Pwaites' Reading in 2013 - 2014

I've been wanting to start a reading journal, but have been putting off as I haven't been reading much. Plus, it seemed silly to start a reading journal just a few months before the end of the year. However, a glorious catch of new books has convinced me otherwise.

I mainly read fantasy and science fiction and fantasy, a fairly large dose of which is YA. I also have interests in ancient history (I'm a Latin student), art, and strong female characters. I'm also reading books for an American Lit class and a US History class, so I'll probably comment on those.

The books currently waiting in a stack to be read:

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (I'm reading this next)
Civil War Wives by Carol Berkin
Eona by Alison Goodman
The Retrieval Artist by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
UnSouled by Neal Shusterman
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
The Swan Kingdom by Marriott
Extremes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome by Lesley Adkns and Roy A. Adkins

I've also got Tamora Pierce's Battle Magic and Jay Kristoff's Kinslayer hanging around, but I've had them for over a month and haven't touched them yet besides to read the first chapters or so. I may get to them eventually.

I'm also working on some book art, book carving, sort of thing. If it goes well, I may end up posting it. You can also expect to see my commenting on books' cover art and illustrations.

welcome, and happy reading. Book carving.... hmmm.... yes, post that!

Welcome! I'm looking forward to reading your posts; you always seem to read such interesting books when you comment on other threads!

Have fun with your book journal, pwaites!

I read Eon by Alison Goodman and I couldn't stomach it. It was particularly galling that within a few chapters, the reader can figure out what the problem is between Eon and the dragon, but Eon takes the whole book to figure it out. Of course, since she did figure it out, the second book might be better, and the idea behind the book I liked (the dragon thing, not the only-male-riders thing). But not enough to actually read Eona, for that the first book annoyed me too much.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!

4> I read the book when it first came out, so over five years ago now. I only have vague memories of it, but I've read another book by Alison Goodman that I liked so I'm willing to give it a go. Plus it has dragons, which I always love. However, I'm not anticipating it to be wonderful or worthy of a reread.

Hello, pwaites!

I've read Tooth and Claw and The Swan Kingdom and enjoyed them both immensely. I will look forward to reading your thoughts about the others; I may find a few things for myself here.

Update on The Republic of Thieves:

I'm about half way through right now (as expected, it's one of those books that I can't put down). It hasn't let down so far and is just as enjoyable as The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies. However, the one thing that bothered me about the previous two books is also present here: lengthy interludes.

I've gathered that the purpose of the interludes is to give information about characters and the relationships between characters. There's pretty much two separate plots going on, one in the present, and one describing Locke's childhood. While some of his childhood is interesting, I don't think it needs this much page space - it distracts from the main plot and slows down the story. Some information could be woven into the main text and some could be deleted altogether. Scott Lynch really had to have them, he could have included them as a collection of extra scenes at the end of the book, or he could have posted them online. Either would be a better solution.

That one grievance aside, The Republic of Thieves is an excellent book so far. The world building is as superb as always, and a few hints were made as to the fate of the Elders, the long ago race who left amazing glass ruins as their only sign of existence. To my delight, more has also been revealed about the bondmagi (the world's only magic users who are an organized group). They've got an organized political structure which is an important part of the book as Locke and Jean are hired to rig an election.

More has also been seen of the mysterious Sabetha. I was repeatedly frustrated and annoyed when the earlier two books continually referenced her without ever actually showing her. In Republic of Thieves at least, we've seen her in Locke's memories and she's now an active part of the plot.

She was one of the things that annoyed me about the first book. The only woman in the gang, and she's disappeared years before and is never actually shown? Really? The other women in the book were all in opposition to Locke, or died very shortly in. Mind you, being in opposition to Locke doesn't mean that they're bad people, seeing as how Locke and his gang are thieves and con-men. The second book improved things immensely with the introduction of Drakasha, a female pirate captain, and Ezri, her second in command. I'm really hoping to see Drakasha again, though there's been no sign of it so far.

Civil War Wives will be up once I finish The Republic of Thieves.

6> I'd heard of Tooth and Claw in other places, but I picked up The Swan Kingdom after reading about it on your threads. I do hope that you'll find something - your thread has been very helpful.

Hello! I too enjoy your posts and I've starred your thread, glad to see it :)

I'm interested to hear what you think of The Swan Kingdom and of Battle Magic, when you get around to it. I've been re-reading the Emelan books with the idea to read it, give The Will of the Empress a second try, and go on to Melting Stones, but I sort of petered out after Street Magic with the ending where Briar and Evvy bond over killing enemy grunts and a little ways into Cold Fire when I remembered the whole arsonist plot.

Also, Pierce's prior work with the"foreigners come into a society and save it" trope is pretty much playing it straight, between the Bazhir in Song of the Lioness (especially The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, where Alanna comes into the Bazhir culture and teaches them that they are Doing It Wrong on a number of levels, and another white character is magically selected to be their hereditary leader) and from what I've heard the Trickster duology with Alanna's daughter went in that direction as well... The Emelan books seem to do somewhat better on having a diverse cast, though, so maybe there's hope that things are better this time?

The sheer amount of appropriation without even basic research and then trying to say "oh, but it's not actually Japan" in Kristoff's work was a total dealbreaker for me, though.

Scott Lynch has been on my "sorta maybe try someday?" list for a while, but sentences like "For faced with his one and only match in both love and trickery, Locke must choose whether to fight Sabetha—or to woo her." in the blurb of the latest book made me raise one eyebrow in a questioning fashion and shuffle it down the list a little.

7, 8: Scott Lynch just came up in a thread on FantasyFans. I'll post here what I posted over there:

"My impression of Scott Lynch's work was that his depictions of women were largely (if not exclusively) negative; in the world of this 'bromance,' women are not to be trusted. With such a legion of books in my TBR pile, I don't really feel the need to go out of my way to read his work. 'But it's so good,' some will say. This may be true. But good books are innumerable; one could never get around to reading them all, so why shouldn't I choose ones that better suit my mood?"

If this is not accurate -- if the female pirates in Red Seas Under Red Skies and the women in The Republic of Thieves are actually kick-butt heroines rather than duplicitous villainesses -- I will be glad to put the books in my TBR pile. Could these books be read and enjoyed without having plowed through the first one? The first volume is such a thick book, and I don't want to spend that much time wandering through a wilderness without a female character whose company to enjoy.

10: Dona Sofia sounds like the only one I'd like -- the only one, at any rate, to whom I'd let myself get attached. The female gladiators and the Spider are villains, while Nazca gets fridged.

Yet Red Seas Under Red Skies sounds like MUCH more my kind of thing.

Again, could I read and understand the second volume without bothering with the first?

11> Yes, I think you could read the second without the first. Sorry, my post was taking longer than expected to wright, and I was rushed for time.

The Spider isn't a villain, though she is an antagonist. She's on the side of the law, were as the main characters aren't. Also, this is one of those series where a large number of characters die. Especially in the first book.

Second book (again, spoilers):
Zamira Drakasha - the pirate captain the link is talking about. A few scenes are told from her POV.
Ezri - the second in command to Drakasha and very capable. She sacrifices herself to save the ship and her friends.
There's also a woman who is some sort of law enforcement, and another whose an assistant to the main mark of the book.

Third book:
Sabetha - already described
Patience - the mage who hires Locke and Jean. She values morality and ethics and is one of the four mage leaders.
I haven't run into any other major female characters yet. There have been a few bit parts, which the books mainly divide between male and female evenly. Scott Lynch's world is fairly gender equal - a thief, doctor, or guard is just as likely to be female as male.

12: Thanks, pwaites. I wasn't intending to give you a hard time; I always appreciate your posts.

I've finished The Republic of Thieves.

While the series lacks a continuing plot, I feel that the end of The Republic of Thieves is the beginning of one. Like always with this series, I didn't see it coming.

I'm a third of the way through Civil War Wives. Each third covers one historical figure. I've just read Angelina Grimke's section and have Varina Davis up next. Honestly, I don't think the rest of the book can stand up to the section on Angelina Grimke. She was one awesome woman.

8> I meant to reply fully earlier, but got caught up in talking about The Republic of Thieves.

Is Battle Magic the first in a series? If it isn't, I haven't read any of the others. Would this be a problem?

Part of the reason that I've been so slow to read it is the whole "foreigners come into a society and save it" trope. I read the first few pages and realized that the protagonists were presumably white, among a society that seem to be based of off somewhere in Asia. It was not conducive to continued reading.

As for Kristoff... I enjoyed the first book. I don't know that much about Japanese culture, or even the anime he might have been basing it off. I just found it fun to read about a girl and a griffin. Sure, I noticed a few things. The pandas, for example. But I didn't really realize the extent of his non-research until I looked into it. He literally used Wikipedia.

Now I have this sense of guilt when I try to pick up the second book. If I ever do read it, it will be a guilty pleasure read. However, I think I'm feeling more guilt than pleasure. Why, oh why did I buy a hardback copy of it?

Battle Magic is chronologically the ninth in a series. I have not read it myself--it sounded much too dark for me to be interested, in addition to the issues you've noticed.

Though I do have to say that only one of the three main protagonists of Battle Magic is actually white. Evvy is originally from one of the countries coded as Asian, and Briar is of mixed race. So, two out of three are not white, but they're still foreigners. ETA: Priviledged foreigners, yet. They're mages associated with a very famous temple/school.

>15 pwaites:,16 What lohengrin said- Battle Magic comes chronologically after Pierce's Circle of Magic quartet, which follows four orphaned or unwanted ten-year-old mages after they come to a temple, acquire mentors who teach them in their magic (thread, smithing, weather manipulation, and plant magic respectively) and face earthquakes, pirates, forest fires, plague and personal issues. The Circle Opens quartet after that splits those characters up (one per book) on journeys with their mentors and are all focused around solving a crime (assassinations, gangs, arson, and murder) and the character taking a student.

Battle Magic is about Briar and his mentor Rosethorn, both plant mages, and Briar's student Evvy, a stone mage, and takes place after Briar acquires Evvy as a student in Street Magic; there are two earlier-published books that come later, The Will of the Empress which brings the four mages back together at the temple, and Melting Stones, originally an audiobook, which follows Evvy, who splits off from Briar and Rosethorn after Battle Magic (I've not read The Will of the Empress or Melting Stones yet, so I'm not sure quite the circumstances.)

In Battle Magic, Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy go to the home temple of the Living Circle religion (the one that temple that took Briar and the others in in the first four books practices)- the temple is in Gyonxe, which is about to be invaded by Yanjing- pretty much a Tibet and China analogue. Evvy is from Yanjing, but was an unwanted younger child who was sold into slavery because Yanjing society is awful!! so she ran away and ended up living alone in the city Briar meets her at in Street Magic, and Rosethorn is a dedicate of the temple, so they do have some connections to the situation, but... Pierce's track record in this area isn't so great, despite her other strengths.

I suspect Battle Magic is probably written to stand alone pretty well since it's been about five years since the last book came out, but you might have a better idea of the character relationships and the world. I personally like the first quartet quite a bit, though much of that is nostalgia I'm sure because I read them at the right time- I like the focus on uses for magic that aren't war and killing, though there is some of that, especially with the pirates. The second quartet took things right back to the genre-typical focus on uses of magic for violence, though, and Battle Magic seems to take that even further.

I have fairly much invested in these characters, though, having been reading the series since around the time the fifth book came out- but I expect to wince my way through parts of it. The way I have decided personally to deal with liking and even enjoying problematic things is not to give them a pass on issues despite the parts I like, to bring those things up for discussion and include them as qualifiers in recommendations if I recommend them to others, and try to give an equal or greater platform to similar works that do it right- especially works by authors who fall into the category that's marginalized by the problematic parts. I'm not claiming that this is the best solution, and definitely not that I'm perfect about doing this this, but I like to hope that it balances things out a little.

Speaking of problematic books, Cyna at You're Killing Us had a (spoilery!) review of Kinslayer up today. It seems like Kristoff did a little more research on things like linguistic issues, so some of those errors are fixed, but there's a lot of icky male-gaziness and "the worst bits of torture, prolonged suffering, and victimization are only wheeled out for women and gay men." There were a couple of bits she liked though.

>9 kceccato:-14 Thank you for the detailed summaries! I had wondered if that was a case of "bad blurb."

Sabetha and Drakasha sound like very interesting characters, and that might sway me to try the books, but I can't help but noticing in your SPOILERS that an awfully high percentage of female characters end up dead, in ways that are stereotypical for female characters to die. I noticed you said there's a lot of character deaths, though- do between a third to half of the named, important male characters end up dead because they're evil, sacrificing themselves for the good of everyone, or as motivation for other characters?

I'm also a little bit mystified- not just picking on this series, because I've seen it in other places too- as to how "boys club" mentalities like with Locke's group arise in created cultures that are theoretically gender-neutral- it seems to me those things aren't compatible unless one goes for the gender essentialist "men are inherently sexist pigs even in the absence of learned sexism" explanation.

Mixed feelings about how well I'd like these, but they are readily available... Can I ask for a SPOILER which might be the deciding factor for me, does Sabetha end up romantically involved with Locke or are there strong indications it's going there? If so, I think that would undermine the "his love at first sight is stupid" thing for me by playing the trope so that it's validated in the end, even if it gets there the long way around.

17> I'll skip on Battle Magic then. I may read the first quartet, as that sounds more to my taste.

I think you have the right idea about problematic books. A book usually isn't all good or all bad, there's usually at least something that the author does well. I wouldn't feel guilt about it - as you said, you're bringing the issues into discussion.

I'll probably try to read Kinslayer at some point. I've already bought a hardback copy, and I'd hate to resell it without reading it. Besides, I'd rather start it and not finish it, than never give it a fair try.

Male characters die just as much as female characters. SPOILERS AHEAD. Nazca's brothers and fathers are both killed (it's her entire family that goes, not just her). The majority of the "boys club" gang dies (murdered by the villain, and thus motivation for the survivors) . The male villain, brother of the Berengias sisters also dies. All of those were in the first book. There's male characters who die in the second, but I cared much more about Ezri so I don't really remember the details.

STILL SPOILERS: I can only think of one significant death in the third book, that of the female mage Patience which came in the last chapter. By then she wasn't as good as she first seemed. I don't think she was completely evil though; I think she was doing what she thought she had to do for the greater good.

AGAIN, SPOILERS: Sabetha does not end up with Locke at the very end of the book (they are together for a short time during it), and Locke makes the decision not to go after her.

END OF SPOILERS

I don't think the culture is entirely gender-neutral, or intended to be. I think Sabetha's comments and struggles are supposed to point this out.

I'm about two thirds through Civil War Wives, but I got sidetracked when a friend handed me Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

I loved Mistborn. The world was so interesting - ash that falls from the sky, a magic system based around swallowing metal. And it was wonderful to watch Vin grow from a character who mistrusted everyone, to someone with friends she cared about.

However, Vin was the only female protagonist. All the rest of the thieving crew were male. This doesn't strike me as entirely realistic - women are just as likely to have magical powers as men, so why wasn't there more women among the protagonists?

19: I agree, Mistborn is great, and it's great that Vin is a good female character, but the book could have used more women. It doesn't make any sense for their to be so few. I seem to remember a female Mistborn (or a Misting, I forget) later on in the books, but she was evil. There is one other good woman in one of the later books, but her role is limited.

I just reread my reviews of the books, and the good thing is, although there are still not enough good women in book 2, at least there is a remarkable lack of male condescension.

19, 20: Vin's only female peer in the first book was Shan Elariel -- her enemy. None, but NONE of her friends were female. This bothered me (along with Vin's animosity toward reading; I find it next to impossible to identify with a character like that). Sarene in Elantris was much more my kind of heroine, that is, more of a thinker, but she, too, had no substantial female friends, although there were a couple of women in very minor roles with whom she was friendly. Even in Warbreaker, which boasted two female leads, those leads scarcely interacted with each other at all; all their important relationships were with male characters.

So Sanderson, while he does a good job of creating individual female characters who are competent, powerful, or both, falls short when it comes to depicting female friendships, or any kind of close connection between girls and women. I understand The Way of Kings does a better job of this; I will need to read it and see.

21 (kceccato): So far I've only read the Mistborn trilogy and Elantris (oh, and The emperor's soul), and I agree. On the other hand, at least the female roles he does write tend to be good, and his books are good too. So yes, I think it's something he should work on, but I will definitely keep reading his books. And hope he'll improve on this point...

> 20, 21, 22 I didn't think Shan Elariel was worth mentioning. Not only was she evil from the get go, but Vin killed her. It's hard to find someone whose more of an antagonist.

I'm going to keep reading Sanderson. I'll probably finish the Mistborn trilogy first, and I've already had Elantris on my to read list. I'll add Warbreaker and The Way of Kings as well.

I wasn't bothered by Vin's animosity towards reading. She grew up in a world were reading for pleasure was unimaginable, and it sounded like she wasn't able to read very well. She didn't see it as being as important for her survival, and I think it's understandable that she preferred things which were easier for her. I remember hating to read the first year or so I was taught. The books were all boring, and I felt like I was bad at it. It took me getting interested in books to improve and begin to enjoy it.

I also have friends who hate reading. I don't completely understand it, but I think they just think differently. Many of them really love math or music. I think in Vin's case, she cared more about things that she could see and touch.

I actually prefer to have some protagonists dislike reading, if it makes sense for there character. To often it seems like authors have there characters uniformly able to read and enjoy it, despite the fact that except for the past couple of hundred years, the majority of people have been illiterate. As fantasy normally has a medieval setting, it doesn't make sense for the majority of characters to be able to read, especially if they come from a poor background such as Vin. I was surprised that she could read in the first place, and I think having her love reading would have been pushing it.

On another note, I spent Thanksgiving reading Tooth and Claw. It's possibly the first book I've found that takes place entirely among dragons, even if these dragons act like humans in many ways.

Despite the dragons, I am surprised that I enjoyed it so much. It was primarily a family drama, dealing with matters such as inheritance and marriage. Maybe the stakes seem higher if you have the possibility of your main characters being eaten?

The ending felt a little trim, like the author had wrapped up all the plot threads with a big bow on top. Everyone was married off and had come into fortune, or at least in the case of the protagonists. Not one character's fate was left to doubt. I do like disparate plot threads coming together, but when it's this neat it feels contrived. The only thing worse would have been to have an epilogue telling what happens to each of the characters up until their deaths.

23: Let a heroine dislike reading if she must, or even let her be illiterate -- but let her somehow be imaginative, with at least some slight touch of the "dreamer aspect." I never saw any of this in Vin.

Speaking of imagination, I'm glad you liked Tooth and Claw, one of the more imaginative takes on dragons I've ever read.

I've finished The Swan Kingdom. It was a very fast read and much shorter than I was expecting. Sweet, but simple and less powerful than I would have liked. It was also much lighter - I was expecting at least some of the darkness of the original fairy tale. On the Harry Potter sliding scale of darkness, it would be The Sorcerer's Stone. Unfortunately The Deathly Hallows was my favorite. Maybe it says something about me.

My biggest issue with the book is trifling, yet one highly irritates me: the cover.


They just shoved two not very good photographs together and erased part of one. Wow, that probably took all of five minutes. I went hunting for other versions, and most of them are just as bad.


Marvel, at the elementary Photoshop skills! Stare in awe at the use of copy and paste! Gasp at the white airbrushing!


This one isn't as bad. It's just relying too much on rainbows, flowers, and glitter.


Out of all the covers, I think this is the best, even if it's boring. There's nothing that objectionable about it, and it's vaguely related to the book. It's just dull.

I think every book deserves a good cover, not something that looks like it was made for Intro to Photoshop.

I've been feeling the need to read more John Green, so I read Looking for Alaska earlier this week. I won't be rereading it. It took too long to get to the point, and I didn't particularly like any of the characters. In fact, I disliked Alaska, which possibly defeated the whole purpose of the book.

I haven't had much time to read this week, and I won't in the upcoming two weeks. Once I survive exams, I'll get back to work on the growing stack of books on my desk. For now, I've decided to post some of my favorite covers. Since I posted covers I disliked, I think it's only fair to also post covers I like.



I love the line work in the new Discworld covers. They're so detailed! Plus, the text flowing out of the hat like that is a nice touch.



The silhouettes of the characters are so vibrant and active! The artwork fits so well with the imagery of the book.



Remember my complaints about bad Photoshop? This is what good Photoshop looks like. The colors and composition are so beautiful.



I like how it's so unsaturated except for the goggles. You wonder what the person's looking at, and then you see the reflection of the air ship in the goggles. The textography is also well done.

I thought that both the UK and US covers for Ocean at the end of the lane were striking and well done, but I do slightly prefer the US one. I loved the simpicity of the black, white and red Night circus too.

I have the third of the Swan kingdom covers, and I do like it, if only because the artist resisted the temptation to try and picture the characters or a scene from the novel. The first two are pretty generic (comatose girl or hooded figure ... *sigh*) and would have put me off the book. I really liked the novel and didn't mind that it wasn't so dark. I do need to read Daughter of the forest by Juliet Mariller though, which I gather restores the darkness of the original.

27> Daughter of the Forest looks amazing.

28: It is, it's a great book.

I've been rereading the Dragonback books by Timothy Zahn. These books win my "worst covers ever" award. Their covers are horrible, absolutely horrible. Today, I looked at the back of one and saw that the cover artist was Jon Foster, whose name I recognized. He's made some of my favorite covers! Boneshaker, in my post above? By him. I was stunned and of course immediately began searching to find more information. I went to his online gallery and found the cover art without the text or design work.

Three covers followed by original artwork:







Now, these are not Jon Foster's best works, but when compared to the final covers, they are much better. I think part of it is that they don't take up the full cover - in my opinion, it never looks good if the artwork only takes up part of the cover. It is better if the artwork incorporates areas where text can be placed.

However, he clearly didn't read the books. The dragon is repeatedly, repeatedly described as golden. Yet, on every single cover he's green.

And the typography is horrible. There's no getting around that.

I also noticed that on Dragon and Thief, the artwork on the cover is different from the artwork in Jon Foster's gallery. The wings have been removed (this is actually in keeping with the book), and the image has been darkened and blurred. I looked inside the cover to see who did the design work and found that Jon Foster was only listed as the cover artist on the back of the book. Inside, it lists David Gaadit as the cover artist.

I tried to search David Gaadt, but I didn't find much. I did find that he's responsible for the following Ender's Game cover:



A blog that lists the changes of cover for Ender's Game says the following:

(It) was created to make Tor's back catalogue more attractive to a younger audience. Personally, I think it's more targeted at parents buying "appropriate" books for their children, so it's not a very good idea and doesn't do the book justice. Especially the first release with cover art by a widely unknown artist named David Gaadt -- interestingly enough a Greensboro, SC resident like Orson Scott Card -- makes Ender's Game look like a story for children. Fun times in zero gravity with a cool and shiny suit and helmet.

My best guess is that Gaadt was hired by Starscape to make Zahn's first YA series more attractive to a younger audience. I likewise am guessing that he's the one responsible for the faulty cover design.

The promised book carving:

Wow, that's beautiful! And highly original, I've never hear of book carving before.

31: Extraordinary. My compliments. I'm impressed.

What was the book, and does the composition relate to it?

33, 32> Thank you!

The book was an old history book that covered from the pre-agrarian age to the industrial revolution. It doesn't have anything to do the picture, I was just using it as a canvas.

My problem is finding books I'm willing to use. Even then I'll still feel guilty for cutting it up.

Nice work! It must have been hard to make the first cut, but some books are in such bad condition or so outdated that they will just end up in a landfill or recycling centre. It's much better to turn them into works of art.

oh that's amazing! very nicely done!

I am impressed!

Books I want to read in 2014 (This list is ever growing):

- Shadows - it's by Robin McKinley. What else can be said?

- Raising Steam - currently, the only Discworld book I haven't read. I haven't been as fond of the last view (Unseen Academicals, Snuff), but anything by Terry Pratchett is still wonderful. Plus, it will be nice to read new work concerning my favorite characters, which the Discworld has in abundance. Vimes is probably my favorite character of all time, but I love so many of the others as well: Granny Weatherwax, Tiffany Aching, Angua, Carrot, Cheery (or Cheeri), Moist, Andora Dearheart, the Luggage, Rincewind, Lord Vetinari, Death, Susan...

