Book round-up: December 2019

[sixthlight]

Final round-up of the year! I'm pleased I managed to stick to this. I think I'll do a my-reading-year-in-review post (with the books that really stuck with me) in the next couple of weeks.

Non-fiction

Sandworm (Andy Greenberg)
Detailed history of Russian cyber attacks over 2015-2019. I was familiar with most of the individual events but hadn’t quite pieced together the kind of machine behind them; highly recommended reading if you’re interested in this aspect of modern geopolitics (and, if you’re interested in geopolitics at all, the cyberwar aspect is central.)

Fiction

Jade War (Fonda Lee)
Second in the Green Bone trilogy, sort of a mash-up of Hong Kong martial arts dramas and The Godfather in a secondary world which is in its equivalent of the 1960s or 70s, which is...just really neat? Secondary fantasy worlds always seem to get stuck in the Victorian era; it opens up so many more possibilities when your central characters can do martial arts magic and then jump on an airplane. Very excited for the series to continue.

Murder on the Titania (Alex Acks)
Several novellas/short stories in a steampunk AU (also with zombies, but they are entirely beside the point of the plot?) about a daring pirate and her various heist/mystery adventures. Fine but not much more for me than that; there’s not much in the way of character development.

Diamond Fire (Ilona Andrews)
I still think Connor Rogan should be thrown in the sea! I still don’t understand the heterosexual ‘romance’ (and other heteronormativity) in this series! I still really like the worldbuilding/mystery elements. Less hate-read than frustration-read, the thing where you read something hoping that the bits that frustrate you will magically fix themselves.

A Mortal Bane (Roberta Gellis)
Mystery novel set in twelfth-century London, starring the madam of a small brothel in Southwark, trying to clear her own and her co-workers’ names when a client is found dead shortly after leaving their house...and they discover a papal bull. Does a magnificent job of being set in another time, with characters who share that era’s concerns and priorities, rather than being about modern people in fancy dress – plus really gets into the nitty-gritty of 12th century English/French politics (well, that’s a plus for ME). There are apparently more books in the series and I intend to track them down.

Turning Darkness Into Light (Marie Brennan)
Follow-up to her Lady Trent series, focusing on Isabella, Lady Trent’s granddaughter Audrey as she begins the translation of an important Draconian text. Much smaller in scale than the original series, but fantastic in its exploration of linguistics, history, how a human society might deal with a non-human species (the good and bad bits), and a collection of imperfect people doing their best. Well...most of them. I hope Brennan writes a lot more in this universe, it’s where she does her best work.

An Extraordinary Union (Alyssa Cole)
Ellen Burns is a free black woman working undercover in Confederate Baltimore as an agent of the US government; her role (and heart) are compromised when Malcolm McCall, a Scottish immigrant who is also an undercover agent for the US, crosses her path. I found the spy plot and historical setting more compelling than the romance, but the character voices are strong and the story rattles along.

Re-reads

The Blending series (Sharon Green)
Speaking of uncompelling romance...look, I can’t recommend most things about this series, but the main plot arc/worldbuilding conceit can be summed up as Polyamorous Magical Captain Planet Hunger Games, and either that’s for you or it isn’t. It is enough for me that I re-read the whole thing as comfort fare and was, largely, comforted.

Its main sin is its incredible repetitiveness; you could cut it down to one solid novel, but no. It’s five. Its main advantage is that Polyamorous Magical Captain Planet Hunger Games is a hell of a setting/plot to be getting on with, and the five leads are engaging characters who only field the Idiot Ball when it comes to their (het) romances. Frankly, fandom could do a lot worse than steal the main magic conceit (see: Polyamorous Magical Captain Planet) for fics.

 

Comments

Lady Trent

[birdylion]

I went through all your book roundups just to see if you had read Lady Trent. If you hadn't, I would have recommended it to you.
I'm delighted to see that you have read and seem to like the series!

Since I first read it, it's become one of my favourite (if not the ~) series and I'm always so happy when others know and enjoy it too.

Re: Lady Trent

[sixthlight]

Yes, I like the series a lot! I don't know if I'll ever re-read it (though I'm not saying I wouldn't) but it occupies such a great science-fantasy crossover space.

Re: Lady Trent

[birdylion]

(I hope you don't me rambling at you about them - I rarely encounter people who know the books.)

It really does, and I also enjoy the history of science aspect the format brings to the story. Memoirs are well suited for this kind of story. They allow the author to write the perspectives of the young and the older Isabella, as well as hint at the changes of society brought by decades of (new) scientific research. I wouldn't say the writing is revolutionary, but the world feels well-rounded and the narrative is definitely well crafted and shows love for what it depicts. I'm not usually particularly interested in dragons, but I was very invested in Isabella's scientific study of them as shown in the books.

In Turning Darkness Into Light, I loved the very realistic depiction of translating old texts, that was fun!
What touched me most in the story were Kudshayn's thoughts about the new text and how to deal with the emergence of an older and different creation myth for your people than what you know and believe. Very interesting.