In the last couple years I've moved my non-LHMP book reviews over to Dreamwidth to keep a certain separation between my voice as an author and my voice as a reader. But I want to give this one a bit more visibility.
Reviews
Blog entry
Every once in a while, you figure it’s time to read a book because it’s considered by many to be a classic and you want to see what the fuss is about. And besides which, it was on sale at Audible, so I finally checked out Backwards to Oregon by Jae. This is marketed as lesbian historical romance though, like a number of other reviewers, I have significant discomfort with that label. My one-sentence plot-summary might be “novelization of the classical ‘Oregon Trail’ computer game, centering a queer relationship.”
I’m feeling trapped between my (entirely personal, self-made) commitment to review (almost) all the media I consume, and how thoroughly behind I am at doing so. Hence, my all-in-one micro-review roundup, in which I give my impressions of everything on my “to review” list since last June. It may take me a couple more days to transfer these into the various review sites.
(Oops, I meant to post this a few days ago!)
This is another book that I read because “it fits in the waist pack I used for my Saturday morning bike ride.” Somewhat surprisingly, the main text was short enough to read over two croissants and a cup of coffee.
One of the peculiarities of my reading habits is that, while I’m often reading multiple things in parallel, I keep them sorted out mentally by reading in different formats and different contexts. The most eclectic reading context I currently have is “things I read over breakfast on my Saturday morning bike ride to Walnut Creek.” It has to be a book that will fit in my belt pack, which means either mass market paperback or the equivalent of a trade paperback (including hardback books of similar size). Mass market paperbacks are generally fiction, which means generally read them in ebook.
A short (novella?) historic romance between an impoverished middle-class woman trying to eke out a living on the fringes of the propertied class, and her childhood friend of that class who is struggling to find a way to be himself without losing everything. A Christmas masquerade ball provides the context for the masks to start slipping as our heroine connects the dashing man she meets at the ball with the eccentric young woman she thought she knew. A delightful happily-ever-after trans love story that threads the hazards of historic plausibility very neatly.
I’m never going to complain about the hints and beginnings of an openness in mainstream romance publishing to consider f/f historical romances. Hopefully we will eventually have so many that I don’t find myself pinning all my hopes on each individual title. Sebastian’s entry into the field branches off from an existing series, matching a lady’s companion with a haunted past and a maid with a suspicious present in something of a revenge caper. The romance worked for me, but there were a number of improbabilities in the depiction of the social context that kept throwing me out of the story.
All of the Dominion of the Fallen books have their harsh and horrifying moments, but this one feels like the darkest going in (though maybe not so dark coming out). If anyone with less skill than de Bodard were writing this series, I might have noped out after the first book, but she gets past my uneasiness around horror with gripping characters and masterful worldbuilding. The fallen angels, dragon kingdoms, and loose-cannon magical creatures of Paris are plunged into something close to all-out war.
A free short story set in O’Dell’s “Janet Watson” series. Following the framing motif of journaling that features in the main series, this story takes the format of a diary of a teenage Janet Watson during the year that inspired her to pursue medicine. Something of a character sketch in form, we’re offered more background into the near-future worldbuilding that underpins the series. For those who love Janet, this shows the girl who will become the woman, already facing a dangerous and frightening future but without quite as many smashed dreams.
In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the character of Miranda is something of a cipher – a pawn who exists only in other people’s image of her and plans for her. Duckett’s novella images her after her father’s return to Italy, as she begins to shake free of being a silent pawn and ask some hard questions: like what actually happened to her mother and what is lurking in the tunnels beneath the castle? She makes an uneasy alliance (and finds the possibility of romance) with a serving woman who has her own reasons to distrust the power structures in Milan.
I read this book through an interesting lens, because I was reading it in parallel with a how-to book on writing romance plots. And while I loved 90% of Lady’s Guide, the parts that clunked for me were all plot elements that the how-to book insisted were absolutely necessary plot elements in a romance. While that didn’t lessen my enjoyment of Waite’s book, it did lessen my inclination to take writing advice from the how-to book. This is a well-grounded historical romance between two women with unusual avocations: astronomical calculation and fine embroidery.
The books in the Glamourist Histories series have been somewhat hit or miss with me. This one, I’m afraid, missed. I might have been more articulate as to why if I’d succeeded in reviewing it closer in time to reading. It mostly boiled down to the protagonists doing foolish things due to unwillingness to communicate or admit weakness, plus some contrived plot twists. At this point I doubt I’ll finish the series. I wish I’d liked it better because I think the author is an amazing human being.
