rowyn | Entries tagged with books

I did it! I finished editing A Dragonling’s Family! Before the end of March (barely)! Now I just need to get it to first readers. Blurb:

When Vaiyae’s dying friend, disowned by her family, asked him to raise her offspring, he could not refuse. But he had some misgivings, because Vaiyae is a human/crow-shifter, and his friend—and her unhatched child—are dragons.

Daneah, a new witch in Zendzu-ksto, and her raccoon companion offer Vaiyae their aid, as the difficulties of being a single parent are amplified by his daughter being of a different species. As Vaiyae and Daneah spend more time together, romance stirs between them.

But their fragile family is threatened when the dragonling’s uncle roars into Zendzu-ksto and demands custody of his niece. Can the crow-shifter stop a dragon from taking Vaiyae’s adopted daughter?

And if Vaiyae can—does he have any right to?

This is a polyamorous MFM fantasy romance, with one plot thread being the romance and the other being a custody battle over a baby dragon. Story includes:

Trans man and crow lord/fren protagonist
Crow lord brooding (his adopted egg)
Adorable baby dragon antics
Adorable murder of crows antics
Murder of crows vs dragon! (spoiler: it’s fine, the crows are fine, nobody panic)
Hard-of-hearing sign-language-using witch and her animal companion/interpreter
Dragon shapeshifter who can’t be arsed to shift into non-winged forms properly because why would you want a body that doesn’t have wings?
Both friends to lovers and enemies to lovers because polyamory means not having to choose tropes either
Bisexual protagonists because what is monosexuality? we just don’t know

If you are interested in being a first reader, please contact me via email (my gmail address is ladyrowyn) / comment on this post/ DM on Mastodon/ etc and I'll send you a link privately. Comments are (double-checks) screened if you want to leave an email address in the comments.

I finished initial edits on Alien Peacelords! Now I need first readers.

Why have a midlife crisis on Earth when you can have one among the stars?
With faster-than-light space travel, flying cars, and biological advances that eliminated most diseases, Fali-tan is more technologically advanced than Earth in every respect save one: computers. Fali-tan's are no better than punch-card-programmed mainframes, and had not improved in generations until the discovery of their long-lost cousins on Earth. Now,But after discovering their long-lost cousins on Earth, Fali-tan's population is eager to achieve their own Information Age.
After her third post-release layoff from a major gaming studio, Coriolis Washington is ready to try something new. Like, going-to-another-world new. And whatever her friend's lurid romance novels might say, Cori knows perfectly well that Fali-tan needs programmers to write code -- not sexy women to fill out harems.
As the leaders of their people, the peacelords of Fali-tan's Peacelord Union will go to great lengths to attract skilled Earth developers to their nations.
... and the shocking, overwhelming physical attractiveness of humans is the least of Coriolis's charms to rival peacelords and ex-lovers Dhavoran and Tyvalon.

This is a science fiction MFM polyamorous romance. Elements include:

disaster bisexuals
aliens who are pretty much just humans in funny colors
aliens who find humans Super Sexy, Especially the Female Protagonist
character with social anxiety who actually gets professional help
friends to lovers to enemies to lovers, because apparently even my alien men can't manage to have a relationship without screwing it up horribly at least once
trans protagonist but it's no big deal to literally anyone so it only comes up briefly

If you are interested in being a first reader, please contact me via email (my gmail address is ladyrowyn) /comment on this post/DM on Mastodon/etc and I'll send you a link privately. Comments are screened if you want to leave an email address in the comments.

Thanks!

I was looking at my blog today and realized that I'd never mentioned the Angel's Grace release! It came out on January 10 and I went to visit terrycloth on January 11, so I did even less talking-up-the-new-release than usual. Oops. Here it is! This is pretty much just the newsletter announcement, which I did remember to send out.

Angel's Grace

The Demon’s Series: Book 4

If Bright had known how good it was to be a reformed demon, it would have reformed thousands of years ago.

Not that reform has been trouble-free for it, granted. Its presence in the demon hunters’ guild had been so divisive that Bright had to leave. Now Bright and its friends — Sunrise, Raven, and Mercy — hunt demons as an independent team in a foreign nation. When they stumble upon a strange new kind of demon, asking the guild for assistance means risking another backlash.

On a more personal level, Bright knows its three teammates would like to forge a romantic relationship with one another. Even its teammates know that they want a romantic triad. But for some reason, they can’t just do that. Humans are incomprehensible.

But the most worrisome issue is that Bright knows that some of the demons of Anesh have been working together to stop Bright. They’ve attacked Sunrise once, and Bright expects them to try again. Or to attack one of its other allies.

Its concerns are justified—

—but their plan is more ambitious — and far more deadly — than anything Bright imagined.

Author Commentary

I’d hoped to publish Angel’s Grace in December, but I see that I wisely put “December or January” down for my anticipated release date in my last newsletter. Right on time!

This book concludes the arc begun by Demon’s Alliance. While I expect to revisit these characters at some point in the future, this installment leaves everything in a satisfying place. It will be a few years (or more) before I get back to them.

In other writing news, I have two completed drafts to edit (Alien Peacelords and A Game to You) plus one mostly-completed draft to finish writing (A Dragonling’s Family). All three of them are in new and separate settings. Alien Peacelords will be my next release, later this year.

Books by Other Authors

Anyone who knows me knows that I have not done much reading for the last several years. I have, however, recently finished M.C.A. Hogarth’s "Haley and Nana" series. I love these stories: charming, healing, gentle, and wise. They are an excellent length: short enough to read quickly and long enough to develop a vivid cast and an engaging world. Do take a look.

Happy reading!

I finished Spells, Snow and Sky by CoffeeQuills a few weeks ago. It’s a polyamorous paranormal romance novella, between a human woman, a yuki-onna (“snow woman”, a Japanese spirit), and a witch.

