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hawkwing_lbBooks 2016: 140-148
140-142. Rose Beecham, Grave Silence, Sleep of Reason, and A Place of Exile. Bold Strokes Books, 2005, 2006, 2007. Ebooks.
I read these on a recommendation from a friend, and now I'm extremely annoyed that Beecham wrote no more books in this series after A Place of Exile. They're damn good, if unconventional, mysteries set in rural Colorado near the state border with Utah, starring Jude Devine, an FBI agent undercover as a Sheriff's Detective to help monitor militia activity in the area. (I don't care if this setup is plausible or not: the stories around it are compelling.) The writing is very solid and the characterisation excellent. I recommend these books wholeheartedly.
143. Courtney Milan, Hold Me. 2016, ebook.
Contemporary romance from the author of Trade Me. Very much a comedy of errors, but a sweet one and one in which several characters are queer. (The main female character is a trans woman; the love interest is a bisexual bloke.) (Neither of them are white.) It's really well put-together, as one expects from Milan, and I enjoyed it a lot.
144. Ashley Bartlett, Cash Braddock. Bold Strokes Books, 2016. Ebook via Netgalley.
Not exactly a romance novel about a drug dealer (prescription pills) who falls in love with a woman who turns out to be something other than what she seems. Amusing and well-written, as queer female romance novels go.
145. Emma Newman, After Atlas. Roc, 2016. Review copy via Tor.com.
Read for review for Tor.com. It is an excellent dystopian murder mystery, and then it jumps genres at the end, and I'm still not sure what to think.
146. Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob Ziegler, The Burning Light. Tor.com Publishing, 2016. Review copy via Tor.com.
Read for review for Tor.com. I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is? But it is well-written.
147. Rhonda Mason, Cloak of War. Titan Books, 2016. Review copy via Titan Books.
Read for column. Ridiculous but fun, and less uneven overall than The Empress Game, to which it is a sequel.
nonfiction
148. David Potter, Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint. Oxford University Press, 2015.
An excellently readable biography of sixth-century Byzantine empress Theodora, who began her life as the daughter of an actress and the bear-master of one of Byzantium's factions, became an actress herself, bore a daughter out of wedlock to a wealthy man, left (or was abandoned) by him, somehow met Justinian, nephew of the then-emperor Justin, and married him - in order to do this, the law barring actresses from marrying respectable men had to be changed.
She and Justinian had no children, but she was one of the pillars of his reign, though they tended to be on opposite sides of the major theological-political question of their day (regarding the outcome of the council of Chalcedon and whether Jesus Christ had one (divine) nature or two (human and divine)). During the crisis of the Nike riots, she is reported as convincing Justinian to stay and fight rather than fleeing, saying "Power is a splendid shroud."She predeceased him by more than a decade, but he never remarried.
Potter's biography is lucidly clear and eminently readable. He does great work in tying the (complex) sources together into a plausible narrative of Theodora's life and her personality. But I think more context for her later life (during the rest of Justinian's reign before her death) would have been very useful: as it stands, the biography feels very much weighted towards her rise, rather than her reign.
140-142. Rose Beecham, Grave Silence, Sleep of Reason, and A Place of Exile. Bold Strokes Books, 2005, 2006, 2007. Ebooks.
I read these on a recommendation from a friend, and now I'm extremely annoyed that Beecham wrote no more books in this series after A Place of Exile. They're damn good, if unconventional, mysteries set in rural Colorado near the state border with Utah, starring Jude Devine, an FBI agent undercover as a Sheriff's Detective to help monitor militia activity in the area. (I don't care if this setup is plausible or not: the stories around it are compelling.) The writing is very solid and the characterisation excellent. I recommend these books wholeheartedly.
143. Courtney Milan, Hold Me. 2016, ebook.
Contemporary romance from the author of Trade Me. Very much a comedy of errors, but a sweet one and one in which several characters are queer. (The main female character is a trans woman; the love interest is a bisexual bloke.) (Neither of them are white.) It's really well put-together, as one expects from Milan, and I enjoyed it a lot.
144. Ashley Bartlett, Cash Braddock. Bold Strokes Books, 2016. Ebook via Netgalley.
Not exactly a romance novel about a drug dealer (prescription pills) who falls in love with a woman who turns out to be something other than what she seems. Amusing and well-written, as queer female romance novels go.
145. Emma Newman, After Atlas. Roc, 2016. Review copy via Tor.com.
Read for review for Tor.com. It is an excellent dystopian murder mystery, and then it jumps genres at the end, and I'm still not sure what to think.
146. Bradley P. Beaulieu and Rob Ziegler, The Burning Light. Tor.com Publishing, 2016. Review copy via Tor.com.
Read for review for Tor.com. I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is? But it is well-written.
147. Rhonda Mason, Cloak of War. Titan Books, 2016. Review copy via Titan Books.
Read for column. Ridiculous but fun, and less uneven overall than The Empress Game, to which it is a sequel.
nonfiction
148. David Potter, Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint. Oxford University Press, 2015.
An excellently readable biography of sixth-century Byzantine empress Theodora, who began her life as the daughter of an actress and the bear-master of one of Byzantium's factions, became an actress herself, bore a daughter out of wedlock to a wealthy man, left (or was abandoned) by him, somehow met Justinian, nephew of the then-emperor Justin, and married him - in order to do this, the law barring actresses from marrying respectable men had to be changed.
She and Justinian had no children, but she was one of the pillars of his reign, though they tended to be on opposite sides of the major theological-political question of their day (regarding the outcome of the council of Chalcedon and whether Jesus Christ had one (divine) nature or two (human and divine)). During the crisis of the Nike riots, she is reported as convincing Justinian to stay and fight rather than fleeing, saying "Power is a splendid shroud."She predeceased him by more than a decade, but he never remarried.
Potter's biography is lucidly clear and eminently readable. He does great work in tying the (complex) sources together into a plausible narrative of Theodora's life and her personality. But I think more context for her later life (during the rest of Justinian's reign before her death) would have been very useful: as it stands, the biography feels very much weighted towards her rise, rather than her reign.