A historic fantasy set in medieval Portugal and inspired by a legend of the miraculous transformation of bread into roses. But is it a miracle or a curse for your touch to turn food into flowers? This story explores themes of self-harm, disordered eating, and the legacy of religious intolerance, all tied up in a slow-growing romance between a future queen and the magical woman who may be her only hope of surviving. Pinguicha has the knack of framing her story with realistic historic attitudes, beliefs, and reactions without suggesting that it places a happy ending out of reach.
Evidently I’m making a habit of reading Vo’s Singing Hills novellas in odd contexts. I read the first sitting on a gurney in an emergency room, and this one hanging out in a park near the Apple Store waiting for my phone’s batter replacement to be completed. This has nothing to do with the content of the books, but is a testament to their convenient length and engrossing content.
Cole has been doing really fun things with the trope of “contemporary royalty romance” in both this and her Reluctant Royals series by creating an entire network of invented kingdoms throughout Africa and the Mediterranean through which her Black protagonists can romp without having to dodge around the legacy of European royal history. Both series now have an f/f entry. In this novella, two complex and difficult personalities clash (and encounter an awkward attraction) around the possibility that one of them is the heir to the mysteriously-disappeared ruler of an island kingdom.
I think the only word for this book is “delightful.” In a standard-issue medievaloid fantasy setting, a teenage apprentice baker and wizard finds herself thrust into the unexpected role of saving the city-state from plots and foreign invasion. With the help of an animated gingerbread man and a magical familiar in the form of a sourdough culture named Bob. I mean, what more do you need to know? The protagonist is believably complex and flawed and the baking-based magic (indeed, the general premise of how magic works in the world) is well-realized and woven into the plot and its resolution.
A story in O’Dell’s world of River of Souls, but starting a different series (Mage and Empire) that combines threads of romance, adventure, and mystery. You get plunged into the world with its rich geography, history, and politics pretty quickly, so it may help to have read other books set in the world to have a solid grounding. For some reason I didn’t love it as deeply as I did the River of Souls series and I’m not entirely sure why.
A graphic novel telling the romance between two women in service, set in a time of social change and opportunity. One character is unapologetically plain and plump, the other is a bi-racial daughter of the English presence in India. There’s lots of exploration of family, loyalty, community, and the tricky balance between security and making a life of your own. And sex. There’s lots of sex. Which I hadn’t quite expected to see on the page given the feel of the cover art and description. Not a problem, just not expecting that.
Being a massive Jane Austen fan, I’m also something of a sucker for spin-offs that do fun things with her characters. Though I have strong opinions on some of the ones that didn’t work as well for me. This is a fun, reasonably fluffy, series in which Mr. and Mrs. Darcy play amateur detectives while encountering all manner of characters from other Austen novels in the context of cozy murders. The writing is competent, though not scintillating (and without a serious attempt to mimic Austen’s own prose).
I'm still trying to figure out the factors that broke through my "reading block" in the past month. One definitely seems to be adding hard-copy books back into the mix, which is how I picked up this one. Another factor I'm beginning to suspect may have helped was trying to stop think about reading as "reading to review" and just read. It's not like I have a significant "voice" as a reviewer, and I started out posting reviews of books just to have a space to think about them a little more.
Lately I’ve been plucking books almost randomly off my to-be-read bookcase (which really needs to be organized so it’s not quite so random). I’d rather forgotten about picking up this one. A somewhat dated (with respect to gender politics) short gothic with mystery elements, set in an ancient villa and the Etruscan catacombs beneath it. Archaeology, ancient mysteries, terrible family secrets, lots of peril that might have been avoided if people talked to each other more about the odd things they knew about the villa and its former inhabitants.
A novella(?) set in the author’s Dominion of the Fallen series, with a tight little murder mystery embedded in the familial/court politics of the underwater dragon kingdom. Lots of drama, angst, peril, and socio-political negotiation to provide distraction from the murder. And that’s just between our dragon & fallen angel married protagonists. I’m going to guess that this story might be a bit too in media res for any reader who hasn’t read the Dominion novels, but you should go read those because they’re really good.
A while ago I started working my way through reviews of things I’ve read in the last year or two. Ha, ha, yes, my up-to-datedness is that bad. And then in the last month or so, I finally seem to have broken through my “reading block”. So let’s spend some time getting reviews done, though they’re going to be briefer than I sometimes write. I’m scheduling 18 reviews (following my usual one-blog-per-day maximum) which gets me caught up with everything in my spreadsheet, though I need to comb through iBooks and other files to see if I’ve overlooked something.
Set in the same magical-Regency world as Cho’s earlier Sorcerer to the Crown, but overlapping only slightly in characters, this book tells the story of two sisters in Malaysia, struck by a curse that sends one on a quest to England and fairyland to find a cure for her sister’s fading. Along the way, she must conceal her own lack of magic, enlist the aid of the sorceress royal and a dragon, and untangle the mystery of her own identity.