For the most part, it’s a fluffy, low-stakes story, with a single PoV character: Sky, the human. I’ve thought about writing a paranormal romance on occasion, and one of the things that deterred is that, while I like the dramatic, angst-filled background full of adventure, actually writing the adventure takes a tedious amount of time away from the romance. Spells, Snow and Sky addresses this by supplying occasional hints about past drama and adventure, and skipping the whole part where you write it all out. It’s original fiction, but it reminded me of fanfic in this respect; I felt like I was reading a romance about characters that had their adventures in a different book. I thought this was an extremely clever way of getting right to the romance!

As is often the case with me and single-POV-romance, the romance didn’t engage me that much. But it was a delightfully atmospheric story, immersive and wintery.

After reading that, I remembered that I’d never finished O. Westin’s Micro Science Fiction, a collection of tweet-length (144 characters, from before Twitter’s doubling of the character limit) micro fics. So I finished it finally. If you use Twitter, you’ve probably seen O. Westin’s work before, as microsff. These are bite-sized and delightful as individual works. I preferred to read them slowly, because I found devouring several dozen at a time made them lose their individual weight. It’s a good collection and I recommend it.

Next, I bounced off of three different books, which I am going to complain about here because I want to whinge and also I don’t want to pick up these books again because I’ve forgotten what they’re about. But I’ll put DNF in the titles and author names so they won’t come up in vanity searches.

Also, important note: I bounced off all three for reasons that had nothing to do with the skill of the author. It was purely an “I am not having fun because this book is Not For Me” reaction.

I have a huge number of books on my Kindle where I have no recollection of why I got them or what I was thinking when I did. Many of them were free or cheap from Bookbub deals, and others were recommended.

CytheraDNF by JoDNFGraham: I think this is SF erotica/romance, with the main pairing being M/F. Which is to say “the first chapter had an M/F pair and the blurb implied the book would be about them.” The female protagonist is a “sacred courtesan” and the male protagonist is a ship’s captain in a military fleet.

If you want to read erotica and you like the “happy prostitute” trope in erotica, I imagine this book would work for you. I expect that I picked it up because SF romance that isn’t “alien warlord” style is hard to find. I do not care for “happy prostitute” as a trope. It’s not that I object to sex work so much as to the depiction of sex work as a fun sexy romp where every client is young and conventionally attractive. I feel like fiction about sex work is mostly moralizing in one direction or another -- either sex work is cruel, brutal, and soul-destroying, or it’s beautiful and sexy and uplifiting. Neither depiction feels convincing or interesting to me.

Anyway, I made it through the sex and BDSM in the first chapter, found the second chapter started with the female protagonist “testing” candidates by groping them while asking questions, went “yeah, not in the mood for this much erotica” and put it down.

LordDNFof the LastDNFHeartbeat by MayDNFPeterson

I know why I picked up this one! An author I follow on Twitter tweeted excitedly about the third book in the series being released. So I followed the link, discovered that it was the third book, went to look for the first book, and discovered I’d already bought it.

So I opened the book, and remembered that I’d already bounced off it once.

Oh.

I gave it another try. It did not work out.

It’s an M/M romance where one male protagonist, Mio, is very femme, to the point of “mistaken for a girl by rando dude who proceeds to sexually harass him.” The other male protagonist, Rhodry, is a tall strong alpha lord with magical powers. Mio is also poor, oppressed by his family, forced into crime against his will, and begs Rhodry to rescue him from his family/life of crime.

So the setup comes across as “exactly like a stereotypical M/F romance except I changed the pronouns for the female character.” I hate this trope SO MUCH. It manages to feel simultaneously misogynistic (“I’ll write an M/M romance because vaginas are gross, ew”) and queerphobic (“but I want to keep every single heteronormative quality in my characters so one protagonist is stereotypically feminine in EVERY WAY and the other protagonist is stereotypically masculine in EVERY WAY.”)

It’s the “every way” that really gets to me. If any of the qualities were swapped -- made the femme man be the alpha lord, or made the super-masculine guy short, or SOMETHING to indicate that the author didn’t think one’s physical qualities absolutely determined one’s status, standing, identity, psychology, and preferences, it would help.

Anyway, the author is trans and I am confident she is neither queerphobic nor misogynistic. She just has the misfortune of liking tropes that make my skin crawl. I tried to persevere.

Then Mio’s mother coerced him into mind-raping a random man for political power, and Rhodry came home to find a dead boy on his driveway and his reaction was along the lines of “this is so tiresome and inconvenient,” and I deleted the book from my phone.

If you don’t mind some grimdark (it’s a romance, it has an HEA/HFN, so presumably they rise above the grimdark eventually) and enjoy the above tropes, I think this would be a good book. What I saw of the dynamic between the two protagonists was good, and it’s well-written. I feel like some interesting stuff was going to happen later in the book. There was a suggestion that Mio might be intersex, which could be cool -- I seldom read intersex protagonists. But I don’t think I’m ever going to be in the mood for the tropes involved here.

NiceDNFDragons FinishDNFLast by RachelDNFAaron

No idea why I got this book. It’s fantasy + SF in the Shadowrun style: Earth several decades in the future, plus “magic returned to the world.” The main character is an unambitious young dragon whose mother got mad at him because he’s not sufficiently cruel and ambitious. She locked him into a human form and exiled him to the “Detroit Free Zone”, where dragons are killed on sight.

I got through the first fourteen pages. There was a prologue that engaged me, and then I met the exiled dragon and his sister and his mother and kind of just hated everything. There was a letter from his uncle that was amusing, though.

The mother is physically and emotionally abusive, and at some point I may be like “sure, I can put up with the protagonist being tortured periodically by his mom” and be able to read this. But. Not in the mood. NEXT.

The Fall of Lord Drayson, by Rachel Anderson

An M/F Regency romance. No idea why I picked it up. But I actually finished this one! It was short and mediocre.

