Books 2017: there is a mountain yes there is a mountain yes there is

[hawkwing_lb]

Books 2017: 18-25


18. Kameron Hurley, The Stars Are Legion. Angry Robot, 2017.

Read for Locus and for column. A fascinatingly squishy space opera, which Hurley has been promoting as LESBIANS IN SPACE (it is). It's less of a mess than her fantasy, and a lot more fun, although Hurley does sometimes confuse brutal for interesting.


19. Jacqueline Carey, Miranda and Caliban. Tor, 2017.

Read for review. A retelling of The Tempest. Honestly, I don't see the point of a novel that spends so much time dwelling on an abusive parent-child relationship that doesn't ever allow the victim of the abuse to get away. NOT my cup of tea.


20. Lara Elena Donnelly, Amberlough. Tor, 2017.

Read for column. Fascism and amoral gay boys in love. Promising debut.


21. Ada Palmer, Seven Surrenders. Tor, 2017.

Read for review. It doesn't quite succeed in living up to the promise of the first volume, which is a shame, but together Too Like The Lightning and Seven Surrenders make a very promising debut.


22. Caitlín R. Kiernan, Agents of Dreamland. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for review. Creepy Lovecraftian horror novella. Not exactly my jam. Also parasitic mind-controlling fungus.


23. Justine Saracen, The Sniper's Kiss. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

A romance novel involving women who love women set during WWII. A Russian-speaking American clerk in the Lend-Lease programme and a Russian soldier, later a sniper, encounter each other first during international meetings about the Lend-Lease programme. Later, the American clerk gets into trouble investigating corruption on the Russian end of the Lend-Lease problem and ends up at the front, where she disguises herself as a dead Russian sniper and partners with the live Russian sniper. Saracen has done her research: the WWII setting feels believable. The characters are reasonably well-rounded, the relationships make sense in context, and the writing is better than tolerable. As F/F romances go, it's definitely in the top 10%, particularly for historical ones.

(I always feel sad judging F/F on these particular merits. But in any given month where I look at six or eight F/F books from Netgalley and at best only half of them are even readable, they are certainly the merits.)


24. Yolanda Wallace, Divided Nation, United Hearts. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

A romance novel involving women who love women set during the American Civil War. One disguises herself as a man in order to fight for the Union, the other is trying to keep a farm running while her father and brother are fighting for the Confederacy. I finished it: it's not a particularly good novel, but it is an entertaining tropetastic mess.


nonfiction

25. Hubert Wolf, The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent Scandal. Vintage, 2015. Translated from the German by Ruth Martin.

I first heard of this book via Lady Business, where it was spoken of in very complimentary terms. I can confirm that it is extremely solid history writing, clear and thorough and immensely readable: the kind of history where you keep reading in order to find out just what happened next.

Wolf deals with a particular convent scandal, one that took place in the convent of Sant'Ambrogio in Rome and was investigated as a result of a complaint made by the German Catholic Princess Katarina von Hohenzollern to the Holy Office for the Doctrine of the Faith (the office of the Inquisition). Katarina had entered the convent as a postulant and then a novice (after two marriages and a previous unsuccessful attempt to become a nun in a different convent) and came to believe that she was being poisoned by the sisters of Sant'Ambrogio, as a result of her opposition to certain practices she believed were entirely improper.

Wolf draws on several archival sources, including the Inquisition's own files and the testimony of the witnesses and defendants in the case, to illuminate the life of the Hohenzollern princess, the convent, the other nuns, Church politics, and the case itself. False saints, poisonings, political manoeuvring in the Jesuit order, the curia, and the papacy, Solicitatio by priests in confession, sexual assault of novices, female sodomy: this is history mixed with true crime, and Wolf lays it all out in fascinating detail.

Including a good deal of detail on how the Inquisition actually investigated the charges laid before it, which is fascinating in its own right.

Comments

[hrj]

Ooh, #25 sounds interesting. One of the as-yet-unexplored byproducts of my lesbian history project is a cross-source examination of historical tropes like "lesbianism is rampant in convents". In that particular case, I suspect there was underlying truth below all the often-political spin. (Some of the other repeating tropes seem less plausible.)

[hawkwing_lb]

The witness testimony and the interrogation of at least one of the defendants makes it clear that there was lesbian sexual contact going on, but the sort attested here is in situations where it was definitely situations of sexual abuse rather than anything that could be considered a remotely healthy relationship. (Holding the office of "mistress of novices," owed the absolute obedience of novices in a religious order, and having the confessor priests, who might otherwise have intervened, convinced she was a living saint.)

It's a fascinating book.

[sovay]

Honestly, I don't see the point of a novel that spends so much time dwelling on an abusive parent-child relationship that doesn't ever allow the victim of the abuse to get away. NOT my cup of tea.

Interesting. Someone else on my friendlist just read this novel and recommended it pretty much universally; the ending was not mentioned except in a heartbreaking way, which could have meant any one of a number of things. I wonder if they didn't see it.

A Russian-speaking American clerk in the Lend-Lease programme and a Russian soldier, later a sniper, encounter each other first during international meetings about the Lend-Lease programme. Later, the American clerk gets into trouble investigating corruption on the Russian end of the Lend-Lease problem and ends up at the front, where she disguises herself as a dead Russian sniper and partners with the live Russian sniper.

What does it say about me that my reaction is YES THAT THANK YOU?

I finished it: it's not a particularly good novel, but it is an entertaining tropetastic mess.

