between the rock and the cold, cold sea

I'm coming off a cold and I'm sure I don't remember everything I've read.

Books 2017: 210-222


210. Sarah Glenn Marsh, Reign of the Fallen. Razorbill, 2018.

Read for review for Tor.com. Good.


211. Michelle Sagara, Cast in Deception. Mira, 2018.

Read for column. Also good.


212. M.C.A. Hogarth, From Ruins. Ebook, 2017.

Read for column. Good.


213. Ali Vali, Heart of the Devil. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

F/F romance. Not good, but enjoyable.


214. L.A. Hall, The Comfortable Courtesan Vol. 1. Ebook, 2017.

Really good. I need to write more about this latter.


215. Beth Revis, Star Wars: Rebel Rising. Ebook, 2016.

Read for column. Not really what I was looking for in a Star Wars story, but maybe I should have known that going in.


216. Genevieve Cogman, The Lost Plot. Tor UK, 2017.

Read for review. Good.


217. Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric's Mission. Subterranean Press, 2017.

Read for column. Really good. Excellent.


218-220. Seanan McGuire, Chaos Choreography, Magic for Nothing, and Tricks for Free. DAW Books, 2016-2018.

Read for column. Fun.


221. Kara A. McLeod, Known Threat. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

F/F thriller with romance elements. Terrible, but still strangely entertaining.


nonfiction

222. Richard Holmes, Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air. William Collins, London, 2013.

A history of ballooning. Moderately fascinating, but definitely worth reading for the bit about the balloon post and the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war, when thousands of letters went out by balloon and back - thanks to the technology of photography and miniaturisation - by pigeon.

Books 2017: 182-189


182. Liz Ziemska, Mandelbrot the Magnificent. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Meh.


183. E.J. Swift, Paris Adrift. Solaris, 2018.

Read for review for Locus. Also meh.


184. Steven Brust, Vallista. Tor, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Meh again.


185. Helen S. Wright, A Matter of Oaths. Bloomsbury reprint edition, 2017. Ebook.

Read for column. WOW OKAY. This is really, really, really good space opera. Queer and including older women and originally published nearly thirty years old, go and read it, go and READ IT NOW.


186. Spencer Ellsworth, Starfire: Shadow Sun Seven. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com. Middle book with middle book issues. Fun, though.


187. Ronica Black, Under Her Wing. Bold Strokes Books, 2017. Ebook.

FF romance between a librarian and the owner of a no-kill dog shelter. Readable, but meh.


188. Karis Walsh, Set the Stage. Bold Strokes Books, 2017. Ebook.

FF romance set around a theatre company. Fairly decent.


nonfiction

189. Yasmin Khan, The Raj at War: A People's History of India's Second World War. Vintage. London, 2016. (First published 2015.)

Read for Patreon. Very interesting history, compellingly written.

So. August was A Month. There are any number of things I need to do this month, like sort out my Patreon from August and for September, a couple of medical appointments, and buy my membership for Octocon.

I have more review work than I used to, which is good. On the other hand, keeping up with everything is... tricksy.


Books 2017: 130-156


130. Melinda Snodgrass, In Evil Times. Titan Books, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Annoying grim, focusing on Bad Shit happening to Not So Nice People.


131. Kate Elliott, Buried Heart. Little, Brown, 2017.

Read for Sleeps With Monsters column. Excellent conclusion to Elliott's really great trilogy.


132. P.C. Hodgell, The Gates of Tagmeth. Baen, 2017.

Read for Sleeps With Monsters column. Latest Kencyrath novel. Fun, but the series has lacked a sense of forward progress for the last couple of installments.


133. Barbara Hambly, Murder in July. Severn House, 2017.

The latest in Hambly's long-running Ben Janvier mystery series, set in New Orleans in the 1830s.


134. Barbara Ann Wright, House of Fate. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

Read for Sleeps With Monsters column. Fun, albeit weak and slight. Reminded me of a less gleefully batshit Jupiter Ascending.


135. Max Gladstone, Ruin of Angels. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com. Really fucking brilliant.


136. Malka Older, Null States. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com. Solidly entertaining sequel.


137. Adam Roberts, The Real-Town Murders. Gollancz, 2017.

Read for review for Patreon. Good near-future thriller.


138. J.Y. Yang, The Black Tides of Heaven. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for Sleeps With Monsters column. And for review for Locus. REALLY REALLY GOOD novella.