So it started off with the male protagonist, an earl, evicting the female protagonist, the impoverished teenage daughter of a vicar and a seamstress. I don’t usually like hate-at-first-sight books, but I was entertained by the banter between the two as the earl tells the girl that she and her widowed mother have to find some other place to live because he’s selling the property where they presently reside.

The earl then rides off in the rain, falls from his horse, and knocks himself senseless.

At this point, I thought “oh no, he’s gonna wake up with amnesia and she’s gonna lie to him about how he promised she and her mother would never have to move, or something like that. Ugh.” But I kept going.

The female protagonist rescued him, somewhat unwillingly, from the road. When he regains consciousness, he has amnesia, and the female protagonist somehow or other decides to tell him “you are my servant!”

...

This premise is so mind-bogglingly repugnant that I don’t know how it managed to get on my Kindle. I can only assume it was free on Bookbub and that I only read the 20 word Bookbub blurb before downloading it, and the Bookbub blurb didn’t manage to encompass the awful premise.

But the premise was so terrible that I decided to keep reading just to see if the author could manage to justify a romance ensuing from this.

Short answer: no, not really.

The romance requires copious amounts of suspension of disbelief, not only for the ridiculous amnesia subplot and for the earl deciding not to hold it against her, but for the complete lack of objection by literally anyone else in the story to the eventual marriage of the two. The characters never feel like a plausible part of their period. The first half of the book has the amnesia subplot, and if you suspend disbelief it’s still cringe-inducing but more-or-less works. The last half of the book is tedious, saved only by the too-briefly-sketched subplot of a romance between the girl’s mother and a wealthy friend of the family. (The latter two would’ve been made far more appealing romance protagonists than the actual protagonists.) The earl’s mother and sister make every effort to promote a romance between the two protagonists, with no explanation whatsoever as to why they think this is a good match. The male protagonist stops being a POV character for the second half, for no reason except, I guess, to promote suspense about what’s going to happen next? When this is a romance and we all know how it ends? So tedious.

Granted, I did finish the book; it had good qualities. The characters were endearing except when they were doing the asinine things required by the plot. There are some nice romantic scenes. It’s mercifully short.

It did not make me want to throw it across the room?

I think mostly it hit the increasingly small spot on me between “awful stuff is happening and I don’t want to endure this” and “everything is fine, so I’m bored.” I am an extremely difficult audience. -_-

I was reading this book for a Very Long Time -- since September 2020, to be exact -- and finally finished it a week or so ago. This is a unique case; I don’t believe I’ve ever spent nine months reading one book before. And it really was about nine months of reading one book, not "I read it for a week and put it down for a few months and then picked it up again, repeat until complete.” I put it aside for a few weeks to read Shadeslinger, and for a few days here and there to read a few other books. But for the most part, I read a few pages of India After Gandhi every day from September 2020 through May 2021.

So it’s not a book that pulled me along, where I felt compelled to keep reading and find out what happens next. But despite this (or maybe because of it), I love this book. It is fascinating and informative and packed full of interesting details.

I purchased it due to a confluence of factors:

It was on sale through Bookbub, for $1.99 -- a particularly deep discount for an ebook that normally retails at $14.99 (and is well worth $14.99, I might add)
It is a history of a non-Western country
Written by a native of that country
In English
With serious attention to scholarly detail
Intended for popular consumption

It is incredibly rare to stumble across a book that combines all of those last five features. I’m not saying they aren’t out there, but when I’ve looked for stuff like this, I’ve never found it before. So that was exciting.

The volume has citations for everything, and much of it is primary sources -- eg, “the author went to archives and read the original, unpublished correspondence of various historical figures.” It's this attention to detail that justifies the sticker price; it's a book that required years of research and diligent fact-checking. And it’s written in plain English rather than designed to impress other scholars, so it’s easy to understand. It’s thorough about the period that it covers, 1948-2016 (plus some background from 1947 and earlier), covering political, economic, military, and communal issues. So much of it is stuff I had no idea about. Like Indira Gandhi declared “The Emergency” in 1975 -- effectively martial law, where she cancelled elections -- and then actually ended it in 1977 to return India to democracy.

Much of it feels remarkably similar to American history in certain respects. India is a nation committed to religious freedom, and struggling with that commitment. Minority religious groups suffer from oppression and outbreaks of violence (on both sides, but the minorities get the worst of it.) India has indigenous populations that want to be self-governing, while India is determined to keep the nation united. India’s political dynasties are more obvious and powerful than America’s (the Indian National Congress has been headed by a member of the Nehru family pretty much since inception) -- but America has the Kennedys and the Bushes and the Clintons; it all feels familiar.

Other aspects are so foreign to my experience that I can’t help wondering why they’re so different. The Indian National Congress went from holding over 75% of seats in 1984 to holding under 30% in 1996. In the USA, we fight rabidly over a few percentage points one way or another. It’s all but impossible to imagine either of those majorities or minorities in my country -- much less for one party to go from one extreme to the other in just twelve years! I realize that some of it is because the USA’s particular electoral policies virtually guarantee a two-party system. But even so, the USA’s politics are so team-based that it’s hard to imagine us having 40%+ of the population that’s willing to switch to a new team. (I will be honest, I envy this fluidity).

Anyway, despite the length of time it took me to finish this book, I never wanted to quit. It is a fascinating glimpse into a part of the world I don’t know much about. I am glad that I read it, and a little sorry that I’ve finished it. Guha has written several other history books; I might just pick up another one.

