wealhtheow

An old man's reminiscences of the year all of the children in the world started singing. He was just a little too old to be part of it. Aching, sweet, and with some of Peter Pan's magic sprinkled on it.

Romance series generally follow a pattern: each book follows a sibling or friend of the previous book, and marries them off in turn. Couples from earlier novels generally have walk-on parts, spending just long enough on-page to let the reader know that they are deliriously happy and have plenty of babies.

This is not that kind of series.

The Clanrosses from [b:Lady Elizabeth's Comet|2908100|Lady Elizabeth's Comet (Clanross, #1)|Sheila Simonson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1257779204s/2908100.jpg|2935256] and the Falks from [b:The Bar Sinister|2616896|The Bar Sinister (Clanross, Prequel)|Sheila Simonson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1261150964s/2616896.jpg|2641551] are back, and they make up the majority of the novel. Elizabeth's younger half-sisters' romances and intrigues provide the driving force of the plot, but the older, already married characters are the ones I (and I think the author) was most interested in. They have so much left to negotiate and figure out, for themselves and as a couple, and watching them work through it was really fascinating. And I really enjoyed the way history is portrayed in these books--there is real danger from the poor people, who have real grievances, and the censorship of the written word actually seems very threatening here. That said, there isn't really a narrative arc in this book--no build up and then a climax, I mean--and so although my affection for the characters kept me interested, the events themselves are rapidly fading from my memory.

hooks has written a short, very readable selection of essays on a variety of topics, from sexuality to domestic violence to intersectionality. This could be used as an intermediate introduction to feminism--maybe what you give someone after they've already ingested the basic facts of current inequalities. [b:Feminism is for Everybody|168484|Feminism is for Everybody Passionate Politics|Bell Hooks|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327933698s/168484.jpg|843092] doesn't make the case for feminism's existence, but rather is a slightly disjointed history of feminism from the 1960s through the 90s and a basic primer on what hooks envisions feminism needs to challenge and produce. We need to document how feminism has helped women, especially older women who have stories about illegal abortions and what society was truly like before feminists started talking about and pushing for gender equality. We need to make sure the movement does not just focus on one gender (include how to raise boys as well as feminist girls, how men can be masculine but not patriarchal, examine and challenge problems men have within patriarchy), sexuality, class, race. (And not let mass media present well-educated attractive white straight women as the only members of feminism, or the spokespeople!)

Overall, feminists need to work to create a mass-based movement that includes visions and models of what non-patriarchal relationships, norms and society look like. We need to communicate those ideas outside of people we already think agree with us, or are like us. Or, in her own words: "While visionary feminist thinkers have understood our need for a broad-based feminist movement, one that addresses the needs of girls and boys, women and men, across class, we have not produced a body of visionary feminist theory written in accessible language or shared through oral communication. Today in academic circles much of the most celebrated feminist theory is written in sophisticated jargon that only the well-educated can read. Most people in our society do not have a basic understanding of feminism; they cannot acquire that understanding from a wealth of diverse material, grade school-level primers, and so on, because this material does not exist. We must create it if we are to rebuild feminist movement that is truly for everyone."

In [b:A Door into Ocean|121606|A Door Into Ocean|Joan Slonczewski|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1312029708s/121606.jpg|2640708] Slonczewski used the view points of characters from capitalist Valedon to introduce the communal-living, all female pacifists of Shora. The main plot was tension between Valedon's economic coercion and the Sharers' aim to never cause harm, and it culminated in the question of whether aliens (or rather, people with a completely alien view point that would destroy everything one values) were still too human to be harmed. The next book, [b:Daughter of Elysium|121608|Daughter of Elysium|Joan Slonczewski|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1202489024s/121608.jpg|117082], is set thousands of years later, when both the Sharers and Valedon are part of an intergalactic network of treaties and trade. Thousands of years after that comes [b:The Children Star|121607|The Children Star|Joan Slonczewski|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1312055902s/121607.jpg|117081], centered around a small colony of orphans trying to create a life for themselves on an alien planet. Prokaryon is inhospitable to outside life but seems to have no sapient creatures...except that the trees are planted in rows, the mountains crafted in pleasing shapes, and brush fires are immediately extinguished with targeted rain storms. The colonists are convinced that Prokaryon harbors some alien intelligence, but unless they can prove it the entire planet will be terraformed for use by the teaming, starving masses back home.