139. J.Y. Yang, The Red Threads of Fortune. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for Sleeps With Monsters column. And for review for Locus. Really good novella. Would've liked it better as a novel, I think.


140. Fran Wilde, Horizon. Tor, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com. And for review for Locus. Interestingly thinky, rewards approaches from multiple directions.


141. Tim Pratt, The Wrong Stars. Angry Robot, 2017. Forthcoming.

Read for review for Locus. Really really really really fun space opera. It's got the emotional sense of humour of KILLJOYS but with more Weird Alien Shit. Immensely satisfying.

And between Yang, Roberts, Pratt, and Gladstone, I read five books in row in which there were queer main characters in relationships and NO GAYS WERE BURIED.


142. Alyssa Cole, An Extraordinary Union. Ebook, 2017.

Interracial het romance set during the American Civil War. I wanted more spies, less sex, but I am not the target audience?


143. Thea de Salle, The Queen of Dauphine Street. Ebook, 2017.

Het romance. Explicit. Good story. Pet tiger. Fun.


144. Jenny Frame, Royal Rebel. Ebook, Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

FF romance, set in a near-future alternate Europe with Ruritanian kingdoms. Romance between spoiled royal princess coming off a bad relationship and ex-CEO former addict now running a charity. Kind of awfully written, but the characters come alive.


145. K.J. Charles, Wanted, A Gentleman. Ebook, 2017.

MM historical romance, late 1700s, of the genre I find myself mentally referring to as Sad Boys In Love. Charles writes this genre very well, with appropriate levels of angst, snark, and explicit sex.


146. K.J. Charles, Sceptred Isle. Ebook, 2017.

MM historical romance, 1920s, with magic. Will probably write it up in a column. It is fun.


147-149. Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel, The Lawrence Browne Affair, and The Ruin of a Rake. Ebooks, 2016-2017.

MM historical romance, regency era. Sad Boys In Love! Fun.


150. Carsen Taite, Sidebar. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

FF romance. Lawyer and Supreme Court Judge. Kind of terrible, really. But readable, just.


151-155. Jean Stewart, Return to Isis, Isis Rising, Warriors of Isis, Winged Isis, and Wizard of Isis. Bella Books, various dates. First volume originally published 1991.

FF romance/science fiction. Sort of. Set in a dystopian/utopian future world deeply influenced by the feminist SF novels of the period immediately preceding the publication of the first volume, Stewart posits a technologically advanced female-run (and largely lesbian) society, separated from a disease-ridden and repressive misogynistic society by a mostly impenetrable technological barrier on the North America continent. The writing is uneven, the worldbuilding is occasionally downright weird, and the plotting has giant holes. But as a series, these books still manage to be pretty fun.


nonfiction

Christopher A. Faraone & Laura K. McClure, eds, Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World. The University of Wisconsin Press. Madison WI: 2006.

A varied and interesting collection of essays on the topic of the sale of sex, or sex work, in the ancient world, ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to the Roman empire. Hopefully I will write more about it soon, but it is worth perusal.

Books 2017: 86-108


86-93. KJ Charles, An Unseen Attraction, An Unnatural Vice, The Magpie Lord, A Case of Possession, Flight of Magpies, Jackdaw, A Queer Trade, Rag and Bone. Ebooks, various dates.

Solid, fun historical romances (and historical fantasies) involving men who love men.


94. Karis Walsh, You Make Me Tremble. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

Romance involving women who love women, the aftermath of an earthquake, and an animal sanctuary.


95. Kathleen Knowles, Taking Sides. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

Romance involving Indiana's recent discriminatory law, a woman who is still in the closet to her mother, and the liberal political activist/campaign consultant (a woman called Trevor) with whom she falls in love.


96. Gun Brooke, Thorns of the Past. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

Better than Brooke's SFnal efforts. A romantic thriller involving an ex-cop and an accountant.


97. Erin McKenzie, Where Love Leads. Bold Strokes Books, 2017

A romance involving school counselors, single mothers, and the aftermath of homophobic bullying and assault.


98. Missouri Vaun, Crossing the Wide Forever. Bold Strokes Books, 2017.

Historical romance involving women who love women, cross-dressing, and the American prairie.