I read Frederica over the weekend. This is a romantic comedy set in 19th century England. Like the other Heyer novels I read, I found the comedy worked better than the romance. The orphaned 24-year-old female protagonist has charge of her three youngest siblings (12, 16, and 19), and one thing I particularly liked about the book is that the male protagonist's relationship with the two youngest is not an afterthought. He doesn't cultivate their affection or put up with them for the sake of Frederica. It would be more apt to say that the youngsters cultivate his affection and he finds himself powerless to resist them. Having found myself on occassion wrapped around some small child's finger and doing the most tedious things because they looked all hopeful at me, I can relate. :D The protagonists are both pretty likeable, and the male protagonist exerts himself to become a better man over the course of the novel -- but not because Frederica actively reforms him, which is another point in its favor. I like characters to redeem themselves rather than be coaxed to redemption by some outside force. The comedy in the novel is more understated rather than laugh-out-loud absurd, as in some of her other books. I'll give it an 8.

I haven't written a review in a long time. This is because I haven't finished reading a book in even longer. Brood of Bones is the first book I've finished in 2017.

I started several other books, and have arguably reduced my to-be-read-pile by a few because I threw books out of it. I don't know. I might give some of the books I gave up on quickly another chance; one was "this is a gay romance and right now I really want to read a book with some girls in it and not ALL BOYS ALL THE TIME". But I was pretty grimly disappointed with the start of some others.

Anyway, I feel like I was being exceptionally judgy about book during this time, so Brood of Bones probably deserves bonus points just for making it past the "meh" barrier and getting me to read it to the end.

This is the first of the Enchantress series, which is currently five books. I don't know if Marling plans to release more, but it looks like all of his writings to date have been in this setting (though not this series), and with overlapping characters.

I didn't like it as well as the other two books I've read by Marling, which is a pity because Brood of Bones is the first and the free one. Ironically, the one weak spot in Dark Lord's Wedding -- the climax -- was my favorite part of Brood of Bones. The story leading up to the climax dragged on too much for my tastes, with the protagonist either unsure what to do or pursuing options that I could tell weren't going to work. But the climax was very satisfying and proceeded well from everything established in the story so far.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about this book -- the protagonist is determined to Do the Right Thing, and to help people even at personal cost. While Hiresha has a number of flaws and in some ways is hard to like as a person, her strong moral compass is admirable. And I liked that she had various flaws that made sense in the context of her society. A lot of characters in fantasy have attitudes very similar to contemporary American ones regardless of how different their culture is, and I appreciated the effort put in to make Hiresha a part of her world.

Overall, I will give this one a 7, and will probably pick up the second book in the series at some point, given that I like Marling's recent work.

I forget if I ever reviewed the first novella in the series, but Bujold has three novellas total in the "Penric and Desdemona" series now. I finished reading "Penric and the Shaman" recently, and I gotta say how much I like this series. I love the way Bujold portrays the gods in the Five Gods setting, because they are a real power in the stories. They are, at various times and some times simultaneously, awe-inspiring, benevolent, utterly terrifying, subtle, and overwhelming in power. The characters in the setting pray to the gods, and sometimes their prayers are answered, and usually this is both terrifying and to their benefit. It feels very much in the nature of divinity. One of the running jokes of the setting has characters thinking hard about whether or not they actually want to pray. "Do I want divine intervention here? I know what divine intervention looks like." There's a delightfully alien feel to it.

This is especially in evidence in "Penric and the Shaman", which is one of those stories when the gods are clearly working hard to bring people together to do what needs to be done, whether they want to or think they can or not. It's also one of those stories where all the characters have good reasons for what they're doing and why they're doing it, which I always appreciate.

I enjoyed "Penric's Mission", too, which had more about their form of sorcery and fewer miracles. I'm kind of annoyed at this one, however because it didn't really resolve at the end. It wasn't a cliffhanger, but it left the characters in an uncertain position with no clear indication of how they'd end up after it.

Still, I have come to adore both Penric and Desdemona. One of the things I really like about the three novellas is that Bujold has let a lot of time pass between each one: Penric is 19 or 20 during the first, then mid-twenties for the second, and about thirty during the third. The reader gets glimpses of what he's been doing between stories, and you can see the way the relationship between Penric and Desdemona has changed and deepened over time, and the way that Penric continues to mature. I'll give the series as a whole an 8.5. Definitely recommend, and I'm looking forward to the fourth one. Bujold's released all three in the last 18 months, so I'm hopeful it won't be a long wait for the next.

I did not read much last year, and I never got around to posting reviews for most of it. I will catch up a little here!

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky's, A Girl Corrupted by the Internet Is the Summoned Hero!? is written in the style of a Japanese "light novel". This is not a subgenre I'm familiar with; to me, it read like a dialogue-heavy, description-light novella.

This is kind of a strange concept for a story, because it's kind of about pornography while not actually containing any pornographic scenes. One of the key plot points is that the main character is a teenage girl who shamelessly consumed lots of online pornography. She is summoned to a fantasy world to save them from the "Dark Lord", and the magic system in the world revolves heavily around notions of sexual purity/impurity/desires.

You might think "okay, this sounds like an excuse for erotica" but no, there is no erotica. At all.

What you get instead is a lot of humor, and clever exploits of the way magic and prophecy work in the setting. Some attempts at exploits work, some fail, and the whole hangs together sensibly.

I heard about this novella because Yudkowsky is the author of the fanfic "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", which I'd read and enjoyed. This novella does have the same "clever people coming up with clever solutions" quality to it. There's also a certain genre-savviness to it; the protagonist knows the kind of story she's in, and also that it's not technically a story so may not follow the conventions she's expecting it to.

Overall, I liked it but didn't love it; the characters could've been more engaging, mainly. The protagonist is interesting but the only person one really gets to know as a distinct personality. Still, the premise was cute and the clever stuff is delivered well. I'll give it an 8.

Courtney Milan, Hold Me

I have mixed feelings about this book.

Some of them are from the tropes used: "Enemies to Lovers" and "Secret Identities" are not my favorite tropes, although ironically I was writing a book that used both of them (The Sun Etherium) when I was reading this book. Apparently I only like those tropes when I'm the one writing them. -_- Anyway, if you like those tropes, you will enjoy this book more than I do.