- The Golem and the Jinni - I've heard so many good things about this one, and it has two of the more unpopular creatures as leads. It will be a bit of an unusual read for me - I don't normally read books widely considered to have "literary" value.

- Magic Breaks - This series is always very enjoyable, and I want to find out what happens as the story nears the end.

- The Well of Ascension - If I didn't have finals, I would have read this already. I really enjoyed Mistborn, and I felt the beginnings of a plot for the next book. Naturally, I want to find out more. I'd like to read some more books by Brandon Sanderson as well. Maybe Elantris?

Others on my to read list:

The Rook
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
His Majesty's Dragon
The Safe-Keeper's Secret
Daughter of the Forest
Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome
Sandry's Book
War for the Oaks
Shadowland

When looking for books, I mainly look at authors. If I've read one book by that author that I enjoyed, I'm much more likely to pick up another one. For certain authors, I'll read anything they write. Some, I'll buy it not even knowing what it's about. Others I'll try to pick it up from the library. It depends on how reliable I think they are when it comes to writing good books.

Authors Whose Books I'll Get As Soon As Possible:
Terry Pratchett
Robin McKinley
Holly Black
Scott Westerfeld
Jasper Fforde
Cherie Priest
Cornelia Funke
J.K. Rowling - I know some people haven't liked her non Harry Potter work, but I've loved everything she's written.
Neil Gaiman
Rick Yancey - I haven't really liked his mysteries, but I'll wait eagerly for any new YA releases.
Patrick Rothfuss - I don't know if he should be on this list, as he's only published two books. That being said, when he finally gets around to releasing the third, I'll get it immediately.

Does anyone have suggestions to add to the lists?

Due to finals, Christmas, and illness, it's been a while since I've updated. I'm currently reading The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England and enjoying it immensely. Daily life has always been my favorite part of history, and by the very nature of the book it includes a lot of information about life in the fourteenth century. Interesting fact - during the fourteenth century, men's clothing styles changed much more than women's.

I've also started The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making but have gotten stuck around page fifty. I really dislike the writing style, which mimics Victorian era fairy tales and which I find cloying. I want to it a bit more time, but by avoiding it I'm taking up even more time that could be spent reading other books.

Before and during Christmas, I read The Retrieval Artist and Other Stories in preparation for reading Extremes. It was a solid collection which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, I realized that I'd almost completely forgotten what happened in The Disappeared, the book that comes before The Extremes. To remedy this, I reread The Disappeared.

The Disappeared is a detective story set in the future on the moon colony of Armstrong. In order for humanity to be able to trade with alien species, society permits alien justice systems to affect humans, even if they did not perceive that they were committing a crime. The punishments for the crime will likewise be handed over to the alien species - they can range from life imprisonment in a harsh alien work camp to handing over your first born child. To avoid these things, people contact a disappearance service which gives them a new identity on a different world.

I love world building, and the alien races and the moon colony give plenty of it. The situation itself is also a difficult and perplexing one. How do you deal with a completely different culture, with completely different ideas of justice? Is it ethical to go against their laws and your own government's agreement to preserve our view of justice?

Unfortunately, the same reasons that made me like The Disappeared made me tepid on Extremes. Extremes has no aliens. Not one. It deals entirely with a human crime and thus has none of the knotty questions of it's precursor.

I'll stick with the series, as the later books promise to have more aliens.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Extremes, The Retrieval Artist and Other Stories, and The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England were all some of the books that I recieved for Christmas. The amount of books was surprising, but in retrospect it makes since. Relatives are constantly complaining about the difficulties of getting gifts for teenagers, and my Goodreads "To Read" list would be the answer to the constant question of "What do you want for Christmas?"

I just finished The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England yesterday and enjoyed it very much--one of many things I'd probably never have heard about outside LT. I hope I retain some of the wonderful tidbits that are so plentiful in this book, such as that the "mystery" in medieval mystery plays refers not to their being about some sort of sacred mysteries of religious dogma, as I thought, but to the craftsmen's guilds that were required to put them on--because "mystery" was another word for "guild." The connection? (I had to look this up elsewhere.) The root of the word has to do with being initiated into secret knowledge--as a guild member would be--and the sense of it evidently evolved to mean any kind of hidden knowledge.

39: The "Retrieval Artist" series intrigues me. Is Noelle DiRicci a good character? Does she have plenty to do?

40> Same here. I think some of it could be especially useful for anyone writing fantasy.

41> Yes, she is. She's the senior detective on the case who keeps getting assigned new partners and cases that no one else wants due to her unfortunate tendency of ticking of her bosses. She's tough, smart, fully competent, and gets a fair amount of page time and action. The other female POV character is a disappeared on the run. She is presented sympathetically, although she's at odds with the law.

I've read a few more books, which I'll talk about later. But first, here's the updated 'To Read' stack.

Eona by Alison Goodman
Kinslayer byJay Kristoff (It may be awhile for these two. I've moved them to the bottom of the heap)
A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor
UnSouled by Neal Shusterman
The Fires of Vesuvius by Mary Beard
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse by Hermann Hesse
The Line Between by Peter S. Beagle (I love The Last Unicorn, but haven't read anything else by him)
The Folk of the Air by Peter S. Beagle
The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey
Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (Probably will be the next book I pick up)
The Chosen by Chiam Potok
The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn
His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
King's Dragon by Kate Elliott
The Safe-Keeper's Secret by Sharon Shinn
Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon
Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn
The Mediator by Meg Cabot
Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome by Lesley Adkns and Roy A. Adkins

I think it's possible that some of these books may still be in the stack come summer. Now, onto what I've actually read.

I gave up on The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and picked up Elantris instead. Elantris hooked me as thoroughly as Mistborn did. I found myself with ink-stains on my fingers reading far into the night. Elantris follows the drama of a kingdom next to the ruined and fabled city of Elantris, which used to be so full of magic that it's inhabitants were viewed as gods. After Elantis fell, ten years prior to the story, the kingdom of Arelon suffered constant upheaval and distress. In addition, Arelon remains one of only two kingdoms that have yet to be conquered by a militant religion that serves as a vehicle for empire building. The story starts off with the introduction of it's three POV characters: Raoden, crown prince of Arelon and new-found Elantrian; Sarene, the politically minded princess and betrothed of Raoden; and Hrathen, a priest of the militant religion who has been sent to convert Arelon or else.

I quickly found that Raoden's story-line was the most interesting to me, or at least in the beginning. He's been thrown into a city inhabited by what are basically sentient zombies who can never heal and thus accumulate pain from every injury they suffer. Raoden has to deal with the threats of violence and insanity, and he persists in trying to craft an orderly world out of this madness. While the other characters story lines start out slow, Raoden's promises action and excitement from the beginning. And his story delivers. I didn't have any problems with Raoden's story line, or at least until he began to interact with Sarene (more on that later).

I was bored for Sarene's section. In the early chapters at least, her political maneuvering doesn't seem to consist of much. She deals with the fully obnoxious king, makes allies with the nobility, goes to balls, teaches the other noble ladies to fence for some reason, tries to find out what happened to Raoden (which we already know) and aghasts over not having a man in her life. It is repeatedly stated that she's too intelligent and outspoken to find a husband and that no one wants to marry her (luckily for her, she's destined to end up with Raoden. It's obvious from the beginning). Her complaints actually reminded me of a book that I had to read for US History, Civil War Wives. One of the women it focused on was Varina Howell Davis, who was very intelligent and felt limited by the gender roles of the time. She was outspoken and had a bitting wit, but in direct contrast to Sarene's situation, men tended to like her because of it (it probably helped that she was good looking). Thus, the "I'm too intelligent for them" falls flat on it's face.

Before I get to Hrathen, I want to talk about Sarene and Raoden's relationship. Okay, so I find out that two of the protagonists and a prince and a princess, who are engaged. And the prince is presumed dead. With all my reading of the fantasy genera, it is immediately obvious how this is going to turn out. They are going to end up together. It is a fact, and Elantris follows through. It's insta-love at it's worst. They haven't even met each other before insta-love kicks in. They've only exchanged letter's and talked to each other through these magical devices. Sarene thinks, "Oh, here's someone who will finally love me! Yay, I've found what I've always wanted more than anything else - true love!" Raoden thinks, "Finally, here's a woman who is strong and intelligent - not like all those other women!" Truly, he thinks that she's different from all the other women. It would be hard to say if his comparison is accurate, because there aren't many other female characters to compare her to.

SPOILERS: "Well," I think, "at least Raoden's some sort of thinking zombie. At least that's different. It doesn't nearly make up for the "destined for each other" trope, but at least it's something unusual." Of course, by the end of the book, the magic problem has been solved and Raoden is transformed into a godlike Elantrian. And in my opinion, shining is nearly as bad as sparkling.

And even before he makes his final transformation, his zombie like status doesn't appear to be an issue in the relationship. Not even in the "Beauty and the Beast" sense, and I hate that trope. Part of this may be because Sarene doesn't actually find out that the mysterious "Spirit" she's been talking to is actually her long lost Raoden. Raoden, for some inexplicable reason, chooses not to tell her who he is. I don't really recall it being explained. I think at first he wanted to get to know her before revealing himself, but he quickly moves into being friends with her and heads over heels. And yet, he doesn't tell her. Not even when she gets thrown into Elantris due to Hrathen's duplicity. During which time she does nothing I might add.

So, at the end of the book we have shining, magical Raoden saving Sarene. Once again, the magical "other" guy ends up with the ordinary girl. At least she isn't in high school. END SPOILERS

On to Hrathen. At the beginning of the book, I wasn't that interested in his sections for many of the same reasons that I didn't like Sarene's (supposed political maneuvering disguising nothing much happening). But by the end, I think he was my favorite of the three POV characters. I enjoyed seeing him struggle to decide what to do, and I rejoiced when he made the decision to prevent further bloodshed at all costs. SPOILER For some random reason he fell in love with Sarene before dying in the end. No, I don't get why he fell in love with her either. He never even really spoke with her. I get the dying part - authors never seem to know what to do with an antagonist who switches sides. These types of characters tend to die frequently. END SPOILER. There it is, my thoughts on Elantris, which took up more space than I was suspecting. Oh, well.

Due to the text wall on Elantris, I think I'll post my thoughts on Raising Steam and Confessions of a Sociopath at a later point.

Be sure to check out the group read we did on Elantris in the Green Dragon. It was our first group read, and Brandon Sanderson graciously contributed to it. You can find the link to it on the group page.

Yes, there are three Elantris threads!

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Groups:The_Green_Dragon/Group_book_di...

44, 45: Good to know!

That is a great analysis of Elantris. I was completely engrossed in the book while reading and devoured it like popcorn, but, after finishing, some of the same issues that you picked up on niggled at me. I do love Sanderson's characters, but I wish he'd put more than one main woman in each novel. (Okay, Warbreaker has two, and I believe that The way of kings is better in this respect too.)

44, 45> Thanks for the heads up! I've read over the Elantris threads, and I found Brandon Sanderson's comments the most interesting part. It's not very often that you get the author's feedback like that.

47> I was the same way. Most of those issues didn't occur to me until I'd finished it. It was actually an easy book to analyze - I find that I have more to say about the very long books. It's the short, light ones where I can't find much to say. I'd love to pick up Warbreaker and The Way of Kings and will certainly be reading them at some point.

I wasn't a big fan of Raising Steam. Possibly, my expectations were to high, but there just seemed to be something off about the writing. The sentences seemed longer and more rambling, and I only laughed out loud once. I remember feeling the same way about Snuff. Oh, well. At least we got to see some of the characters again. But even that felt off - the dialog in particular. If the names had been changed, I'm not sure I would have recognized them.

I borrowed Confessions of a Sociopath from my sister, a rare occasion as she's not much of a reader. The book was interesting enough, but on reflection I don't know how much of it is true (probably to be expected). I can't understand lacking empathy, and I don't think that I ever will.

I read through The Name of the Star this morning. It was fairly entertaining and enjoyable, though not something I'd rave about or hand over to friends. It had the fairly standard, designated love interest, but in general the romance was low key. More so than I've seen in most other recent YA books. My biggest complaint would be that it took a while for the book to get moving. For the first half of the book or so, the main character was just living her ordinary life while things happened in the background.

School's starting back up, so my reading pace will slow down. No more hours on end with a book in hand...

#43: I read Unwind a while back and really enjoyed it, but I hadn't known it was part of a series. I liked how it ended and, in my mind, it was complete and that was that. Now I find out there are two more books in that world, and I'm hesitant to pick them up. What do you think? Should I pick up Unwholly? Is there more for thought in it? Or are they the same thoughts rewritten just for the sake of another book?

49> I liked the second well enough and would recommend picking up the second. I still haven't read the third and last book, and I may want to get back to you after I do so.

Thanks, pwaites. I also just read the blurb on Unwholly and see that it delves deeper in the type of world that supports unwinding (corporately and politically). It does sound interesting, and my library has a copy, so (resistance is futile) it's on its way to me now.

51> I hope you enjoy it! I want to get to UnSouled soon, but there's so many books!

I'm reading The Line Between right now and enjoying it. I'll post some on it when I finish. The next book I read will probably be Let it Snow by John Green as the book club's meeting to discuss it on Wednesday, unless it gets postponed (we have a habit of doing this). I won't get the book until Monday, so fingers crossed as to how much I'll be able to read!

I'll also be starting on Beowulf for English class in about two weeks time or sooner. A research paper was assigned today, and out of the options available I'm thinking of doing on the historical and social context of Beowulf. Or, I might do it on the feminist link between The Handmaiden's Tale and The Scarlet Letter. Writing both of these actually sounds kind of fun, but I have to chose between them.

In other news, I've decided to post a list of some of my favorite literary heroines. I've been answering some recommendation requests on Goodreads, one of which was asking for strong female characters. It got me thinking.

Note: the numbering is not reflective of how much I like the heroine. I like all of them, and it would be too hard to rank them.

1. Boneshaker's Brier. From my suggestion on Goodreads:

"A woman and her teenage son live next to a walled city filled with poisonous gas and zombies. The teenage boy goes into the city to find out what became of his father.

In most books, that would be that. He would be the main character, and we wouldn't hear from his mother again until the end of the book. But in Boneshaker, his mother decides she's not going to let him do something so stupid and takes off after him."

I love Brier. She goes through so much hardship, but she stays so strong. And where else do you see a character like her? The mother's of those adventuresome teenage boys are usually non-characters, who stay home if they aren't dead.

2. Discworld's Granny Weatherwax.

(illustration by Paul Kidby)

There's something about arrogant characters that makes them so fun! Granny believes that she's capable of everything, and she always thinks that she knows best. Just when you start to think she's full of it, she'll pull something so amazing and you'll remember how completely competent she is.

You also get the sense of what a difficult job she has. She takes care of all the people and problems that come her way, and she doesn't very often get thanks. She straddles the line between the light and the dark, but she'll always do what's right. As she says, "fairy godmothers give you what you want, witches give you what you need."

3. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie's Flavia De Luce.

Flavia's a brilliant eleven year old girl with a love of chemistry. There are just so many little things about her that are wonderful - for example, she named her bike Gladys. And her relationship with her sisters rings true - antagonistic at times but with love underneath.

4. Discworld's Tiffany Aching.

The Discworld is home to many of my favorite characters, both male and female. I think what I love most about Tiffany is her love for words. Here's a nine year old girl who read through the dictionary and has a favorite word, "susurrus." I can connect with her so completely, it's scary. I remember reading Wintersmith during my freshman year of high school (I would have been about the same age as Tiffany was in the book) and being shocked by how closely her thoughts and feelings mirrored mine. I still have no idea how Terry Pratchett was so accurately able to channel a thirteen year old girl. It's truly amazing.

5. Dealing with Dragons's Cimorene.

Cimorene's been a favorite of mine from an early age. I remember my dad reading out loud Dealing to Dragons to me and doing my second grade book report on it. Even when I was in the princess stage, I loved the princess who wouldn't be proper. I myself would rather live with dragons than learn etiquette and marry a prince. Really, who could pass up dragons?

This list is growing longer than I expected. There's various other heroines I'll have to post at another date, and I'd like to start one of my favorite heroes at some point (Sam Vimes is my favorite character ever. He'd be right at the top of the list).

In writing this list and thinking of the heroines I haven't yet added, I've realized that many of them are written by male authors. Of course, part of that is because Terry Pratchett has a disproportionate share. But there's still another of others.

I like the idea of your list, pwaites. I'm curious to see who else will get on there!

53> It'll probably be something I post on when I'm in the middle of something and haven't yet developed thoughts on it or when I'm between books.

I've finished The Line Between, which I enjoyed. It's a solid short story collection with a few gems and no real blemishes. My favorite was probably "El Regalo," and I'd be eager to read what he writes next with the characters. I liked "Quarry" but found it confusing. I'd probably need to read The Innkeeper's Song, which it's a prequel of, to understand it. I liked "Two Hearts," the sequel story to The Last Unicorn, well enough. The narrator is very engaging and I like the story with the griffin, but I think it suffers in comparison. The Last Unicorn is such a beautiful and powerful book that any sequel was going to fall short.

I've started reading and researching Beowulf (Seamus Heaney's translation). I was a bit worried at first - epic poems aren't really my thing - but I'm enjoying it so far. The story's interesting, and I like the rhythm of the words. Here's a quote:

"In off the moors, down through the mist bands
God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.
The bane of the race of men roamed forth,
hunting for a prey in the high hall.
Under the cloud-murk he moved towards it
until it shone above him, a sheer keep
of fortified gold. " (lines 710 - 716)

So far my only problem is keeping track of all the names. Ancient Germanic names aren't the easiest to remember, and a distressing number seem to begin with "h."

The introduction to this version mentioned that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a paper, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," which changed the way that Beowulf was viewed. Even though I haven't read The Lord of the Rings (I've tried repeatedly to get through The Hobbit), I can see how Beowulf could be an influence. Ancient warriors, battling trolls and dragons. Maybe I should make a serious effort to read The Lord of the Rings. Is it better than The Hobbit and can it be read without having read The Hobbit first?

LOTR can certainly be read without reading The Hobbit. Tolkien catches you up on everything you need to know. The question of whether it's better is an interesting one. I'd say it depends on why you didn't care for The Hobbit. He wrote it as a children's story, whereas LOTR isn't, so it has a different tone and atmosphere. On the other hand, it's still Tolkien, so his style is still evident.

By the way, his essay on Beowulf is on line - easy to find via Goggle.

52: What a great list!

I haven't made the acquaintance of Briar or Flavia yet, but I wholeheartedly concur with the love for Granny, Tiffany, and Cimorene. I don't know of any writer, male or female, who can write tough, smart, take-no-prisoners female characters quite like Terry Pratchett; one of the biggest advantages he gives them, I think, is that they get to be funny, when entirely too often, "tough women" are written as humorless in a humorless context. And I have a soft spot for Cimorene, because 1) she's best buddies with a dragon, and 2) she's one of the few princesses in fantasy literature whom I actually admire and enjoy reading about.

I, too, love Sam Vimes.

54: Yes, it's possible to read and enjoy The Lord of the Rings without having read The Hobbit. I love The Hobbit, but then, it's written in that whimsical Victorian fairy tale style that I enjoy but I know you don't care for. I wouldn't bother with it if it isn't to your taste, and there's very little of that same whimsical style in LOTR.

55> I've found a copy of the essay but haven't gotten to reading it yet.

It's been a long time since I last tried to read the Hobbit. I remember hating the part about the merry elves. The style might be the issue, but I feel guilty for being someone who reads mainly fantasy and hasn't read Tolkien. And I enjoy reading about Middle Earth and his world building.

You might find The Silmarillion to be a better avenue of approach into Tolkien's universe than the Hobbit. I think his creation story there is just one of the best created myths I've ever read. The other tales in the collection give you a good sense of where his mind was focused.

By the way, I really loved the write-up of Elantris. I agree with all of it.

There are parts I love about the Hobbit, and other parts that annoy me to no end. I don't think the Lord of the Rings is anything like it at all, and as for story line, you will miss only tidbits of back story by not reading The Hobbit, and you can always read it after if you wish. This is not to say LotR is perfect, Tolkien certainly has his flaws, but the world is worth it all.

56> Terry Pratchett writes awesome characters in general, both male and female. To me, it's the characters that stand out most about his work. I love Discworld, but I think that a large part of the world building is in the characters who you see over and over again in varying books. Actually, Ank-Morpork itself sometimes feels like a character.

Now you've got me thinking about tough, humorous female characters. I can easily think of ones who are snarky and sarcastic, especially in urban fantasy sorts or books. For more straight out humor, maybe Thursday of The Eyre Affair? There's other fantasy authors who are funny, but next to Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde is probably the one whom I'm most likely to define as "humorous fantasy."

56, 58, 59> I've decided to give LOTR a try. I know that my grandmother has copies of the books, so I can borrow The Fellowship of the Ring the next time I visit her. The Victorian fairy tale style could vary well be why I didn't like Hobbit. It's the same reason I wasn't able to get into The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland.

I haven't done that much reading this week. I'm almost done with Beowulf. I really love the poetic translation by Seamus Heaney, but I also really love the theme of how old age will conquer everyone, even the great heroes. There's a sadness to it, a poignancy I wasn't expecting.

I've read five tales from The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse and the introduction. All of them have been magical and unexpected. It interesting that none of them are among the stories mentioned on the back of the book. I'm gathering that Hesse is better known for the stories with anti-war themes that he wrote during and after WWI.

I would recommend these stories, but I think it's necessary to point out an issue drawn up in the introduction:

"To a certain extent it is embarrassing to read Hesse's portrayal of women and their roles. Like many German writers of his generation, Hesse depicted women either as gentle muses who have a mysterious wisdom that men do not possess, or as strong and sensitive martyrs who are in contact with the source of knowledge."

I haven't really minded it so far. I don't expect much depth of characterization in fairy tales, and such things are more forgivable from older works.

In addition to these more traditional stories, I've been reading Romantically Apocalyptic, a web comic. Very funny and also somewhat confusing, it follows four survivors or the apocalypse, two of whom are insane. One of these two is the leader of the group, Zee Captain, a person of ambiguous gender (he/she always wears a heavy coat and a gas mask) and an unflagging positive view of the world.

Sometime this weekend I'm planing on reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of Universe. I don't know much about it, but a friend lent my the book and has been badgering me to read it.

Aristotle and Dante was enjoyable but also fairly forgettable and something I'm unlikely to reread. I'm not much into YA fiction that's "realistic."

On Tuesday I read both The Safe-Keeper's Secret and The Truth-Teller's Tale. They are short little books very fast reads. Both are fantasy, but neither had any action. Instead, they focused on the characters and the relationships between them. The Truth Teller's Tale had one of the best depictions of sisterhood I've seen in fantasy. All two often, one sister will be good and the other will be evil, and they'll be at odds the entire book. Or on the reverse side, there'll be a huge age gap and the younger sister is just a child who's to be protected (although it seems like this role is more often filled by younger brothers when there's a female lead). Another good pair of sisters that springs to mind is Nita and Dairine from the Young Wizard series, mainly High Wizardry and on.

I'm still reading short stories from The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse. They'll lovely, but I feel no real urge to read through them fast.

Update to the List of Favorite Heroines:

6. The Bartimeaus trilogy's Kitty Jones.

I will freely admit that Kitty is an action girl, especially in the second book. However, I think there's more to her than that. She struggling to change the highly unequal class system of the trilogy's world. And I think she does so in a way that makes sense. At first she goes to court, but when she fails to receive justice she winds up joining the resistance, which carries out attacks against the government. Eventually, she starts trying to find out more - she gains access to a library and starts trying to see things from other perspective's. I love her because she's relentless in her effort to do what's right, even when it's difficult.

7. Harry Potter's Hermione Granger.

It should be no real surprise that Hermione's on this list. The word's "academically oriented perfectionist" could be used to describe both me and her. While that is one reason I like her, it's another reason she'll never be my absolute favorite heroine. She's just too much like me.

I think the series would look pretty different if she were the main character - much more stressing over grades for one thing. And while her stress and focus on high achievement are mainly played either for laughs, I think it would be viewed very differently from her perspective. Seriously, all the times she's basically doing Ron and Harry's homework for them... it'd look very different from her perspective. What I do really like about her is that she changes throughout the series. By the end, she's realized that there are worse things than being expelled.

