Of Swords and Parasols

What are you currently reading
7 Seeds Vol 22 Tamura Yumi. Almost caught up! Then I will have to sit down and organize my thoughts. Which, currently, are mostly that I have feeeeeeelings. Mostly about Hana, Natsu, Matsuri, Ayu and Aramaki right now.

i'm still reading Heyer's The Black Moth in bits and pieces. I think I'm about halfway through now? It's entertaining enough.

What did you recently finish reading?

Seduction in Silk by Jo Beverley. Georgian-set romance novel in which Our Hero inherits a much-contested family estate from a distant relative, on the condition that he marry the niece of a woman the relative wronged years ago, because said woman also laid a curse on his family that all their children would die until the wrong was righted, and his intended bride is the daughter of a man reputed to have been mad. It's a pretty straightforward "forced to marry a stranger, how will we make it work" plot,and a well done one, with characters managing to have conflict while still acting like mature, intelligent adults capable of of clearly communicating with each other. Unfortunately, I felt like several chapters developing the family feud and the curse (and it seems too be leading to a major plot development, and then...doesn't), as well as Our Hero's conflict with his family ended up being cut out, and so I felt like I somehow missed part of it when I finished.

Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks. Like The War At Ellsmere, Friends With Boys focuses on a young woman entering a school environment completely unlike any other she's known. The main character, Maggie, has been homeschooled her whole life, and has had little interaction with other kids close to her age outside of her three older brothers, who all started going to public school when it was time for them to enter high school, and now it's Maggie's turn. She isn't used to her brothers having friends outside their family, and has difficulty making new friends until she befriends a pair of "punk" siblkings-Alistair, who appears to have a silent feud with a number of other kids at school, including one of Maggie's brothers, and Lucy, who is obsessed with the supernatural but scared of anything resembling a scary movie. To complicate things, Maggie is frequently haunted by the ghost of a woman from the 18th century, who has visited her many times over the years. It's not as wildly entertaining as The Adventures of Superhero Girl, but is more poignant, and holds up as a cohesive whole better than Zombies Calling or The War at Ellsmere.

Voices of Dragons by Carrie Vaughn. Somewhat-different "human befriends dragon" plot. Set in an AU where dragons emerged from hiding shortly after WWII and now live in various territories with no communication with humans, a teenaged girl accidentally crosses the border to North America's dragon territory, and befriends a curious young dragon. Human/Dragon relations slowly start to deteriorate around them while the two explore the possibilities of working together, and the history of human/dragon relationships before dragons went into hiding in the middleages, and how those previous relationships could translate to modern times. Very interesting and enjoyable. It leaves things open for a possible sequel, but doesn't actually need one, as all necessary elements are wrapped up.

Midnight Pearls by Debbie Viguie. Part of Simon & Schuster's "Once Upon A Time" fairy tale series, this time for "The Little Mermaid." It has the classic tale (through the Disney lens) as well as a genderswapped version throughout. The main character, Pearl, was found by a fisherman during a storm as a child, is scared of the ocean, and is secretly friends with the prince, who has to chose a bride soon. It doesn't go the way it looks to be going early on, which was nice, and is generally pretty solid. It's not the best book in the series (that's probably Snow, of the ones I've read) but it's better than some of the others, and is pretty decent as a fairy tale retelling in general.

Interesting sidenote that I'm not entirely certain what to make of:

( spoiler )

The Wallflower Vol 28-30 by Hayakawa Tomoko. Leave it to this series to have an in canon AU crackfic set in the Edo era. Then again, I think most of the storylines in the series are like crackfic prompts after a while. "Auntie moves in, the gang joins forces to find her a boyfriend." "Kyohei and Sunako catsit." "Ranmaru is banned from dating." "Kyohei becomes class president." etc etc. I've accepted that the series has had about as much character growth and plot progression as the mangaka is going to allow before she decides it's time to start wrapping things up, and I think I'm ok with that, as it entertains me regardless.

Secrets of A Runaway Bride by Valerie Bowman: Wallpaper Regency Historical Romance in which the heroine's brother-in-law asks his best friend to keep an eye on her and keep her from eloping with her unsuitable Beau while he's on his honeymoon. Despite the inherently aggravating concept of the plot being fueled by one man asking another to keep a woman under control while he's out of town, and the fact that much of the heroine, Annie's, motivation seemed to be low-self-esteem (excerpt that I don't think the writer recognized it as low-self-esteem), I was actually enjoying this in a "don't think too much and roll with it" way, and intending to see if the library had Bowman's first book, until I got to the last 100~ pages and Annie's characterization took an extreme nosedive fueled by low-self-esteem motivated desperation.

( spoiler )

Frogged by Vivian Vande Velde. Cute MG book about a 12-year-old princess who kisses a frog who claims to be a prince, only to learn its a local boy who got turned into a frog for harassing a witch, and could only turn human if he got someone else to kiss them, which would in turn turn that person into a frog. The book focuses mostly on Princess Imogen's attempts to figure out how to break the curse without having to turn someone else into a frog, and her effective abduction by an amateur theatre troupe who decides to use a talking frog in their act.

I read about 2/3 of the first volume of Haruka Beyond the Stream of Time, and was mostly confused. Then I remembered that I read it back when Viz first started releasing it and was thoroughly lost then.

What do you think you'll read next?