99. Blythe Rippon, Benched. Ylva, 2017.

Romance involving a lawyer and a Supreme Court Justice. Complicated by the fact that neither of these people are any good at talking honestly (or listening) to each other.


100. Lauren Wright Douglas, The Always Anonymous Beast. Bella Books, 2010, first published 1987.

Interesting noir sort-of mystery involving blackmail and lesbians.


101. Margaret Killjoy, The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion. Tor.com Publishing, 2017. Forthcoming.

Read for review for Locus.


102. Ian McDonald, Luna: Wolf Moon. Gollancz, 2017.

Sequel to Luna: New Moon. Read for review for Strange Horizons.


103. K.S. Merbeth, Raid. Orbit, 2017.

Read for review for Locus.


104. Kat Howard, An Unkindness of Magicians. Saga Press, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Really excellent.


105. Andrew Neil Gray and J.S. Herbison, The Ghost Line. Tor.com, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com. Weird.


106. Vivian Shaw, Strange Practice. Orbit, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com. Amazingly good. Read this.


107. April Daniels, Sovereign. Diversion Books, 2017.

Sequel to Dreadnought. Read for review for Tor.com. Really good.


108. Curtis Craddock, An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors. Tor, 2017. Forthcoming.

Read for review for Tor.com. Really good.

Books 2017: 65-74


65. A. Merc Rustad, So You Want to be a Robot. Lethe Press, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Short stories. Not usually my thing, but pretty okay.


66. Nicky Drayden, The Prey of Gods. HarperCollins, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Chaotic but good.


67. Tanya Huff, A Peace Divided. DAW/Titan Books, 2017.

Read for column for Tor.com. Lots of fun.


68. Laura Lam, False Hearts. Tor, 2016.

Read for column for Tor.com. Really good near-future thriller.


69. Wendy N. Wagner, Oath of Dogs. Angry Robot Books, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Interesting science fiction with mystical twist.


70. Jack Campbell, The Genesis Fleet: Vanguard. Titan, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Campbell is not getting any more imaginative.


71. Sarah Gailey, River of Teeth. Tor.com Publishing, 2017.

Read for column. Interesting novella.


nonfiction


72. bell hooks, Outlaw Culture. Routledge Classics, 2006. (Originally published 1994.)

I'd never really grasped the ways in which bell hooks is a foundational thinker for intersectional feminism before picking up this collection of essays. It is an uneven essay collection, and its referents are now nearly a quarter-century out of date, but much of what she has to say doesn't seem radical to me - in part because over those two and a half decades, they became part of the approaches to feminism that predominate among the people from whom I learned about feminist theory and praxis. (They are still radical, mind you.)

Reading this collection has made me want to read more of bell hooks' work, which is an excellent thing for any collection.


73. Linda M. Heywood, Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen. Harvard University Press, 2017.

I want to write more about this biography of a 17th-century African queen who just did not quit and seems to have been immensely astute as a war-leader, as a diplomatic, and as a politician overall (except possibly in arranging the inheritance of her kingdom, but one cannot blame someone for not keeping things in order after they're dead). But in brief, it is a fascinating examination of a woman who the Portuguese colonisers saw as a "devil queen," and of her context.


74. Nancy Marie Brown, Ivory Vikings. St. Martin's Griffin, 2016. (Originally published 2015.)

Brown uses the Lewis chessmen, famous pieces found on the island of Lewis in Scotland in the early 19th century, as a lens through which to examine the late medieval Scandinavian world, its trade connections, and its culture. Brown is interested in the origins of the Lewis chessmen, and sets forth the arguments for where they might have been made, although it is clear her sympathies lie with the theory which ascribes them to Iceland in the late 12th or very early 13th century. (Brown makes a persuasive stab at ascribing them to the hand of an individual ivory-carver, a women named as Margaret the Adroit in the Saga of Bishop Pall - not a saga that has been translated into English.)

Brown is a careful historian, nuanced in her treatment of the evidence, and cautiously qualifying any sweeping claims. But she is also an imaginative historian, and an evocative one. Her knowledge of the Scandinavian world and the Icelandic sagas shines through, and her ability to write both clearly and entertainingly about matters of which yr. humble correspondent knows very little is a rare gift among historians. This is fun history. I approve of it.

Books 2017: 50-55


50. Martha Wells, All Systems Red. Tor.com, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com.


51. Michelle Sagara, Cast in Flight. Mira, 2016.

Read for column. Really fun, as usual.