8. Sunshine's Sunshine.

Sunshine makes this book for me. It's written as a sort of stream of consciousness, and her rambling thoughts are delightful to read. She undervalues herself - at some point she says that she isn't brave, that the people she knows are, but that she's not. No spoilers, but by the end of the book she's found that bravery. Sunshine and her life are what make this book my favorite vampire story. Yes, there's vampires, but Sunshine has other things going on in her life. She's the queen of cinnamon rolls and all other baked goods, and the family restaurant and bakery pervades her life. Regrettably, I do tend to get hungry when reading her descriptions of her baking.

9. Discworld's Angua.

Angua is the only werewolf character I've ever liked hands down. She's brave and smart, but she's also very practical and has a somewhat cynical understanding of how the world works. All of this plays wonderfully off her boyfriend, Carrot, who's naive and a complete optimist. I know that this is supposed to be a listing of heroines, but Angua and Carrot are one of my favorite fictional couples. Why aren't there more like them?

Also, what is it about werewolves that usually makes them so unlikable?

10. High Wizardry's Dairine

I mentioned Dairine earlier, when I was talking about sisters in fantasy. Dairine's older sister Nita is actually the main character of the series. For two books Dairine is just the little sister who's sometimes there in the background. Then, in High Wizardry Dairine steals into her older sisters room, find her wizard's manual, take he wizard's oath, runs of to Mars, ends up on an uninhabited planet, and creates a new alien species. From then on, she's firmly cemented as a major character and as one of my favorites.

Don't get me wrong - I like Nita too. It's just that there's something so appealing about Dairine's determination to go out and get what she wants, which is to be a wizard (because it's completely unfair that her older sister gets to do awesome things and she doesn't). Plus, she's very fierce and brainy and loves StarWars. It's hard to get much better than that.

61: You don't like Remus Lupin? He's always struck me as a relatively inoffensive fellow... I agree completely about Angua, however. She is definitely a favorite. One thing I regret about Pratchett's more recent Night Watch novels is that she and Carrot have played less prominent roles; in Night Watch and Snuff, they're barely there at all -- although Angua does get one really good scene in the latter, and manages to be awesome in only a flicker of page time.

I really need to read the Bartimaeus trilogy. Sunshine is on my list as well; Robin McKinley can usually be relied upon to create a worthy heroine.

"Also, what is it about werewolves that usually makes them so unlikable?"

Oh, I don't know, maybe the fact that they lose control of themselves and rip everybody apart? ;)

I like some of the werewolves in the Dresden novels, some were just preposterous, and others evil/yuck/ptooie. I used to have a thing for the werewolf character in Dark Shadows. :D Way back in the day.

#63 - Well, he was a very pretty werewolf, that one.

Impressive list, pwaites. I actually know who most of them are. LOL I do love Granny Weatherwax!

62> I do like Lupin, but I tend to forget about him. He's mainly in the third book, and in the later books he gots lost among the other characters.

63> Maybe that is why I dislike werewolves. I really hate when they're "dangerous and uncontrolable" and also the love interest. Also, t often seems like the authors have no idea what a wolf is. Either they're monsters or noble nature spirits.

64> Granny Weatherwax is plain awesome, and she knows it!

I've just started on Part Three of The Way of Kings, and I have some thoughts.

One of the major characters, Shallan, has an artistic bent. I'm artistic myself, I can get behind this. But her attitude to her artwork doesn't mirror that of other artists I know. So far she's liked everything she's drawn, and all her drawings have been proclaimed a success. Admittedly, we haven't seen much of her so far (she disappeared for 400 pages or so), but not once has she expressed frustration at her artwork. Not once has she failed to accurately capture what she sees in her head. It just doesn't work this way. No one will have all wonderful drawings (at least not in their own eyes), and all artists are bound to get frustrated with a piece at some point.

Plus, a good deal of her ability seems to rely on her photogenic memory. She's able to recall scenes in perfect detail at least hours later.

Ergh. She just feels to perfect so far - aside from the dubious morality of her quest, that is. Maybe I'll get to like her more once we've seen more of her. For now, she's my least favorite protagonist.

However, this book is not lacking in viewpoint characters. So far, there's been at least five reoccurring ones. Szeth had the second prolong (really, there's two prolongs), and I've enjoyed his sections for the action and the mystery surrounding him. But I've only seen him three times so far, and he doesn't really merit as one of the main protagonists.

Kaladin was my favorite of part one, probably because he was in a much worse situation than Shallan. Shallan's trouble is months away, Kaladin's is with him every day. That being said, I'm noticing some similarities between Kaladin and Raoden. Both struggle to bring hope and humanity back to people at their lowest. Both have a sense of optimism. Both seem to be the hero who will Do The Right Thing.

For all my complaints, I liked reading Raoden's chapters, and I like reading Kaladin's. This is partially why I was annoyed when a new viewpoint character, Dalinar, is introduced in part two. I'd already gotten involved in the other characters struggles, and I didn't particularly care about Dalinar. But I found that as I read through his sections, I wouldn't be able to put the book down any more than I could during Kaladin's.

The world building is phenomenal but can be hard to wrap my head around. For one thing, there's the sheer strangeness of the land and creatures. Grass that retreats into holes in the rock, and crustaceans taking the place of cattle? What illustrations present help, but I think the book could use some more of them.

I think my favorite setting so far has been the Purelake. There's something I find fasinating about a people who live in the midst of a wide but shallow lake that's never more than six feet deep. Even their floors are covered in a few inches of water.

66: Is there more than one woman this time around?
This has been my main issue with Sanderson in the past. Even in Warbreaker, which boasts two (ineffectual) heroines, the two actually interact maybe twice? He's included some interesting women in his novels, but he doesn't have the best record with the Bechdel Test.

67> Among viewpoint characters? No. There are a few others. For example, when we first see her, Shallan is trying to become the ward of the king's sister, a famed scholar. She and Shallan obviously interact some (three or four times so far). They are by far the most major female characters though. There's a few others, but they're mainly scribes.

All the books of his that I've read have passed. Not particularly well, but they've passed. In the case of The Way of Kings so far, it would be one passing of the Bechdel Test per every 150 pages or so.

I'm still hoping that we might see more female characters. Dalinar had a vision of the past in which he saw a female Knight Radiant, complete with the magical armor and sword. I'm getting the feeling that the ancient, mythical past of this world will be returning. Maybe some warrior women will return with it? I've got my fingers crossed.

One of the reasons I'm hoping for this is because the main culture has very strictly defined gender roles. Art, writing, reading, history, and the like are considered part of the feminine sphere, whereas war and fighting are for men. As a consequence of the division, neither of the male protagonists can read and there is an abundance of female scribes. However, I miss the presence of action girls and warrior women.

Today was declared a snow day. So what did I do? Start working ahead? No! I spent my time finishing The Way of Kings, which I have decided deserves four stars.

The main issue with WoK is the same one I had with The Lies of Locke Lamora and co. It's necessarily long and has too many flashbacks which throw off pacing. The third prologue? The countless descriptions of Kaladin's childhood? Some of the interludes? All could go. What this book needs is to be honed and sharpened. It's begging for an editor's knife to take out some of the flab.

As other reviewers have pointed out, things don't really start coming together until page 800 or so. And even by the end of the book, the main characters haven't all converged or interacted. But at least they've been set on the path for the next book.

Speaking of the next book, this is supposed to be the first in a ten book series. So much felt like it was building up for the books to come. Other reviewers have said that this book stands on it's own, but I don't agree. Yes, it ended with a few major revelations instead of a cliffhanger, but there are still so many of questions that are left unanswered and so many things just about to occur. WoK had the feel of the start of an avalanche, but it was only in the last few hundred pages that the avalanche started to gain momentum.

My recommendation for anyone interested in the series would be to wait. Wait until more of it has been written, so you won't have to keep the details of the world and plot in your mind before the next book comes out. Plus, then you'd have something tangible ahead of you.

On a final note, I did get to like Shallan much more. At some point, I also found some suspicious parallels between Kaladin and Jesus. I'm thinking he's a Christ figure. He goes to great lengths to save the bridgemen. He's presumed dead after being left in a high storm as punishment, but then he miraculously survives when he should by all accounts be dead. Just wanted to point this out, as I haven't seen any other reviews saying it.

69: 10 books!?! Really? Pff, I think that's way too many. Still, I really like Sanderson, but perhaps I'll follow your advice...

>69 pwaites:: Having read your excellent review, I now don't feel bad about having kept The way of kings on Mount Tbr for so long.

70, 71> The second book comes out in March, so if you wait until then the series will be 1/5th done and there may be more of a reward for getting through the early parts of the first book. I agree - ten books seems excessive. We'll have to wait and see if he can pull it off well, but we'll probably be waiting for a long time.

The Way of Kings came out in 2011, I think? If he continues publishing the series at this rate, it won't be finished until 2038. Yikes. What if he gets bored with it half way through?

72: That's a depressing thought!

73: I've been looking on his website, and he says that he's going to try and publish one every 18 to 24 months, which would be around 2030.

I've just finished yet another Brandon Sanderson novel, this time in audio book format. Steelheart is a YA superhero novel - but all of the supers are evil.

I didn't particularly care for the narrator of this one. He felt too Gary Suish. He was eighteen and the newest member of a group that fought the Epics (the super humans). Despite this, he was the one who tended to save the day, come up with the brilliant ideas, and posse valuable information that the others didn't have. That, and he was infatuated with one of the two female characters, Megan. We were treated to multiple descriptions of her beauty, her red lips, her flowing golden hair, and her skill with handguns (at least she was competent and not some floozy).

I kept reading regardless. I liked the idea and the plot, and Sanderson had never let me down before. This time proved to be no exception. I'd been feeling like the story was predictable, when Sanderson did the thing I was least expecting. He killed off Megan. I was shocked. A YA novel where the love interest isn't sacred? That's practically unheard of. Of course, all is not what it seems.

DOUBLE SPOILER Megan's alive at the end. How? That's the great, awesome twist of the entire book. She's an Epic and was from the beginning. END DOUBLE SPOILER

But that wasn't the end of the twists, oh no. The ending was full of them, and I'd only figured one of them out (and I didn't even get that one fully).

In regard to the audio book qualities, Steelheart was also excellent. The narrator did a really great job, and I was completely immersed into the story. Unfortunately, I was so immersed that I burned through it in three days instead of the two weeks or so I'd been counting on. Oh, well. I'll just have to find another audio book.

This weekend I visited Atlanta to go on a few college tours. Of course, I had a couple of books with me for the plane flight.

Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn concerns the illegitimate daughter of a high ranking lord who visits her sister at Castle Auburn every summer. As she grows up, she notices trouble within the castle, such as her sister's ill fated arranged marriage to the prince. This being a Sharon Shinn book, our narrator of course finds her true love along the way.

Which brings me to my one grievance with the book. Coriel, the narrator, was unbelievably dense about a number of things, the most obvious the love interest. By the end of the book, it was incredibly obvious that he was in love with her. Important clues that she failed to understand: giving her the family ring he's worn his entire lifetime, tradition stating that he should marry a girl from her family (she doesn't even figure this out after her sister gets married), speaking meaningfully of love and marriage, saying he'll only marry someone he loves WHILE LOOKING RIGHT AT HER. Need I go on?

Her observation that things were amiss in her world seemed to come to suddenly. When we first see her at fourteen years old, she's completely clueless. Yet when she's seventeen she figures everything out and almost does an about face. I think it would have been more realistic if we saw her realize things over the course of several years, rather than over a month or so.

Oh, and I really, really loved how the situation with the arranged marriage played out. Elisandra kept telling Coriel not to worry - "I'll be fine." It isn't until after the odious husband to be dies on their wedding night from poison that I figured out what she'd meant... In retrospect, it was pretty obvious that she'd been planning this a while.

My conclusion: Summers at Castle Auburn is a fun, light, fantasy drama. Good, but not something I'm likely to reread.

Smoke and Mirrors is a short story collection by Neil Gaiman. Anthologies are always an odd bag, but over all this one was very enjoyable. My favorite has to be "Snow, Glass and Apples," a retelling of Snow White. Once you think about it, you can really see Snow White as a vampire (lips as red as blood...).

I also read Shadowland by Meg Cabot during the week. I don't have much to say about it. Fast and entertaining, but not memorable.

I'm not a huge fan of short story collections, though I don't know why. I do have to get to Smoke and Mirrors, though. I'm glad to see you enjoyed it. Have you read Fragile Things, pwaites?

76> Not yet, but it's on my To Read list.

I find that short stories can be less compelling. You don't get the same level of involvement that you get with larger works. As a consequence, I've abandoned many half way through.

I've enjoyed Gaiman's novels, but on the whole I didn't care much for the short story collections. They seemed very uneven to me, without enough gold to compensate for the dross.

Yes, I've yet to meet an 'even' short story collection. There are always a couple of stinkers in there. I believe it is just the nature of the beast.

77: Short stories aren't really my thing either, pwaites. When I engage with a story and a set of characters, I like to spend more time with them than a short story allows. Short stories are, for me, the literary equivalents of "meet-and-greets."

Since I've become a Sharon Shinn fan over the past two years, Summers at Castle Auburn is in my TBR pile -- but it does sound as if it may not stir my admiration quite as much as Mystic and Rider did.

80: I like short stories precisely because I don't get committed. I have something I can sit down and read while I eat lunch or ride on the bus, and I don't get so involved that I put off other things to read.

They tend to be a staple of exam season or otherwise particularly busy weeks.

I've just added Mystic and Rider to my TBR, so I can't give any comparison of the two.

For me, too many authors write short stories with the same type of story they use for their books. That doesn't usually work, at least not for me, since in a short story, you don't have time to get involved and there is no time to evolve some depth, which is necessary for that type of story.

What I like in a short story is if it introduces a situation, and then gives you a twist all the way at the end. No deep involvement necessary, just show enough so that there is space for the twist. For instance, I read a story when I was in high school that showed a difficult birth and some family issues around that. At the very end, I believe it might have been the very last sentence, it became clear that the baby in question was Adolf Hitler.

My favorite short story I found in an SF anthology. It was by Peter Cuijpers and was called 'God op aarde' (God on earth). I'm not sure if it was ever translated, though...

I agree with zjakkelien. And so I like many of Isaac Asimov's one- or 2-pagers, where he spends most of the story building an elaborate set-up for a mind-shattering pun in the last sentence.

82, 83> My favorite short stories tend to have twists. Ronald Dahl's "The Landlady" and Frank Stockton's "The Lady or the Tiger?" are two of my favorites.

I alternated between three books this week, one of which, Unsouled, I've just finished.

Unsouled is the third in a YA dystopian series that is apparently a "dystology." I have no clue what a "dystology" is. When I tried looking it up online, all I get is this series, which leads me to conclude that it's a made up word.

The series itself, which starts with Unwind, is a cut above the typical YA dystopian - it probably helps that it was published before the Hunger Games and all it's clones flooded the YA market. The premise of the story is that unwanted teenagers can be "unwound," i.e. have their bodies taken apart for organs. Unwind introduced three main characters: Connor, whose parents tired of his unruly behavior and handed him over to the government to be unwound; Risa, whose orphanage experienced budget cuts and decided to unwind ten percent of their teenagers; and Levi, whose parents raised him to be unwound for religious reasons. I remember them going on the run (fairly obviously) in the first book, but I can't remember much else as I read it so long ago. This was unfortunate, for I was constantly missing things during the next two in the series.

For US History, I am currently reading Contempt of Court, which describes a court case from 1906. Despite the lack of evidence against him and the many witnesses who provided him with an alibi, a black man is found guilty of raping a young white woman and sentenced to die. Two lawyers from the black community race to the Supreme Court and manage to get a reprieve. I haven't gotten any farther, but I'm steadily reading through it during bus rides and spare time at school. It's engrossing and one of the better non-fiction's I've read.

Finally, I'm listening to The Rook on audio as I work on art projects for various different classes. We got given two weeks to make a children's book based of Beowulf for English class, and I'm doing all the illustrations in addition to artwork for a huge yearlong project, for a weekend art class, and finally for a portfolio due in May. Having a book to listen to can keep me going for far longer than I would otherwise.

I'm not very far into The Rook (about four hours in out of seventeen), but so far it's exciting. A woman wakes up standing in a circle of bodies wearing latex gloves with no idea of who she is or how she got there. She searches the pockets of her jacket and finds a letter addressed "To You." The letter warns her that she's in danger and that an unknown person is trying to kill her. She's given two options: run and start a new life, or resume the life of her former self and find out who's trying to kill her.

The premise reminded me a bit of the Bourne Identity, but the story veers away after the initial scene. Myfanwy (the first name of her former self and the one that she's adopted) soon finds that her former self (referred to as Thomas) was a high ranking member of a secret organization composed of those with supernatural powers. Thinking that Thomas was some sort of high powered, secret agent? Think again. For while Thomas may have had some supernatural powers, she was too timid to use them and became an administrator instead.

Myfanwy is clearly much braver and more outspoken than Thomas. So far, people have noticed that she's acting unusual, but no one's yet picked up that she's a different person, or at least one who's completely lost her memory. I wonder about this a bit - no one's questioned her personality change? Oh, well. I'm not that far in, and I bet people will start to figure things out later in.

I've finished The Rook, and I'm giving it five stars. I'll have to get a print copy so I can reread it and loan it out to friends. It's just one of those books.

It's hard for me to say just what I like about it - it's so much easier to point out flaws. But I'll give it a go. The Rook seems to include everything I like in a book. A strong and sympathetic protagonist who's struggling to get out of a situation that she's not responsible for. A supporting cast with any number of interesting and memorable characters, including some of the very minor ones. An intriguing and suspenseful plot. A fantasy heroine without a love interest or romance plot (delightfully unusual). Some fabulous and down right original ideas.

And more on the characters. They were really what made this book for me. I was interested in all of them - even the antagonists such as the skinless Belgian and Gestalt. Or even such minor characters as Little Pawn Allen. Or, two of my favorites, Shantay (incredibly awesome American Bishop) and Ingrid (the incredibly competent secretary).

My one issue would be that the letters from her former self interrupt the flow of the story. It's the same problem I had with The Lies of Locke Lamora and The Way of Kings. While the flashbacks can be amusing and hilariously funny (such as the prophetic duck), they detract from the flow and aren't always relevant to the plot (I'm looking at you again, prophetic duck).

Anyway, despite the pacing issues this is a wonderful, wonderful book. If it sounds like it would be at all your thing, I'd suggest going out and getting a copy immediately.

I also read The Privilege of the Sword. I liked it - it was entertaining and enjoyable, it some good characters. While I won't sell it or cull it from my shelves, it's not something that I can really see myself being compelled to read over and over again. I'd say it's a three and a half stars. That being said, I did just loan it out to a friend. There are too many good elements to ignore and it is very readable, even if there's some issues.

My major problem with it was the plotting, especially when it came to the ending. It just ended. No warning, no sense of things being wrapped up. For all the problems built up, the end was much to simple and some loose and unnecessary ends were left lying around.

The protagonist, Lady Katherine, was wonderful. It was a pleasure to see her grow throughout the book, and by the end she'd become self confident and independent. However, with the exception of Alec Campion, the Mad Duke Tremontaine (Katherine's uncle), none of the other characters were that interesting or fully developed.

For one, there's Artemesia, who Katherine talks to for something like five minutes at a party over nothing very important and they're suddenly friends. Really, after a five minute conversation where they didn't even learn each other's names. In fact, Katherine runs of the next day, seeking help, to Artemesia. Let's just say that it doesn't go well. But instead of cluing in on, "Hmm, maybe I'm not bestest of friends with someone I don't know" Katherine continues to call Artemesia her friend. Really. It's insta-friendship.

If that's not enough, there's a large number of POVs, some of which are Artemesia's. Is she better when the story's focused on her? No. She's still self concerned, silly and whiny. She's throwing temper tantrums over the color of her dress. And we're supposed to like her? None of the other POVs were as bad, but none were very interesting (besides Katherine and the Duke).

And then there's the romance plot. It didn't go as badly as it could have, but I didn't particularly care for it. When Katherine starts realizing that she's lesbian/bi-sexual, I felt dread because at the same time she was suddenly interacting with Artemesia again. What if it was actually insta-love instead of insta-friendship (hey, insta-friendship's at least an original flaw)? What if our brave, strong, likable protagonist ends up with sniveling Artemesia? Thankfully, Katherine recognized that Artemesia was silly. Instead she ended up with Marcus (because our young female protagonist couldn't be single now, could she?), who I didn't really like, but didn't dislike either. As far as I cared, he could have disappeared from the story and I probably wouldn't have noticed. But hey, at least Katherine talked to him for more than five minutes.

Katherine and the endlessly amusing Mad Duke Tremontaine make the story. The rest of the characters felt like they were there to add some message about gender roles. While I'm fine with authors trying to include weighty themes and such in fantasy novels, I think the story should come first. And the story would benefit from cutting some of the fluffy POVs.

I loved The Rook as well, but was much more forgiving of the duck story just because it was so darned funny. And it provided some good character explication for a few of the poeple who are less on camera. I have high hopes for the next book in the series.

Very good discussion of The Privilege of the Sword. I agree it was weaker than some of her other work; I hate to think it was because it was possibly being marketed as YA crossover.

86> Urgh. I hate when publishers assume that YA audiences will buy bad writing more willingly than adults.

The faults with The Privilege of the Sword haven't put me off reading her other books, which I still want to get hold of.

Her other books are better--the characters are all better realized and fleshed out.

#85 by pwaites> Another The Rook lover here. What a fun book.

85, 89: The Rook was one of my favorite reads last year. It may well rank as my favorite urban fantasy, surpassing War for the Oaks. So glad you enjoyed it, pwaites; our reasons for loving the book are strikingly similar.

I haven't done much reading reading this week due to a sudden flood of AP Chemistry work and the arrival for the due date of the project concerning Contempt of Court.

I did start on a reread of Tithe, which I'm almost finished with. It's a fun read and a good one for the bus ride. I originally grabbed it when I was looking for books for a friend, who'd read The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves. But she turned up her nose at Tithe (based on only the title and the assumption that it was YA, she guessed the subject matter and some key facts involving the protagonist). That's okay. I'd already started rereading it in the mean time, and it wasn't nearly as good as The Raven Boys anyway and has much worse ratings. Although, some of the Goodreads ratings are pretty hilarious, such as this one, even if they weren't intended to be. I mean really - have these people read any YA books before? In context to many of the other ones out there, Tithe isn't that objectionable. Really, while some of the "teens were... hinting at being sexually active" there wasn't actually any sex, or illegal drug use, for that matter. The same can not be said for many popular YA books - see John Green's for example.

Onward to The Raven Boys. I realize that I haven't yet mentioned it on here, and it's high time that was fixed. It and it's sequel were some of my best reads of last year, if not the best. And it was almost a complete surprise. I read The Raven Boys because I'd liked Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races, but I had my doubts. The synopsis of The Raven Boys contained several key words and phrases that normally prompts me to avoid the book in question:

“Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”
" Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble."
"But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain."

The words "true love" and "inexplicably drawn to" tend to make me drop books and run the opposite direction in fear of Twilight clones or insta love. But just this once, I was so, so happy I gave it a shot.

While the back seems to suggest a paranormal romance, The Raven Boys is really a fantasy with romance aspects ranking below the friendships between the main characters, all of whom are wonderfully depicted. The plot actually focuses on ley lines and trees that speak in Latin and the hunt for an ancient Welsh king. I was so scared that the sequel would be a let down - but The Dream Thieves was actually better than the first and made Ronan my favorite character of the series. If you haven't looked at these yet, I encourage you to give them a look. They're beautiful and spellbinding YA series.

On the book reading front, I've got a copy of Words of Radiance in preparation for attending a Brandon Sanderson book signing next week. I'm so excited! But there's no way I'll be able to finish WoR by then - I refuse to haul a 1,000 page + hardback around with me.

Finally, my bookshelves are getting crowded. I may have to have a cull sometime soon.

get more bookshelves

#91 - "Finally, my bookshelves are getting crowded. I may have to have a cull sometime soon."

Good luck with that. Do you have a system?

Where will you be seeing Brandon Sanderson???? (I love that man.)

