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Books 2012: I'm home from away
Sep. 11th, 2012 12:11 amAnd the study tour knocked me out. I mean, massively.
Which makes it understandable that I read a lot of quite frankly not very good lesbian fantasy romance. Speaking in the technical sense of "not very good," that is. I read it in sufficient amounts to feel comfortable making a couple of generalisations: which is, that most of the genre romance lesbian fantasy I read while away is upper-10%-percent-of-the-slushpile stuff, in need of polishing, practice, and a good editor fully conversant with skiffy tropes to sharpen it up into real quality. A lot of it's... pretty much pure id-fic. That didn't going through enough editing to knock the naive treatment of structure and prose out of it.
Books 2012: 156-164
156-158. Winter Pennington, Witch Wolf, Raven Mask, and Bloody Claws. Bold Strokes Books, 2010-2012.
Some of that upper-level slush pile lesbian romance I was talking about. One of the better writers, actually: by Bloody Claws I felt like Pennington was developing better control of her prose and voice, and with some more attention to detail the structural and pacing issues could be taken care of, as well. The mood is essentially lesbian early Anita Blake: however, the world-building has some rather annoyingly distracting flaws.
I'm harder on this series because it can closer to being solid urban fantasy than most of the rest of the lesbian skiffy romance came to being solid at all.
159. L-J Baker, Lady Knight. Bold Strokes Books, 2007.
A lesbian romance set in a believably-detailed pseudo-medieval world. Solidly written, for the most part, and rather well-done, apart from the untelegraphed brutal rape near the end.
160. Meghan O'Brien, Wild. Bold Strokes Books, 2011.
Shapeshifters and serial killers, oh my. Not entirely terrible.
161. L.L. Raand, The Midnight Hunt. Bold Strkes Books, 2010.
Just bad. Bad from a prose standpoint, and bad from the standpoint of bad urban fantasy. Also, the romance made me feel kind of icky.
162. Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Dragon Ship. Baen, 2012.
My thoughts, they are already over at Tor.com. Short version: I approve, where's the next book now?
163. Sarah Rees Brennan & Justine Larbalestier, Team Human. HarperCollins, 2012.
Hilarious and also affecting. It is good book, and if I were less tired, I would have more to say about it.
Wait one. Good world-building, solidly implied but not overdone. Good characters... mostly believable, except for the Best Friend With True Love thing, but then I never had (m)any friends as a teenager, so how do I know what teenagers think about true love with vampires? Excellent pacing. Also, I appreciate the zombies.
164. Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken. Random House, 2012. ARC courtesy of the author.
So, the thing I did not realise about this book is that it is the first in a series. Or perhaps a trilogy. (The whole "book one" thing maybe ought to have clued me in, but sometimes I'm oblivious.) So I did not realise it was allowed to end on a cliffhanger.
I am still aggrieved about that. Because really, that cliff, right there? Very sheer and unexpected and I want to know what happens next, damnit.
Young Adult, really quite excellent. It make me laugh like a drain and then it put the screws on and made me care. I'm not sure that I don't have a touch of emotional whiplash, but it's the good kind. Well. Maybe a little bit much adolescent angst in there for my best preferences... but it's YA. That's par for the course.
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sarahtales has agreed to answer a few interview questions for the column over at Tor.com sometime in the next while, so probably I will end up thinking about Unspoken a bit more. But it is good book, I tell you that now.
Which makes it understandable that I read a lot of quite frankly not very good lesbian fantasy romance. Speaking in the technical sense of "not very good," that is. I read it in sufficient amounts to feel comfortable making a couple of generalisations: which is, that most of the genre romance lesbian fantasy I read while away is upper-10%-percent-of-the-slushpile stuff, in need of polishing, practice, and a good editor fully conversant with skiffy tropes to sharpen it up into real quality. A lot of it's... pretty much pure id-fic. That didn't going through enough editing to knock the naive treatment of structure and prose out of it.
Books 2012: 156-164
156-158. Winter Pennington, Witch Wolf, Raven Mask, and Bloody Claws. Bold Strokes Books, 2010-2012.
Some of that upper-level slush pile lesbian romance I was talking about. One of the better writers, actually: by Bloody Claws I felt like Pennington was developing better control of her prose and voice, and with some more attention to detail the structural and pacing issues could be taken care of, as well. The mood is essentially lesbian early Anita Blake: however, the world-building has some rather annoyingly distracting flaws.
I'm harder on this series because it can closer to being solid urban fantasy than most of the rest of the lesbian skiffy romance came to being solid at all.
159. L-J Baker, Lady Knight. Bold Strokes Books, 2007.
A lesbian romance set in a believably-detailed pseudo-medieval world. Solidly written, for the most part, and rather well-done, apart from the untelegraphed brutal rape near the end.
160. Meghan O'Brien, Wild. Bold Strokes Books, 2011.
Shapeshifters and serial killers, oh my. Not entirely terrible.
161. L.L. Raand, The Midnight Hunt. Bold Strkes Books, 2010.
Just bad. Bad from a prose standpoint, and bad from the standpoint of bad urban fantasy. Also, the romance made me feel kind of icky.
162. Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Dragon Ship. Baen, 2012.
My thoughts, they are already over at Tor.com. Short version: I approve, where's the next book now?
163. Sarah Rees Brennan & Justine Larbalestier, Team Human. HarperCollins, 2012.
Hilarious and also affecting. It is good book, and if I were less tired, I would have more to say about it.
Wait one. Good world-building, solidly implied but not overdone. Good characters... mostly believable, except for the Best Friend With True Love thing, but then I never had (m)any friends as a teenager, so how do I know what teenagers think about true love with vampires? Excellent pacing. Also, I appreciate the zombies.
164. Sarah Rees Brennan, Unspoken. Random House, 2012. ARC courtesy of the author.
So, the thing I did not realise about this book is that it is the first in a series. Or perhaps a trilogy. (The whole "book one" thing maybe ought to have clued me in, but sometimes I'm oblivious.) So I did not realise it was allowed to end on a cliffhanger.
I am still aggrieved about that. Because really, that cliff, right there? Very sheer and unexpected and I want to know what happens next, damnit.
Young Adult, really quite excellent. It make me laugh like a drain and then it put the screws on and made me care. I'm not sure that I don't have a touch of emotional whiplash, but it's the good kind. Well. Maybe a little bit much adolescent angst in there for my best preferences... but it's YA. That's par for the course.
sarahtales has agreed to answer a few interview questions for the column over at Tor.com sometime in the next while, so probably I will end up thinking about Unspoken a bit more. But it is good book, I tell you that now.