I have a lot of manga checked out from the library, though admittedly, most is is "I haven't read this/think I read a bit of this a while back, and the library has it so ok" so that. I also have Kelley Armstrong's newest book, but I kinda did that automatically and I think I want to find people who've read it before I do, just to make sure I don't get a Clayton/Elena thing again.

What are you currently reading


Volume 8 of 7 Seeds by Yumi Tamura. According to wikipedia, the arc I'm reading now wraps up at the end of volume 9, and I'll have reached the point I kept telling myself I wanted to reach before taking a break. Which is just as well, as emotional investment is currently a bit anxietymaking. Yumi Tamura appears to have gone "Pft, Clamp thinks they can make unbearably angsty back stories? They are amateurs. I'll show them how it's done without going nearly as far over the top."

What did you recently finish reading?

Volumes 4-7 of 7 Seeds. See above.

A Bride's Story Vol 4 by Kaoru Mori. Most of this volume is a side plot about a pair of twin sisters looking for husbands. These husbands, though, have to be brothers so the sisiters won't be separated. It was pretty much hilarious and delightful throughout, and I didn't mind the sidetrip at all.

Cross My Heart by Sasha Gould. DNF. Set in late 16th Century Italy, our heroine was sent to a convent several years ago, but is called home by her father after her sister's mysterious death to marry her sister's fiance, and soon is approached by a secret society of women who help make each others problems go away. Which would seem to be a perfect formula for me, but somehow, it's just boring. Like, really really boring. I read over half of it thinking "surely, SURELY something is about to happen and this book will live up to its potential and turn awesome!" until I realized that the boredom was making me read more slowly than usual and hours that could be spent reading something else were drifting away from me.

The Secret Lives of Codebreakers by Sinclair McKay. Nonfiction about day-to-day life at Bletchley Park from 1938-1945. Pretty interesting stuff, really. I hadn't realized before that there were 9000-10000 people employed there throughout the war (though that includes EVERYONE employed there, including messengers, secretaries, kitchen staff, cleaners, etc., not just codebreakers) or how common nervous breakdowns were. This is also the first thing I've read that broke down just how secretive things were, including between the people working there, with no onebeing allowed to discuss any aspect of their work with anyone outside of their own department, even family also employed at the Park. There was one family of a mother and two daughters where the mother was a waitress in the canteen, the older daughter one of the codebreakers, and the younger daughter employed as a messenger at 13, and who later became a secretary at the park, and none could discuss their work with each other at any time, even after the war. (The younger daughter, Mimi Gallilee, is also one of McKay's most-quoted sources for the book.) Another couple met and got married while working there, but didn't know what the other actually did there for decades after, despite being married the whole time. There's some information on codebreaking, but most of the focus is on the day-to-day operations and living conditions.

The War At Ellsmere by Faith Erin Hicks. A short-ish graphic novel about a girl named Juniper who goes to a boarding school on scholarship. She quickly befriends her quirky roommate, Cassie, and makes an enemy of the school's Queen Bee, Emily. The main plot is pretty straightforward and doesn't add anything to its type, but is very enjoyable. There's a sideplot about a legend of the school's, which holds that, before it was a school, it was a lord's castle, and one day the lord's sons had a fight and followed a white beast into the forest, and were never heard from again. Unfortunately, the book isn't long enough to really integrate that legend into the main plot, because based on what Hicks managed to do in the limited space she had, I think that could have elevated it from a solid and enjoyable read to a pretty great read. I feel compelled to mention that there isn't a single living male in the whole thing.

The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks. Utterly hilarious adventures of a superheroine whose town is beset by ninjas, marshmallow thieves, evil poodle ladies, and the occasional talking bear. It pokes a lot of loving fun at the genre (and less loving fun and more sharp stick at society-at one point, Superhero Girl wears a hoodie because she's having a bad hair day, and everyone thinks she turned evil) and has a lot of fun with her adventures in and out of costume, and wants us to ponder just how often superheroes forget to take their masks off (and how they keep them on in a fight). My favorite parts were when she fought her evil future self, and the times her brother showed up to be eternally devastated that she didn't want to be his partner forever.

The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford. Memoir of Marion Crawford, who was governess to Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret in the 1930s and 1940s. Knowing that the royal family cut off all contact with Crawford after she published the book and never spoke with her in the almost 40 years between the book's publication and Crawford's death (and didn't attend or send a wreath to her funeral) I was curious about what she had to say, and surprised to find how incredibly pro-royal-family it was. By today's standards, it's almost nauseatingly pure and positive. To judge by the book, the royal family was perfect and gracious and never had an ounce of arrogance or pretension, and the princesses were perfectly behaved angels who never lost their temper or misbehaved, only having "flaws" that made them precocious and clever as children, and intelligent and responsible and caring as they grew older. As one of the first books of the type, it must have felt to be an enormous breach of confidence, despite it's adoring nature (and definitely was, as Crawford had supposedly agreed not to publish anything about the royal family) but most famous figures would be relieved if something unauthorized about them came out and was half as positive as this. Really, though, it was an enjoyable and charming read, and had a lot of interesting information about life and conditions at the times, it's just hard to buy into a portrayal of any family as being so good and flawless.


What do you think you'll read next?

More 7 Seeds, then get back to Legend of the White Haired Demoness, and I have the Beautiful Creatures series from the library.