May I ask?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Someone else on my friendlist just read this novel and recommended it pretty much universally; the ending was not mentioned except in a heartbreaking way, which could have meant any one of a number of things. I wonder if they didn't see it.

The ending follows the text of The Tempest, save that Miranda saves Caliban's life and leaves him behind: most of the novel is Miranda's youth and her friendship with Caliban up to the point of the shipwreck, and it is impossible not to read Prospero as both emotionally and physically abusive -- at one point he tortures the child Miranda into a stroke, after which she needs to relearn to speak and walk. At the end, Ferdinand's immediate love for her is a result of a love potion prepared by Prospero, and Prospero -- still, possibly, with the means to magically torture her -- accompanies her when she is given no real choice but to leave the island: there is never a sense that Miranda is making a choice out of her own free will, rather than the need for affection and validation from her manipulative, abusive, and distant father, and lurking fear of what he will do if she demurs.

Carey has elegant prose, but I've seen stage-settings of The Tempest that humanise Caliban and point up Prospero's utter monstrousness. The tragedy of this version of The Tempest isn't that Miranda leaves Caliban behind in isolation with only the hope she will send for him one day, but that Caliban believes himself monstrous and Miranda can't escape her learned helplessness, and that Prospero -- the real monster here -- gets pretty much everything he wants.

(Will answer your other question in further comment.)

[sovay]

At the end, Ferdinand's immediate love for her is a result of a love potion prepared by Prospero, and Prospero -- still, possibly, with the means to magically torture her -- accompanies her when she is given no real choice but to leave the island: there is never a sense that Miranda is making a choice out of her own free will, rather than the need for affection and validation from her manipulative, abusive, and distant father, and lurking fear of what he will do if she demurs.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

So I hope somebody's writing the fix-it where she goes back to the island, learns the magic of Sycorax from Caliban, and gives Prospero a heart attack.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I should add that it is possible someone else could read the novel differently than I did! (I DO NOT SEE HOW, but clearly it is possible.)

But, yeah, kinda want Prospero to be fed to the fishes one piece at a time.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

What does it say about me that my reaction is YES THAT THANK YOU?

That you are a person of great good taste and discernment? *g*

May I ask?

Sure, but honestly, it's a bad-but-entertaining romance, scattered in pacing and only unevenly coherent. Tropetastic mess points include:

1. Confederate woman's family doesn't own slaves, sees war not about slavery as much as North bullying the South;

2. Union woman encounters Conderate woman's brother and father as prisoners of war; brother escapes swearing revenge;

3. Confederate woman has local Asshole Gentleman who wants to marry or rape her;

4. Confederate woman pretty much falls in love (lust?) with Union woman at first sight;

5. Union woman saves Confederate woman from Union deserters;

6. Union woman is shot by Confederate woman's brother, resulting in:

7. Confederate woman discovers Union woman's gender, remains in lust;

8. People have sex in a hayloft shortly after having been shot in the chest;

9. Novel doesn't conclude as much as end with Union woman deserting to stay with Confederate woman, because True Love trumps all else?

...I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention after the enthusiastic hayloft-post-chest-wound-sex.

[sovay]

That you are a person of great good taste and discernment?

Heh. Seriously, that sounds great to me. I'll try to look for it.

...I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention after the enthusiastic hayloft-post-chest-wound-sex.

That's fair! I confess that it is not the first thing that I would think of doing, unless I had only been shot a very little in the chest, and maybe still not even then.

(Also, I have to say that the ethics of the ending kind of sound like a mess to me, although I understand that wasn't what the novel was in it for.)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Seriously, that sounds great to me. I'll try to look for it.

It's from a lesbian small press, so it might require special-ordering for libraries and the like. (I'd never see any of these without Netgalley.)

I confess that it is not the first thing that I would think of doing, unless I had only been shot a very little in the chest, and maybe still not even then.

(Also, I have to say that the ethics of the ending kind of sound like a mess to me, although I understand that wasn't what the novel was in it for.)

Me neither. I confess it is a very easily-treated chest wound, for someone shot with a 19th century bullet -- no damage to ribs, no fracturing of the bullet, no lung involvement, no major blood vessels: I cannot for the life of me figure out how it could work at all, anatomically, especially since the bullet wasn't a through-and-through and required digging around with tweezers to extract.

The ending -- yeah, ethically it doesn't work at all for me. Or emotionally, really: there's no character development from "loyal soldier" to "screw that, I'm staying here and having hayloft sex for the rest of my life and helping run the farm and protect My Girl."

[sovay]

It's from a lesbian small press, so it might require special-ordering for libraries and the like. (I'd never see any of these without Netgalley.)

I don't actually know anything about Netgalley—is it a service you sign up for on your own time or is it part of your arrangement with Tor.com?

I confess it is a very easily-treated chest wound, for someone shot with a 19th century bullet -- no damage to ribs, no fracturing of the bullet, no lung involvement, no major blood vessels: I cannot for the life of me figure out how it could work at all, anatomically, especially since the bullet wasn't a through-and-through and required digging around with tweezers to extract.

I'm just flashing on the relevant surgery scene from Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003).

Or emotionally, really: there's no character development from "loyal soldier" to "screw that, I'm staying here and having hayloft sex for the rest of my life and helping run the farm and protect My Girl."

—they just have a romantic ending because it's a romance.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Netgalley is a service for publishers and reviewers - you sign up and ask for ebooks that they're offering, and the publisher says yay or nay. With Bold Strokes Books, they seem to have auto-approved me after the first time I asked? So.

You remind me I want to watch that film again.

they just have a romantic ending because it's a romance

Pretty much.