between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Books 2016: 184-190


184. Max Gladstone et al, Bookburners Season 1. Serial Box, 2016.

Read for review for Locus.


185. Laura Anne Gilman, The Cold Eye. Saga, 2017. Copy courtesy of the publisher.

Read for review for Tor.com. I have meh feelings. It is a very slow book.


186. Ellen Klages, Passing Strange. Tor.com Publishing, 2017. Copy courtesy of the publisher.

Wow. This is really good.


187. Ann Aptaker, Genuine Gold. Bold Strokes Books, 2017. E-ARC via Netgalley.

A novel of lesbians and crime in 1950s New York. Entertaining, if peculiar.


188. Gun Brooke, Exodus: Escape. Bold Strokes Books, 2017. E-ARC via Netgalley.

Terrible FF science fiction romance. Readable, I guess.


189. Ali Vali, The Devil's Due. Bold Strokes Books, 2017. E-ARC via Netgalley.

A novel of crime families and lesbians, set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Entertaining, if also peculiar.


190. Cari Hunter, A Quiet Death. Bold Strokes Books, 2017. E-ARC via Netgalley.

The more of Hunter's novels I read, the more I like her work. This one is a fairly gruesome crime novel with murder and sex trafficking, but it's solid crime novel.

Books 2016: 169-170


169. Alex Bledsoe, Gather Her Round. Tor, 2017. ARC via publisher.

Read for review for Locus. Pretty damn good.


170. Greg Rucka (et alia, Dragon Age: Magekiller. Dark Horse, 2016.

A delightful graphic novel set during the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition. It is surprisingly sweet for a piece of work with so much blood and death and demons in. (Also I liked the half-unseen romance bit. LOVELY.)

Books 2016: 149-155


149. Heather Rose Jones, Mother of Souls. Bella Books, 2016.

Read for column. Good third book in series, solid, moving further away from anything that looks like romance towards more politics and family-saga style of things.


150. Aya de León, Uptown Thief. Dafina, 2016.

Really interesting Leverage-style feminist thriller with a great cast.


151. Gail Carriger, Romancing the Inventor. E-book, 2016.

Steampunk romance novella about two women, set in Carriger's Parasol Protectorate universe. Read for column. Fun and good.


152. Karin Kallmaker, Christabel. Ebook, originally published 1997 I think.

Really terrible fantasy lesbian romance. I mean, terrible. It makes nearly no sense at all.


153. Alexis Hall, Iron & Velvet. Riptide, 2013 (ebook).

Fun romp about a queer female private investigator in a London with werewolves and vampires and all kinds of other magic. Fast, a bit on the shallow side, and a little rough, but a hell of a lot of fun.


154. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Certain Dark Things. Thomas Dunne, 2016.

Read for column. Really excellent vampire novel. Much recommend.


155. Gaie Sebold, Sparrow Falling. Solaris, 2016.

Read for column. Fun, fast, entertaining steampunk.

Books 2016: 135


135. Greg Rucka, Stumptown Volume Two. Oni Press.

I forgot to include this in my last round-up. Excellent graphic novel about a Portland PI and a missing guitar. I would give at least a finger off my left hand to see Rucka's Stumptown adapted for the small screen, because that would be awesome.

Books 2016: 133-134


nonfiction


133. S. Frederick Starr, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. Princeton University Press, 2015 (first published 2013).

Lost Enlightenment is an ambitious and very readable intellectual history of Central Asia between the late 600s and the late 1200s CE. The first three chapters of this solid tome (over 500 pages, excluding end matter) set out to provide context: context for Starr's endeavour, and context for Central Asia, which had a long and vibrant history even before the Arab invasions.

Further chapters centre on specific courts or specific figures, with significant space given to al-Khwarazmi, al-Razi, ibn Sina, al-Biruni, al-Farabi, Ferdowsi, and al-Ghazali, all figures who in their own way shaped the intellectual and cultural life not only of Central Asia, but of the entire Arab-speaking world and eventually Western Europe.

