Of Swords and Parasols

What are you currently reading

Murder in the Paperback Parlor by Ellery Adams. The second book in a mystery series about a woman who own a resort/retreat for booklovers, and whose family is secretly the caretakers of rare, secret and banned books. This one has a romance novel convention (it's not called that, really, but that's what it is) in which the most popular author is murdered. I MOSTLY really like it. I say mostly because one of the suspects is a feminist (who has a hitory of being abused) who has many many thoughts and feelings about romance novels and feminism, and that's mostly used to portray her as OTT and irrational. It's offset by having the main character point out defenses for the stance, but it still rubs me the wrong way. Also, the book is not editted that well and has a LOT of typos. My favorite is when some is said to have "died of a heroine overdose."


What did you recently finish reading?
Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Shattered Empire 1-4 by Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto. A mini-series set at the very end of and in the months after Return of the Jedi.
I guess even the main character's identity could be considered a spoiler for The Force Awakens?

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Seanan McGuire: A Red-Rose Chain. The latest October Daye book, which was truly impressive in its ability to have each chapter make the protagonist's 10 times as screwed as they were in the last chapter. For people who haven't read this but intend to, I should warn that this one dives into some horror and torture territory, and briefly teeters on the edge of becoming a slasher. (Err..."slasher" as in "subcategory of horror genre," not shipping. Though there is some of that too.)

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Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry: : Star Wars: Moving Target: A novella about Leia, set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It's bookended with scenes of Leia sometime not long before before The Force Awakens. Pretty much, after EOTS, Leia goes "Ok, collection of strapping sidekicks, go find my boyfriend! I have to help run this rebellion. Luke, please don't lose any more bodyparts. Lando, don't forget that Chewie has my permission to rip off your arm and beat you to death with it if you betray us again. Chewie, don't rip off anyone's arms unless it's necessary. I'm not too worried about you, you're the most responsible one of the bunch."

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Norihiro Yagi: Claymore Vol 22-27. This marks the 3rd shounen series I've stuck with from beginning to end (the other two being Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai Deeper Kyo). I remember when Viz released the first volume and I was figuratively shoving it in everyone's faces.

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Sarah Prineas: Ash and Bramble. Sold as a twisted version of fairytales in which the amnesiac main character is one of many slaves of the Fairy godmother from fairy tales, forced to create all the clothes and slippers and items that populate fairy tales. This is a good description of the frist arc, but what the book ACTUALLY is is deconstructive meta about fairytales, perception of roles (and rejection of assigned roles) and stories and a pretty dark and messed up take on the idea of Story As Character. It's kind of Ever After High's concept taken to its worst extremes, in terms of how it affects characters. Becasuse of how its set up, characterization can be a bit inconsistent or absent at times, but it's a conscious narrative choice, as opposed to bad writing. I don't think it hit every note it thought it did. But it was a lot more than I was expecting, and a good read.

I read a bit of the Lando comic, but apparently Lando is like Han Solo where, while I quite like him with the rest of the cast, I'm not really interested in him when he's away from them and in full pre-reformed smarmy conartist mode. His Rebels appearances are as close to that as I'm interested in.

What do you think you'll read next?

More Star Wars stuff, probably, and I have a bunch of mysteries and YA/MG books checked out, so those. Not sure beyond that.

1. Does anyone here watch Devious Maids or am I all alone in that one? I binged on the entire second season over the weekend, and realized I didn't have anyone to talk about it with. They did a Rebecca plot and everything this season. The cliffhanger just was not OK, though.

2. I'm watching season 2 of Orphan Black and very,very over the reproductive focus in this season, which I understand only gets worse as the season continues. The season as a whole, in what I've seen...well, I still like it, but its very much one of those shows that gets success and then becomes to conscious of the fact that people are paying attention to what they're doing and performs to that, instead of just doing its thing.

