know if that even makes sense, but sometimes my brain makes it make sense...