This is a psychological study of the confined lives and expectations of women in post-WWII England. Using flashbacks, it traces the lives of a mother and daughter as every turn seems to snatch away what they felt they were promised, constantly requiring them to have less, to do less, and to be less (manifested as anorexia by the daughter).
On a whim, I picked this up in audio because I wasn't sure when I'd get to it on the page. Given how late I am to the party, I'm aware that there's now an entire series of the "wayward children" stories, involving those who have gone through portals to another realm...and now can't find their way back. But this first story is less a classic portal fantasy than it is a classic murder mystery. And when all the inhabitants of the mysterious spooky mansion are more than a little odd, sorting out the suspects can be a problem.
I don't quite know why, but this book just didn't grab me and I ended up not finishing it. Maybe it's because I'm enough outside the online culture being depicted that it felt both alien and over-explained. Maybe I had too hard a time trying to get inside the protagonist's head.
There are times in your life when you really need a deeply engrossing story that will take you away from the here and now for the space of a couple hours. One of those times is when you’re sitting in an emergency room waiting for them to confirm your pulmonary embolism. One of those stories in Nghi Vo’s novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune. I don’t recommend the former, but I do recommend the later.
This sapphic, Vietnamese-inspired historic fantasy is warm and cozy, like sipping tea in front of a blazing fire, with a cat sitting on your lap, where the cat might turn into a tiger and the fire might burn your palace down. Aliette has the knack of compressing enormous amounts of world-building into a very few pages. You can easily read this story in a single bite, but it immediately plunges you into the deep back-story of a princess-hostage, the fraught politics of maintaining an unequal power balance, and the personal hazards of re-igniting an old love affair.
This isn’t so much a review of the book as a discussion of my reaction to it. For what that’s worth. I picked up Romancing the Beat because it was recommended on a podcast for authors who want to analyze what does or doesn’t work in their romance plots.
It isn’t necessary to be as much of a language geek as I am to love this book. McCulloch does an excellent job of applying linguistic analysis and principles to the ways the internet has used and changed language, and then explaining it all in an engaging and understandable way for the lay person. If you have ever had a “kids these days!” moment about online language, this book will explain to you why the things you’re complaining about are actually fascinating examples of larger trends in language change that have always been present.
A relatively short Regency novella, with a f/f match that’s a spin-off from an existing m/f series. It’s lovely to see more entries into the f/f Regency field. (Pro tip: there are other ways to make your Regency heroine stand out as non-conforming than to give her scientific interests.
Considering what it takes for a book to make it from my TBR list to actually being read, it’s fairly rare for me to choose not to finish a book. Here are two that I closed unfinished.
(I'm going to try to get caught up on reviews, which means the reviews may be briefer than I usually prefer to do.)
Not only did my reading get thrown for a loop this year, but I still have a bunch of reviews to write for things I finished in the past. This one is jumping the review queue because I just finished it and figured it was best to write something while fresh in my mind. I know, I know, I'm the one who made the rule about reviewing everything I read. But I know how important community reviews can be to a book, so I do my best.
I think I have enjoyed every single thing I’ve read from Stephanie Burgis, though I haven’t real any of her middle grade series. When preparing to recording an interview with her for the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast on the occasion of the release of Moontangled, I read the entire series leading up to it. Herewith are some briefer-than-usual reviews of the component parts.
I had no idea what to expect going into this book, and if I’d had expectations they would have been wrong. Based on the cover copy, what you have is a Neolithic murder mystery with intimations of queer romance. But Between Boat and Shore is neither a murder mystery nor a romance in terms of genre. The story opens with both a violent death and the arrival of two traveling strangers in the small community of Otter Village, motifs that would ordinarily suggest a classic whodunnit plot.
Contemporary romance isn’t usually my thing, but I’m so desperate to get another f/f historical romance out of Alyssa Cole (having loved “That Could Be Enough”) that I decided to triangulate by picking up “Once Ghosted, Twice Shy” for the f/f side, and her Loyal League series for the historical side. I still want more f/f historicals but at least I get more Alyssa Cole.
The second book in O’Dell’s near-future Sherlockian thriller series takes the reader on a game of cat-and-mouse where our protagonist, Dr. Janet Watson, struggles in the midst of chaos and danger to continue trusting her colleague/housemate/friend--I would say “partner” except that word carries some erroneous implications when you’re talking about two queer women--Sara Holmes.
Sometimes I stumble into reading a book that isn’t in my usual target zone at all. I’ve read some short fiction by El-Mohtar that I rather enjoyed, but “epistolary time-travel secret agent romance” isn’t something that would necessarily pique my interest until you insert the word “lesbian” into that phrase. Reading the book set me ruminating on questions of what even is gender in a post-human society, but that’s a different discussion.
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