3. In addition to kdramas and anime (and some cdramas...pretty much most of what Crunchyroll and dramafever have for non-premium accounts) Hulu now has some subtitled telenovelas. They've had non-subbed ones for quite a while, but the only one with English subs that I'd found before was the first season of Gran Hotel, which I've already watched. (Netflix and Hulu actually both have season 2 of Gran Hotel now, I just haven't made it to it yet.) Now added to my neverending queue are a 1990s Zorro series, Aguila Roja/Red Eagle a current Zorro-like series set in Spain in the early 17th century, and Isabel a period romance from the 90s. Because, I mean, I'm going to catch up with everything someday...

4. I can never decide if the Fall daylight savings change is great or awful. (The Spring one is evil. That's all there is to it.)

5. I am reading the latest October Daye and will no doubt have plenty to say about once I've finished, but I do want to say something about something that happened midway through the book.

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6. I had only vaguely heard of Lena Dunham before everyone started hating her book, and now I'm tripping over everyone hating her book and her responses to criticism of it and her because of it.

7. Flight Rising's vault feature is my new favorite thing. I'm squirreling away every single treasure chest I can (from leafy packs to festival chests) except for gilded and iron chests (because they might have familiars I don't have yet) to open at Christmas. Possibly even including the festival chests I've managed to restrain myself from opening.

What are you currently reading

Nothing, because I finished the novella I was reading about half an hour ago.

What did you recently finish reading?

I finished Absolute Witch, which I posted on separately.

Chimes and Midnight by Seanan McGuire. The seventh October Daye novel, and certainly a gamechanger. (Enough so that I was actually expecting the A plot to have to carry over into the next book before it was resolved.) This is possibly the only book I have read in which the words "evil pie" were completely accurate and as serious as they were absurd. I'm not sure, but I think (hope) that the next arc of the series will bring the focus to Toby's mother and her mysteries.

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Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn. This one has Kitty going to Vegas and doing a live show, while meeting the Vegas supernatural crowd on the side. I liked the parts about the show and the parts with Kitty's parents a lot, and was generally enjoying it until near the end, where ?Vaughn actually managed to make me feel physically ill.

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The Earl and the Fairy Vol 1 by Mizue Tani and Ayuki. Adaptation of light novels set in Victorian England, and a girl named Lydia who can talk to fairies, and a possibly-fake nobleman named Edgar who abducts her (by way of rescuing her from other, less nice abductors) and then hires her to help him find a fairy artifact. I enjoyed the anime based on the same light novels, and this is very similar, though it doesn't give so much deja vu to make me want to stop reading, though I do find Edgar's "La, I have abducted you but it was at least partly for your own good. Also, look at my angst that makes me more dark and dangerous." more insufferable than I recall finding it in the anime.

Capturing the Silken Thief by Jeannie Lin. Novella set in Tang Dynasty China, about a scholar studying for his exams, and a song girl who thinks he stole a valuable book from her. Very enjoyable, but too short, IMO.

What do you think you'll read next?

Manga, probably a romance novel. Maybe one of the Twelve Kingdoms books that I haven't read yet that I found English translations of online.

The October Daye series is an urban fantasy series about a half-fae (half-fae are called changelings in this series which I'm still adjusting to, as that isn't what a mythological changeling is, but moving on) knight, October "Toby" Daye. It's not quite like any other urban fantasy series I've read: there's the obligatory triangle with the sexy "others," but they're no more "other" than Toby herself (perhaps less so, actually) and Toby is generally too busy trying not to die to worry about her love life, and six books in, it's playing out in a very non-triangley way (bonus points for the fact that I genuinely like one a lot and don't mind the other, despite finding him considerably less interesting than most other characters in the series), and the supernatural world/real world is blended together in a more interesting (and "convincingly"-as much as the world can be used for an urban fantasy series) way than most series, with the majority of the action taking place on the fae side of things. It's also very much worth noting that the fae aren't all white.

But there are two main things that set it apart for me.