Things I liked about it: the female protagonist, Maria, is a Hispanic transwoman, a fact which is not very plot relevant. It's nice to see trans protagonists just being people in the story as opposed to "This Is A Story About What It Is Like to Be Trans". In a similar vein, the male protagonist, Jay, is a bisexual Thai-American man and that's even less plot-relevant. This stuff informs the backstory of the characters, but it does so in much the way that characters being middle-class white cis American does. Maria does have some distant-past trauma rooted in being trans: her parents kicked her out when she was 12; she grew up with her grandmother, who was both loving and accepting. But it's not the focus of the book and, since Milan always gives her characters traumatic backstories*, it doesn't feel like a commentary on transness per se.

* No, really, she does. I like Courtney Milan's writing but I can't binge-read her books because ZOMG ALL THE TRAUMA. I think her theme is supposed to be "even broken people can find love" but after the third one in a row it feels more like "only people who have known TRUE HORROR AND DESPAIR can understand what love really means".

Anyway, Jay doesn't have a problem with Maria because she's trans. Jay is, however, a disrespectful elitist snob, and he takes and instant dislike to Maria because she's beautiful and well-dressed. He is not precisely a misogynist; he doesn't so much hate women as think that female-coded behaviors like "wearing makeup" and "liking pop music" indicate that a person is shallow and not worthy of being treated with common decency.

Jay exemplifies a certain kind of person, one who thinks that since he respects women who share his own interests, that means he is off the hook from treating people with respect when when they don't. Slowly, over the course of the novel, he pieces together that this is not actually how mature adults behave.

It's kind of exhausting. Like it really shouldn't be this hard to figure out "treat people decently" and "no, it's not okay to assume someone is shallow based on the way they look and also EVEN IF THEY ARE SHALLOW YOU SHOULD STILL TREAT THEM DECENTLY." Seriously. "Treated like a person" is not a thing people need to earn from anyone. It should be the default. Be polite. It won't kill you. Why is this so hard?

There are lots of things to like about Jay: he is smart, loyal to his friends, supportive, and hard-working. But the fact that he really has to work HARD at a thing like "basic politeness" which frankly even most outright bigots can manage better than him is just ... sigh. Okay, Jay.

Maria was much easier to like than Jay; her habit of baiting Jay got a little wearing, but (a) he deserved it and (b) it wasn't that big a part of the book. Also, Maria gave me nerd-like-me feels; she is studying to be an actuary and on the side writes an apocalypse-of-the-week blog, where she researches meticulously various possible ways forms of "the end of the world as we know it" and what the world would look like after it happened. Her blog has reasonable blog-like levels of success, which means it has lots and lots of readers and earns about as much as a good part-time job. It had a good plausible feel to it.

The last 40% or so of the book is mostly Jay trying to make it up to Maria for being such a jerk in the first 60% of the book. I admit I have always had a soft spot for that sort of thing, so this part worked for me.

Overall, I did not love this book nearly as much as the first in the series, Trade Me. But I did like it overall, and will give it an 8.

Alexis Hall, Pansies

This is a contemporary gay romance. Its basic premise is "man falls for the man he used to bully in school" with the bonus of "main axis of bullying was 'because weaker boy is gay'". Which, obviously, the bully turns out to be, too. There's another bonus bit where the victim used to fantasize about dating/making out with the bully.

That last bit was pretty hard for me to relate to; I can't imagine lusting after any of the people who bullied me. But aside from that piece, the book was a fun read and I enjoyed it overall. Not too much else to say about it. I'll give it an 8.

I read this book while on the plane to North Carolina to visit my parents, back in June. It took me a little while to fully engage with it, but by the halfway mark I didn't want to put it down. In fact, I stayed up an extra half hour to finish it (at like 1AM) at my parents' house. It's a standalone novel, but there's another book in the setting that takes place after it, The Dark Lord's Wedding*, and I was very tempted to buy it immediately and start reading. I resisted temptation, because visiting people, but nonetheless.

Magic Banquet is a middle-grade fantasy novel. One of the reasons I picked it up was for the table of contents, which is a menu. I suspected the menu might prove metaphorical, but no, the items on the menu do correspond to actual dishes served at each section of the book. The various courses of the banquet all have dangers and adventures associated with them, as the characters are transported from one locale to the next to enjoy or potentially get killed by their meal.

The mini-puzzles and adventures of each part add up beautifully to the overall arc of the book, and the different members of the cast are great fun to watch (especially the dark lord, whom one never knows quite what to make of). I'll give an 8 (mainly for the slow start), but definitely recommend.

*

I read Dark Lord's Wedding during my trip to Seattle. I had a great time with this right from the start. There was one jarring note for me: Magic Banquet, which immediately precedes it in the setting, is a middle-grade novel. Dark Lord's Wedding is an adult novel in tone and themes, but has much the same straightforward and charming writing style, so it kind of took me by surprise.

As it turns out, Wedding is the fifth novel in a different series that happens to be in the same setting, with some of the same characters. It works fine as a standalone, although there are various references to the previous books.

The story does revolve around the engagement and marriage of two of the protagonists, but it's not a romance. The plot is mostly fantasy-adventure in tone, with some politics and alliance-building.

I am ambivalent on the trope of the "not-all-bad bad guy", which is definitely the category that the Dark Lord and his bride fall into. Hiresha, the Lady of Gems and prospective bride, is clearly well-intentioned but still commits atrocities in the course of the book. Tethiel, the Dark Lord, is a more ambiguous character. I am not quite sure how Marling managed to sell me on these characters, but I definitely rooted for them despite their flaws. Tethiel in particular has a unique charm founded on his extraordinary outlook. I laughed aloud many of his deadpan remarks throughout the book.

One of the many things that's well-done about the book is the use of different magic systems, with just enough explanation of how they worked to make them intelligible to the reader, and not so much as to make them less magical or awe-inspiring. The protagonists are both tremendously powerful in their own right, far more so than the vast majority of the people around them, and it shows in the way they interact with others, this uncrossable gulf of power. They feel too large for ordinary morality, which is the sort of thing that often grates on me but worked well here.