92, 93> Any book I didn't finish or dislike (anything under three stars, really). After that, I ask myself "Would I read this again, or would I loan it out to someone?" If the answer is no, I'll try to put them in the pile for resale. Here's some books that'll probably go out on the next cull:

Loves Music, Loves to Dance - wasn't particularly bad, but I don't tend to reread mysteries.
Shadowland - fun enough, but not really worth the shelf space
Shattered Souls - didn't finish. I really should have known better before picking up a YA paranormal romance type book.
Sylo - I don't think I even started this one. I tried reading something else by the author and found I hated the writing. It seemed fine enough when I read his books four years ago, but the suck fairy seems to have paid them a visit.
Delirium - I really liked Before I Fall, but this one turned out to be another cliched YA dystopia.
The Fox Inheritance - was not as good as the first book, which didn't really need a sequel in the first place.
The Swan Kingdom - not worth a reread, and I didn't like it enough to lend it out either.
The Nightmare Affair - didn't finish.
The Age of Miracles - didn't finish.
Battle Magic - it turns out to be the tenth in a series or something. As I feel no pressure to go out and track down the rest of the series, it's better to let it go now.
City of Ash and City of Bone - I don't even know why I got the second one. The first was alright, but there wasn't anything new or interesting about it. When she added a love triangle with a vampire and the cliched "bad boy," I called it quits on the series.
The Enemy - bleh. I actually bothered to write a negative review on this one.

Ones I'm on the fence about:
A Confusion of Princes - I liked it well enough, and it's borderline at three stars. It may survive a couple more years.
Kinslayer and Eona - They've been sitting on my "To Read" stack for forever, but both had issues with their predecessors in the series. I feel guilty selling off books I haven't at least tried, so they'll probably stay around.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - I didn't finish this one, but I feel like I should give it another shot.
Bitten - I didn't really care for it, but I might want to try others in the series, so I might hang on to it.

I don't really have space for new bookshelves. Besides, I can sell these at Half-Priced Books and use the money to get more books. Using this system, the number of books has stayed constantly 500 to 600 (discounting ebooks, non-fiction, children's picture books, reference books, books belonging to other family members, ect.).

93> I'm going to see him at Murder By the Book. It's an independent book store focusing on mysteries. I am wondering how they're going to fit everyone in - it's not a large space, and I have a feeling that there's going to be a big crowd.

#94 - They will probably try to keep the line moving quickly. Not always easy with him as he loves to chat. I got to see him twice last year. The first time was at Book Expo America in NYC and the lines were ridiculous. The second time was at ConnectiCon and the crowd was much more reasonable. Hope he draws a large but fast moving crowd. Love the name of that book store, BTW!

I've finished Words of Radiance. Wow... just wow. I can't wait to see where the series goes. I'm still a bit skeptical about if there's eight more books worth of story left, but this one was less draggy than the first (even though it was longer). It gets five stars, no question.

When I was writing about other books by Brandon Sanderson, one of the topics that kept coming up was female characters. Specifically, if there was more than one female character. In answer, I've decided to make a list of all the major female characters from Words of Radiance.

Shallan Davar - one of the major viewpoint characters. She's an artist with incredible skill and memory. She's also a potential Knight Radiant, meaning that she can use magic. I didn't like Shallan at the start of the series, but I came to like her by the end of The Way of Kings. By the end of WoR, I loved her. She's developed so much. We really get to see her gain strength and have gotten to know a lot more of her past.
Jasnah Kholin - the sister of the king, a scholar, a mentor to Shallan, and a potential Knight Radiant. She's dedicated to logic and intent on her studies. Starting in WoK, she develops a relationship with Shallan which continues into WoR. I particularly loved their interactions at the beginning of the story. I was upset when she seemed to die, although I decided that it was because she was a mentor figure who tend to die a lot in fantasy. But in the very end (seriously, the last couple of pages), it's revealed that she's still alive.
Navani Kholin - mother of Jasnah and the king and the prior king's widow. She's also holds an active interest in fabrials, which can be thought of as magical engineering. She interacts a limited amount with Shallan and not at all with Jasnah.
Sylphrena (Syl) - a spren. I really don't know how to describe sprens, a type of creature specific to this world. The best analogy I can think of is a fairy, but that's not really accurate. They're natural creatures who appear around certain events or ideas. Syl is a wind spren (what it sounds like) until she's revealed to be an honor spren. She's mischievous and cheerful but interacts with none of the other female characters.
Tyn - a conwoman who briefly acts as a mentor to Shallan. She's not a good person, but she does seem to care for Shallan.

The book also contains Interludes set between the five sections. These interludes focus on characters other than the major viewpoint characters we normally see. Some of these characters are involved behind the scenes, and others are probably going to become major characters in the main story arc in a later book. The female Interlude characters from WoF:

Lift - awesome. Really, in the span of what amounts to basically a chapter, Lift manages to become my favorite character in the entire series. She's a spunky twelve year old girl with powers over friction. She's also kind and willing to do the right thing, even if it costs her. I have hopes that she'll become a major character later on.
Eshonai - the war leader of the Parshendi, a race of people who have different forms and communicate their emotions through music. I was really happy when Eshonai was introduced. She's a strong female character, and the only woman we've seen who is a Shardbearer and a warrior. She's also kind and determined to do the best thing for her people. She also cares for her sister, a scientist working to find more Parshendi forms. Eshonai shows up in every interlude, sometimes twice. Unfortunately, her end as of WoR is tragic. Her mind is taken over by a new form her sister developed, and she becomes twisted into blood thirsty dictator. I think the real her is underneath it somewhere - while in the new form, she senses screaming from somewhere inside her. I was hoping for her to break free of the new form somehow, but this is never shown and it's uncertain if she survived the end of the book.
Rysn - an interlude character both of this book and the previous book. I didn't get why she was shown in the last one - she's an apprentice merchant, and her story so far has nothing to do with the plot. While her sections may be largely for world building, her latest interlude hints at her being important.

Thanks for that post about Words of radiance. I was going to try and wait to start the series until more of the books were published, but after reading your summary I think I'm going to have to dive into The way of kings asap!

WoR is high on my list of books to get when I start buying them again. soon.

I agree with above that short stories need to have a twist or a point to them. They are too short to just want to explore the world or get to know the characters which is fine in a novel, so instead they need to make you think. Themed collections usually work better for me than anthologies. I've had lots of ER short story collections, some much better than others, but yes there are always the odd tale that doesn't work so well for me - but if you read the reviews each person picks a different one they didn't like.

97> I found out at the signing that the series consists of two five book arcs, which is a bit more manageable than a straight ten book series.

At the signing (more on that later), a friend of mine bought the Hugo Award winning The Emperor's Soul, which she kindly loaned to me after she finished. It's wasn't what I've come to expect from Brandon Sanderson - namely, short. It's a 175 page novella that takes under two hours to read. And it's wonderful.

The premises of the story is that the emperor suffered a blow to the head and heavy brain damage. He's alive and perfectly healthy, except basically in a coma.

Enter Shai. She's an amazingly gifted thief and Forger who's been caught and condemned to die. But instead, she's offered an opportunity. She can save herself by crafting a new soul for the emperor.

This is what's so great about the story. To craft his soul, Shai must well and truly understand him, probably even better than he understood himself. She must also deal with those who question the value of her art - is she truly creating? Or is she merely copying?

All in all, it's an amazing story, especially for one so short. In just 175 pages, Sanderson is able to create a world complete with an original magic system (of course!) and a cast (albeit limited) of vivid characters. Shai's got to be one of my favorite Sanderson characters. There's an emotional depth to her that I don't always feel with the others.

Now onto the signing.

It was a lot of fun! This was the first time that I've been able to get friends to go with me to a signing, and it was really nice to share the experience with someone else. There were a ton of people there - the room was jam packed. One fan actually arrived dressed in a Mistborn costume that he made himself. It was wonderfully detailed and included coins and vials of Allomancer metals. It also made me realize that I need to seriously amp up this year's Halloween costume.

Brandon Sanderson spoke first about the title of Words of Radiance. He intends for each book in the series to be named after an in world book. Unfortunately, the book he originally intended for the title of WoR was named The Book of Endless Pages. He did not notice the problem until his editor pointed it out. If you've seen a copy of WoR, you'll know what the problem is - the thing's huge.

Eventually, at the last possible minute, he settled on Words of Radiance. After all, as he said,"Nobody would buy Unnamed Book by Brandon Sanderson." (The fan in the Mistborn costume insisted that he would).

After some more information about the writing process, he moved on to questions. Of course, there were some of the usual sort ("When's the next book coming out?"), but I also learned some interesting things. I was vaguely aware that all his epic fantasy books were set in the same universe, but I didn't know that some of the same characters showed up in different series. I didn't catch any of this. A reread of all the books may be in order.

Other interesting tidbits: When he was writing Jasnah, he went onto atheist forums online for research. I was really impressed with her character - characters with different beliefs than their authors is a sign of a good writer. Oh, and Lift is going to be a major character in the future! Yay!

Finally, this being at a book shop, I picked up some new books for Mount TBR:
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (the newest Flavia de Luce mystery)
Libriomancer (recommended by the store staff)
The Well of Ascension (finally!)

In other news, I read His Majesty's Dragon before the signing. It's fun and very readable. I'll be picking up the sequel at some point.

Yikes. Sorry for the text wall. It's probably a good thing I didn't wait until the end of the week to update - at this rate I'll probably have finished another book by then.

Glad you had such a great time at the signing. I've always heard that Sanderson is a really nice guy, and your experience seems to bear that out. I LOLed at the story of how WoR got its name!

And clearly I am going to have to give in and get The emperor's soul for my kindle ...

100> I highly recommend it. It's such a great story.

Um, yeah, I would buy Unnamed Book if it was by Brandon Sanderson. Sounds like a terrific time!

>102 MrsLee: Agreed!

>100 Sakerfalcon: The emperor's soul was great, totally recommend it!

I've finally finished the Mistborn trilogy - and do you know what? Out of the three, Mistborn is still my favorite due to it subverting the traditional fantasy stories that the latter books embrace. The trilogy can be summed up as the following:

Mistborn - a heist story
The Well of Ascension - a siege and political maneuvering
The Hero of Ages - an epic war and the end of the world

I don't know how to talk about the latter two books without giving away too much from the first. As a result, most of this post will be in spoiler tags, some for different parts of the trilogy. I can talk about female characters without any spoilers. Suffice to say, there still aren't many. Two more women are introduced in The Well of Ascension, Alrriane and Tindwyl. Neither spend much page time with Vin or with each other and are on the whole pretty minor characters. Especially in the third book, the most important thing about them seems to be their romantic relationships. Out of all the Sanderson books I've read, the Mistborn trilogy's got to be the worst for gender representation. Vin seems to have some sort of innate hostility towards other women - admittedly she's hostile to everyone, but she's especially so to the other female characters.

This section contains spoilers for Mistborn. I did really like Elend and Vin's relationship. Vin's a powerful warrior and assassin, while Elend's a king and scholar. He doesn't have the physical powers or the training that Vin does. In The Well of Ascension, the stereotypical gender roles of male "protector" and female "protected" are flipped. Vin is officially his bodyguard, and we see her protecting him during fights. It makes sense - she's basically a one woman force of destruction. Her weaknesses are much more emotional. She has difficulty trusting and a strong sense of paranoia. She also worries about not conforming to the traditional gender roles, and at times feels like Elend deserves a more "normal" woman. Elend meanwhile is wondering why someone so amazing as Vin would chose to be with him.

That was actually one of the worst parts of The Well of Ascension. There was relationship aghast. Too much of it. Why does every relationship plot need to have aghast? Oh, well. At least The Hero of Ages was better on this front.

This section contains spoilers for Mistborn and The Well of Ascension. At the end of The Well of Ascension, Elend gains the powers of a Mistborn. I was worried. Was Vin suddenly going to turn into a damsel in distress? My fears only increased when Vin commented that Elend's powers were stronger than hers.

But my fears turned out to be groundless. While Elend did have sheer power, Vin had much better control and finesse over it. Her experiences and training still counted for something, and she was still doing feats that were beyond any other character. She'd also made the decision that she couldn't try and protect Elend any longer - she had to let him take risks and allow him to be harmed if it was for the good of the world. This, combined with Elend's new powers and some emotional development on both their parts, made the relationship more equal. They were working very much as partners in The Hero of Ages.

I'm beginning to notice that there are more similarities between Sanderson's male characters than his female ones. I think it's because the male characters are often "The Leader". Actually, pretty much all his major male characters are - Elend, Raoden, Kaladin, Dalinar, and Kelsier. Elend, Raoden and Kaladin especially tend to remind me of the others and blur together some. These fall into to categories: the optimistic leader getting a group of downtrodden people through difficulties, and the leader wrestling with weighty moral dilemma. The same character may be a different type in different books - for instance, Kaladin shifts from Way of Kings to Words of Radiance, and Elend from Mistborn to The Hero of Ages.

His female characters feel more distinct to me. They don't remind me of each other when I read them - they're simply themselves. Shallon feels like a completely different person from Vin who feels different from Shai. It probably helps that all the major female character's of his fill different roles, even if they do have a bent towards scholarship and artistry.

One final thing. Has anyone else noticed how horrible the paperback covers are? They're so grainy and such terrible quality. Plus the lighting's terrible, and Vin's dressed up like a pirate or something. The hardback covers by John Foster are so much better.



Anyway, those were my musings of late. I've also done some drawings of Vin, which is unusual for me as I tend to stay away from fan art. If I shade them, I'll post the best one here.

>104 pwaites: I had the same fear on starting The well of ascension, pwaites! And as you, I found it was groundless. Elend never overshadows Vin, the two of them are working together pretty well.
I've seen more books where there was one awesome woman, but then she tended to have some flaws that made her a little less awesome. Vin doesn't have that and the guys around her really accept her. So Sanderson gets point for that, the only thing missing really is more women...
Oh, my books have the second set of covers (and you're right, the first ones are ugly), but the ones that are really awesome are these:


I really like the last one...

105> Those are some pretty awesome covers. I really like the blue smoke for the mist, and it's interesting to see pencil work on a cover. I think the one for Hero of Ages is my favorite.

>106 pwaites: Yes, that's my favorite too. It's gorgeous! Have you never seen these covers before? They really stand out in a bookstore (and I think it's pretty cool that they managed to make covers that are so completely different from other fantasy covers, yet still perfectly recognizable as fantasy).

>105 zjakkelien: Now I want to dump the ugly versions I have and buy those.

>108 MrsLee: Haha, quite understandable, MrsLee! I like them better than mine too, but at least I don't have the really ugly ones...

107> Nope. I've only seen the two versions I posted - I think those may be the UK cover art. I looked through the cover galleries on Brandon Sanderson's website, and it turns out that the cover artist (Sam Green) has done artwork for other Brandon Sanderson series.



I don't think the smoke effect works as well for the other series. I'm not sure if that's Sam Green's work or not, as it wasn't included in the images on his website. I also really love the Chinese The Way of Kings cover art:



Oh, and the ebook cover for the Mistborn trilogy is really spectacular:

Wow, I'd never seen that Chinese one! Amazing!

I too prefer the art on the Chinese cover. Works better for me than the work by Sam Green. And, like you, I truly enjoyed The Emperor's Soul.

I've read two mediocre at best, disappointing at worst books lately: Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi and Dangerous by Shannon Hale.

Agent to the Stars, I could recommend. It was entertaining and relatively quick, just not anything particularly special. It's a solid three stars. The idea itself is fairly interesting - aliens hire a Hollywood agent to represent them to humanity. But where the book could have turned thoughtful or meaningful instead, it went for the quick fix.

When I was browsing around the bookstore and found Dangerous, I was surprised. It's one of the influx of teen action adventure/science fiction type books and written by Shannon Hale of all people. I wouldn't have picked it up otherwise, not even with that positive blurb by Scott Westerfeld smashed across the front. But... Shannon Hale's a good author. And she normally writes fantasy, fairy tale type books. What would this book be like?

Now I've read it, and I've really got to wonder about all the blurbs from popular YA authors. It did get a bit better - not that the plot was spectacular when it finally arrived. Way too much time was spent on the main character's, Maisie's, obsession with the love interest, Wilder. I hated Wilder. He's a arrogant jerk who treats her horribly.

There wasn't any real characterization. I never got to feel anything at all for any of the characters, except a hatred for Wilder, who I was probably supposed to like.

And all the swear words were bleeped out, probably to make it age appropriate for a YA audience. But if you don't want to have swear words, don't include them in the first place. Or just say "he cursed" or some such.

Anyway, I am giving it two stars. I was actually able to finish it and after the plot kicked in, it was pretty fast paced. I still wouldn't recommend it.

After the last two disappointments, I pulled out the final novels by Brandon Sanderson that I haven't read, The Alloy of Law and Warbreaker.

I liked The Alloy of Law a lot - it reminds me of the Watch books by Terry Pratchett more than anything else. It's probably the crime solving plot and large fantasy city setting that does it for me. Of course, Elendel has a very different feel than Ank-Morpork. It's nowhere near as distinct a setting, and it has a higher level of technology (as of Alloy of Law).Still, I shouldn't compare any setting to Ank-Morpork; They're bound to suffer by comparison.

The Alloy of Law follows Waxillium Ladrian, a lawman from the Roughs (basically the Wild West) who's returned to the city to take up the duties of his noble house. He's determined to put his crime solving instincts behind him and focus on his new life. He succeeds in ignoring a series of baffling thefts by a mysterious group named the Vanishers, until his old friend and deputy Wayne shows up in Elendel. Wax, Wayne and Marasi, a young woman studying law and criminology, together set out to bring the group to justice and rescue the hostages taken by the gang.

It's a fun book, and it's very interesting to see how the world's changed since Mistborn. I especially liked the way Sanderson worked the events from the previous trilogy into the mythology and religion of the world.

Warbreaker reminded me of Elantris in some ways. I think it's part of the plot set up - one of the main characters is a young woman sent to the city as part of an arranged marriage. There are four main viewpoint characters that the book rotates between.

Siri is the young princess from Idris who's sent to an enemy city to marry the mysterious God King. She'd never expected this, as it was her older sister who was brought up for the role.

Vivenna is Siri's older sister - the one meant to marry the God King. She feels displaced and useless after Siri is sent instead and decides to run off and try to rescue her sister. She's always been the proper sister, the one who's done what's expected of her. She doesn't know what to make of the changes she's finding in herself.

Lightsong was my favorite character. He's one of the Returned - a group of people who returned from death and who are worshiped as gods. Yet, Lightsong does not believe in his own divinity and constantly mocks the world around him.

Vasher, the final viewpoint character, remains mysterious until the end. He's a practitioner of this world's magic system, the Biochromatic Breath.

I liked Warbreaker, but I don't think it was as good as some of his other books. At this point, the only Brandon Sanderson books that I haven't read are the ones aimed at middle school students and some of the novellas.

>114 pwaites: The Biochromatic Breath? Wow! I haven't read Warbreaker yet, but that sounds great!

115> I actually liked Mistborn's magic system more. Then again, if Warbreaker had had colored illustrations... well, I think I'd have a new favorite magic system.

>116 pwaites: I'm reading Mistborn again. It does have a wonderful magic system... Even though I've read the trilogy before, I find I've forgotten some of its intricacies. I'm looking forward to the second book, when a lot more is explained about Feruchemy.
By the way, you're a native english speaker, right? I've always wondered where to put the emphasis in Allomancy. I could imagine it on either the first or the second syllable. Where do you put it?

117> I put it on the first syllable.

One of the fun things about The Alloy of Law was seeing how Allomancy and Feruchemy worked with technology such as guns. It's a simple enough system, but he's developed so many interesting uses for it.

>118 pwaites: You make me curious. I haven't read The alloy of law yet, I imagine I will get to that once I've re-read the Mistborn books.

I loved Alloy of law, even though I hadn't read the two Mistborn sequels that precede it. The characters were fun to follow and I liked the tighter storyline. But I want a sequel ...

119> Do try it!

120> I have my fingers crossed for a sequel soon. The way his writing process works, he writes shorter, lighter books (such as Alloy of Law) in between the big epics... one of which he just finished. It'll be another year or so until he starts writing the next epic, so maybe there'll be another Mistborn book in the meanwhile.

I picked up Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West recently. I don't really know what to think about it. It's a character based book, rather than a plot one. But the viewpoint of the Witch (Elphaba) is shown only rarely. Instead, she's depicted as viewed by other characters. And large chunks of her life are left missing or unexplained.

The book begins with the circumstances surrounding Elphaba's birth and the very early years of her childhood. It isn't umtil later, when the story shifts to her college age, that we get a sense of Elphaba's personality. I liked Elphaba at this age. She was unabashedly different and a great proponent of equality.

But from there, the story shifts again and Elphaba changes. It's hard for me to understand the events that changed her - the narrative skips over them and never explains them. For a story based around a character arc, I don't think this is forgivable. And while I liked Elphaba in the second section, I never really felt connected to her. There's a distance, probably she's never seen from her own viewpoint until the end.

Still, I liked it more than many others I've meet. Most people who recognized the book said they found it confusing and hadn't liked it. I can agree somewhat with the confusing part - the author left many plot points open and it's unclear if Elphaba was the puppet of some greater power.

>121 pwaites: I had great difficulty with Wicked and it's one of the few books that I actually gave up on and just couldn't finish. I felt like it was a great shame that I couldn't engage with it because a number of friends had said they really enjoyed it, but a second attempt fared even worse than the first.

122> I think it's one of those books were opinions are very divided.

I'm trying to figure out how to voice my thoughts on Libriomancer. I think I've finally come up with an apt metaphor. It's like walking into a lovely room. You're smiling and admiring the bookshelf, when you happen to see a dead rat on the floor. It's huge and gross and lying on the middle of the carpet. And it's starting to smell.

For the first forty pages or so, I was unreservedly enjoying Libriomancer. There's all sorts of hilarious references to other science fiction and fantasy books that I really enjoyed. The magic system worked by pulling objects out of books, which was predictably fun. Unfortunately, the romance plot arrived. The entire situation was icky and inherently sexist. The main female character cannot function without a lover. Seriously it's part of her nature as a dryad - she literally can never have any sort of independence as she forms her personality and body to please her lover. Urgh. In all she reads like some sort of teenage male fantasy, which actually she was as she was pulled from some creepy fantasy sex slave type book.

It could have been good. It could have been so good. But that disgusting romance plot was underlying the entire thing. I don't think I'll be picking up anything else by Jim C. Hines. It's possible that some of his other female characters are better written, but I don't really care to try.

123: Thanks so much for the warning, pwaites. I had enjoyed The Stepsister Scheme, and had thought I might be interested in the Libriomancer series. But this plot, as you describe it, would thoroughly nauseate me. And Hines thinks himself a feminist, a champion of better roles for female characters in sci-fi and fantasy! One of the "good guys" in last year's SFWA Bulletin debacle! I don't get it. Nor do I get why nearly all the reviews I've just read claim that Lena, the uber-submissive, is a "strong" female lead, since, according to your description, any "strength" she has is the product of someone else's fantasy wishes, and not of her own choice. Sheesh, how would someone like that, a purely dependent creation, have any sort of inner life or interior dialogue -- things a heroine would need to have in order for me to like or admire her?

I will not be going anywhere near this series.

>123 pwaites: It's my understanding (not having read the books, but occasionally reading Hines' blog and seeing interviews like this one) that Hines included that character specifically to examine the trope of that kind of character in creepy fantasy sex slave books, but there is definitely not always a clear line between examination and just plain old repetition of the trope, and it's even more tricky when the attempted examination is done by a member of the same social group who often perpetrates the same trope straightforwardly.

123, 125: I looked at some reviews of Codex Born on Amazon.com and found this:

"The Magic Ex Libras books are a lot of fun. The magic system itself is basically Nerd Porn. Grab all the cool stuff you love from books, and use it to fight monster. And a hot magical sex slave is your girlfriend.
And it's not your fault she's your super powered, warrior, Gor slave girl knockoff(seriously Hines calls her a World of Gor knock off). If she wasn't yours, she might fall into the hands if a bad person who would use her powers for evil. So for the good of the planet, she needs to be Your sex slave."

This was from a POSITIVE review.