Slonczewski's characters always have well-drawn interior lives. Their conversations range from philosophy to child care arrangements, with each given as much weight as the other. (And I do love that there are some many different family styles presented in these books, from 1 man& 1 woman with biological children to single parents to adoptive parents to people parenting with friends or same sex lovers to the Elysians, whose children are raised in creches by robots.) The ethics and thought experiments she sets up in her books are even more fascinating. In her first book the reader is asked to consider whether aliens are human; in the next, whether machines are. This book makes the question more difficult still: it introduces us to microbes capable of communicating with or even controlling other living beings, and we must again decide whether these creatures, which live on a time scale in miniature to us but have the power to reshape our minds or very flesh, should have the same rights and respect as given other intelligent beings..

Slonczewski writes incredibly thoughtful, fascinating thought experiments, and powers them with likable characters and enough plot to keep the pages turning. I wish more people read these books!

Kitty is the werewolf pack master of Denver. She and the vampire master of the city are two of the few people who stand in the way of Roman, whose Long Game to destroy humanity is gaining momentum. Even as Kitty and Rick try to make new allies, others challenge their power bases: a new werewolf is setting himself up to challenge Kitty, while a vampire Catholic priest tries to lure Rick away from Denver. I really liked how the alpha fight was resolved --Darren came at Kitty like the only thing that mattered was who was more physically powerful, but she talked her way into support from the whole pack before the physical confrontation even started. They never even had a fight, because she made it clear that he would have nothing to lead if he won. I think this is the first time I've seen a werewolf pack anywhere in urban fantasy/paranormal romance that had an alpha who wasn't particularly powerful, but did have vision and human warmth. It's a cool way of looking at what is always written in a very hierarchical, primitive structure. I was less enthused by the rest of the plot. It felt slapdash, and it didn't move the overall story forward at all. This series feels stalled, and I understand: resolving the Long Game plot is a huge undertaking, and it should involve alliance building and investigation before the big climax...but c'mon, let's get to it!

A very readable history of ways in which technology shapes our food and culture, and vice versa.

Using old records and tales, Boswell traces one of the main fates of unwanted children: abandonment. From antiquity through the end of the Middle Ages, European parents of every social standing, in every circumstance (from rape to incest to adultery to married couples), abandoned or sold their children, in expectation that they would be adopted or raised elsewhere. The rates were highest from the late Roman Empire (beginning around 250 AD) through the eleventh century, dipped during the next two prosperous centuries, and then started to rise again around 1200. "At no point did European society as a whole entertain serious sanctions against the practice. Most ethical systems, in fact, either tolerated or regulated it...Christianity may well have increased the rate of abandonment, both by insisting more rigidly than any other moral system on the absolute necessity of procreative purpose in all human sexual acts, and by providing, through churches and monasteries, regular and relatively humane modes of abandoning infants..." The main change in abandonment from antiquity to the Middle Ages is that with increasing worth put upon lineage and birth, adoption of abandoned children decreased in both rate and the value people placed upon it. Before, adopting a child meant that the parent-child bond was even more powerful, since it was chosen; after, adopted child-parent bonds were considered inferior. During antiquity, children survived via the kindness of individuals, and added to a parents' glory. Later, they were usually given to the Catholic church as oblates, were they were forced to live the rest of their lives as monks or nuns. In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, European cities created foundling hospitals, which took in hundreds of infants a year but killed most of them through communicable disease.

Boswell lays out his arguments, interpretations, and sources with meticulous detail and a wonderfully dry, sarcastic style. See my status updates for statistics or anecdotes that particularly struck me.

Anna was turned into a werewolf against her will and brutalized for years. Someone else's peril gave her the push she needed to call in the Marok's enforcer. When Charles arrived in Chicago, they each realized that they were in love. Within a week, they'd resolved the pack's dysfunction (by killing most of the pack) and then Anna moved to live with Charles. About a day after arriving in the weird little community the Marok's pack (made mostly of wolves either too vulnerable or too dangerous for other packs), Charles and Anna are given a mission: find and stop whatever's been killing hikers. They stomp through the snow for a couple days, find the person responsible, some fights happen, they win, and then they get married. Sure, they've known each other for less than two weeks. Sure, Anna was emotionally and sexually abused for years until just two weeks ago. But hey, their wolves recognize either other as mates, so...Also features Asil, a wolf so old that he has a perpetually jaded and borderline suicidal outlook on life. Although I quite liked him in Briggs's Mercy Thompson series, hearing his internal monolog makes him feel implausible and thinly characterized.

What was really amazing about this book is that despite all the action and romance, it is so boring that I fell asleep most times I tried to read it. It actually, literally operated as a soporific. I don't know if it's just because I don't like the characters or what, but I found this series nigh unreadable.