The only thing I didn't like about the book was the climactic scene, which kind of felt like it came out of nowhere and was there mainly to add more drama and conflict to the narrative. Still, I had a good time overall and plan to check out the earlier books in the series. I give this an 8 too.

I finished this book a couple of weeks ago. I'd actually forgotten that I bought it back in February, so it was a nice surprise to find it with my Amazon books.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is in Bujold's Vorkosigan setting. The Vorkosigan books are mostly action-adventure sf, but some of the books don't fit in the "action" category. A Civil Campaign, for example, is a romantic comedy bordering on farce. This newest novel is mainly a romance, but it's much less drama-filled than the typical romance. The central protagonists are solidly middle-aged and, more importantly, mature. The reader never seriously fears that they will make stupid choices based on flawed analysis. They are afflicted with some doubts and indecision, but they doubt sensible things and dither over reasonable options. Even when the outcome was uncertain, I never thought, "oh, this is going to end in disaster if they make the wrong choice." They're smart people. There are good reasons for both paths. They'd be okay.

I really enjoyed reading this novel, especially now, when I'm in the middle of writing The Sun Etherium. TSE's main romance also proceeds fairly smoothly, and the main challenges the characters face aren't life-or-death either. So it was nice to see Bujold making it work. GJ&TRQ isn't her strongest work, certainly, but it's solid and fun and I loved seeing a middle-aged couple get to be the romantic leads.*

There were some elements that didn't work as well for me. It felt like Bujold was ret-conning in Jole's importance in the lives of Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan over the last 14 or so books. I don't remember Jole being mentioned before, actually, and am kind of wondering if he was (as an extremely minor character). On the one hand, the last 14 books were about Miles and I can quite easily see him being completely oblivious to his parents' private lives. On the other, it did not really feel like Bujold had always intended Jole to have been part of their lives. I'm happy enough to have him in the backstory, I'd just be happier if there'd been prior hints about his presence there.

Anyway, this is a solid 8 and I am happy to keep recommending and reading Bujold's work.

* I tried doing this in The Moon Etherium -- the protagonists are both over 50 -- but since the characters in TME are unaging, they don't come across as middle-aged as strongly.

New release sale for The Moon Etherium ends today! Last chance to buy it for $2.99! The $2.99 sale on A Rational Arrangement and Further Arrangements also ends today.

For those who've already bought it: thank you! &hearts;

I'm also gonna beg for reviews now, because having some reviews up is enormously helpful in selling a book. Readers are much more likely to take a chance on an unknown author if there are some reviews on the book, and a lot of promotion opportunities are only available once a book hits a certain number of Amazon reviews.

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About the book

A prince of the Sun Etherium, Mirohirokon has everything: immortality, invulnerability, and the aetheric power to be anything he desires, to satisfy almost any desire. But the one thing aether cannot give him is his father's freedom. For a chance to win that, he will risk everything.

Sick of the petty, twisted politics of the Moon Etherium, Ardent quit it for a simpler life. Yet when Miro seeks her aid to rescue his father, she realizes that far more is at stake than one man's life. Duty-bound, she returns.

But to save their world, must they sacrifice their love?

Special New Release Price!

On sale for just $2.99! Buy it now! Sale ends October 5.

My previous books, A Rational Arrangement and Further Arrangements are also discounted to $2.99 in honor of the new release.

Other Stuff

The Moon Etherium is the book I drafted in six weeks back in the spring. It took me a little longer to get it ready for sale, but it's here! It has some of my favorite story elements: magic, romance, and problems that the protagonists have to work together to overcome. I'm very pleased with how it came out and already working on another standalone novel in the same setting. I hope you all will enjoy it, too.

Lastly, special thanks to my tireless typesetter

alinsa. ♥

This is the sequel to Even the Wingless.

Most of the Some Things Transcend takes place with the protagonists trapped on a small spacecraft in enemy territory. Both sides of the conflict, the Alliance and the Chatcaava, are technologically sophisticated, spacefaring cultures (they've both got, for instance, FTL, highly advanced medicine, and short-range teleporters). There are a few combats that take place as boarding actions, because the aim is to capture rather than destroy. Most of the combat is hand-to-hand, because the ships have tight corridors and little room to get range. The setting and action work well to provide urgency and momentum to the story, and to motivate the characters.

I occasionally had trouble suspending disbelief, however. For instance: the most effective weapons used in these conflicts are the Chatcaavan's natural claws, and swords. Neither side appears to have armor, or any more sophisticated hand-to-hand weapon. This just didn't seem to fit with the rest of the tech on display. The not-working-for-me was compounded by one of the characters being deathly ill but in a way that didn't impede him from using the handful of days they had to prepare between boarding actions to practice and teach hand-to-hand combat. I ended up spending too much time thinking about how various elements were convenient for the purposes of the emotional arc of the story, which made it less immersive.

This aside, I enjoyed the emotional arc, the character development, and particularly the way the relationships between different characters unfolded. The relationships are all nonstandard: there's an asexual romance between Jahir and his longtime partner Vasiht'h, which gets tested in various interesting ways, and a complicated M/M relationship between Jahir and Lisinthir, which is sweet and romantic despite them both being (a) committed to other people and (b) having only semi-compatible BDSM interests (that they discover and talk about but do not consummate in this book). So it's a kind of polyamorous story, in that the characters have multiple interests and don't expect sexual or romantic fidelity from their partners. I had a lot of fun with that. Vasiht'h and Jahir are both psychologists, and their training resonates through their conversations. They feel very real and solidly-grounded. The characters are delightfully complex and multi-faceted. Overall, I'll give this one an 8.

I've known about
Even the Wingless for several years but never read it, because I lean towards genteel, fluffy fantasies and this is a story full of sexual violence and torture.

