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hawkwing_lbBooks 2014: 66-71
66. Patrick Weekes, Dragon Age: The Masked Empire. Tor, 2014. ARC from Tor.com.
Read for review at Tor.com.
67. Seanan McGuire, Sparrow Hill Road. DAW, 2014. ARC from Tor.com.
Read for review at Tor.com.
68. R.S.A. Garcia, Lex Talionis. Dragonwell Publishing, 2014. ARC via a friend who is a friend of the author.
This is an interesting debut effort that shows promise, but structurally the execution lacks coherence and suffers from a case of and also the kitchen sink in terms of what kind of story it is trying to be. (It is also in many respects setting itself up as the first novel in a series: it is not satisfactorily complete in itself in my view.) It is an enjoyable novel if you can live with its structural problems.
69. Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise. Tor, 2013.
Gladstone's second novel is one that I found difficult to get into at first. In fact, it took reading his third novel for me to go back and get past the bit I was sticking on. But once past the hump (past page fifty or so) it turns into something tense and great: not quite as good for me as Three Parts Dead or Full Fathom Five, but still an excellent entry by a writer who's shaping up to be one of the field's best new voices.
70. Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five. Tor, 2014. ARC from Tor.com.
Read for review at Tor.com. A novel I really enjoyed.
Nonfiction
71. Sahar Amer, Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2008.
This is an interesting, illuminating analysis of literary connections between medieval French and Arabic literature in the area of love between women. Amer's arguments for reading the presence of silent "lesbian" or "lesbian-like" relations in some medieval French poetry are not always convincing, but her arguments about the limited nature of only seeing intertextuality in direct textual influence are persuasive. Too, this is perhaps the first book I have read that incorporates an accessible English-language introductory summary of same-sex and particularly lesbian love in medieval Arabic literature. I've added several titles to my list of "medieval Arabic texts in translation I want to read," even if some of them are in French. (One day I will have the leisure to learn classical Arabic. And German.)
66. Patrick Weekes, Dragon Age: The Masked Empire. Tor, 2014. ARC from Tor.com.
Read for review at Tor.com.
67. Seanan McGuire, Sparrow Hill Road. DAW, 2014. ARC from Tor.com.
Read for review at Tor.com.
68. R.S.A. Garcia, Lex Talionis. Dragonwell Publishing, 2014. ARC via a friend who is a friend of the author.
This is an interesting debut effort that shows promise, but structurally the execution lacks coherence and suffers from a case of and also the kitchen sink in terms of what kind of story it is trying to be. (It is also in many respects setting itself up as the first novel in a series: it is not satisfactorily complete in itself in my view.) It is an enjoyable novel if you can live with its structural problems.
69. Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise. Tor, 2013.
Gladstone's second novel is one that I found difficult to get into at first. In fact, it took reading his third novel for me to go back and get past the bit I was sticking on. But once past the hump (past page fifty or so) it turns into something tense and great: not quite as good for me as Three Parts Dead or Full Fathom Five, but still an excellent entry by a writer who's shaping up to be one of the field's best new voices.
70. Max Gladstone, Full Fathom Five. Tor, 2014. ARC from Tor.com.
Read for review at Tor.com. A novel I really enjoyed.
Nonfiction
71. Sahar Amer, Crossing Borders: Love Between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2008.
This is an interesting, illuminating analysis of literary connections between medieval French and Arabic literature in the area of love between women. Amer's arguments for reading the presence of silent "lesbian" or "lesbian-like" relations in some medieval French poetry are not always convincing, but her arguments about the limited nature of only seeing intertextuality in direct textual influence are persuasive. Too, this is perhaps the first book I have read that incorporates an accessible English-language introductory summary of same-sex and particularly lesbian love in medieval Arabic literature. I've added several titles to my list of "medieval Arabic texts in translation I want to read," even if some of them are in French. (One day I will have the leisure to learn classical Arabic. And German.)
