Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Summer Round-Up: Books What I Read While On Summer Vacation, Pt. 1

Y’all, I managed to get more leisure reading done in the past three months than I have in the past two years combined. It’s amazing what being stuck on a plane or a bus will do to one’s reading time, not to mention the one month I spent laid up in bed from a one-two whammy of a really nasty summer flu, followed by strep throat. (Lymph nodes the size of ripe plums, dudes. It was amazing.) In any case, I looked at the backlog of books I wanted to talk about, and realized I was never, ever going to write about them if I had to write my usual 1,000-1,500 word review. So what’s a girl to do? Why, review all of them at once, of course, in abbreviated blurb form. Everything’s more fun when it’s bite-sized!

So here, in approximately chronological order, are the first five of the ten books I’ve read so far this summer, and what I think of them:

More Men Reading Romance: Scrinnameless discovers Bujold

A few weeks ago, Scrinnameless sent me word of a wonderful used bookstore in Mobile, Alabama.

Turns out Scrin is a dude - and he later wrote to me:

I think I’ve nerved myself enough to submit myself to the Will of the Bitchery. Who can suggest some good sf or fantasy romance to start me off on?

As for about myself… I’m a 22-year-old college student in Mobile, Alabama, pursuing a degree in geology. I play video games. I read, naturally, all over science fiction and fantasy, along with odds and ends here and there. I have a thing for snarky dialogue and commentary (which is how I found SBTB in the first place).

So, yes, O Masters of Romance, teach me!

Oh yeah, like I’m going to be able to resist bringing a 22 year old rock-student into the massive awesome that is romance.

I asked Scrin for more details about what he likes to read, and here was his reply:

Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

If I had to write a compulsively honest personal ad for Throne of Jade, it’d go something like this:

Slightly awkward transitional book full of high seas adventure, political intrigue, derring-do, exotic locales and nascent musings on the nature of liberty, natural rights and sentience seeks geeky reader who squeals with glee at the thought of an alternate history of the Napoleonic war with dragons. I might not be as taut and compelling as my predecessor, but I promise to be compulsively readable just the same. Give me a chance to spend all night with you between the sheets. You won’t be sorry.

If you haven’t read His Majesty’s Dragon yet, I definitely do not recommend beginning the series with this book. It’s not so much a matter of lost backstory, as Novik does a decent job of catching you up on events, but that first book sets up a lot of essential detail in terms of how the Aerial Corps works, and the dragon-aviator bond. And for that matter, don’t read this review if you haven’t read the first book, for… read more »

His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

I’m one of the few girls I know who didn’t really want a horse when growing up. Horses are nifty critters and all, and I loved Black Beauty as much as the next kid, but ungulates just don’t do all that much for me. I liked predators much better. Screw ponies—I wanted a dragon. I didn’t care about the magic crap, really; I mostly loved the idea of having a predator the size of a house be completely bonded to me. A huge predator that can talk and breathe fire: what’s not to love? But alas:

That said, it still took about three different people thrusting Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon in my face before I sat up and took notice—then sat back down to read. Where I proceeded to be utterly glued to the book for the next day or so. Seriously, people, I was reading this book while stopped at traffic lights.

So some critics claim that… read more »

Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow

Working for the Devil; or, The Hades Bunch

Here’s the story of girl named Dante
A necromance, she could talk to all the dead.
She was sent to school where she was beaten,
Which fucked her in the head.

Here’s the story of Jaf the demon
An assassin, he killed demons for his boss;
Then one day, the Egg, it came up missing
Which made the Devil cross.

Satan figured out the culprit was Santino—
Demon used to kill psionics just for fun.
Gave Dante Jaf to use as her familiar,
That’s the way they started on this bounty hunt.

A bounty hunt, a bounty hunt,
With some friends, Jaf and Dante on a hunt.

Protracted spoiler-filled discussion between Sarah and me below the fold, O Readers.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

The setting:  The town of Wall, which lies hard by the boundary of Faerie, and every nine years, the site of a Faerie Market.

Also, assorted locations in Faerie.

Our Intrepid Hero: Tristran Thorn, a sweet but awkward and somewhat gormless young man of mysterious lineage.

Our Intrepid Heroine: Yvaine, a rather no-nonsense fallen star.

Summarize the plot in one unwieldy run-on sentence that abuses commas and semi-colons with merry abandon: Clueless young man deep in the throes of an infatuation makes a rash promise to retrieve a fallen star for his light o’ love and leaves the known world for the uncharted, unpredictable wildness of Faerie, where he encounters (among other things) a hairy little man(ish sort of creature), two witches, a talking tree, several ghosts (whom he never sees), a prince, a fallen star, assorted inhabitants of Faerie and a partridge in a pear tree (OK, I might be lying about the last); uncovers a hidden talent or two; finds what he thinks he’s looking for; discovers he’s braver and capable of much more than he ever thought possible; loses a great deal of his awkwardness and gains +10 Gormfulness; and ultimately… read more »

Unmasked by CJ Barry

I have to be honest: I have a lot of trouble getting into romance set in the future when said future romances are set in space. Other galaxies, other planets, sectors, warping - somehow my brain resists accepting the alternate reality, like it’s too big a jump and too far reaching a fantasy. I’m ashamed to admit I’m either really dim in terms of space imagination, or maybe I’m a lameass space snob. But sadly, space romances are hard for me to get into. It’s possible it’s because the few I’ve read have done world building via info-dumping, which is bothersome because it slows down the pace to a crawl even if the spaceship is traveling at the speed of light. But info-dumping is not really enough of a reason for my hesitancy. I’m not sure why my “select reading material” button goes dark at “Space, the year 3056….”

And yet, I scold myself, I’m willing to accept all manner of idiocy in a historical. And I’ve read plenty of romances set in the future - as well as a few set in… read more »

All the Nebula Award Winners—in Haiku

My friend Katie, who’s this freakish Platonic Ideal of the geek babe (she likes science fiction! and comics! and role-playing! and video games! and she’s a CHEMIST!), recently decided she’d summarize her opinions of all the Nebula Award winners she’d finished reading in haiku format.

C’mon, the sheer geek-fu of that has to strike you speechless. I know it did me.

The results were even more awesome than I expected (the haiku for Neuromancer is especially doubleplus awesome), and with her permission, I’m sharing them with you. Yeah, I know, they’re not reviews of romance novels, but SF/F is still considered plenty trashy by many circles, and lord knows Katie’s one of the smartest bitches I know. Ennn-joy.

Nebula haiku
Plentiful as falling rain
But less poetical.

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold

I’ve heard a lot about Lois McMaster Bujold. I mean, one of my best friends wrote about Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan for his college entry essay—and he got in. Bujold inspires a lot of hard-core love among the geeks, and I’ve been meaning to check out her Vorkosigan saga for several years now.

Falling Free is set in the Vorkosigan universe, though it takes place about 200 years before Miles is born and its events are only tangentially related to the greater Vorkosigan saga. Regardless, I was pretty excited about digging into it, because I thought the premise teemed with all sorts of possibilities for drama and adventure. To wit: What if a massive conglomerate with interplanetary interests commisioned biologists to genetically engineer a species of human maximized for life in freefall? What if this species was considered corporate property and not strictly human? And to drive the ethical considerations to the fore, what would happen if, for some reason, these engineered humans became completely obsolete?

Unfortunately, though the questions this book raised were enough to make me tingle from anticipation, the execution was disappointingly slight.… read more »