But recently, I've been in the mood for something dark and intimate, and with the third book in the series just out, I figured I would finally give it a try.

Somewhat to my surprise, I loved the book.

It does have some weaknesses: it's a book about diplomacy between two interstellar nations, the Alliance and the Empire, and the complexity of politics on that massive scale is glossed over. The backdrop of nations feels more like a painted image than a living thing that twists, turns, and wreaks havoc behind the scenes. Further, there were points where I wanted the characters to succeed by brilliance and instead the results felt more like chance.

This aside, the story has a lot to recommend it. Lisinthir is delightful, especially in the first half of the book, where his wit, courage, and insight all shine. Watching the Slave Queen evolve over the course of the narrative is remarkable, and the way the two characters rely on each other's strengths is wonderful. I especially liked that the Slave Queen's ability to simply endure, which looks like helplessness, was in its own way a power.

I'd expected to have my suspension of disbelief tested by the set-up: The Alliance and the Empire are described as "allies", but the Empire openly enslaves, tortures, and rapes Alliance citizens at their court. Yet it hangs together well: they are not "allies" in any usual sense of the word" rather, the Alliance is attempting detente. The Alliance doesn't want to start a war unless they have to, and they're not sure they'll win if they do. So they are tolerating things that, say, the modern USA wouldn't tolerate. (And of course, even the USA has put up with some pretty flagrant crap: the Iran hostage crisis comes to mind.) The Empire is technologically sophisticated yet their court spurns the use of any weapon that's not innate; this makes sense in the context of their culture and the entire heirarchy on which it's based. It's not obvious how they became an advanced society while retaining a horrific feudal culture that seems more likely to stifle innovation, but there are hints that suggest possibilities. It worked.

The book's core strength, its true glory, lies in the portrayal of the relationships between the main characters and the complexity of their emotions. The story navigates a whole range of emotional states: fear, pain, horror, pleasure, love, hatred, anger, hope, despair, and more. These are powerfully, at times overwhelmingly, depicted. The transformations of all the characters -- and everyone is strikingly transformed before the end -- are difficult and plausibly conveyed. It is an intimate, personal story.

The book is full of depictions of rape, sexual violence, misogyny (oh the MISOGYNY), dominance contests, humiliation, etc. None of this is written for titillation: it is not a remotely erotic novel. Nor is there any sense of authorial approval or even liking for it: none of this is okay. None of this is remotely okay. There is a certain fascination with the power exchange involved, with the emotional response of characters to all this horror. That gets a fair amount of loving detail. Most of the abuse itself is dealt with in few words and not explicitly described.

I found the work as a whole compelling and engaging, the kind of story that devastates in the best way, and that uplifts by the end. I rate it a 9.

This is the third book in a trilogy; I think it's the last, though perhaps the author will write something more about the characters.

I have many feelings about this series. MANY FEELS. Of the three books, I liked the second, Prince's Gambit best. The first, Captive Prince, I found absolutely harrowing. The second was much less harrowing: there was still violence but it was less intimate: conflict rather than abuse. The difference between being under the constant threat of death and the constant threat of torture. IN THEORY, I should be more worried about death, but in practice I find the prospect of torture worse. Sometimes I wonder if that's a side effect of depression. When you're used to fantasizing about death as an escape, it doesn't seem nearly as terrifying as having to endure horrors much worse than the life that left you suicidal. Anyway, maybe it's just me, but I found the first book engaging but traumatic. The second book was a fantastic exploration of the characters, still with lots of conflict and tension, but also lots of "protagonists being brilliant and talented in order to improve their position".

Kings Rising opens with several chapters that I found even more harrowing than the first book, because now instead of horrible things happening to characters I didn't care about, these were inflicted on ones I loved. I found it powerful but, to my surprise, not unpleasant. Books that do horrible things usually make me want to stop reading, but here I just wanted to see what would happen next, whether it was awful or not. And I wanted explanations: a reason for some of the extreme emotional abuse being dished out. So that impressed me, that throughout reading it I never wanted to put it down. (I did, because I had to work, but I didn't WANT to.)

Kings Rising displays an emotional intimacy of considerable range: not just love and lust, but the kind of deep cruelty and pain that only happens when someone loves a person who mistreats them, whether by accident or design. There are many highs and lows, and I rode them often with glee. Even the lows; I think that's because this is a romance and I was depending on a happily-ever-after, rather than being abandoned in a pit of misery. This was also well-done and engaging.

Some of the characters in the book are brilliant planners, and there's a sense of wonder, the I-didn't-see-that-coming-but-I-should've, that I love when I see it well-done. Of all the things one can hope for in a romance, this is one of the least likely to get. Pacat delivers it, multiple times, through Kings Rising. Unfortunately, this means that when it's NOT delivered, it's all the more disappointing.

The climax in particular felt overwrought rather than brilliant. One of those where the characters are in way more trouble than it looks like they can possibly get out of, and then they manage it, and on the one hand you're glad, but on the other you're like "that rescue wasn't very plausible or brilliant". This is my problem with the common 'up the stakes' advice writers get: the more trouble protagonists are in, the more likely it is that the solution will throw me out of the story by seeming too unlikely.

But my biggest fault with the book is it ends like a page after the climax. I HATE THAT. If you're one of those people who likes Hollywood endings, where the credits roll 30 seconds after the protagonists win, then you will be fine with this. I am not fine with this. I don't want to get kicked out of bed right after the climax: I want some post-coital cuddling. SHEESH. This one actually annoys me much more than the lack of brilliance in the climax, because I know how tough it is to balance a challenge for your characters. But how hard is it to write some pages of your characters dealing with other loose ends, or living happily together, or SOMETHING after the big resolution? I'm not asking to be blown away by cleverness here, I just want to have some denouement.