It isn't likely to encourage me to pick up the book. It makes it pretty clear that although this time around, the girl gets to grace the cover, and we get snippets of her backstory in each chapter supposedly, the book still belongs to the male protagonist. It's HIS choices that matter, and the world will be saved as long as the kick-butt fantasy girl's powers remain under HIS control. The world will be saved by Boy Power, to fulfill the wishes of male readers to which speculative fiction has catered since its inception.

I expected better from Hines.

125> If that was what he was trying to do, I don't think he pulled it off well. Or at least not for someone who was new to his books and had no idea what he was trying to do. It just seems like another male author writing a sexy female character for his male lead.

124, 126> Actually a fair number of the Goodreads reviews I read found Lena problematic. Such as this one. However, these tended to be the more negative or at least middling reviews. The positive ones tended either to not mention her or to not mention the icky relationship issue.

>127 pwaites: Yeah, it doesn't sound like he did- intent is not magic, and when it comes down to it it's what's on the page that matters. It's the author's responsibility to make their intent clear on the page, rather than the reader's responsibility to play detective and figure out what the author really meant.

Lena ending up involved with Isaac at all even if she also has a relationship with someone else as well is kind of a dealbreaker as far as subverting the trope for me too, I think. I'd intended to read these as my local library has both of them in ebook, but they've definitely dropped way down the list.

>126 kceccato: That review... Yuck. Also, even more depressing, two people voted it "helpful"...

This week and the next are both pretty busy, so I've turned to an old favorite to reread: Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett. I'd loaned it out to a friend and then happened to have it in my backpack right when I needed a book to read. Besides, it's been a while since I reread anything, and longer still since I reread a Discworld book.

If you aren't already familiar with the plot, Reaper Man is about Death getting fired. Yes, Death, the anthropomorphic personality, not the natural function. The result is spectacularly funny. An ancient wizard by the name of Windle Poons dies but ends up hanging around as a zombie. And Death himself takes up the job of a farmhand in a small town.

One of the things I love about this book is that Death's personality develops a lot. He's so fascinated with humans, but he has trouble understanding us. But in Reaper Man, he comes the closest to understanding.

Finally, I don't know if I've mentioned it here, I made a story mainly through illustrations as part of a year long research class. It's been sucking up a lot of my time, but at this point the product's pretty much done. If anyone's interested in taking a look, I've got it both as a video and in just the still images (under "The Story") here.

>129 pwaites: Very nice, one of the reasons I taught my children at home was so that we could find their unique talents and interests and use those to learn. It was very exciting. I have one perfectionist child, and it has sometimes kept her from trying/doing things, for fear of failure. An ongoing struggle for her.

Yes, very nice, extremely moving. The fissure glowing red in egglike perfection (wholeness) is such a powerful symbol, one feels that constant nagging pain. Well done.

130, 131> Aww, thank you guys! :)

Finished The Dead in their Vaulted Arches, the newest Flavia De Luce mystery, today. Most mystery series I'll abandon before this - I'll get bored with the plots and start being able to predict them. And yes, I have started being able to predict the endings to the Flavia books, but I find Flavia so delightful that I don't care! She was actually in my post 52, "Favorite Female Characters, Part One." Here's what I said about her up there:

"Flavia's a brilliant eleven year old girl with a love of chemistry. There are just so many little things about her that are wonderful - for example, she named her bike Gladys. And her relationship with her sisters rings true - antagonistic at times but with love underneath. "

Flavia continued to delight in her newest installment, but things are changing - for instance, she's almost twelve. Also, the end of the previous book dropped a bombshell cliff hanger for this one. Initially, it didn't seem to be as world moving as I thought it'd be (when they said "Your mother has been found," they meant "Your mother's body has been found"). But, this book did change the series decisively. Some fans might be upset with the new direction, but I'm excited. I can't wait to see where it'll go!

In addition... I went book shopping online. Most of the titles I'd heard about here on LT:

Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines
Downbelow Station
Cyteen
Three Parts Dead
London Falling
The Ladies of Mandrigyn

And then I look at the books that have been sitting on the TBR stack for months. I don't feel guilty about the nonfiction - I'll get to those when I have more time on my hands. But for various reasons, there's five fictional books that I haven't gotten to. For Kinslayer, I figured out just how little research the author did (pandas... in Japan), but I'd bought it before I'd reflected so deeply on the flaws of the first book. Eona is in similar straights. Plus, I've since heard negative things about it.

King's Dragon, I got given for a gift and know nothing about, besides that it's a long epic fantasy and the start of a long series. So far it's been too daunting to pick up. Oath of Fealty is the first in it's trilogy but not the first book set in that world. It starts off with a long authors note of everything that's happened before it. I think I may try and read the first trilogy beforehand. If anyone's read either of these and liked them, let me know and it might help bump them up the pile.

Finally, there's The Chosen, which a close friend loves and has been raving about, but it's realistic fiction and looks more literary than entertaining.

>>129 pwaites: Thank you for sharing the link to your story/video. Very nicely done! I am impressed with the work and the overall approach to your project!

133> Thank you for taking the time to look at it!

I'm three or four chapters into The Ladies of Mandrigyn. I'm not sure about the writing quality - the author has a problem of telling, not showing, and it's fond of info-dumping. On another downside, I really hate the male lead, Sun Wolf. However, the back of the book tells me that he's going to be kidnapped and poisoned, which makes me happy. Presumably he'll learn a lesson at some point.

134: Sheera and the other Ladies are forces to be reckoned with, and I'm pretty sure Hambly is on their side. I agree, Sun Wolf can be a bit tough to take. (I had a hard time with him in The Dark Hand of Magic as well; I liked him a little better in The Witches of Wenshar.)

>134 pwaites: you always know you're in for a tough ride when you're actively looking forward to a major character getting punished :)

Finished with The Ladies of Mandrigyn. At a certain point, I overcame my earlier reluctance and spent every moment possible reading. I even stayed up late on a school night, which I try to avoid doing. I don't hate Sun Wolf anymore, but I don't like him either. He's achieved apathy.

Starhawk, on the other hand, won me over pretty soon after she left the mercenary camp. I think it's her stoicism and determination. She doesn't show a lot of emotion, but she will reflect on what she feels. She also has the drive to carry out her decisions no matter the difficulty. And she doesn't judge other people either - she accepts that Fawn hasn't had the training she has and doesn't begrudge her for it.

But there's still elements of the book that irk me. The names would be one. Starhawk and Sun Wolf. Really? It might be somewhat acceptable if they weren't born with those names, but the book never mentions how they got them. The villain didn't do anything for me. Yes, he has dark powers, but he wasn't frightening or intimidating. He'd also benefit from this list of suggestions.

The writing issues continued into the story, but they became less noticeable as I got wrapped up in it.

Right now I'm reading Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines. It's very interesting so far. Apparently, fifteen to twenty percent of women buried in some nomadic tribes were warriors. What really strikes me is how for many years evidence of warrior women was ignored or brushed over. I think it still is today. It's assumed that societies have always been patriarchal, when really matriarchal or more egalitarian societies did exist.

I have a friend who claims she doesn't write anything with magic, she writes things with supernatural elements or superpowers or urban fantasy, which she says is not magic, it's called something else. I don't agree. Most urban fantasy I've read has included magic. I also classify superpowers as a form of magic. It's an interesting discussion - does anyone else have thoughts on what constitutes magic?

>137 pwaites: Superpowers sound like a form of magic to me. Supernatural elements too. Well, depending on what the elements are of course, for instance, ghosts are not magic.

edit: I guess magic involves manipulating or changing the world around you in a way that does not involve the physical laws as we know them. But sometimes creatures are also magic. Because they were made with whatever force is magic?

>137 pwaites: Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines sounds like a fascinating read. I may just have to add that to the wish list I'm not allowed to put anything else on!

I had thoughts on your magic being something different to supernatural and superpowers question but the more I tried to unpick them the less I could separate one from the other and give a clear unequivocal answer and ended up convincing myself of the opposite to what I'd originally thought! So at this point I'm going to withdraw and say - I've just managed to completely baffle myself!

138> I've always thought of supernatural as being creatures, like werewolves or vampires. But what makes a werewolf or vampire supernatural and something like a unicorn or dragon magical?

139> It is interesting, but it's more about archaeology and women's roles in ancient societies in general than on specifically warrior women. There's quiet a lot on ancient priestesses. I still enjoy it, but it's not exactly what I was hoping for. Then again, the nomadic societies didn't have a written language, so it's hard to gather much information about them.

My reading is going at a snail's pace. AP exams are less than a month away, and I have many tests and projects in addition. My English teacher gave us a week to put together a forty minute presentation on a romantic poet. Her theory was that we wouldn't start til the week before anyway.

>140 pwaites: Difficult to answer, because I don't think a werewolf or vampire is supernatural whereas a unicorn or dragon is magical. Why distinguish between them? Whether they are magic at all depends on the world, I think. In some books, a dragon is not magic, it just is. In other worlds, they are magic, because their existence is somehow interwoven with the existence of magic.

I mentioned ghosts, because I don't think they are ever magic, are they?

141> I don't usually think of ghosts as magic. Maybe when they're in exist through necromancy, as in Sabriel?

I've come down with a cold and been reading London Falling as I sneeze. I'd first heard about it from several people here on LT, and eventually I decided to pick it up.

London Falling follows four police officers as they investigate the mysterious death of a gangster. But their investigations lead them towards gaining the Sight and seeing London as it really is. They're soon embroiled in a world they don't understand, trying to catch an ancient serial-killing witch.

While reading it, I realized that it would make a good TV adaption. When I read the acknowledgements and author bio, I found that Paul Cornell has written TV episodes and that the story was initially conceptualized as a TV show.

It's a suspenseful and dark story with many edge of your seat moments. I really loved the way the main characters attempted to format police procedural for combating forces of supernatural evil.

After finishing London Falling, I moved into Three Parts Dead. I liked it, and I think other fans of Brandon Sanderson probably would as well. It has some of the same elements he plays with - religion, urban setting, a unique magic system. Plus, it has a wonderful female protagonist, who's also described as being black.

You don't realize just how many characters in fantasy are white (or authors for that matter) until you stop to think about it. The only black fantasy lead who jumps to mind is Eden Moore from Four or Twenty Blackbirds, who's mixed race. There's a few more as secondary characters - such as Shantay from The Rook.

Today I took the SAT, finished Warrior Women, and started Cyteen. I enjoyed Warrior Women, but it was also frustrating in some ways - she only talks about areas that she's had personal experience with, such as the Chinese mummies, which didn't really fit with the "Hidden Heroine" topic. The title also lead me to believe that the book was mainly about, well, warrior women. In reality, they only made up one chapter, maybe two if you count the chapter on the Amazons, whom have no evidence of actually existing but were probably made up based on stories of foreign women to keep Greek women in line.

The book also only covers Eurasia. In the second to last page, she mentions that an ancient North African kingdom trained women as bodyguards. Why not more information?

I think part of the brevity is the lack of information on general. Really, all we know about the ancient warrior women in the steppes was that they existed. Their nomadic tribes didn't have any written language, so all the evidence comes from burial goods. Plus, the presence of women buried with weapons was ignored for many years by the archaeological establishment.

Still, the book did contain some fascinating tidbits and was easy to read. I would recommend it as an introduction to the topic. It gave me other avenues to explore in my reading.

I'm only a few pages into Cyteen at this point. Not far enough to give any judgments.

I've also created two lists on Goodreads (is there a list feature on LibraryThing?):

Fantasy/Scifi Heroines Without Love Interests I spent years searching for these but eventually gave up. But after reading both The Rook and Three Parts Dead this year, I have renewed my belief that they are out there somewhere. It's not that I always hate romance subplots, but I would like to see less of them sometimes. They often feel like a requirement.

Diversity in Fantasy and Science Fiction I've realized that most of the protagonists in fantasy and science fiction are straight or white or both.

There's Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey. I haven't read it, but it was recommended to me by a source I trust.

You can access Lists from Home page, more info here:

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Lists

I took a couple of courses on women in the ancient world in college, part of them focusing on warrior women- I'll have to see if I can dig out the list of books we used in the class. The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser was one, I know, for the sections on Bodicaea.

Relevant to the earlier discussion on Mistborn cover art, I saw the Mistborn trilogy is being reissued again this summer for a YA audience: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/04/check-out-new-cover-art-for-brandon-sandersons-... Does she really kill Captain America with arrows in the third book?

I've bookmarked the lists for future reference! I did notice that for some of the books on the list, though, the heroine doesn't have a love interest in the book mentioned but gains one later in the series- eg The Golden Compass, Black Unicorn, Dealing with Dragons. Maybe there's a way to qualify this? Also, on the diverse list, is there a way to tag what kind or kinds of diversity are found within? (Eg A Confusion of Princes, which has been on my read-eventually list for a while- I'm curious.)

>129 pwaites: I liked your video too! I can empathize.

Reading reviews of some of these books led me to this denouncement of the common excuse that "sexism is historically accurate" when it comes to gender roles in fantasy novels.

147> Ohhh... that looks fascinating. I'll get a copy ASAP.

148> Hmm. The reviews of The Warrior Queens indicate that it was more focused on modern day rulers, while I'm more interested in the ancient stuff. Some reviews also indicated that she played down the war aspect of rulers such as Bodicaea. Do you happen to remember it?

I decided to base it on books rather than series, primarily because if I went by series I wouldn't have been able to have nearly as many books. I had fifteen originally. Classifying it by series would have reduced it to five. As far as I know, there's no way to tag something when you add it to a list. There's an option for saying why you added it, but I haven't figured out how to view that once the book's added.

In the case of A Confusion of Princes, the protagonist is described as having dark skin. But it's set so far in the future that racial categories aren't really existent. Plus, the cover makes him white, which is another problem with the publishing industry.

148> Thanks! It's surprising how many people can. It's just one of those things that isn't really talked about.

>149 pwaites: Oh, that's a good article. Kameron Hurley has a good one as well, "We Have Always Fought": Challenging the Women, Cattle, and Slaves Narrative. Not quite on the same topic, but diversity-related, have you seen the Medieval POC Tumblr? It's pretty neat too.

I actually managed to find a syllabus for the class I took- an earlier session, but the books seem the same: here. Besides The Warrior Queens, we also used Ancient Queens and On the Trail of the Women Warriors: Amazons in Myth and History. The Warrior Women book you mention just having read was actually an optional text for the course- I thought the title sounded vaguely familiar. Unfortunately, it's been too long for me to remember much about The Warrior Queens beyond that we read part of the text about Bodicaea and discussed her- all of the readings were just supplementary to the lectures and discussion. One of the other texts we referenced was The Creation of Patriarchy, which I wasn't too fond of- from what I recall, it seemed fairly gender-essentialist in the "women are naturally good, kind, nurturing" and so on way that some second-wave feminist books are. I later read Cynthia Eller's The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, which brought up a lot of issues with the theories of prehistorical utopian matriarchy. (I have Eller's follow-up book, Gentlemen and Amazons, about the origin of this myth in my TBR right now.)

I didn't realize that about A Confusion of Princes- all I have seen is the whitewashed cover. That's understandable about the no romance list, but in a way I think the starkness of the list makes a statement of its own. Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion and Sherwood Smith's Banner of the Damned have asexual heroines, so I don't think they would have romance subplots, and Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic Quartet, Melisa Michaels' first four Skyrider books, and Tara K. Harper's Lightwing also have no romance. Oh, and Heidi C. Vlach's Render, that I got from Member Giveaway was one as well. I'm sure I can dig up others, I don't have a Goodreads account but I'd be happy to add them if you convert to using LT lists.

Regarding your video, I think you're spot on that it's not something that's talked about. All the more reason for representation in stories and so on to provide that mirror.

>148 sandstone78: Those Mistborn covers are hideous! The first one is ok, but I don't think that's new. I checked out different covers for those books on GR once, and I believe that picture was in the french one:



>149 pwaites: Good link, that was quite an interesting article. Plus, when you write fantasy, you can pick and choose which historical elements you wish to include...

>150 sandstone78: Very good article by Kameron Hurley as well!

148, 151> The last one's horrible. It really does look Captain America. I really like the first one, and the second one's pretty good even if the sword looks way too large.

150> That's an excellent article, and the artwork's very beautiful. I hadn't seen the Medieval POC Tumblr, but it reminds me of an art show I read about which consisted entirely of European medieval paintings of Africans. Even medieval Europe wasn't entirely cut off from the world. Tumblr has so many interesting things, but that's the exact reason I'm not getting an account. If I do, my time wasted on the internet will increase exponentially.

Thank you for all the books! On the Trail of the Women Warriors: Amazons in Myth and History looks most interesting, and The Creation of Patriarchy looks like something I'll avoid.

I think the best comparison would be to make a similar list for male protagonists, who seem much more likely to not have a romance plot. I have heard of Deed of Paksenarrion, but I think I've also heard that she's asexual because she was raped? Am I confusing this with a different book? (CORRECTION - I think I got it mixed up with Mercedes Lackey's Vows and Honor). I was reading this on my phone sitting next to a friend who's asexual and likes fantasy, and I saw the words "asexual heroines" got excited and showed her. Unfortunately, I then got mixed up. Oh, well. I don't know how well she'd have liked it anyway, but I've added it to TBR list along with Banner of the Damned (which looks pretty interesting). Oh, and I found this LibraryThing topic looking specifically for asexual characters in fantasy.

I'll add the other books you mentioned on - thanks for the titles! I'll try to start an LT list soon, possibly later tonight.

This reply ended up getting pretty long. I'm sectioning parts of it off into another post on general reading updates and such.

And now for a more general book update:

I like reading books, but I also like talking about and sharing the books I love. To do this off of LT, I need to get some of my friends to read some of the same books as me. I'll admit it - I'm a book pusher. I've been shoving books onto my friends for years. This was what originally prompted the search for non-straight protagonists in fantasy - in the last year, three of my book inclined friends have come out. One of whom has said that she's specifically looking for books with gay, lesbian or bisexual protagonists. That's when I realized that the only fantasy book with a non-straight protagonist I'd read was The Privilege of the Sword, which was already loaned out to the "likes strong female protagonists" friend (she liked it). Anyway, that started me on the hunt for more diverse fantasy.

In all the years I've been pushing books, I've rarely regretted it. Usually, I'm glad someone else is reading it even if I never get it back. Such is the case with a friend who took a whole stack with her when she switched schools. I know she'll read them. I once loaned her a four hundred page book and she read it in twenty four hours. Unfortunately, I loaned personalized signed copies (this was such a bad idea) of Gunmetal Magic and Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey to someone who then stopped talking to me for a month over some perceived slight. She's at least talking to me again (and acting like nothing happened), but I don't think I'm getting those books back. And I know she hasn't read them.

On the topic of current reads, I'm listening to the audio version of Finnikin of the Rock. I really like the world building and the plot set up - the closed off kingdom and the situation with the refugees isn't something I've seen done before. But I'm not as enthusiastic about the characters. I'm okay with Finnikin most of the time, I hate the thief (Frey), and I've only started to become more understanding of Evanjalin. At first I disliked how secretive and manipulative she was. Now that I've found out she's the heir to the throne, I understand her a bit more. If your entire family was slaughtered and you could be executed for revealing your identity, it would lend an accustom air to lying.

I haven't gone any farther with Cyteen. I'll probably pick it up again tonight. I've also started Candide for school. I'm not enjoying it so far - events happen so quickly. I think it's supposed to relate to philosophy, so maybe I'd enjoy it more if I understood the theories behind it.

Thanks to LolaWalser's help, the lists have been converted into LT lists:

Diversity in Fantasy and Science Fictiont
Science Fiction and Fantasy Heroines Without Love Interests

Can't you ask your 'friend' your books back, pwaites? You're talking again after all...

edit: just looked at your diversity list. Do you want only books with protagonists who are neither straight nor white? Or is a white not-straight person or a non-white straight person also ok?

153: re: Finnikin of the Rock: I remember reading this novel not so long ago and being drawn, like you, into the plot and the world, yet finding the characters a little troubling. The same thing happened when I read the sequel, Froi of the Exiles.

Even though I raced through those books, I find they do not hold up well upon reflection, which is why I haven't been in too big a rush to read the third book. I won't give details, not wishing to spoil, but every single major female character in these books is abominably abused by at least one man, sometimes more than one, in the course of her story. Worse, almost none of the abusers are called to account for their behavior. At times it seems as though Marchetta feels it's in the nature of men, even otherwise good men, to treat women badly.

Really like your lists, by the way.

155> She's been saying she'll give them back for several months now. But apparently she's lost them in her room somewhere.

I should clarify that - white not-straight, or non-white straight are fine.

156> There's no way that I'm reading a book about Froi. I'm not even sure why he's in the book in the first place. Some message about forgiveness maybe? Or how people are a product of their environments? I don't care, I still hate him. Especially when he tried to rape Evanjalin. And yes, I agree with you completely on the point about female characters. Throughout the entire story, Evanjalin is constantly being threatened with rape.

I'm about a hundred pages into Cyteen, and it just went a direction I was not expecting. I was assuming that Ari was going to be the main villain for the entire story. She's got holds over everyone and is clearly and despicably evil. But... then she dies. I'm very glade she's dead, but I'm wondering where the books going to go now. And who killed her? Motives abound, but none of the other major characters appears to have killed her.

Time for a reading update. Life's been hectic recently - AP exams are in about a week and everything going at a break-neck pace. But I've gotten some reading done.

Firstly, I finished Finnikin of the Rock. I'll give it three stars - entertaining enough and some interesting world-building ideas, but ultimately I don't care enough about the characters to read the sequel. Anyway, I'm now in the market for a new audiobook from audible. Any suggestions?

I'm 590 pages into Cyteen, which is 680 total. I'm pretty bored, but since I've read this much I'm going to push myself to finish. No point giving up now. It's much too slow moving for me, and there isn't really any action. This isn't a bad thing, just not for me. I'm also not happy with how Ari's character arc is going. This'll take some explaining. In the beginning of the book, she's a hundred something year old scientist with massive power. One of the main characters is introduced in this section, Justin, who's a seventeen year old boy working in Ari's lab. She sexually harasses him and ends up drugging and raping him. See? This is why I was happy when she died.

But, when she dies, the other high ups at the genetics corporation decided to recreate her by cloning her and raising the clone exactly as she was. Thus we get Young Ari as a new major character. I'd hoped that this new version of Ari would turn decidedly away from her predecessor. But she feels way to close some of the things Old Ari did - mainly concerning Justin. I'm pretty fed up at this point.

Also, the depiction of the relationship between Justin and Grant is... strange? Props to C.J. Cherryh for including a gay couple, but we literally would not know they're a couple if other characters hadn't specifically pointed it out. We never see any sort of physical affection or the like between them, whereas the heterosexual relationships are much more described. And why does Justin still refer to Grant as his (adopted) brother if they're in a sexual relationship? You'd think he'd stop using that term.

I've got Downbelow Station sitting on my desk, and I'm planning to read it. But I may need to take a break with a different author for a bit.

Right now I'm also rereading Fearless because I really need a de-stressing book right now. I really love the world building of this series - fairy tales going through an industrial revolution? It's so dark and enchantingly beautiful. But sad in a way as the Mirrorworld becomes evermore like our world.

158: In her book Brave Dames and Wimpettes, Susan Isaacs stated, "I have always needed my heroes to be good; the anti-hero has my brain but not my heart."

Since I share these sentiments, I don't think I will be picking up Cyteen anytime soon. Fearless, however, is on my want-to-read list, along with its predecessor Reckless.

159> Yes, I really do like those two. There seems to be a trend of making many characters unlikable and unsympathetic, but the Mirrorworld books do the opposite. Pretty much everyone, even the antagonists (such as the Dark Fairy and Nerron), are sympathetic. And it works well - the characters all have different goals and objectives, and so are in constant conflict with one another.

Reading update time! This weeks been pretty crazy in terms of books. Normally, I try to stick to one, but this week the number of current reads has exploded.

I'm 626 pages into the 680 pages of Cyteen. I've been stalling for awhile but am still determined to power through.

I have finished my reread of Fearless - fairly easily since the book is actually pretty short. I loved it as much this time around as I did the first. I suppose that the one flaw the series could have in terms of female characters is interactions between them. Clara and Fox traveled together in Reckless, but never really got along. Fox is worried about loosing Jacob to Clara or the world that she comes from. And the Dark Fairy and the Red Fairy are most certainly not on good terms. In many ways it's a result of so many characters being in conflict with each other and our heroes (Jacob, Fox, Will and Clara) being in the middle of all of it.

