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ladybusinessReading recently has been taken up by an ARC of Black Wolves by Kate Elliott (it's great! pre-order now!) that I'll be reviewing soon. It's almost 800 pages so...if you like epic fantasy, Kate Elliott put some epic fantasy in a book and then shook it so it frothed up some extra epic fantasy. :D
I still don't know who to blame my October Daye bender on because Jodie has refused to take the fall, but whoever finally tipped me into reading this series: what have you done to me you monster?????
Ana and I read Young Avengers Vol. 2: Family Matters for Fangirl Happy Hour. My verdict: DRAMATIC! Comics really can go from 0 to 500 in the span of one issue. This volume was all about the teenagers and their private lives, the secrets they were keeping, and the secrets they never knew about that were about to be revealed explosively (hahaha…I'm an asshole).
The story lines heavily featured the boys, but I'm biased because I would just prefer everything be All Kate Bishop All the Time. The Young Avengers have ignored Grumpy Dads, a.k.a Captain America and Iron Man, refused to disband, and so Grumpy Dads and Jessica Jones go around telling their parents what's up. I liked Steve trying to get Tony to go see Cassie's mom, and Tony's like "WHOA not even for you sugarplum".
And then a Family Bible somewhere explodes and a foot is jammed into the narrative gas pedal. This volume was busy and full of information, although I'm finally getting that when people say, hey, jump in anywhere, you can! Because comics love a good infodump; I got a crash course on one version of Mar-Vell's past, who I only know from basics due to the Carol comics I've read. I'm sure this has been retconned or rebooted a zillion times (I'm assuming at this point there's at least three versions/pasts of every character) but thought it was all cool how it came together. I love all these kids; they're great.
One thing that's been hard for me to get used to is the objectification of the female characters. Because I started with newer comics, like Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel going backwards is shocking, like in the cover above where Kate is meant to be a teenager. WHY, ARTIST? Why did you do this? I feel gross and you should feel gross, too. And I know this is probably not even that bad! in the grand scheme of things, but seriously this was a comic about teenagers. Gravity exists! People don't stand like that. *grumbles*
I reviewed Carry On for the B&N SFF Blog and my final thoughts were that it was super charming, lots of fun, and had a lot of chewy parts to discuss if you're up on your Harry Potter canon. I didn't have space over there to dig into much of the character work, but wow did I ever love some of these characters. Simon and Baz were great, of course, but I ended up loving Penny and Agatha desperately. I was talking with Jenny about how we want an entire book about Agatha where she's the smartest of them all. :D The girls and women were some of the strongest and most emotionally resonant parts of the book. Even though the narrative is centered on Simon and Baz, it challenges itself multiple times, especially in regards to Agatha. It's also turning a lot of tropes over to look at them from a different direction, especially where in concerns care of children and acquiring power.
It's an adventure story and a romance and it feels a lot like what Harry Potter fanfic felt like to me back in the day. It has the bonus of being hyper-aware of the story it's telling and the tropes it's using and just how much angst is good angst. It's a nice warm sweater of a story and I will keep hoping that maybe Rowell will have some more stories to tell in this universe because I adore the meta of it all but find the characters really refreshing and neat on their own merits, regardless of the characters they were imagined out of or potentially represent.
And in my continuing march through the entire October Daye series, I finished One Salt Sea which was really good but really heartbreaking. That could be a blurb for the whole series at this point. My emotions hurt.
The way McGuire writes these intimate, complicated mysteries that always end up having a resolution more personal than simply a job-of-the-week type story is rad. Each mystery Toby unravels sinks her deeper and deeper into Faerie, and raises more and more questions. Sometimes it answers them and sometimes you're just left gross sobbing on your cat's fur.
I love the continued world building as we get to go to new places and see a more diverse slice of Faerie than usual. This time: the water Faerie to solve the case of the kidnapped kids, which is definitely something Toby has Feelings about. I had to spoil myself for parts of this one, though, because I could handle not knowing what happened before it actually arrived. And not even that helped much. :(
I still get a little bemused by all the Faerie stuff, but I'm pretty sure this series is bringing me around to the ways it can be cool to play with this mythology. I'M NOT A CONVERT yet, we'll see how I feel once I catch up on the series (I'm halfway through the next book already, hahaha).
I still don't know who to blame my October Daye bender on because Jodie has refused to take the fall, but whoever finally tipped me into reading this series: what have you done to me you monster?????
- Young Avengers Vol. 2: Family Matters by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung
- Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
- One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire
Ana and I read Young Avengers Vol. 2: Family Matters for Fangirl Happy Hour. My verdict: DRAMATIC! Comics really can go from 0 to 500 in the span of one issue. This volume was all about the teenagers and their private lives, the secrets they were keeping, and the secrets they never knew about that were about to be revealed explosively (hahaha…I'm an asshole).