Starr accompanies this history of ideas and thinkers with a reasonably comprehensive discussion of political events affecting the region across this timeframe. His narrative occasionally tangles itself in confusion, as it does not always take either a strictly chronological or a strictly thematic approach. Lost Enlightenment's achievements are also lessened by Starr's continually insistence on using comparanda from Western Europe: he assumes the reader is familiar with examples from Western Europe but not from Central Asia or the Arab world, whereas some of us (even Western Europeans!) are much more familiar with, say, Maimonides than John Locke.

For all its faults, however, Lost Enlightenment is a fascinating work and an excellent introduction to a region and a set of thinkers frequently neglected in Anglophone history writing. I don't think there's complete English translations of the works of any of the writers named above, with the exception of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh - and where there are English translations, many of them date from a century or more ago. Perhaps Starr's efforts to bring this intellectual heritage to wider appreciation will spur some press to bring to an Anglophone audience more of the primary sources on which his history depends.


134. Rachel Mairs, The Hellenistic Far East: Archaeology, Language, and Identity in Greek Central Asia. University of California Press, 2016 (first published 2014).

This slender volume is specifically concerned to discuss the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms in the region that today is eastern Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India. Mairs focuses on the archaeological remains, uncovered by excavation and by survey; the challenges posed by the evidence and the state of publication of the evidence; the difficulties posed by unprovenanced items (as a result of looting) and the interpretative challenges of investigating "ethnicity" and "identity" in a region whose inhabitants are very lightly represented in the surviving literature (Chinese and Greek) and that from the point of view of outsiders; and in a region where very little epigraphic evidence has come to light that may illuminate the self-understandings of the inhabitants of ancient Bactria in the three hundred years after the conquests of Alexander the Great.

Because of its prominence in the evidence, Mairs looks in detail at the city of Ai Khanoum, the Hellenistic urban foundation that has a Greek inscription which claims to be copied from Delphi, and posits a Bactrian architectural koine to explain some of its more unusual (as a Greek city) features. Mairs also looks at the relationship between settled and nomadic people in the region, and examines the explanations given for the fall of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms.

While brief, this book is really interesting, particularly from the point of view of identity in the "Hellenistic" world.

Books 2016: 119

nonfiction

119. Michael T. Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America: Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Originally published in 1980, I first heard of this book as a recommendation from Max Gladstone. It is an anthropological study - one might call it a Marxist anthropological synthesis - of certain cultural and social practices present in some areas of 1960s and 1970s South America. It focuses in particular on a practice of the "devil bargain" among male agricultural workers, and on practices involving a figure known as the "Tio," or "uncle," a devil-like figure, which are carried out by Bolivian tin-miners. Taussig strives to argue from historical cultural context, and makes a strong case for the continuity (and adaptation under new pressures) of historic cultural forms.

This is a complex book, with a strong theoretical focus drawing on Marx, which is not an area in which I'm competent to say much. But it is fascinating read, if at times a difficult one to follow.

Books 2016: 96-115


96. Nisi Shawl, Everfair. Tor, 2016. Copy via Tor.com.

Read for review for Tor.com. Interesting and meaty and fascinating and magnificent.


97. Marie Brennan, Cold-Forged Flame. Tor.com, 2016. Copy via Tor.com

Read for review for Tor.com. Short and sharp and intense and fun.


98. Pol Robinson, Open Water. Bella Books, 2011. Ebook.

Lesbian romance involving the US women's Olympic rowing team and the Beijing Olympics. Sports romance, I guess? Not half-bad.


99. D. Jordan Redhawk, Broken Trails. Bella Books, 2013. Ebook.

Lesbian romance involving endurance sled racing in Alaska. Pretty fun.


100. D. Jordan Redhawk, Darkstone. Bella Books, 2015. Ebook.

Lesbian fantasy romance involving Los Angeles, music, fated chosen ones on opposite sides, and a magical gate to a realm of elves. It's better than that makes it sound, but it's really more than a little cheesy.


101. D. Jordan Redhawk, Freya's Tears. Bella Books, 2014. Ebook.

Lesbian science fiction romance. The setting and the plot reminded me a little of Firefly, only the setting isn't as well developed -- not that Firefly's setting really was -- and the plot is forgettable, because I can barely remember anything about it. (I'm not even sure if it's actually a romance. I'm guessing so, since all the author's other books tend in that direction.)