Miéville writes beautiful descriptions. Everything else about this book was a slog to get through, from the monologues he has characters give in the midst of battles to the repetitious similes. Another annoying tick: characters had (incredibly obvious) realizations and then spent pages thinking about how much their mind was blown. Yes yes, we get it, your whole universe is rocked on its axis by the very idea that, say, a spy might have collected plans for an invasion. Let's get on with the story, shall we? Oh no, we have to spend at least three more pages reading descriptions of how this totally shocks you? All righty then.

There were some bits here I really liked, like Tanner's conflicted feelings about the ocean deeps, or the idea behind the scabmettlers. The ideas behind Miéville's societies are good, but he doesn't follow them up well--I still don't know how a single character ate, or where they got their clothes, or anything like that. There wasn't much foundation to the world building, just a lot of flash and wordy purpley description.

I got annoyed that not a single female character succeeded at anything. There are exactly four female characters with any page time: Bellis, who is literally only useful as a conduit for male characters' actions. She translates what men (and the Lover) say to other men. She takes a book from the man who found it and gives it to the men who want it. She's manipulated by Silas Fennec to get information from Uther Doul and vice versa. Fennec gives her a letter which Tanner actually has the adventure of delivering. On and on--there literally is not a single instance in this entire book in which Bellis does a single thing of her own accord. She's delightfully cold, misanthropic and lonely, so I assumed I'd love her, but her incompetence and unending supply of naivete really annoyed me. There's Shekel's girlfriend, who doesn't do anything except provide Shekel an opportunity to get over his prejudice against the Remade and Tanner a chance to show off his engineering skills. Carrianne is Bellis's friend from the library, who has about three lines, no plot purpose and mostly serves to introduce the idea of the goretax. And there's the Lover, who has I think two monologues and that's it. To add insult to injury, after the fact we realize Uther Doul convinced her that they need to get the power of the Rift, which was her driving force through the entire book, so even her motivation isn't her own. In the end, she's deposed rather randomly and vanishes off the boat. Every other character is male and every single goddamn thing that happens in this entire goddamn book is driven by dudes. It is dumb and it started really straining my ability to believe the world.

As for the plot...well, it's very episodic and poorly paced, and the main characters are completely useless within it. I had a really hard time maintaining interest in this.

When naval captain Laurence bonded with a dragon egg, he though his life had taken a turn for the worst. But instead, he developed a deep friendship with the dragon. Since then, he and Temeraire have destroyed battleships, foiled invasions, traveled throughout the world and even betrayed their nation on occasion. But their commitment to each other has never wavered--until now. After being shipwrecked, Laurence loses his memory of the last eight years. His struggle to understand his choices, and what kind of man he's become, is far more touching and fascinating than I expected from an amnesia plot. He does regain his memory (upon clapping eyes on Thackery, thus providing more fuel for the 'shipping fires). From there we are thrown into a whirlwind of events: first they must prevent the assassination of China's crown prince, then foil a coup, and THEN on to Russia, to battle Napoleon once more. But this time, Laurence has hundreds of dragons at his back.

tbc

A mixed bag of urban fantasy stories, not all of which are actually fantasy, and not all of which are really all that urban. A number are magical realism, and if I liked that genre better (or at all) I would have enjoyed this collection better. My favorite stories were Delia Sherman's "How the Pooka came to New York City", Patricia Briggs's "Fairy Gifts", and Peter S Beagle's "Underbridge." Each of them provide a good deal of characterization in a short amount of space amid an interesting plot. My very favorite was Ellen Kushner's "The Duke of Riverside" because I am desperate for any little scrap of Riverside I can get. Kushner is so good at writing characters that every time I read about Alec and Richard I feel like I'm hearing about an old friend I haven't seen in a long time, but know well. They feel very real.

Peter Grant was on track to becoming a paper-pushing policeman when he stumbled upon magic. Now he's apprenticed to the last magician left on the London police force, and he's got more excitement than he can handle. He dealt with a marauding spirit and the gods of the Thames in [b:Midnight Riot|8680417|Midnight Riot (Peter Grant, #1)|Ben Aaronovitch|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320484733s/8680417.jpg|13552476], and now Peter is tracking down whoever--or whatever--is killing jazz musicians. Like the last book, this is witty and fast paced, with great action scenes and wonderfully consistent (but multifaceted) characterization.