The story lines heavily featured the boys, but I'm biased because I would just prefer everything be All Kate Bishop All the Time. The Young Avengers have ignored Grumpy Dads, a.k.a Captain America and Iron Man, refused to disband, and so Grumpy Dads and Jessica Jones go around telling their parents what's up. I liked Steve trying to get Tony to go see Cassie's mom, and Tony's like "WHOA not even for you sugarplum".
And then a Family Bible somewhere explodes and a foot is jammed into the narrative gas pedal. This volume was busy and full of information, although I'm finally getting that when people say, hey, jump in anywhere, you can! Because comics love a good infodump; I got a crash course on one version of Mar-Vell's past, who I only know from basics due to the Carol comics I've read. I'm sure this has been retconned or rebooted a zillion times (I'm assuming at this point there's at least three versions/pasts of every character) but thought it was all cool how it came together. I love all these kids; they're great.
One thing that's been hard for me to get used to is the objectification of the female characters. Because I started with newer comics, like Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel going backwards is shocking, like in the cover above where Kate is meant to be a teenager. WHY, ARTIST? Why did you do this? I feel gross and you should feel gross, too. And I know this is probably not even that bad! in the grand scheme of things, but seriously this was a comic about teenagers. Gravity exists! People don't stand like that. *grumbles*
I reviewed Carry On for the B&N SFF Blog and my final thoughts were that it was super charming, lots of fun, and had a lot of chewy parts to discuss if you're up on your Harry Potter canon. I didn't have space over there to dig into much of the character work, but wow did I ever love some of these characters. Simon and Baz were great, of course, but I ended up loving Penny and Agatha desperately. I was talking with Jenny about how we want an entire book about Agatha where she's the smartest of them all. :D The girls and women were some of the strongest and most emotionally resonant parts of the book. Even though the narrative is centered on Simon and Baz, it challenges itself multiple times, especially in regards to Agatha. It's also turning a lot of tropes over to look at them from a different direction, especially where in concerns care of children and acquiring power.
It's an adventure story and a romance and it feels a lot like what Harry Potter fanfic felt like to me back in the day. It has the bonus of being hyper-aware of the story it's telling and the tropes it's using and just how much angst is good angst. It's a nice warm sweater of a story and I will keep hoping that maybe Rowell will have some more stories to tell in this universe because I adore the meta of it all but find the characters really refreshing and neat on their own merits, regardless of the characters they were imagined out of or potentially represent.
And in my continuing march through the entire October Daye series, I finished One Salt Sea which was really good but really heartbreaking. That could be a blurb for the whole series at this point. My emotions hurt.
The way McGuire writes these intimate, complicated mysteries that always end up having a resolution more personal than simply a job-of-the-week type story is rad. Each mystery Toby unravels sinks her deeper and deeper into Faerie, and raises more and more questions. Sometimes it answers them and sometimes you're just left gross sobbing on your cat's fur.
I love the continued world building as we get to go to new places and see a more diverse slice of Faerie than usual. This time: the water Faerie to solve the case of the kidnapped kids, which is definitely something Toby has Feelings about. I had to spoil myself for parts of this one, though, because I could handle not knowing what happened before it actually arrived. And not even that helped much. :(
I still get a little bemused by all the Faerie stuff, but I'm pretty sure this series is bringing me around to the ways it can be cool to play with this mythology. I'M NOT A CONVERT yet, we'll see how I feel once I catch up on the series (I'm halfway through the next book already, hahaha).
no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 06:10 pm (UTC)I used this phrase a few times to poke at him (I KNOW) and eventually grew attached to it for long and probably boring reasons re: my relationship with words and reading as a process. Plus it sounds...fun...like! yeah! LET'S WIN AT LITERACY! and so of course I decided this was a GREAT NAME for a reading column.
ANYWAY there was a long story and now I am wishing the origin of this phrase was cooler and not "renay pokes angry man on Internet". XD MY LEGACY.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-25 10:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-26 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 02:25 am (UTC)Yeah, there's like several instances of Kate Bishop showing up in super sexy costumes where I want to drop the artists a line to remind them that she's supposed to be still a kid basically. On the up side, my podcast partner Whiskey Jenny texted me the other day to say she wanted to be Kate Bishop for Halloween and what costume advice could I provide? PURPLE is the answer.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 04:52 am (UTC)omg now I want to be Kate Bishop for Halloween. WHAT A GREAT IDEA.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-25 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-26 08:37 am (UTC)