102. D. Jordan Redhawk, Lichii Ba'Cho. Bella Books, 2014. Ebook.

If this didn't start life as a Xena fanfic, I will eat my hat. (And I do not own a hat.) Post-apocalyptic biker gangs, really bad cyberpunk. Poorly developed, but the characterisation shows promise.


103. D. Jordan Redhawk, Orphan Maker. Bella Books, 2013. Ebook.

Lesbian romance. Post-disease-apocalypse where everyone post-puberty died. YA feel, somewhat underdeveloped in parts. Strong characterisation.


104. D. Jordan Redhawk, Tiopa Ki Lakota. Bella Books, 2013, originally published 2000. Ebook.

Historical "lesbian" (it may make more sense to read one of the characters as a trans man?) romance set mostly among the Lakota and partly among the white settlers of the American frontier. Pacing is an occasional issue, but the characterisation is great, and so is the cultural stuff.


105. D. Jordan Redhawk, Alaskan Bride. Bella Books, 2016. Ebook.

Lesbian romance set in the 19th century Alaskan frontier. Entertaining, solid characterisation, but there's not really enough there there to make it really work.


106-109. D. Jordan Redhawk, The Strange Path, Beloved Lady Mistress, Inner Sanctuary and Lady Dragon. Bella Books, 2012-2015. Ebook.

It's a YA lesbian not-a-vampire version of The Princess Diaries? I think? With more coming-of-age, murder, reincarnation, and magic. It's far more entertaining that it has any right to be.


110. Sheryl Wright, Don't Let Go. Bella Books, 2016. Ebook.

Lesbian romance involving a family-owned company, secrets, lies, and disability-acquired-through injury. Not half-bad.


111. M. E. Logan, Tempered Steele. Bella Books, 2015. Ebook.

Here's a peculiar beast. It's a collapse-of-society-as-we-know-it economics-of-scarcity novel, with indentured labour and anti-indentured-labour campaigners. (And lesbian relationships.) It's got an odd abuse-recovery and power-imbalance argument going on, and I'm not entirely sure what its emotional and thematic centre is... but it's an entertaining read.


112. Emily Skrutskie, The Abyss Surrounds Us. Flux, 2016.

Do you know how much I wanted to like this novel? I had it described to me as "pirates and seamonsters and lesbians" and I was SOLD. And it's a fun read, but the logic of its worldbuilding -- people train seamonsters to protect industrial shipping from pirates, but the potential for seamonsters as weapons of war is not hardly acknowledged -- is a little off. Plus, our main character trains seamonsters and gets kidnapped by pirates who want her to train one for them -- and she ends up killing joblots of people because she is in love with a teenage pirate whose life is being threatened to make the main character DO THE MURDER.

(Also the main character is more emotionally invested in seamonsters than people.)

So its moral centre is a wee bit off. I don't find killing many to save one all that justifiable.

On the other hand, seamonsters. The seamonsters are pretty great. So is the burgeoning friendship/relationship between Cas, the main character, and Swift, the pirate girl who is basically her permanent guard. The problems of the power imbalance between them are directly addressed and not glossed over, so that's good.

It's only at the novel's climax that it pisses away a really good thing with unexpected a) illogic and b) antiheroics.


113. Mary Robinette Kowal, Ghost Talkers. Tor, 2016. Copy via Tor.com.

WWI. Mediums. Spies. Murder. Death. Spirits of the dead. Ghosts. Hauntings. Explosions.

This is a fun book. The characterisation is a little bland, and the conclusion is a little rushed -- and the dénouement is a little too pat -- but it's fun. (There might be some leaps of logic.)

114-115. Jack Campbell, The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast and The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Leviathan. Titan Books, 2014-2015.

Space opera. Just like the other books in Campbell's series. Pretty terrible space opera, but sometimes one wants a honking great space battle and no mistake.

Books 2016: 74-79


74. David D. Levine, Arabella of Mars. Tor, 2016. Copy courtesy of Tor.

Reviewed for Tor.com.


75. Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit. Solaris 2016. Copy courtesy of Solaris.

This is so great. SO GREAT. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic space opera territory, with undead generals and friendly robots and horrible people and relatively decent people doing horrible things and it is just so readable and compelling that despite the INCREDIBLY HIGH BODYCOUNT I want MORE NOW PLEASE.