I am going to stop nitpicking here, because the truth is that my complaints are based in significant measure on my expectations. I expected a 9 or even a 9.5 from Kings Rising, and I only got an 8. And the disappointment will make me review it like a 7, and it deserves better than that. This is an emotionally powerful book with many brilliant moments and flashes of genius. It is a flawed diamond, to be sure, but still a diamond, and still recommended.

Some of these launched today, some of them are just "soon", but I was surprised by how many books that I wanted to read are coming out at the same time as my own*. So I am sharing!

This one, I planned. When I realized that I wasn't going to have Further Arrangements ready to publish until February, I decided to launch it the same day as Kings Rising. There was no good reason for this, except that it meant I could spend today reading Kings Rising instead of obsessing over my book sales. Which mostly worked, in fact. I finished Kings Rising earlier today, and longer review to come, but the short version is: good book, had some issues with it, glad I read it, very engrossing. I haven't read any of the others in this post yet, because seriously I do not read that fast any more.

The sequel to Unbound, which I reviewed a few days ago. There was lots and lots of upheaval in the setting by the end of the last book, and I am super-excited to see how things shake out in this one. Also, I am impressed by the way Hines wrapped up the major plot threads in Unbound, but left so much in flux as far as the world went. Nice trick! This also came out today.

The latest Vorkosigan book! The ARC came out last year, and the e-book went on sale in January, but the hardcover launched today. This is a new Cordelia novel, and I know nothing else about it, but I like almost everything Bujold's written, so pretty sure I will enjoy this too.

haikujaguar opened pre-orders for this book yesterday, and it will be out next Monday. Featuring some of my favorites of Micah's characters! I've already got my copy on order.

This has the coolest table of contents I've ever seen. Go on, just look at the preview and you can see it. :9

And special mention to

ursulav: her The Raven and the Reindeer isn't out or up for preorder yet, but it's to be released in "early February", so soooooooon.

... I actually think there were more, but I can't remember what. @_@

EDIT: Oh hey I remembered one of them!

This is a "light novel", which is a form popular in Japan and I don't know how it differs from a novella. Anyway, it's by the author of the fanfic "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", and I'm quite curious to see how he does with orig fic.

* Did I mention Further Arrangements is out today? I probably mentioned it. A few times.

Further Arrangements is now for sale! At URLs conveniently accessible to your browser!

Amazon ~ Kobo ~ Nook ~ iBooks

About the book

A Prequel, a Sequel, and a Parallel:
Three novellas set in the world of A Rational Arrangement

His Angel: Lord Justin Comfrey is not in the habit of molesting the help. But when his host assigns an angelic young man to attend to Comfrey's every need, that resolve is sorely tested.

Inconceivable: When Wisteria has trouble conceiving a child with her husband, Nikola Striker, it only makes sense to them to ask their secret husband for help. But to Justin, the question is not so simple.

A Regular Hero: Callie strikes sparks with the handsome warcat Anthser, but she's a competitive racer and he serves the Blessed Lord Nikola. She wants more from her life than to be the second most important person in his. Must one of them give up their life's dream to be the other's mate?

Special New Release Price!

In honor of the release, both A Rational Arrangement and Further Arrangements are on sale for $2.99! Buy them now! Sale ends February 15.

I do not presently plan to serialize Further Arrangements, so if you'd like to read more in this setting after the serial of A Rational Arrangement is complete, here's your chance!

Publishing Details

Special thanks to

alinsa, who lovingly typeset the book for me, and did the typography for the cover.

Further Arrangements will also be available in print form in the next week or so. Cover price to be determined. It should be less than A Rational Arrangement, because Further Arrangements is much shorter than the first book.

Other Ways to Support the Author

If you do not wish to buy, or cannot afford it, that's fine. If you like A Rational Arrangement, please spread the word! Recommendations to friends, retweets and reblogs of the story installments, reviews on Amazon or on your own blog, etc., are all much appreciated.

For those who read the collection: reviews on Amazon are especially helpful! Not only do they increase the book's visibility on Amazon, but when the book accumulates enough of them, various book review sites will let me submit it for Yet More Reviews. (It's a virtuous cycle!)

Unbound is the third book in Hines's Libriomancer series.

As with the first book, I found this one improved as it approached the climax, with several clever uses of the magic available to the protagonists. The characters are a little overwhelmed by the plot in this book: it's a big world-and-history-spanning epic, with lots of ramifactions that reverbate through the narrative.I do like the way the series started as a "secret magic" setting, and is evolving into "secret exploded, everybody knows" instead.

Isaac has been ground down by the events of the last two books, but still gets some delightfully geeky moments. The polyamory angle is handled well, with maturity and commitment on the part of the participants, and obvious imperfections that they deal with. There were some weaknesses in the book, but overall I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the series' conclusion, coming out in February! (I will note that the book has a solid conclusion:it resolves the central conflict decisively. No cliffhangers!) I'll give it an 8.5.

haikujaguar's The Three Jaguars is now out in print! It's a comic collection about the intersection of art, marketing, and business, personified as three separate individuals who sometimes complement one another, and sometimes conflict.

It is delightful. Witty, sensible, beautifully illustrated, and entertaining even as it educates. It is not a how-to book. It is much, much better than any how-to book. I have been following Micah's work online for many years, and The Three Jaguars -- in the combined essay and webcomic forms -- is my favorite of all her works. No one writes about business like Micah does, with laugh-out-loud punchlines, adorable illustrations, fantastic expressions, and an abundance of both wisdom and sympathy. The beauty of this book is that you will pick up knowledge without even realizing you're learning. Not just the explicit lessons on business and creativity, but the craftsmanship on display: the amazing expressiveness of the characters, the composition of scenes, the dialogue and plot choices, the gorgeous inking -- there's SO MUCH to enjoy. And learn from!

And unlike all those tedious how-to books, you will actually WANT to read this one. Because it's FUN!

I love The Three Jaguars enough that I took the time to illustrate my testimonial:
( Cut for large image! )