52. Gwyneth Jones, Proof of Concept. Tor.com, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com.


53. Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones. Tor.com, 2017.

Read for review for Locus.


54. Foz Meadows, A Tyranny of Queens. Angry Robot, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com. REALLY GOOD.


55. Yoon Ha Lee, Raven Stratagem. Solaris, 2017.

Read for review for Locus. Also REALLY GOOD.

---

I'm really not keeping up with the influx of new books, to be honest. Ten that I would conceivably read arrived today, on top of at least five last week. So, meep.

Books 2017: 37-42


37. Corey J. White, Killing Gravity. Tor.com, 2017. Forthcoming.

Read for review for Locus. A lot of fun.


38. Marie Brennan, Within the Sanctuary of Wings. Tor, 2017. Forthcoming.

Read for review for Tor.com. Great conclusion to the series.


39. Cassandra Khaw, Food of the Gods. Solaris, 2017. Forthcoming.

Read for review for Locus. Interesting. Gruesome. Really pretty good.


40. Cynthia Ward, The Adventure of the Incognita Countess. Aqueduct Press, 2017.

Novella. Read for column. A hell of a lot of fun, in a gothic style that reminds me of Penny Dreadful.


41. Aliette de Bodard, The Citadel of Weeping Pearls. Ebook, 2015/2017.

Novella. Read for column. Set in the same continuity as On a Red Station, Drifting. Really good.


nonfiction

42. Mark S. Thompson, Wellington's Engineers: Military Engineering in the Peninsular War 1808-1814. Pen & Sword Books, Barnsley Yorks., 2015.

An interesting topic: a mediocre execution. I will have more to say later.

Books 2017: 32-34


32. Erika Lewis, Game of Shadows. Tor, 2017. Copy via publisher.

Read for review. Er. Eeep. WTF.


33. Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin, eds., The Djinn Falls In Love & other stories. Solaris, 2017.

Read for review for Tor.com. Really excellent anthology.


nonfiction


34. Ibn Fadhlan, Ibn Fadhlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North. Penguin Classics, 2012. Translated with an introduction by Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone.

Ibn Fadhlan left an account of his journey from Baghdad to the court of the Bulghar khan in 921 CE. (The account of his return journey doesn't survive.) Full of precise observations and surprisingly little judgment - and a certain amount of what comes across as good-humoured honesty - this is really lovely medieval travel writing. It includes the only eye-witness description of a Viking boat funeral in the lands of the Rus.

Ibn Fadhlan's account takes up a little less than half the book. The remainder is given over to extracts from other Arabic travel writers (or compilers of geographic information) who deal with the far north or with people from the far north, such as Vikings. These are usually far less self-aware and precise than Ibn Fadhlan, but fascinating in their own right.

(I really like the Arabic literature of the medieval period, at least as much of it as I've been able to read in English translation. It'd be really cool to have a good translation of Ibn Hayyan, you know. Or ibn Rusta. Hell, Mas'udi.)

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.

Books 2017: 1-4


1. Carrie Vaughn, Martians Abroad. Tor, 2017. Copy via Tor.com.

Read for review for Tor.com. Meh?


2. April Daniels, Dreadnought. Diversion Books, 2017. Copy via Tor.com.

Read for review for Tor.com. This is great! I like it LOTS.


3. Erica Cameron, Assassins: Nemesis. Triton/Riptide, 2017. Copy via Netgalley.

Okay. This is the sequel to Assassins: Discord which had QUEER FEMALE TEENAGE ASSASSINS in it, running thriller plot across the US. It wasn't the tightest or most sensible of plots, but it knew what kind of queer pulp it wanted to be, all right?

Nemesis moves to a couple of secondary/briefly-mentioned characters from Discord: Blake, the intersex teenage child of a murdered FBI agent, and Daelan, a nice geek-boy teenage vigilante bodyguard from a family of bodyguard-assassins. Boundaries! Murder! Saving each others' lives and maybe the world! Happy queer folks! Deliciously entertaining plot-relevant angst!

If you ever wanted queer vigilante teenage Jason Bourne, this is the book (this is the series) for you.


4. Ellen Kushner et al, Tremontaine Season One. Serial Box 2016/Saga Press 2017. Digital access via Serial Box.

Read for review for Locus. I like it. It feels like the best sort of fanfic.