76. Laydin Michaels, Bitter Root. Bold Strokes Books, 2016. Ebook.

Romance featuring queer women set in Louisiana. Dark pasts, lots of talk about food. It is okay, I guess.


77. Adrian Tchaikovsky, Spiderlight. Tor.com Publishing, 2016. Copy courtesy of Tor.com.

Read for review for Tor.com. I enjoyed this IMMENSELY, though at first I didn't expect to.


Nonfiction

78. James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 2011.

This is an incredible book, part history and part anthropology. I read it in snatches, two and three pages together as time allowed. Scott argues that marginal peoples living at the edges of settled state civilisations have, in the main, made choices about the composition of their societies, their cultural toolsets, their subsistence regimes, and so on, deliberately in order to avoid incorporation into settled states.

It is a really interesting work, and a really interesting argument, and a fascinating overview of Southeast Asia's non-state peoples. I recommend it extremely.


79. Robin Waterfield, Taken at the Flood: The Roman Conquest of Greece. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014.

The US paperback edition is coming out this autumn and I hope to get to review this somewhere. But basically it is what it says on the tin.

Books 2016: 37-42


37. Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning. Tor, 2016.

Reviewed for Tor.com. EXCELLENT GO READ IT.


38. Franci McMahon, Staying the Distance. Bold Strokes Books, 2016.

Mediocre lesbian romance novel about an endurance equitation competitor and her vet.


39. Barbara Ann Wright, Paladins of the Storm Lord. Bold Strokes Books, 2016.

I was extremely disappointed in Wright's last outing - which was, to put it mildly, an incoherent Norse-inspired mess, although better at a sentence level than many f/f fantasy romances in existence - and moderately disappointed in the two before that. Her first novel showed a great deal of promise, and I will confess to Some Hopes of her continuing career: but structurally the later novels of her first series really did not stand up well.

However. Paladins of the Storm Lord opens a new series, and one that shows somewhat better control. It mixes elements from fantasy and science fiction into a planetary opera somewhat reminiscent of Darkover (without the faux-medieval sexism), with politics and fights and interspecies romance. It's fun and fast and entertaining, and I'm really hoping that she manages to actually structure the rest of this series so that the narrative pays off in satisfying ways.


40. Jenny Frame, Heart of the Pack. Bold Strokes Books, 2016.

An incoherent mess of a f/f romance involving werewolves. I think. Narrative through-line, not its strong point.


Non-fiction


41. Peter Thonemann, The Hellenistic World. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016.

With a spot of luck, a review of this will be going up at Tor.com. It is a very short introduction to the world after Alexander. Warlords! Mercenaries! Kings! Art! Natural philosophy!


42. Noel Malcolm, Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016.

Malcolm, a historian who specialises in the history of the Balkans, has reconstructed the achievements (in the service of at least five crowns, counting the Papacy and Venice) of three generations of an Albanian family in the 1500s. From Venice to the borders of Poland, and the Vatican to Istanbul, the Brutis and their relatives the Brunis were at the heart of political, social, and military events across the Mediterranean.

It's a really good book. I recommend it.

Books 2016: 8-16

Ebooks.

8-10. Rebekah Weatherspoon, Better Off Red, Blacker Than Blue, and Soul to Keep.

So. These are lesbian romance novels in a series called "Vampire Sorority Sisters." They are... probably even a little more batshit than that sounds, to be honest. Plot is not a strongpoint. Random poly and/or kinky sex scenes are. It's sort of a trainwreck, but a fascinating one.


11-12. Rebekah Weatherspoon, The Fling, and Treasure.

More lesbian romances. Even absent vampires, Weatherspoon can't plot very well. Still, it is an entertaining plotlessness.


13-14. Yolanda Wallace, Murphy's Law and 24/7.

More lesbian romances. The former is about climbing a very tall mountain. The latter - I cannot actually say the latter made much impression at all?


15. Emily Smith, After the Fire.

Lesbian romance. Angst and lusting after firefighters. Not very memorable.


16. Jae, Just Physical.

Good lesbian romance about an actress with a chronic illness and a stunt woman who is afraid of fire. Has a plot. Good prose.