However, in Fearless Fox did meet with her mother, the first we've seen of her. The reunion was brief, but Fox said she'll return.

I'm about twenty-five pages from the end of Candide. The due date for it got moved up two weeks, so I'll probably let it languish until then.

I've started listening to an audio book of Written in Red. I'm really liking it so far - the world and the characters are both very interesting. Here's a summary of it from Anne Bishop's website:

"As a cassandra sangue, or blood prophet, Meg Corbyn can see the future when her skin is cut—a gift that feels more like a curse. Meg’s Controller keeps her enslaved so he can have full access to her visions. But when she escapes, the only safe place Meg can hide is at the Lakeside Courtyard—a business district operated by the Others.

Shape-shifter Simon Wolfgard is reluctant to hire the stranger who inquires about the Human Liaison job. First, he senses she’s keeping a secret, and second, she doesn't smell like human prey. Yet a stronger instinct propels him to give Meg the job. And when he learns the truth about Meg and that she’s wanted by the government, he’ll have to decide if she’s worth the fight between humans and the Others that will surely follow. "

I was worried about listening to it on audio - I don't like blood, gore or gushy romantic scenes in normal books, and it's hard to skip over these in audio. It's mainly been fine, but I am having problem with Meg's blood prophet abilities. The cutting scenes really freak me out.

Additionally, my friend handed me two prequels to Sandman and told me that I have to read them. I've never read comic books, but the art looks pretty and I've liked other things Neil Gaiman has written. Plus, I've been throwing Discworld books at her, so it's about time I read something in return. She keeps pestering me about it even though she gave them to me literally less than five hours ago. I've promised to read them this weekend and return them in perfect condition on Monday.

I blew through the rest of Written in Red. What a fun book! I'd highly recommend it, but other than that I don't really have any new reflections on it.

I've also found this blog post (So. I See I'm A Girl. :/) by Maggie Stiefvater, author of The Raven Boys and The Scorpio Races among other things, were she talks about the differences in the way male and female characters are written. It's something that I think would interest a lot of people on here.

I've also read the two prequel issues of Sandman, or whatever they are exactly. I'm not sure how they fit into the story-line and apparently the artist is different from the main series. I was somewhat confused the entire time, but I enjoyed them and will keep an eye out for more.

I've forged another twenty pages through Cyteen. At this point, it might be worth calling it a DNF.

I've got standardized testing coming up, so I'll be bringing the copy of The Steerswoman along while I'm trapped at a desk for four hours straight. Come to think of it, I might need two books depending on how fast a read Steerswoman is.

>162 pwaites:

That blog post was very interesting. I freaked out thinking she was a teenager at first--how could there still be exactly the same problems thirty years since I was fifteen?!--but realising she's older than that, it's... somewhat less depressing. At least one learns it's a common experience, not a strange personal affliction.

I must say I never wished I was a boy, though. Sure, there were moments in my later teens-to-twenties when, if a gender-flipping switch had appeared hovering in thin air in front of me, I would have flipped it, just to make life easier.

That post reminded me of another recent-ish article about the lack of that "adventurer" type of character... apologies if it's a re-post, it was discussed on this scary sci-fi forum I mostly lurk on, but I haven't noticed it on LT:

It's Frustratingly Rare to Find a Novel About Women That's Not About Love

There are no Jack Kerouacs or Holden Caulfields for girls. Literary girls don't take road-trips to find themselves; they take trips to find men.

I'm sure I've seen kceccato talk about similar things.

sandstone78 also wrote about the lack of "swoonworthiness" in female characters, that combo of cool competence, charm, humour, nonchalance that is so routinely bestowed on men and NEVER given women. Women are always undermined in some way, even the ones meant to be amazing.

162: Excellent blog by Stiefvater. This quote caught me immediately:

"It was just because I had seen the sort of person I wanted to be when I grew up and none of them were women."

This is why I did so much gender-flipping of characters from books I read when I was growing up. I wish so much that I'd had, growing up, some of the smart, funny, courageous female characters I see in more recent children's and YA fiction -- characters like Cimorene and Kazul, Tiffany Aching and Peaches and Malicia Grim, Alanna and Daine and Keladry, Harry and Aerin and Rosie. I'm not as enamored of Katniss Everdeen (I like her better in the movies than in the books), but still I'm willing to say she represents a step forward.

Yet here's what gets me: with the growing number of genuinely awesome heroines in today's YA fiction, why do so many girls choose to read about drips like Bella Swan? Do they know something I don't?

Now I need to read the blog from post 163.

Edited because I just read it. So many of the commenters just DO NOT get it! Can people who have never had to worry about under-representation EVER be brought to understand why representation matters??

Uh, if there's one thing the interwebs have taught me, it is not to read comments on any article about women, feminism etc. :) I just looked at them... I recommend skipping the articles linked on that page too, with their comments.

163> Thanks for the link! While that topic has come up before, I don't think that specific article has ever been linked to. I think the depictions of female characters has gotten better, but there's still a long way to go.

164> I rather think you know something they don't!

In all seriousness, he impression I've gotten regarding the Twilight books is that some girls and women (my mother and aunt both loved the books) prefer to focus on the love interests instead of the main character. I don't really understand the reasoning, but I think it's romantic wish fulfillment.

I asked my mom why she liked it:
1) The visual scenery of the movie.
2) It was a kind of love story (I didn't get anything more specific).
3) It was kind of interesting because of what she knew of the author's religious background, and she liked to see how that showed in the books.

And the number of girls who have actually read it might be inflated. A large part of the buzz comes from the movies. My sister, who I'd thought read it, says she actually just flipped through it and watched the movies instead.

It's also very readable. Even if it's the sort of thing you put down after finishing and go "What the heck did I just read?" I had a similar reaction to The Selection (avoid it). Everyone in the book club read The Selection, even if the discussion centered around everything that was wrong with it. I think that's why they're called popcorn reads - you mindlessly read them and don't realize how ill you've made yourself until afterwards.

165> I think "Don't read the comments" would apply to must of the internet, not just articles about feminism.

166: I remember thinking I couldn't read Touched By an Alien because I would have a hard time liking and admiring a heroine named "Kitty Katt." I've likewise decided The Selection isn't for me, because I would not be able to take "America Singer" seriously. Note to writers: Names matter -- but not in the way some of you seem to think they do.

I am not anti-romance. The stories I write have romantic plots. My problem emerges when ALL the heroine's thoughts, feelings, ambitions, and ideals are consumed by the love plot, or when the book's ethos seems to follow Lord Byron's outdated prescription from "Don Juan":

"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence; man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart
And few there are whom these cannot estrange;
Men have all these resources, we but one,
To love again, and be again undone."

This is what's wrong with books like Twilight. This is also what's wrong with saddling every single female protagonist with a love plot or subplot even when she's involved with other matters, as if adding a romance were the only way to make her interesting to a reader. By now we should have moved long past the ideals of the early nineteenth century when it comes to gender roles, but as some of those comments attest -- yes, I know I shouldn't read them, but I find myself drawn to them as to a train wreck -- many people are still quite fine with those ideals (esp. the man who posted that women are "biologically wired" to center their existence on marriage and children).

Susan Isaacs, in Brave Dames and Wimpettes, puts the problem this way:

"(Wimpettes) don't act independently; they react to men and frequently take their identities from the men in their lives. When they do act bravely, it is, even today, often to defend husband, home, hearth, and children... For many wimpettes, the world stops at the white pickets of their fences; they lack the curiosity to look past the spaces between the pickets at the world beyond because they are so self-involved. Larger issues -- racial equality, justice -- are left to the guys" (7).

This is one of the reasons I loved Cat Barahal from Cold Steel so much. Yes, she was desperately in love with a man, but she was also keenly aware of all the injustices around her and resolved to do something about it. (She also rescues her man not once but twice; despite having far more powerful magic at his call than she does, he's a "dude in distress," unable to save himself, while she, less magically gifted but more capable of using those gifts strategically in a crisis, is never completely helpless.) Mirian from The Silvered follows this same pattern; she's keen to put wrongs to right, and the romance, while it is there, is more of an afterthought. Senneth in Mystic and Rider is also motivated primarily by ethical concerns. Then there's Tara in Three Parts Dead, who fights for justice without the encumbrance of any romantic subplot at all.

More and more, I think the quality I admire most in a heroine, besides intelligence and competence, is INTEGRITY -- a sense of ethics and ideals. I seek out heroines whose vision ranges beyond the picket fence, and when I find them, I treasure them.

Re: "popcorn reads" -- Finnikin of the Rock was like that for me. I devoured it when I was reading it; now I think, "What the hell?"

Quick interruption - a fellow high school student is looking for beta readers for her novella. She has a topic in one of the author groups here on LT - right here.

In other news, I'm doing a reread of Monstrous Regiment. I'd forgotten how much I loved Polly and Maladict.

I really liked The Steerswoman. It's hard for me to describe why - it's always so much easier to say what I disliked about a book.

I think in The Steerswoman's case, the characters were a large part of why I liked it so much. Rowan and Bel are both competent female protagonists, and I really liked Rowan's intelligence and devotion to knowledge. It's also a book that I can add to my "Female Protagonists Without Love Interests" list. And the female characters actually get to be friends with each other and adventure together. It's so wonderful.

The premise of the world itself was nothing I hadn't seen before, but it was well done. There's a saying that magic is simply science beyond our understanding, and Rosemary Kristein ran with it for this book. It's pretty easy to figure out - for one thing, it's a science fiction imprint.

I did wonder about the situation with Liane. I don't see why Bel killed her. Or presumably killed her? It tells us she's dead (or at least vanished), and I think Rowan assumes that Bel kills her. Then they use Liane's cloak as a disguise to escape and Rowan never questions it. I don't think killing someone for a cloak is a good enough reason - couldn't they just tie her up somewhere? Liane's sort of annoying, sure, but I don't think she deserves to be killed. What's really frustrating is the way that it's never brought up.

>169 pwaites: I recently picked this up so I won't read the spoiler comments yet, but I'm really looking forward to it!

>169 pwaites: Hmm, I don't really remember that incident, I suppose I should re-read.
For me, one of the reasons I really like it is that Rowan is in a way a scientist. The way she reasons things out is pretty cool, and I love how she sticks to her morals and has a passion for her work and for knowledge.

172> Oh, yes she is very much a scientist, and I also like the logical steps she and the other steerswomen use to figure out solutions to problems.

I finished my reread of Monstrous Regiment, an excellent book by Terry Pratchett. Of course, does he write anything else? The story follows Polly Perks, who decides to disguise herself as a boy and join the army to find her brother. The plot line sounds fairly typical, but it's the characters who really make the book (they are the Monstrous Regiment after all). It's also typical of Pratchett's newest books that as it is hilariously funny, it's also a meaningful look at issues in the real world - war and gender relations are the predominant ideas explored in this book.

I know the movie's coming out sometime soon, so I did a reread of The Giver. I really don't see how this will be made into a Hollywood movie. It's short enough that plot points won't have to be left out, but it's not the sort of dystopian that's so popular right now. There's no romance or action in The Giver. Instead it focuses on it's moral message and Jonas's coming of age. The ending is also left very open ended - I remember clearly being confused about it when I first read the book in elementary school. Although, the sequels somewhat change the ending of the first book.

>172 pwaites: Do you think the moviemakers might insert some of the plot and characters from the sequels to The giver, in order to get a major female character (and possibly a romance, if they really take liberties) into the film? It's the sort of thing I could see Hollywood doing.

173> I could see that too, but I'm betting they'll expand the role of Fiona, a girl Jonas was friends with.

I checked the cast listing. Apparently they added in Taylor Swift as Rosemary, a character who was only referenced in the books as the the failed Receiver of Memory. Presumably they'll be flashbacks because Rosemary committed suicide ten years before the events of the book. And the actor playing Jonas does not look twelve, but I was expecting that. Hollywood always tends to make characters at least sixteen.

I got Sunshine back from a friend and have started on a reread.

I went on a trip to the bookstore and came home with five new friends:
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marilier
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest (I didn't know that this one was out and was so excited to find it)
And finally, the thirtieth volume of the Writers of the Future contest because I'm thinking of entering their illustrating contest this summer.

My sister also got a book on Russian history that I may borrow once she's finished. Disappointingly, I wasn't able to find many of the books on my To Read list. There were no books by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Ellen Kushner, Sharon Shinn or Martha Wells. They had three books by Elizabeth Moon but not any of the Paksenarrion books, which was what I was looking for. And all of the books I'd selected to find characters of more diverse backgrounds were also not available.

How much of what we read is determined by the bookstores and publishers? So many titles were by big name, best selling authors. And how much of that success is determined by how much the publisher decides to push the books, get them stocked at stores, ect? Luckily, LibraryThing and Goodreads to a lesser extent have been helpful in getting me to find less popular books. But it looks like I'll need to comb through used bookstores and Amazon to find most of my To Read list. Hopefully the library will have some of them, but I've had difficulty finding things before.

To make room on the overflowing bookshelves, I selected thirty-two book to be sold at the local Half-Price Bookstore (as long as my sister doesn't veto any). I was at the point of stacking books on top of other books to cram more into shelves. I may still do this with some authors - Terry Pratchett would be dominating a shelf and a half without the stacking. Plus, most of his books are the same size so it looks tidy.

Went on a trip to Half-Priced Books and got yet another load. It looks like I'll be set for summer.

Deerskin by Robin McKinley (I'm a bit scared of picking this one up)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Fool's War by Sarah Zettel
Swordpoint and Thomas The Rhymer by Ellen Kushner
Once a Hero by Elizabeth Moon
A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer
Mystic and Rider by Sharon Shinn
Cobra Bargain by Timothy Zahn
The Onion Girl by Charles De Lint
Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
Hammered by Elizabeth Bear

Mount TBR is beginning to teeter alarmingly.

I'm almost through with my re-read of Sunshine. It's always hard to describe the plot of this book - the general description is that a woman is kidnapped by vampires. But that's not really the plot, it's just the instigating event. The book is divided into four sections. The kidnapping and her escape all happens in part one. The rest is Sunshine (the nickname of the heroine) dealing with the fallout.

That description says a little more of what the book is about, but again, it isn't really all of it. For the past fifteen years, Sunshine has been normal. Yes, maybe her father was a sorcerer and maybe her grandmother taught her some magic, but she's been living has her mother's daughter. Her life revolves around the family coffeehouse, where she's a baker. But when she's kidnapped, her heritage rears it's head and she's got to come to terms and embrace that part of herself.

I really love Sunshine - she made it onto my list of favorite heroines back up on post 61. The book's written in first person, and the narration really works. Sunshine's character suffuses the story, and her interests and viewpoints never feel tacked on. What other character would be criticizing the badly baked bread she's given while held a prisoner? Here's a few of quotes:

“The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his mustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.”

“It's funny, because I had thought, living through those first two months after the night at the lake, that the great crisis was about What I Was or Who I'd Become or What Terrible Thing Was Wrong With Me (and About to Go Wronger) and Why All Was Changed As a Result. But I was still struggling against the idea that all was changed.”

“I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.”

I remember Sunshine not being one of my favourite McKinleys. It was one of the first McKinleys I read, and the almost stream-of-consciousness way she writes threw me in this one. But it seems I liked it well enough to give it four stars. I really need to reread this.

177> She only uses that style for certain books (Dragonhaven is the other that springs to mind). I like it, but I can see how others can find it rambling or off putting.

I finished reading Fiddlehead, the latest book in Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century series. The books are all set in the same world and there is a chronology to them, but they don't follow the same characters (although some do reappear) and can be read in any order. They take place in a steampunk version of late 1870s America where the Civil War has been going for about twenty years. Also, there's sometimes zombies, although not really in this book. There's a few in the epilogue. That's one thing I've got to give Cherie Priest credit for - she doesn't overuse the zombies. They're most prevalent in Boneshaker (the first book), but more as a force of nature than the plot. In the books not set in Seattle, there tends to be around one zombie scene. Her version of Seattle is home of the zombies and thus infested, so they show up much more often in that setting.

It's a fun steampunk series and one that I'd recommend. Plus, she does a great job writing strong female characters, of which there tends to be multiple per book. She also does a good job on having diverse casts - her airpirate crews and zombie fighters are multicultural and multiracial. There's a lot to love about this series.

178:
One of the reasons I have been reluctant to read this series is that the Confederates are the protagonists. Even though I grew up in a small south Georgia town and live near Atlanta now, I have a very hard time seeing the Confederates as good guys. (It may be heresy to say so, but I'm not even all that crazy about "Gone With the Wind.") I just have to ask:

Is there slavery in this steampunk world?
If so, do the "good guys" attempt to justify it, or do they just ignore its presence? Are slaves ever presented as people, in a sympathetic light?

179> The Confederates aren't the protagonists.

The protagonist of the second book was a nurse who worked in a Confederate hospital, but her husband was a Union solider, and I don't remember her caring much one way or the other. I think she became a nurse to take care of him while he was in the prison camp? I'm not sure, it's been a while since I read Dreadnaught.Same goes for one of the other female characters, who worked for the Confederacy but married a Union solider and ended up working for a Northern detective agency (she was actually a real historical figure who I think Cherie Priest found interesting, but she also tried to find a way to sever the Confederate ties in her alternate history version). Aside from those characters, the other point of view characters are either Westerners who aren't involved one way or the other (the Civil War's only mentioned in passing in Boneshaker, or Unionists (Grant was actually a viewpoint character of Fiddlehead, and Lincoln was also a prominent character).

I think slavery was ended at some point before the series - I think I remember a reference to it in the second book Slavery is never justified by anyone - all of the protagonists (and most other characters too) are against it. There are some characters who are ex-slaves. Gideon Bardsley, a viewpoint character from Fiddlehead, escaped from slavery and became an inventor and scientist. One of the two POV characters from Clementine is Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey, another ex-slave and a pirate captain of an airship. Both of these characters are brave, sympathetic protagonists. There's also a number of other characters who are black or mixed race in the series (and a number of Chinese and Native American characters as well) - Josephine Early, a protagonist of Ganymede being one.


Captain Hainey.

The series ends with the Union becoming reunited and the Confederacy ceasing to exist. I understand the fear - I wouldn't want to read anything sympathetic to the Confederacy either - but you don't have cause to be worried.

180:
Thank you! This series will go on my happily extensive To-Read list.

Edited:
I think I might like to read Boneshaker and Dreadnought -- but Clementine and Fiddlehead, not so much. I've just been reading some Goodreads reviews of these, and according to them, the heroine of these books, Belle Boyd, is very pro-Confederate, works for the Union only against her will/better judgment, and actually tolerates slavery. If these reviews are accurate, I can't see myself liking or admiring her. But are they accurate?

Why are all the women Southern, and all the men Northern/Union?

181> Boneshaker and Dreadnought are probably the best of them anyway.

That didn't really come across in Fiddlehead - at some point she says she thinks slavery is wrong, though she does still feel somewhat sympathetic towards the South. But "very" would not be the right word. I can't remember Clementine so well, and it could be more like what you described, but I think it was also part of the "reluctant allies" situation with Captain Hainey. They end up helping each other along the way and growing to respect each other and start to be friends. In general, there isn't a whole lot of character depth in Priest's books. They tend to be more adventure focused. I'd have to read it again to say much more, and unfortunately it's an ebook copy on my malfunctioning ereader.

Not all the women are Southern. Brier Wilkes of Boneshaker for example is from Seattle and outside the conflict (presumably Union, but the war's a long ways off to them) . Same goes for all the other characters in The Inexplicables and Boneshaker. In the case of Belle Boyd, she was a historical figure - a woman who spied for the Confederacy, but she was a woman who did things. I think Cherie Priest found her interesting and decided to write about her. I don't have any answer for the heroine of Dreadnought, but I'd guess that Priest was trying to give her connections to both sides to make her a sort of outside figure on her journey across America. Josephine Early of Ganymede does live in New Orleans, but she is spying for the Union.

If you're still worried, you could take a look at her Eden Moore books instead. I wouldn't classify them as urban fantasy exactly (paranormal maybe?), but they do take place in a contemporary setting - they start with Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Eden's both mixed race and doesn't have a love plot (both rare for female protagonists in fantasy). You could also take a look at the urban fantasy series with an OCD female vampire as it's protagonist - starts with Bloodshot. The Eden Moore series is more creepy, and the vampire series is much funnier.

Swordspoint

I'd already read a book that takes place years after this one - The Privilege of the Sword, which I liked enough to search out Swordspoint. Somehow, Swordspoint wasn't really what I was expecting. I don't know why, but I'd assumed that Alec would be less crazy in the previous book. I was wrong. He was still pretty insane, but he was also pretty useless. For most of the book he's just hanging around, living off Richard's money, getting high, getting kidnapped, provoking people into fights (which Richard would fight for him)... I really don't understand why Richard stayed with him. I think the reason offered was that "made life interesting," which was true, but I still think Alec's more trouble than he's worth.

He actually becomes important towards the end of the book when he accepts his place as the heir to a wealthy duchess and is able to bail Richard out of trouble because of it. This leads to him becoming the Mad Duke in The Privilege of the Sword, in which he felt less useless.

The plot was also slow to develop. Luckily, the ending didn't feel as rushed as in The Privilege of the Sword.

Deerskin

I can't describe this book well. It's a retelling of the fairy tale Donkeyskin, and thus about a girl who survives a traumatic and incestuous rape (this really should be included somewhere on the jacket, which it's not). That's really what this story is - a story of survival.

It was also a story for dog lovers, as the heroine's most important relationship is with her dog Ash. There's a number of other dogs in this story too, and frolicking puppies are a spot of brightness in an otherwise bleak story. I was reading this in a very appropriate setting - one dog periodically nosing a tennis ball onto my lap and giving me a beseeching look, the other bounding on top of me and using me as a launch pad as she jumped to the couch.

I'm reading the newest collection of winners from the Writers of the Future contest (Volume 30). I want to enter the illustration contest this summer, and I'm trying to encourage a friend to enter a story.

Skipped the introduction.

"Another Range of Mountains" - an interesting, art based magic system. Very good, although I didn't feel the relationships worked that well. It's hard to have strong relationships in short stories - there just isn't enough page space. But in all, the story reminded me of The Emperor's Soul, which is praise indeed.

"Shifter" - another interesting concept. The main character and his/her family members can change not only their bodies and appearances but their personalities as well.

"Beneath the Surface of Two Kills" - okay. The premise is of a hunter going after a rare species that lives high in the mountains, because a murder requested it as his last meal and cannot be executed until he had it. I'd assumed that the hunter had some relationship to the victim (the story is a reflection on her death, and he says that he didn't want to kill endangered animal), but it's never actually mentioned. The entire plot falls apart if I think about it - the solution he reaches in the end should have occurred to him earlier.

Then two stories by L. Ron Hubbard, which I skipped.

"Animal" - I don't really know what to make of this one. The idea is that most species have gone practically extinct, with a zoological center outside of Las Vegas holding the last elephants, gorillas, and such. But Las Vegas has grown, the land has gotten valuable, and the government decides to shut down the center and sell all the animals to high end restaurants. Then it gets weird. Apparently the government also has to issue you a license to have a kid, so a desperate worker at the center implants her fetus in a gorilla. She gets the kid for a few years before the government finds her (this is told to us near the end), but it gives the main character an idea. The story ends with her heading off to get a gorilla fetus implanted inside her.

"Rainbows for Other Days"- a android serves as a sort of park ranger, looking after the wilderness, when he finds the stereotypical teenage girl who makes him question the world around him. It was a pretty standard story, not too much stood out about it. Except that in the end the android knew he would forget meeting her and the truths she'd revealed. Just like he forgets any disturbing events, because he's programmed that way or something. Like the last one, it had a pretty heavy environmental message.

"Giants at the End of the World" - good world building, bad characterization and plot. It's really ham-fisted about the "Incident in His Past." Really, the first mention or two was enough to figure it out. It doesn't need to be repeatedly brought up. The story also features a randomly rebellious, wide-eyed innocent teenage girl who decides to run away from home for no good reason. At least the illustration was pretty for this one, and as I said before, the world set up was interesting.

That's as far as I've gotten with the short stories. I've also read Assassin's Apprentice recently (still need to write something about that), and I'm planning on starting Luck in the Shadows soon.

