Lace and Blade 2, ed. Deborah Ross

I really liked the first Lace and Blade anthology, with a few caveats, when I read it earlier this year, but what less in love with this one. Which is sad, as it was the cover of this one that made me notice the anthologies.

But really, for a book with a woman with a pretty dress and a sword on the cover, it was rather…light on women. Then again, it is a Headless Woman cover. But really, my problem wasn’t the fact that it was light on women that bugged me so much as the fact that several of the stories stopped just short of advocating the idea that choosing Male over Female was for the best. The stories also see much less focused on the “swashbuckling x romance x magic” theme, though I suspect that may be a natural danger regarding anthology series. Looked at as a whole instead of on a story-by-story basis, I liked it a good bit, if not as much as the first, but the only stories that really stood out to me were Sherwood Smith’s story about Jane Austen vs. Dracula, and Madeleine Robins’s story set in a world where same-sex marriage is normal, and a heterosexual and seemingly asexual women get stuck in an arranged marriage and decide to take matters into their own hands.

anime: Kaze no Stigma, eps 1-2

In the future, I will not Netflix anime based on Netflix recommending it and pretty design that features a girl with a sword.

Particularly when it's about how the destined male heir was cruelly beaten by his more powerful female cousin, and he has returned for revenge all superpowerful with rival magic and is oh-so-clearly the better heir because the girl is a dim hothead who never thinks before acting and will ruin the family.

There's plenty of other anime I could watch about cute angsty men with superpowers and cute girls with superpowers that would neither bore nor annoy me. Actually, it was too boring to really be properly annoying.

Incidentally, Netflix recced it because I have Magic Knight Rayearth and Cardcaptor Sakura in my queue...