The first is that this is one of the few series that makes me genuinely fear for the main character's survival. I mean, it's written in first person past tense and I read five of the books knowing that there was at least one more after it, but still worrying about Toby's chances of survival. Part of it is that Toby has something of a death wish (and not one that isn't noticed or is treated lightly, but one that's consistently met with "OMG Toby STOP ALMOST DYING AND MAKING US HAVE TO PUT YOU BACK TOGETHER. No, we aren't exaggerating or just tired of you doing dangerous things, STOP TRYING TO DIE ON US!", but also because the very first thing that happens to Toby in the series is that an enemy turns her into a fish and leaves her to die on dry land, and she's only saved by a tourist tossing her into a koi pond. Where she proceeded to stay for 14 years, coming back to learn that her life is gone and her fiance and now-teenaged daughter (understandably) think she ran out on them and wants them to welcome her back. I mean, when the writer kicks things off by doing that to the main character, it can be safely assumed that the writer can and will do anything short of permanent death to the character. (Some might remember McGuire's post that was circling around a while back about a reader asking when Toby-and her other female leads-was going to get raped, because it was unrealistic for them to not get raped, and how McGuire said she never was going to have her female characters get raped, and why. Well, McGuire is doing a good job in these books of showing how very many ways you can traumatize for female characters and make them afraid without ever even hinting at sexual assault, and I admit to loving every minute of it despite it being terrible for my nerves.)

Another part of that is that the plots of the book tend to be much more intimately connected to Toby and the people she cares about than I remember most UF plots being back when I read more about it. Instead of Toby being pulled into cases that end up being Big Things, the case tend to start by being directly connected to Toby and her loved ones, and even "the world might end!" tends to be overshadowed by Toby's personal connection to whatever's going on. Even Toby's "epic destiny" type plot that all urban fantasy heroines get isn't so much about the epic destiny, but about the mystery of Toby's mother (who I find utterly fascinating despite the fact that she's had exactly one scene in six books and otherwise is mentioned by others or remembered by Toby) and the impact it has on the people around her.

The other thing is that Toby has TONS of important, emotionally fraught relationships with other women, many of whom, in other series, would be put forth as antagonists or rivals. (There's actually a plotline where someone is targeting people who would normally be assumed to be Toby's enemies in an attempt to frame her, but they aren't and so things don't go as planned.) Instead, Toby is consistently a mixture of frenemy, BFF and ally to most of the women she encounters, and these relationships are given as much, if not more, attention (depending on the book and circumstance) as her relationships with men. My favorite of these is with The Luidaeg, an ancient sea witch with whom Toby has a very Dread Pirate Roberts/Wesley type of relationship, and I freely admit that that was my OTP of the series until something happened (something good, storywise!) that just made that too terribly awkward. (Then I switch to what appears to be the endgame, and I'm ok with that.) I'm also extremely fond of her relationship with May, who can't really be easily explained without reading the books, and of course Toby's mother, Amandine, a mysterious but very important figure who apparently went mad while Toby was a fish, missing and presumed dead, and has since almost becomes a legendary figure, only briefly spotted wandering around the Summerlands. Out of probably a dozen or so important female characters, there are only 3 who are straightup antagonists to Toby, and only one of whom can simply be labeled "the bad guy" (and I'm actually just assuming this character will end up being important based on her role in the sixth book).

Toby also has a couple of adorable teenaged fae boy sidekicks, and possibly acquired a female changeling sidekick in the latest book. (We'll see. I can hope.) There are lots of politics that I, at least, find interesting, and I'm not sure there's an important character who I actually dislike except for a couple of the villains (both of whom may never be seen again at this point), and I find the mythology very interesting. The naming system is a bit odd-women are often gicen nature and date-related names (October, Lily, May, Luna, January, Acacia, April, etc.) and men's names often seem to be lifted from romance novels (Sylvester, Tybalt, Etienne, Quentin, Raj, Connor, etc.) but I got used to it after a couple books, and there's an explanation-of-sorts given at one point. The series seems to be a bit hit and miss-some people seem to dislike the series for some of the reasons I'm drawn to it-but I'll definitely be reading more.

The books, in order, are:

Rosemary and Rue
A Local Habitation
An Artificial Light
Late Eclipses
One Salt Sea
Ashes of Honor

I know a number of people are going to tell me to red McGuire's zombie apocalypse books written as Mira Grant, and I will but has anyone read her Incrypid books? (Or at least the first. I'm not sure the second is out yet.)