Books read in April 2019
May. 5th, 2019 02:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nouAnother book post, rather more timely than the last one.
Definitely recommend
The Healers’ Road and The Healers’ Home, S E Robertson. Low-tech low-violence fantasy with a sprinkling of magic. I enjoyed the first one but wasn't sure whether to read the second until I saw a review (spoilery for the first one) talking about how it starts quite slowly with the protagonists repeatedly wandering around town, choosing furniture and buying food, and then I knew it was a book for me.
Slow River, Nicola Griffith. A near-future sort-of noir, sort-of thriller, sort-of romance with excellent queer representation and an interesting exploration of future sewage technology. (One of the reasons I liked this was the same reason I liked the potato book — it gives details of ways of solving technical problems instead of handwaving it all away. But far from the only reason.)
Maybe recommend
The Woman Who Fooled The World, Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano. This was... OK, I guess? It kept me vaguely entertained while I was reading it, but it hasn’t stuck with me, possibly because it’s a story I’ve heard lots of times before (both with this particular woman and with others).
The Binding, Bridget Collins. This was kind of annoying, in that the premise was known to everyone except the protagonist for no apparent reason except to add mystery and suspense to the first few chapters. And then there was the gratuitous infanticide. Ugh and also the whole thing about being chosen. Also I'm fed up of m/m romances that work out well for the protagonists at the expense of a woman. But if you can overlook all that, then it’s quite a good read!
The Compleet Molesworth, Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle. A klassick of eng. lit. hem-hem. (Though full of casual racism etc.)
The Ironmaster's Tale, L A Hall. This would be in “Definitely recommend” except that if you haven’t read The Comfortable Courtesan it won’t make sense (please read The Comfortable Courtesan and then mentally move this to the top category). I love seeing retellings of previous stories through other characters’ eyes and with extra detail of their activities and thoughts, and that’s just what this is.
Perihelion Summer, Greg Egan. I love Greg Egan’s earlier work but found this kind of meh. Even a kind-of-meh Egan is a decent read though.
Wouldn’t recommend
The Slynx, Tatyana Tolstaya translated by Jamey Gambrell. DNF. Bit too stream-of-consciousness for me, and the style got in the way of working out what the story was about. This might have been the fault of the translator — it did feel a bit clumsily translated.
Artemis, Andy Weir. Second novel by the author of the potato book. There was all this sort-of fake diversity, where characters are described as being Saudi or Vietnamese or whatever, but speak and act exactly like early-21st-century Americans (a contrast to his stereotypical ja-saying German of the previous book). Also, their law-enforcement system is terrifying. DNF, partly because I lost interest in the plot and partly because I lost patience with the clumsy characterisation.
A Big Ship At The Edge Of The Universe, Alex White. Generic future-fantasy with magic crowbarred in. DNF.
Rien's Rebellion, C Z Edwards. Confusing and somewhat exhausting to read, and too many storylines left hanging. I realise it's the first in a series, but that doesn't mean it should just stop in the middle of everything.
Foundryside, Robert Jackson Bennett. This felt quite clumsy: the made-up swearwords (I love made-up swearwords, but these were so clumsily motivated that every time a character used one it annoyed me enough to pull me out of the story), the shoehorned-in exposition, the plot contradictions (literally in the space of two pages, a conversation went from “I tried to kill you, come to return the favour?” to “Ha, yes, of course I can't kill you because your mum would be annoyed”). Also, the default gendering of a sentient object to “he” really bugged me. DNF.
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Date: 2019-05-06 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-07 09:24 am (UTC)