Assassin's Apprentice ★ ★ ★ ★

I'm not sure how I came by this one, but somehow it ended up in my To Read list. Anyway, I really enjoyed it. There wasn't anything astonishingly new about it (although first person is unusual for epic fantasies).

I kept hoping for more of a female lead, which there isn't really. Oh, there's female characters - Molly, Lady Patience, and Mistress Hoid are some that spring to mind, and Kettricken, whose introduced near the end, but with the exception of the last one, none play much of a role in the plot. I kept hoping Molly would develop into something more than a love interest. Still, I hold out hopes for the sequel, which I'm certainly going to read.

There was one other thing about it - dead dogs. I'm not a fan of dead dogs, and this book has two.

I'm glad you enjoyed this one (although dead dogs -ew!) as this along with the other two in the trilogy are lounging in the middle of my TBR pile, Maybe I should unearth them sooner.

>185 pwaites: I love the Assassin trilogy, but they are not happy books by any means. The Ships trilogy which follows has several strong female characters who grow and develop throughout the books.

I was in the area, so of course I had to stop by the used bookstore. I ended up raiding the clearance section and came up with these goodies:

Hawksong and Snakecharm by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Arrows of the Queen and By the Sword by Mercedes Lackey
Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy (short stories)
Spindle's End by Robin McKinley
The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
The Treasury of Celtic Knots by Aidan Meehan
Art Nouveau Flower Designs by Polly Pinder

A friend also loaned me Jhereg by Steven Brust, and the book club voted on Eleanor and Park and The Raven Boys for the summer books.

I've also started on Luck in the Shadows and am liking it so far. I know that the two main characters get together at some point (not in this book), which is bothering me a bit because there's a large age difference. Hopefully it be far enough into the series that the younger character has grown up some (he's sixteen right now).

Reading update on Luck in the Shadows! I'm about two hundred pages in and loving this book more and more. The characterization is amazing, the world building incredibly detailed, and the plot interesting. I think it starts at just the right point - when Alec meets Seregil.

Luck in the Shadows starts with Alec, a young hunter, in the prison of a nobleman, accused of being a spy. A dire fate awaits him when another prisoner is thrown into the same cell. This man is Seregil, an accomplished thief and spy. He breaks himself and Alec out of prison and then offers to take Alec on as his apprentice. Although somewhat troubled by how little he knows of his new friend, Alec accepts. Soon the two are at odds with (and on the run from) a pair of noblemen collecting mysterious wooden disks.

Information about Seregil and the world is slowly revealed, with Alec serving as the reader's guide as he learns more about his friend and the world around him. It's a fairly common device - have a character unfamiliar with the world (either from being isolated or coming from our world) and use them to introduce the world building and character elements. It works really well here.

I'm also very interested in the queens of one of the three lands. Early in the country's history, there was a prophecy that the kingdom would not fall as long as they had a queen of a certain line leading the country and army. The result has been eight hundred years worth of warrior queens. So far, I've encountered two of the princesses, who both serve in the army, and have a positive impression.

>189 pwaites: is it set in the same world as the Tamir triad (The Bone Doll's Twin etc)? Tamir is (dispossessed) heir to the throne of a country of warrior queens. Her story - disguised as her own twin brother to hide her from her uncle the usurping king - is also a good read.

190> I think so - I recall mention of a historical queen who grew up disguised as a boy before she revealed herself and took her place on the throne.

I'll add The Bone Doll's Twin to my TBR list.

Lynn Flewelling is one of my favourites of the "newer" fantasy authors i.e regular checking of when next book is out and waiting desperately for it to be published. I found her through LT and I'd recommend everything she has written.

Yes, The bone doll's twin trilogy is set in the history of Alec and Seregil's world. It is a good read, though darker than the Nightrunners books. Glad you are enjoying Luck in the shadows so much; it's a favourite of mine.

And wow, what great stuff you found at the used bookstore! It must be hard not to go in when they have so many good things!

192, 193> I'm going to keep an eye out for all her books. It's so wonderful to find a new author I like.

I wrote a review of Luck in the Shadows and posted it here.

I'm about half way through Jhereg, a fantasy novel set in a world populated by two species: humans (referred to as Easterners) and Dragaerans. The main character, Vlad, is an assassin working for House Jhereg. Near the start of the book, he receives a very difficult and unusual contract for a former member of the Jhereg Council who ran off with nine million of the House's funds.

I've had difficulty getting into this one. I think it's because I've had trouble adjusting to the world, which is alien from our own in many ways. This could actually be a cross over with science fiction, if I'm reading it right. Some long ago alien race transported humans to the world and set up many of the defining features. .

The biggest difficulty I had was picturing the Dragaerans and understanding the house system. From the beginning, the only physical description of the Dragaerans is "tall," which doesn't tell me how much they differ from humans. It doesn't give a complete reference to how they compare to humans til after page hundred. They're basically elves - tall, no facial hair, pointed ears, long lived, otherwise look like humans. I'm still somewhat confused about the house system. House Jhereg seems to be mainly involved in gambling rings, brothels, and assassinations. But they're stated to have titles, so are they any different than a criminal enterprise? And what about the other houses? And how does the structure of the Empire work?

I finally figured out that each house seems to be connected to a profession or industry of some sort, although I'm still not clear on which house connects to what. A cycle exists whereby each house has control of the empire, and that house controls the source of the Dragaeran's magic.

I'm not a fan of info-dumping, but surely some of this could have been mentioned in the first fifty pages? It also doesn't help that all the animals are fictional species, and it describes the characters in connection to them. E.g. "She moved as gracefully as a dzur" or "her eyes were as soft as an iorich's wing." Labeled illustrations of all the animal life and characters would have helped a lot. Or even some sort of guide at the beginning which tells what each animal is. I can figure out what a dragon is, and I know that jheregs are a sort of mini-dragon, but besides that I'm lost.

>194 pwaites: that sounds problematic - although there's intrinsic comedy value in discovering that a dzur is a lot like an elephant I suppose (I'm not saying it is - I've not read the books - I assume this isn't actually an author in-joke) - and very frustrating. I don't mind realising I don't know what a character looks like 100 pages in, but not knowing how races differ or having any points of reference would really start to annoy me...

>194 pwaites: I picked up Luck in the Shadows on a Kindle Daily Deal recently... I look forward to reading it. I will probably also be wincing at the age difference you mention in >188 pwaites:, though.

(Speaking of >188 pwaites:, that's quite a fine list there! I read the Atwater-Rhodes books last year and was quite taken with them, though I found Snakecharm the weakest of the lot. A book of Art Nouveau flower designs sounds lovely! I love the style of Art Nouveau. Curious to hear your thoughts on the Lackey and the Jemisin.)

There is something of a cheat sheet for the Dragaeran animals I know I've seen- ah, here:

•Dragon: Large reptile which does not breathe fire. Distinguished by tentacles with which it picks up psychic impressions. House of Dragon represents war.
• Lyorn: looks like a medium-size golden-haired dog, except for horn in the middle of its head. Represents tradition.
• Tiassa: large panther with batlike wings - represents catalyst and inspiration.
• Hawk - to a dragaeran this is anything from a goshawk to an eagle - represents curiosity.
• Dzur - large black tiger - represents heroism.
• Issola: vaguely storklike, with sharper beak and darker colors - represents courtliness and surprise.
• Tsalmoth: somewhat bearlike (of course, I find it hard to relate this to tree-dwelling turtles) - is known for unpredictability and tenacity.
• Vallista - amphibious creature living around streams and ponds - represents construction and tearing down.
• Jhereg - small flying poisonous reptile that lives on carrion. represents corruption.
• Iorich - large, slow-moving river-dwlling reptile. Herbivore, but known to follow (sometimes for weeks), track down, and kill anything which attacks them. - represents justice and retribution.
• Chreotha - large foxlike creature which uses its saliva to build a web strong enough to ensnare a Dzur, and sometimes a dragon - represents the trap.
• Yendi - desert dwelling sand-snake. Its bite is so subtle that few animals (or people) will realize they've been bitten until, a few minutes to an hour later, the victim collapses. Represents subtlety and misdirection.
• Orca - mercantilism and the vicious side of business - no animal description.
• Teckla - small salt marsh harvest mouse - represents cowardice and fertility.
• Jhegaala - lives in swamps - starts as an egg, goes to moth, then large toad - passes through a few other stages in between - represents metamorphosis.
• Athyra - owllike bird. Emits psychic signals which draw its prey to it, or cause fear in enemies - it is the house of magic.
• Phoenix - represents decadence and rebirth - no animal description.

Edited to add- Brust may have changed his mind on some of these as time went on too, the animal on the cover of the novel Iorich looks closer to a lion than any kind of reptile!

As I recall, all of the Dragaerans except Teckla are considered titled nobility- the Teckla are peasants. Jhereg is the only (I believe) house where you can buy into titles, and even Easterners like Vlad can buy titles. There is a link with profession- Dzurs are "heroic", Jhereg are criminals, and so on, but also (possibly a spoiler?) considered to be a biological/genetic to House heritage as well regarding the characteristics, except for, again, I believe Jhereg. This is considered in Teckla, which centers around whether the government system of the Cycle is biologically/magically/naturally determined or can be overturned through a peasant revolution.

I got a little frustrated with this series because the pace slowed way down after Issola, I felt nothing really significant happened in Dzur or Jhegaala, but I haven't read Iorich or Tiassa yet. The Dumas pastiches are pretty fun, and Brokedown Palace, focusing on the Easterners, is kind of interesting.

Also, it does have something of a science fictional background, but this never really comes to the foreground as much as I expected it to.

196> Oh, my gosh! Thank you! I may need to print this out and keep it with me while I read.

I'm not sure which of the books I'll read next - it'll probably depend on what my friend has copies of. The chronology doesn't appear to match up to publication order, which further confuses the matter. It looks like they're supposed to be read independently, so I may just skip Dzur and Jhegaala.

I would have expected more on the science fiction aspect. It's unusual enough something really different could be done. Oh, well.

Age difference aside, I'd really recommend Luck in the Shadows.

I was so happy to find the Atwater-Rhodes's books. I'd checked for them several times before, but I was scanning the YA clearance shelf, and they'd miraculously appeared. I think I've heard other people say the same thing about Snakecharm, but I hate reading series out of order so I'll give it a go regardless.

>197 pwaites: You're welcome! I read the series in publication order, which is the author's recommended order I believe- I think it makes sense that way, I didn't have trouble following it but I was able to read them fairly close together. I picked up Jhereg in audio from a recent Audible sale, so might start making my way through them again. Tiassa looks to cross over Vlad and Khaavren from The Phoenix Guards and sequels, so it might be helpful to at least be aware of that if you go that far in the series.

There's a ton packed into Jhereg that never really got a chance to play out as much as I would have liked, specifically a particular revelation late in the book. Most of the books are character-driven rather than revelation-driven, but there are a lot of revelations in Issola and I think Dragon as well including the sci-fi aspect. Hawk coming out this fall looks like it might pick things back up again.

Age differences seem to be pretty common.

I have always been a little bothered by it occurring in same-sex couples given the line of bigoted rhetoric that considers same-sex relationships between consenting adults just another step down the slippery slope to pedophilia (what... no.), but recently I've realized how common a trope it is in heterosexual romances as well, so I have reconciled sometimes sizeable age differences just being a romance thing I have to put up with.

It's practically omnipresent. Just in the past couple of years, I can think of Cordelia's Honor (at least both protagonists are well into adulthood, but the author's Sharing Knife has a middle-aged hero and a teenaged heroine), Song of the Lioness (_three_ much older love interests for our heroine, one of whom first befriends her when she is ten and he is eighteen), Priestess of the White (the love interest is her teacher when she's young, but when she is an adult they become romantically involved), A Wrinkle in Time (Calvin is several grades ahead of Meg), Sailor Moon (in the anime, Usagi is in middle school and Mamoru is in late high school or college when they become involved), Arrows of the Queen (again, both love interests are several years older than Talia), Ultraviolet (high school student and a guy in at least his mid twenties, possibly older), The Magicians and Mrs. Quent where the heroine falls for not the guy around her own age as expected, but a much older guy she is a governess for midway through, N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy with humans and male gods who have been around since forever (never a goddess with a human partner), Michelle Sagara's Into the Dark Lands which is much the same, Indigo Time I reviewed for Member Giveaway where the heroine's husband is old enough to be her father and then turns out to actually be her father, and she finds out and decides she's okay with that and doesn't tell him, and they live happily ever after... and there are more, I'm sure.

While there are exceptions where age isn't mentioned and probably some heterosexual romances with women who are older than their male love interest (though I can't think of any of those offhand), explicit mention and romanticization of age difference is definitely a thing in the vast majority of books I pick up.

I do hope you like the Atwater-Rhodes books! Be prepared for apostrophes, there are many apostrophes. Hawksong is pretty self-contained, and Snakecharm introduces the wider setting and the conflicts that propel the rest of the series, so it is necessary to read but it's a little frustrating. One character in particular seems sidelined purely to keep them out of the plot because Atwater-Rhodes wanted to use Zane as the POV character even when that other character had a lot more at stake in the plot- the setup felt really forced to me. If you can't track down the others and are interested enough in reading on to buy new, the whole series is available bound together in the omnibus The Shapeshifters which I think is still in print.

I'm so glad you enjoyed Luck in the shadows! I think the romance, when it happens, is handled well and succeeds in not being squicky - I look forward to your opinion when you read the sequel. Great review, by the way!

Review of Jhereg posted here.

I just finished Chapter 8 of Mystic and Rider. I'm really liking it so far - Kirra and Senneth are both admirable heroines, and I like how they're so different. Senneth is the tough as nails type, while Kirra is more outgoing and inclined to more traditionally feminine activities (but underestimate her at your peril).

198> Regarding Jhereg, I'm also surprised that more wasn't done with the science fiction aspect. And what about the magic coming from chaos? It was briefly used, and then forgotten about as the plot moved on.

The most infamous age gap that jumps to mind is Twilight.

However, the one that I really remember well is in the last book of Tamora Pierce's quartet that started with Wild Magic. The heroine was sixteen and ended up with her teacher who was in his thirties! It was beyond creepy, and I've always felt worried picking up books by her ever since.

I can't think of any where the women is older. It tends to be a primarily "young girl/older guy" phenomena. I'm sure there's an exception somewhere, but it'd be in the vast minority.

Oh, no - apostrophes, the bane of fantasy novels. I liked Harper Hall okay, but the other Pern book I tried put me off with sheer over-usage of apostrophes. I will prepare myself for the flood of them to come.

Snakecharm's not that long, so I don't think it'll be too bad. A frustrating hundred and fifty pages I can deal with. Now, if it were a frustrating six hundred pages, I'd be tempted to leave it.

Thanks for the omnibus tip. I'll get it if it comes to it, but I'm hoping I can find the next ones in used book stores if I need to. If I'm looking too long, I'll probably nab it next time I set out to buy some of the more elusive books online.

199> I'm glad to hear you say that! It makes me less apprehensive for the sequel.

>200 pwaites: Oh, that last book of the Wild Magic quartet was horrible! The romance felt like it was shoved in as an afterthought - sort of "Oh crap, I forgot to pair her off - well, she only knows one guy so it'll have to be him!" If you haven't read it, I do highly recommend the quartet about Kel, which begins with First test - romance is handled far, far better and Kel is just an awesome heroine.

I know I have read books with an older female love interest, but the only one that springs to mind immediately is Finder by Emma Bull which more of an urban fantasy. It's very good though.

I too liked Mystic and rider; the characters felt like people you could be friends with. I didn't enjoy the sequels quite as much though.

200: I love the heck out of Mystic and Rider. I've read all the Twelve Houses books except Fortune and Fate (though I will soon fill in that blank). The first one is the best one, I agree with Sakerfalcon -- largely because I didn't find the female protagonists in the sequels quite as impressive as Senneth; Ellynor from Dark Moon Defender got on my nerves a bit -- but I did enjoy them.

>202 kceccato: I thought Fortune and fate was very good, not quite up to the level of Mystic and rider but better than the sequels.

203: Good to know! This one moves further up the TBR scale...

201, 202> I don't like the cover blurb given for the second one, and I suspect that I'll like Kirra less in it than I did in Mystic and Rider. It looks like each of the sequels follows one of the other characters from Mystic and Rider, except for Fortune and Fate. The structure could work, but it sounds like it could get repetitive.

Could I skip the second and move on to the third?

I just finished Mystic and Rider and liked it a lot. It wasn't really plot based, and there wasn't a whole lot of suspense or action. Probably because of this, I didn't read it as fanatically as I've read some other books, but the enjoyable characters kept getting me to pick it up again. It was definitely character based.

All six of the main characters where likable and distinct. Senneth's my favorite of the bunch, but I also really appreciated Kirra. She's a different sort of heroine than the ones I've been reading lately, but she's still brave and competent. Donnal felt the most thinly characterized of the bunch - besides his devotion to Kirra, I didn't get much of a sense of him.

It felt like a first book in the series. The ending wasn't a cliff hanger, but it wasn't really an end either. I want to know more about the queen. I'm betting that she is from the Lirrenlands, but that raises a whole pack of questions. And why does the king need her so much? And what about the princess? Is she possibly a mystic herself? And then there's Senneth's theory about where the mystic's get there magic. I'd like to know more about that.

I'm probably going to read the sequels (even if they aren't as good) just to get all the answers I want.

I've written a review of Mystic and Rider and posted it here and also a review of the Writers of the Future volume which is posted here.

Right now I'm listening to an audio book of Murder of Crows, the sequel to Written in Red, and reading Fool's War. I'm liking both of them.

I was worried that the quality of Murder of Crows would take a dive when compared to Written in Red, but it's held up so far. Tensions between the Others and the humans continue to be ramped up, and Meg becomes more and more a part of the Courtyard.

The plot of Fool's War centers around sentient AIs who then go rogue and destroy anything in their path. So far, the story's centered around the spaceship Pasadena, which the main character Al-Shei owns and serves as chief engineer on. The Pasadena is an information company which transports data from solar system to solar system (FTL communications is expensive and impractical). The ship immediately starts having problems due to an ideology clash between the new pilot, who is part of a culture that eschews planets and is trying to bring about more self aware AIs, and the communications officer, who lived on a planet ravaged by a rogue AI attack and views AIs and the new pilot with animosity. The situation isn't presented from one side or another - both character's opinions are seen as understandable.

Also, the gender ratios aren't skewed - about half the crew is female. Al-Shei and her cousin Resit (the ship's lawyer) are both Muslim women, which is certainly not something normally seen in science fiction. Yerusha is the previously mentioned pilot, and the book is sometimes told from her POV. Then there's Evelyn Dobbs, the ship's Fool. The Fools entertain the crew, but they also function something like a psychologist or counselor. They sooth down everyone's nerves and try to prevent hostilities and disagreements between the crew. As we find out later in the book, the Fool's Guild also has a mission of there own, although I haven't figured out exactly what this entails yet.

Hmm, Fool's war sounds very interesting!

>206 pwaites: I liked Fool's War quite a bit. I'll be curious about your thoughts.

Mystic and Rider, though. I loved Senneth, and liked Kirra, but wow, did the plotting of that book drive me up the wall.

Seriously, you're on a mission to figure out why and how much people hate Mystics, in what possible world is taking a wild animal under your control into an inn in a town where the animal has killed people and then walking it through the town to collect a reward for its capture just to show off how awesome you are going to help the situation?

For all I liked the protagonists and their interactions, and admired Senneth sticking up for people, given the stunning lack of empathy on display there I am forced to admit that if I was a non-mystic living in the setting I would probably dislike and fear mystics as well...

>200 pwaites: - >201 Sakerfalcon: I would tentatively second the Protector of the Small Quartet based on my vague memories of it- certainly it doesn't end the way that The Realms of the Gods does. I'm not sure about Finder, though, @Sakerfalcon- are you talking about Orient and Tick Tick, or have I forgotten another couple? If the former, given the way the relationship ends up by the end of the book I'd be inclined not to consider it a good example to counter all of the happily ever after older-guy age discrepancy stories...

>200 pwaites: The apostrophes in the Kiesha'ra series increase sharply at the third book when the story shifts to a society with a conlang, ha'Shmla. Prepare for phrases like "a'sorma-la-lo-Mehay" and "maen'nehlar'las-serdinga-gah'Ahnmik" occurring throughout the text with corresponding translation.

(I'm not going to lie, I encountered the Wheel of Time and Pern at a young and impressionable age, and eyebrow-raisingly unlikely apostrophe-laden conlangs and naming conventions warm my heart. :)

>208 sandstone78: Re: Finder I was thinking of Orient and Sunny, the female cop, who get together during the course of events. I don't remember Orient and Tick Tick ever being more than friends (although it has been a while since I read the book) and yes, I was pretty upset by her fate.

>209 Sakerfalcon: Huh, I hadn't remembered that at all. Interesting. Looks like Finder is going into the reread stack... tentatively. Still mad about Tick Tick even now, some ten years after I first read it.

Ok, all the spoilers around Mystic and rider have made me start reading it, even though I'm also reading Hild. Although I like it, Hild can be a bit tough going, so having another book on the side is going to be good, I think...

I've just finished Fool's War - it's excellent and sadly under read. I've posted a review of it here.

I didn't talk about it in the review, because it's a huge spoiler, but I was really hoping that Lipinski and Dobbs would get together. It doesn't happen, and it never moves beyond the tentative feelings we get closer to the beginning. Of course there's a major reason why it wouldn't happen - Dobbs is an AI. Actually, she's the specific AI who devastated Lipinski's planet when she first became self aware.

She never tells him this. After she's off the ship, someone else tells him off screen, which was annoying because I really wanted to see his reaction to the news. Although no one knew about which planet she'd injured, so he still doesn't know that at the end. Anyway, if that weren't an big enough insurmountable obstacle, she lost her body by the end of the book. So now she's only in the nets, and it's made clear that she won't be able to contain herself in a body anymore. Yeah, guess she's not going to be ending up with anyone.

I liked Dobbs a lot. She really became the protagonist towards the end of the book, after it was revealed that she was an AI and she finds out about the fraction of AI's plotting a war with the humans.

While Dobbs was far from the only AI in this book, I have noticed that self aware AIs tend to be female for whatever reason. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed this?

208> The ryelynx (or what ever it was called) was a big grievance for me. I should I mentioned it in my review, actually.

Tayse kept telling her to kill it, and I totally agreed with him. Why the heck was she dragging it around? She kept saying "I won't kill something for acting according to it's nature." Well, all right, but it's nature is to kill children - it already killed a six year old girl and it almost killed two more while she had control of it. It's dangerous and needs to be killed. She kept saying that she'd take it back to it's proper country, but she knows that she doesn't have time to do that, and dragging it around with you should not be an option.

There's an article going around that denounces young adult books and reading for pleasure. This is Maggie Stiefvater's excellent response.

I'm about a hundred pages into A College of Magics. Nothing much as happened so far. The main character, Ferris the heir to some duchy or the other, has arrived at Greenlaw, a woman's college that teaches magic. She's spent two years there and made some friends. She's studied ancient Greek and Latin books and had a minor escapade. Magic has only been hinted at so far.

>213 pwaites: That's a very apt response and quite right in its statements. Thanks for passing the link along.

I finished Mystic and rider yesterday, and am glad that the conversations here pushed me to start it. It was very easy to read, and had very nice characters. I immediately bought the sequel, but I was sorry to see it doesn't focus on Senneth anymore. I hate that! And the book ended with her plans for the future, so I expected the next book to continue with that... I always check the blurbs on GR, and the one for The thirteenth house was incredibly spoilerish, so I already now half the story line, and I see Kirra meets up with the rest of the party at some point, but still

213:
Here's another appropriate response to the controversy:
http://gwendabond.tumblr.com/post/87997885469/ten-reasons-to-read-ya-no-matter-w...

I agree with half of Stiefvater's essay, and have an issue with the other half.

Agree:
Stories make us smarter. Stories make us wiser. It is through the gift of Story that we learn to see the world through the eyes of people who aren't quite like us. It is through the gift of Story that we are able to travel through time and space. Story expands our experience and strengthens our capacity for empathy. I can't turn up my nose at fiction, however it is delivered; I've never been a hater of visual entertainment. I think I benefit from the books I read AND the movies/TV I see.