This book details how the political maneuverings in the 5th century affected what is officially thought and taught about Jesus. It's all quite complicated and bloody, filled with armies of monks marauding across Europe and the Middle East, and all over philosophical differences so slight I can hardly keep them straight. Alas, this book delves deep into convoluted details of theology, which I could not possibly care less about, and so I gave it up on page 23. I skimmed forward and found that various battles, massacres, and historical personages do get page time, but it seems the book skips around in time a good deal and gets far more detailed in some areas than others. If you're truly interested in the antecedents of Christianity, and you're willing to put up with numerous pages arguing about whether Jesus had a mom, then this is the book for you. As someone looking for more history than philosophy, this didn't work for me.

We first meet Aoife in a madhouse, where she's trying to comfort her mother. Her mother, who has been insane for most (all?) of Aoife's life, refuses to be comforted, and Aoife leaves the institution in despair, not only for her mother but for herself. Her mother was driven mad by the necrovirus, and Aoife was born with it as well; like the rest of her family, she knows she will become insane by her 16th birthday. Aoife has pushed back her strange, otherworldly nightmares and visions for as long as possible by studying the most rational subjects she can find. She fought to be trained as an Engineer, one of the many who toil to maintain their city's great Engine. But after receiving a chilling letter from her brother, Aoife leaves behind her steady life at the Academy. With her is her best friend, prissy, romantic-minded Cal and their guide, the mysterious Dean. Aoife searches for her brother, but instead she finds that the bedrock of her life is on shaky ground.

This book was a distinct surprise to me. It is far more thoughtful and imaginative than I expected, especially given the title and cover. The worldbuilding is fascinating here: decades ago the necrovirus swept through the world, leaving madness and monsters in its wake, and now humans huddle on the ruins of our world (the city of Lovecraft, for instance, is built on top of the remains of Massachusetts). In this alternate version of the 1960s, areas have become isolated from each other, and travel is closely watched by the fascist Proctors and their clockwork ravens. Both Aoife and Cal accept the Proctors' strictures

tbc

Ages ago, the world was created when the first god got lonely. Since then he created several other gods and godlings to keep him company, not least Sieh, the eldest of the godlings but perpetually a child. After a struggle between gods that left the world nearly destroyed, the one of the gods set up a single family of his descendants to be the rulers of the world. This family, the Arameri, ruled for thousands of years, with the other gods and godlings as their slaves. But no structure can remain forever. At last, the Arameri's rule has faltered, and the gods are free. Everything is changing--including Sieh. After promising friendship to two little Arameri kids, Sieh starts aging and as he loses touch of childhood, his godhood fades as well. Meanwhile, a god of vengeance is out to destroy the last remnants of Arameri power, and is willing to kill the entire world to do it.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, the world building is so interesting (the warrior "crop" in Darre! the sigils marking blood status on Arameri foreheads! godlings becoming part of the city!) and the underlying plot is cool and new to me. On the other hand, the pacing of this book is terribly uneven and all the plot happens off-screen. Shahar's entire political plot is only mentioned in passing. Deka has a huge mystical realization that basically makes him a godling, and it's glossed over. Ahad and Glee have an epic love affair that takes up about three sentences. And instead of getting to see any of this first-hand, we just get Sieh saying "then I woke up. Sixty years had passed, and blah blah blah had happened." over and over. The sheer number of times he blacks out and comes to after all the interesting stuff has already happened is just...it approaches [b:Twilight|41865|Twilight (Twilight, #1)|Stephenie Meyer|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1361039443s/41865.jpg|3212258] territory. Sieh's romances are not quite as frustrating, but they are inexplicable. He has maybe ten minutes of interaction with these kids, spread across two years, and this is the basis of lifelong obsession and devotion for all three of them? I didn't buy it. I wanted to believe Sieh's romances, but I need some interaction between the would-be lovers before I'm willing to believe they'll create their own universe or whatever. I felt like the book kept telling me a moment was Huge and Important and Emotional, and I never had any understanding why.

After Tana's father and husband are killed and her children taken by raiders, she goes on a one-woman mission to regain the remnants of her family. Her courage and will inspire others, and soon she comes to the attention of an army commander. He tells her that they have to wait the raiders out, but Tana is impatient. She raises an army of women, armed with peasant weapons (and the occasional arquebus), and they march on the raiders' city.

I really wish this had been twice as long, because there's so much material here that I wish could have been expanded upon, or presented with more subtlety. Even in a bare-bones style like this, it's a good, engaging story, especially with Buckell's trademark of excellent action scenes.

My one quibble with this book is actually with the illustration. The original inspiration for this book was Maureen McHugh's mention of the lack of middle-aged female protagonists, and Buckell spends a good number of pages emphasizing that she's older and has more than her fair share of scars and muscle. She spends the entire book chopping soldiers apart with her axe. And yet. All of the illustrations portray a woman with slender, unmarked twigs for arms and an unlined face. Art fail.