Books 2012: where did my brain go? All gone.

[hawkwing_lb]

Books 2012: 220-223


220. Tanya Huff, The Silvered. DAW, 2012. Copy courtesy of DAW Books.

This is an excellent novel. High magic and desperate adventure, a honourable enemy, a young woman growing into her own power, women who weren't trained to fight being heroic in their own ways.

I'll be talking more about it around January (I hope) in the Tor.com column. For now, I recommend it quite highly.


221. Tanya Huff, The Enchantment Emporium. DAW, 2012. Copy courtesy of DAW Books.

Another one to talk more about later. Huff combines the humorous with the bizarre in an excellent piece of urban fantasy.


222. Beth Bernobich, Passion Play. Tor, 2010.

I'm reading this out of order, months after I read its sequel, Queen's Hunt. A well-studied, painful, excellent character study in loss and intrigue. It unfolds slowly, but proves well worth one's patience.


223. Sarah Diemer, The Dark Wife. 2011, Ebook.

A lovely retelling of the Hades-Persephone myth which casts Hades as a woman and Zeus as... just as much of a villain as any feminist reading of the myths reveals. Recommended.

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Read one other terrible thing I'm not admitting to in public. Because I approve of lesbian fantasy romance, and don't want to point and laugh too much even at the most deserving specimen. Except in private.

Comments

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Loved The Enchantment Emporium; must find Silvered. Alas, I have read far too many bad lesbian romances..shudder.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I found a reasonably good skiffy one tonight! By a person called Sarah Barret.

But of some others, one should not speak. :)

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

I very much wanted to like the Diemer, but the writing was at fanfic level. The characters, except for Hades, were childish cartoons and the bruise-purple passages and continuity errors were below basic. Also, for no discernible reason, Diemer decided to trash the one relationship that was in fact true lesbian love in the original myth: that of Athena and Pallas. Athena mourned Pallas hard and long. Of course, the lord of the underworld being a woman has been a staple of many mythologies (Hecate, Hel).