Not quite agree:
While reading may not make us smarter, it does make us more skilled. The ability to glean ideas and images from words on a page is a skill, and a valuable one. I teach composition, and I can tell you all, it's not hard to see the difference between the essays written by readers and the essays written by non-readers. Readers absorb knowledge of grammar. They learn what a sentence is supposed to contain, and how nouns and verbs and phrases and clauses are supposed to fit together. How can any writer hope to produce good prose if he/she hasn't learned from experience what good prose looks like?

On the one hand, we have obnoxious elitists like the author of the Slate.com article, who see no value in reading for entertainment. On the other, we have dopey celebrities like the noxious Kanye West and his equally repellent wife who BOAST of their inability/unwillingness to read, and see no value whatsoever in the skill. (Thank God the responsibility of being their children's English composition teacher will fall to someone else.) Both extremes are to be distrusted.

Are you liking A College of Magics better? It's one of my favorites, because I love the world-building. The follow-up, A Scholar of Magics is also great fun.

216> Good point. I don't have anything to add - you said it all.

217> I am liking it better! It moved in a direction that I wasn't expecting . The cover, title, and blurb all made me think that it'd be set primarily at the college. I wasn't expecting her to be expelled in the first half! I'm also really interested in seeing where Ferris being the Warden of the North goes. Plus, someone's trying to kill her, and I'm not convinced it's her uncle.

One thing I did think was funny was the blurb from Jane Yolen on the front saying that it was better than Harry Potter. It doesn't mean a lot coming from her. She's been pretty vocal about how she dislikes the series, and she's made comments about how she thinks Rowling stole the idea from her book Wizard's Hall.

I've finished Murder of Crows. It was a good sequel to Written in Red, but it didn't have anything much new until the end. I've posted a review here.

>218 pwaites: Simon and Meg’s relationship continues to develop at a glacial rate, which is actually a nice change from the vast majority of romance plots in urban fantasy.

Glacial rate! Haha, you can say that again, but I totally agree with you. It's one of the reason I can stand this urban, whereas I would pitch most out the door. And I agree with the rest of your review as well.

Checking out the rest of your blog. I like it! Can you say something more about Sunshine? Why is it the best vampire book ever?

And you sent a few more book bullets my way...

220> It'd be more acurate to say that it's the best vampire book I've read. I also have a certain low expectation of the genre thanks to Twilight and it's ilk.

Sunshine's the book that I shove onto friends with a crazed look in my eye. It's been loaned out almost constantly for the past year. At one point there was something of a wait list. I talked about it some in my list of favorite heroines. This is what I said there:

"Sunshine makes this book for me. It's written as a sort of stream of consciousness, and her rambling thoughts are delightful to read. She undervalues herself - at some point she says that she isn't brave, that the people she knows are, but that she's not. No spoilers, but by the end of the book she's found that bravery. Sunshine and her life are what make this book my favorite vampire story. Yes, there's vampires, but Sunshine has other things going on in her life. She's the queen of cinnamon rolls and all other baked goods, and the family restaurant and bakery pervades her life. Regrettably, I do tend to get hungry when reading her descriptions of her baking."

I like pretty much everything about the book. The world building is excellent, and even the minor characters come across as distinct. Even the vampire elements are well done, but what if I had to chose one reason I loved the book, I'd say it was Sunshine herself.

I'm currently beetling around the country on college tours, so internet access is spotty. I am getting a lot of reading time - road trips will do that. I finished A College of Magics yesterday. In the end, I liked it much more than I did at first. I had that sad feeling I get when a good book's over.

A College of Magics turned out not to be primarily about the college, in which not a lot of magic was seen. Instead, it's about Ferris finding out that she holds an important responsibility, one that must be managed.

Throughout the entire book, Ferris represented her uncle as evil. In a less well written book, her views on the matter would be reality. However, in this book, Ferris finds out that some of the assumptions that she made about him are wrong. He might be trying to manage her life, and he might not be a good steward of the duchy, but he was never trying to kill her. In fact, he saved her life from an attempted assassin. It was a nice change from the usual evil uncle trope.

The book's classified as YA, but I'm not certain why. Ferris is a college student for most of the book, which I suppose is an age considered young adult, but doesn't fit with where the genre is right now. Is it because it's shorter? Because there's no violence or anything considered inappropriate for a young audience?

After I finished A College of Magic, I still had travel time left, so I started Hawksong. I'll be honest. I've only made it seventy pages in, and that was a struggle.

I wasn't having too many problems until Zane was introduced. What the heck? Within the first five minutes of meeting her, he's caressing her cheek? And he keeps sneaking into her bedroom? And she's just standing there, reflecting on his eye color and how dangerous he is?

It mentions his eye color a lot. I could count the references to it. I'm also doubting the feasibility of the two groups being throat to throat for thousands of years? Why haven't they collapsed under the strain of constant fighting? Why hasn't a third country swooped in and used the situation to conquer them both? Why has no one thought of trying peace before? How is this war supported? I'd find it more believable if it was the sort of hatred that flared up into warfare every once in a while. Even the Hundred Years War didn't have fighting over a continuous hundred years.

I've started Hammered instead. I don't know if I'll be finishing Hawksong.

A College of Magics was not originally released as YA--someone had the bright idea of repackaging it as YA a few years ago probably because Faris was in college for a chunk of it, but I agree that it's not YA.

And yes, I love the way Faris in the end manages Uncle Brinker by sending him off to Finland. He may not have been trying to kill her, but he certainly didn't have Galazon's best interests at heart.

Good luck with the college touring!

>221 pwaites: Aww, I'm sorry Hawksong isn't working out!

I suspect that some of the worldbuilding problems you point out are just bad sense of timescale, but it is revealed later in the series, in Snakecharm or Falcondance if I recall, that there is a third nation, the falcons, keeping the avians and serpiente at war to basically avert a possible apocalyptic future their seers have shown about a child that was born of mixed serpent and avian heritage. The latter books are about working out alternatives to that future without going back to horrible war given that the foreseeing is true.

I will also say that I was less than impressed with Hawksong the first time I read it, though I had enjoyed some of Atwater-Rhodes' earlier books when I was in my early teens. I picked it up for a reread and continued the series after reading that (spoiler for a sort-of plot twist later, though that phrasing makes it sound more clumsily handled than I think it was) the romance in one of the later books is between the female protagonist/narrator and another young woman. Since there's so little lesbian YA out there- offhand, I can only think of this book and Malinda Lo's Ash and Huntress from major publishing houses and I could never get into Ash- I was curious and willing to give the series more leeway, and knowing that there was going to be diversity among the romantic subplots in advance made me less uncomfortable with the almost Twilight-ish aspects of Zane and Danica. Indeed if I recall they're the most "standard YA" couple of the series.

If Atwater-Rhodes' melodramatic tendencies and way of worldbuilding (which does feel to me sometimes like throwing things out there and retconning explanations in to make it make sense later) aren't working for you, though, those stay pretty consistent throughout the series and her work in general so you may not get along with it.

>221 pwaites: It's going on my wishlist!

A College of Magics is high on my TBR pile.

I liked the world of shape-shifters in Hawksong (I always appreciate a relatively gender-egalitarian society) and will eventually read other books in the series. But I found that book disappointing too, largely because I disliked Danica Shardae. I didn't think she was much of a heroine. I kept waiting, in vain, for her to show some strength, some badass leadership qualities. Instead, she's a character who is controlled by others almost throughout the book, even while she's ostensibly "in charge"; her sole decisive action is actually someone else's idea.

I'm thinking I may skip the next volume in the series, since drippy Danica is the main heroine again. But I understand that future volumes have MUCH more compelling female protagonists; those I will give a look.

I like A college of magics but love the companion book, A scholar of magics (it's not exactly a sequel although events and characters from College are referred to). Jane is one of my favourite female characters.

On the subject of Hawksong, I forgot to mention that I've found the names not to be fitting with the con-language she's developed. A fragment of the language: "o'la'lo'Mehay'teska a'le-Ahnleh." Yet, the character names: Xavier, Danica, Irene, Zane and Gregory. See the issue? "o'la'lo'Gregory?"

I'm almost finished with Hammered. It's enjoyable enough, but for what ever reason, it's failed to strike an emotional cord. However, I do have one big grievance: the cover has been white washed. The heroine is clearly described as being of Native American ancestry and having dark skin. This is affirmed throughout the text. But look at this cover!



Authors don't have any control over covers. Nope, this is the publishing company's fault.

The heroine of Hammered is almost fifty, which is unusual in a science fiction protagonist. There's also a number of other female character that she interacts with. I think my issue is that although her past clearly indicates that she has epic levels of badass, we haven't yet seen it. Probably, it's because she's been retired and running a mechanics shop for the past ten years or so.

222> I agree that sending him to Finland was a good solution. I do have to wonder about her taking his daughter to raise as her heir. He and his wife might not have been the best people or been good for Galazon, but that doesn't say anything about how they'd raise their daughter.

223> On the subject of Hawksong, the Falcons were mentioned as giving the Hawks weaponry and such. I could see them being the architects of the situation. Which later book are you referring to? And do you have to read the previous books? I have a friends who's really looking for YA books with lesbian characters. As far as I know, she hasn't been able to find much besides Malinda Lo. I was actually hoping that she'd loan me Huntress, but it turned out that she had it has an ebook. Oh well. Apparently the library has a copy. I've decided I'd rather try it than Ash, which was her first book and doesn't look as well written.

224> Yay!

225> The society has been gender-egalitarian so far (which is a point in its favor), but I did have to wonder about the set up of the pair bonds. I skimmed back and found this quote:

"In avian society, a young woman was often promised to her future alistair shortly after birth. The two grew up together, he raised to be a guide and protector, and she raised to trust him implicitly. He was expected to walk the fine line of an avian gentleman, respecting her strength and sheltering her from the harshest of her world at the same time."

Needless to say, I don't really agree with the sentiment that he should be protecting her from the dangers of the world. It's falling into the old, "male is protector, female is protected" trope.

From what I've read so far, I'd agree about Danica. In the seventy pages I've read, her only action has been in the first three. That was comforting a dying enemy solider. Since then, she hasn't done any thing.

226> Jane's so wonderfully competent! Out of the whole book, she'd probably be my favorite.

>227 pwaites: Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey has lesbian heroines. Although, considering the amount of sex the girls are having, perhaps it's not YA...

>227 pwaites: The Kiesha'ra book is Wolfcry about Zane and Danica's daughter Oliza, a "wyvern" with both serpent, bird, and combined forms. Initially it seems to be set up with a love triangle with her and two boys, one from the serpiente and one from the avians, but she's not really interested in either of them because she doesn't like the whole Alasdair "protector" thing but she's not sure she likes the way the serpents kind of give everything over to their emotions either. She gets kidnapped from the avian/serpents and falls in with tribes of wolf shifters, and falls in love with a wolf shifter woman, Betia.

I think it would probably stand alone to some degree because so much of it takes place outside the avian/serpent societies, but parts of the book, such as Oliza's decision about whether to remain on the throne, tie back into the whole doom prophecy thing about her children. They do get a happy ending together, SPOILER with Oliza giving up the throne and going with Betia back to the wolves where both of them will lead her pack as the alphas. (Wolf leadership is not gender-linked in this society except in a really screwed up pack Oliza encounters with what at first looks like a cringeworthy standard-issue borderline-abusive YA love interest guy, but he is instead explicitly a horrible person and a villain.)

I have some indie and small press recommendations for your friend:

- Sarah Diemer and Jennifer Diemer's Project Unicorn has a whole bunch of YA lesbian short stories online to read for free in a blog-type format; they're also available in collected themed volumes (eg Winged Things) in ebook or larger collected volumes (eg Project Unicorn Volume 1) in both ebook and print.

- Sarah Diemer also has at least a couple of YA novels: The Dark Wife, a revisionist retelling of the myth of Persephone where Hades is a woman and Persephone goes to her voluntarily, and Twixt, which I'm not quite sure about.

- Shira Glassman's The Second Mango is about a young lesbian queen looking for a love interest with the help of a straight female heroic bodyguard.

- Jaclyn Dolamore's upcoming Dark Metropolis from Disney/Hyperion is supposed to have a lesbian POV character, but I don't think she's the main character. I might give it a shot when it comes out later this month.

- Melissa Scott has a book that's supposed to be more of a YA novel than her others, Night Sky Mine, but I haven't read it yet. It's out of print though. (I would recommend both Burning Bright and Trouble and Her Friends, which aren't strictly speaking YA, not having young protagonists, nor dealing with "coming of age" themes, nor having the particular faster "movie-style" pacing I tend to think of when I think of modern YA, but I read and loved them both when I was in my early teens.)

- Jacqueline Koyanagi's Ascension is likewise fantastic, but possibly more towards the adult science fiction side of the spectrum

Bold Strokes Books is a small press that publishes mostly (but not exclusively) lesbian books, they have many different authors writing fantasy and science fiction. I think some of them are YA, eg Nora Olsen's Swans & Klons, but I haven't read them.

- Jane Fletcher has several books that are published as romantic fantasy (ie romance-novel-level sex), but the protagonists are usually in their late teens:
- an epic fantasy following a warrior and a sorceress that starts with one-book-in-two-volumes The Exile and the Sorcerer and The Traitor and the Chalice
- a five-book interrelated science fiction that looks like fantasy series on a world with only women (the backstory is that it's a colony world where a radical separatist lesbian scientist decided to manipulate things this way, thinking it would solve all conflict forever and ever but surprise, women are people too rather than loving-gentle pedestal ideals and not so much) that follows various characters that keep the peace and their involvement with a group of heretics trying to uncover the true history of what happened- the first published book, The Temple at Landfall, would be a good place to start
- a standalone in a sort of postapocalyptic world, Wolfsbane Winter- I've not read too far into this one yet, but the style seems a lot less polished than Fletcher's other books so I don't think I'd start with this one

- I remember liking Merry Shannon's Sword of the Guardian as well, which follows the characters from younger through a long span of time, though I had some problems with some plot holes and things like that. (It didn't stop me from reading the whole thing in one sitting, though.)

- Possibly also Shea Godfrey's Nightshade or Barbara Ann Wright's The Pyramid Waltz might qualify but these are still languishing in my TBR so I can't say.

There's a thread in FantasyFans about lesbian fantasy as well that might have some more suggestions too.

For non-SFF YA, I've heard good things about Annie on my Mind and Empress of the World, but haven't read either of them. And also, if your friend's into manga, there's always Sailor Moon- the lesbian characters show up around Sailor Moon Volume 6.

I'm sure I have more, if this isn't too much already...

229> I passed your extensive list onto my friend. She gives her thanks.

I'm about half way through Royal Assassin. Too little has happened so far. There's the court intrigue, which is interesting. It's also nice to see more of Kettricken and how she's adjusting to being queen. The threat of the Forged ones continues to grow (I think of them like zombies, even though they're actually alive).

However, too many pages have been Fitz aghasting over Molly. I don't care about Molly. She's insignificant except for being the Love Interest (TM). She plays no role in the plot whatsoever and only ever interacts with Fitz. It's possible that she'll actually become plot significant later (and not as a cause of emotional drama), but there's been a book and a half for that to happen. At this point, I don't think it's going to.

When I read a book with a romance subplot, which most of them have, I expect both characters to be actively involved with the main plot in some fashion. If not, it just feels tacked on and annoying.

Also, she's three years older than Fitz - he's fifteen and she's eighteen. Whenever she complains about him acting like a boy or a child, which produces yet more aghast on Fitz's part, she should really stop to think. This is the rare example of the female character being older, but I still hate it. Robin Hobb needs to find another source for drama than these two's tortured love affair.

230: Molly is the main reason I can't get myself worked up enough to read this series. I don't see how Hobb, who created such memorable heroines as Althea, Malta, Amber, and Althea's mother (name escaping me) in the Liveship Traders series, should saddle us with such a drip for a female lead in the Assassin's Quest books.

>231 kceccato: I wouldn't call Molly a drip, it's more that you can sense an interesting personality trying to get out of the role the author has put her in. She does have agency even given the limitations society has placed on her. But no, she is certainly not the main attraction of the books. Kettricken (who I would argue is really the female lead in the trilogy) and some of the other women who appear later are allowed to do more unusual things and are thus more interesting than Molly.

I've finally been able to write up a review of A College of Magics and have posted it here.

231, 232> Molly is not the lead female character. As much as there is one, it's Kettriken. For one thing she's actually plot significant. She takes action and is generally an important character. If Molly wasn't Fitz's One True Love, she wouldn't have any role in the book whatsoever. Her only importance is her relationship to Fitz.

While I would not recommend the series for female characters, Kettriken is pretty amazing and certainly my favorite character. She's come into the situation completely unprepared by her prior life as a mountain princess, but she's rising to the challenge of being Queen -In-Waiting. Unfortunately, she didn't become a major player until about halfway through this book. She is lured out on a hunt by the villain, abandoned, and attacked by Forged ones - which she successfully kills and escapes. From that moment on, she took a more active role in the proceedings.

The problem is that we don't see much of her and that there's a limited number of other major female characters. There's Molly, who've I've already discussed my opinions of. There's Serene, who's totally evil. There's Lady Patience, who's nice, but a bit ditzy and only peripherally involved in the plotting and intrigue. There's Lacy, Patience's maid, but I don't think she has a big enough role to justify calling her a major character. Of all of the female characters, Kettriken is the only major player. And, as I said before, she has a small role for about half of this book, and isn't introduced at all until the end of the first book.

At this point, I've finished Royal Assassin. I have some thoughts on the ending. First of all, I'm pretty sure that Molly's pregnant. If so, it'll be her most important role in the plot so far. Right now, her leaving Buckkeep is just another reason for Molly Drama. Thank goodness, most of that ended when the real plot started happening about half way through.

For all my grumblings about Molly and the slower beginning, I am giving this book four stars. The tension and pace really pick up in the last third or so. Anything that can go wrong, does go wrong. The situation is desperate, and I desperately want to know how it works out. Like any second book in a trilogy, the ending doesn't give all the answers. However, it doesn't leave us in the middle of things either.

I've come across a copy of Game of Thrones. I'm intending for it to be the next book I start.

I've posted a review of Hammered here.

I started on writing a review for Royal Assassin but got distracted by cover art.

John Howe (famous mainly for Lord of the Rings artwork) did a set of illustrations that included cover art:



The cover versions looked like this:


I like how the characters are included in the upper corners.

Then there's two versions by Jackie Morris:



I prefer the second versions. They make me think of medieval manuscripts.

Then, Michael Whelan did covers for the first two:


This edition switched artists midway through and had Stephan Youll finish up:


I wish they'd stuck with Whelan all the way through - that last one is much to yellow looking. It could be the scan job, but the colors just don't look good.

In other news, I'm about two hundred pages into Game of Thrones. It can be difficult to get through. I'm assuming that all the set up will pay off eventually, and I'm lucky that I already had some idea of who all the characters are. Otherwise, it might be hard to keep track.

Review of Royal Assassin posted here.

I've finished reading A Game of Thrones. I don't know that I have anything new to add to the discussion of it. I liked it, especially when the pace finally picked up. All of the POV characters where sympathetic, although I didn't really care for Catelyn. She makes too many bad decisions and falls apart over her children. Half the POV characters were female, but Catelyn was the only one older than fourteen.

I'd heard a lot about people disliking Sansa. I'd agree for the majority of the book. She's living in a delusional world and makes some bad choices because she can't see reality. For the majority of the book, she's dreaming of princes and fairy tales and songs. When she finally realizes that she's not living a fairy tale, it's heart wrenching.

I think out of the eight different POVs, Jon Snow was my favorite. For one, I found him really likable (this being so, I suspect that he'll die later). For another, the blue-eyed zombie things are really creepy and immediately racket up tension levels. It reminds me of when I'm watching Orphan Black and the Helena music starts playing. You know something's about to happen.

For all the acclaim about how groundbreaking the world is, I found it pretty standard. It's a fantasy world based on medieval Western Europe, just like so many others. And it kept the same gender relations, landscape, basic culture, and pretty much all else. I think of it has taking the standard fantasy world and doing a very good job on it. But the world itself wasn't anything Earth shattering.

The one major difference is the seasons. Winter and summer are variable and can last for years at a time. In the North, there are dire wolves and supposedly mammoth. But these play little role in the set up of the world. I think they should be more integrated, especially the seasons. How do people survive during ten year long winters. Are they storing food for years at end? Do they migrate south?

I'm going to grab a copy of A Clash of Kings at the nearest opportunity.

>235 pwaites: I think we have to think of the North as closer to Scandinavia and Alaska than New York state or Britain. They'll just stomp down the ice, cut their way out of harbour, go ice fishing and swear a lot. Two hours of light a day? No big deal. No fruit for three years? Who eats fruit anyway? ;) But seriously, I think you're right about stockpiling (as autumn also lasts at least a year or two, so you get warning) and that trade with the South and abroad plays a big part too.

I've posted a review of A Game of Thrones here.

I've also finished reading A Wizard of Earthsea, but I want to rant about it some before I write a review. A Wizard of Earthsea is possibly the most sexist fantasy book I've ever read. Magic is explicitly only for men. And I quote, "Weak as women's magic" (5) and "Wicked as women's magic" (6). The few female characters present are mostly evil. Here's the line up:

Serret - an evil and conniving temptress who tries to get Ged to go over to the dark side.
Ged's aunt - tries to use Ged for her own ends, she's a witch with very weak powers. She abandons the villagers when they're in need while Ged saves the day.
Lady O - not explicitly evil, but shouldn't count. She speaks only one line but has lots of description regarding her beauty.
The Unnamed Old Woman - not evil, but I don't even need to describe why she shouldn't count (no lines or even a name).
Yarrow - the only notably good female character. She's Ged's best friend's little sister who shows up in the second to last chapter. Her role is to look sweet and ask Ged questions. I have two quotes to illustrate her:

Spoken by her brother: "This is my sister, the youngest of us, prettier than I am you see, but much less clever" (169)
Spoken by Yarrow herself: "I wish I could truly understand what you tell me. I am too stupid" (177)

All in all, Ursula Le Guin's creating a rather vile image. The only good women are pretty, powerless, and stupid. They serve their men and don't take actions of their own.

I'm faring much better with Perdido Street Station, my current read. I'd place it roughly into urban fantasy - it's set a fantasy world but takes place entirely in the city of New Crobuzon, which is beautifully described and created. There's so much depth to the setting - it's a fascinating if dark place. I really like how so many other sentient species are woven into the world and city. All of the species seem to be composed of human and animal or plant parts. For instance, Lin, the female lead, is a khepri - a species with human female bodies and the heads of beetles. She's also an artist who creates sculptures in the traditional manner of the khepri: using spittle made by ingesting different colorberries to create a luminous surface. The other major female character so far is Derkhan, an art critic and writer for an underground newspaper. I'm currently reading her first POV segment.

There's several different plots going on. The main one centers around Isaac, a renegade scientist who was approached by a garuda, a creature part man, part bird, asking for Isaac to give him back his wings. Isaac is currently hunting down all the information he can about the garuda and the powers of flight.

Meanwhile, Lin has been approached with an offer for a once in a lifetime commission - but the client is a drug lord and she must keep the sculpture a secret. I don't know where this segment is going yet.

The section I've just started with Derkhan seems to be adding a new plot regarding the injustices of the city's government and the rebels who oppose it. I've read to little to say much more.

What a coincidence, Le Guin came up in another group just recently. Would you mind if I mentioned your criticism, as it is so specific? I read that too long ago to venture an opinion--I have a vague impression that it was set in a primitive society, but yeah, I'm sure my reaction now would be much closer to yours.

It seems that, as Le Guin herself says in the excerpt quoted here:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/176534#4745039

she used to write like "a honorary man"... and in that period, that would practically entail sexist obnoxiousness.

238> Not at all! Go ahead. :)

Thanks! The discussion moved fast so I just linked to your post instead of describing your criticism.

There's little to defend in A Wizard of Earthsea - or, to be fair The Tombs of Atuan or The Farthest Shore - from a feminist perspective. I loved them as a child, but if I were coming to them for the first time now, I suspect I'd be frothing. I'm not sure I'd even chance a reread now - my memories of them are too fond to open the door to the suck fairy, so I'll just grant that she's probably sprinkled liberally in the past 30 years ;)