What Have I Been Reading? (2019 batch #2)
Mar. 3rd, 2019 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroSomeone Like Me by Mike Carey - Credit to Carey that this is hella creepy yet not related to zombies or trenchcoat-wearing Englishmen in any way. It ties together nicely, and keeps you guessing as to which characters are going to survive, even if it telegraphed a bunch of the twists early enough for me to stay several steps ahead of the characters. (I noticed exactly where the villain’s plan was going to blow up in her face, too.) Several characters have really awful things happen to them, and there are several—really, one in particular--who are really vividly vile in such a way to deserve everything they get. Not amazingly brilliant, but definitely well-done.
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman - I’m led to believe it’s fairly accurate to the original myths, but it’s also in a very tongue-in-cheek style. Gaiman, as has been noted by my and many others, is a very good writer; and given the prominence of the Norse pantheon in many of his other works, it’s not surprising he has a particular fondness for them. And as his introduction notes, it makes you sad to learn how much of the surrounding mythos is just lost at this point.
The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry - By “psychological thriller” we apparently mean “foreshadow something terrible, then do 200 pages of poor communication couples theater”. I have to wonder if half of those chapters were written for a by-the-book story about new parents of an infant and were just repurposed for this. Sleep-deprived, overly-hormonal, moderately self-absorbed new parents discount each other’s feelings/experiences and jump to conclusions; also, water is wet. (Also, by a quarter of the way into the book, the main characters’ experience as a doctor and a nurse has been wholly forgotten in favor of “helpless dumbass parent” mode. I think the author forgot their backstories for about half the book.) Then she ups the ante with another baby, ratcheting up the crazy everywhere, and the crazy things that almost make sense when you’re an exhaustion-addled first-time parents…well, no, their choices don’t make sense at all. I was annoyed enough by the “giving us chapters from someone’s perspective but leaving out all of their crazy” technique that I was hoping for a “the child is an evil genius” absurd over-the-top twist at the end (or at the least that the father was sleeping with the social worker whose chapters really don’t make much sense otherwise); but no, the only twist was the murder foreshadowed back at the very beginning and apparently the child just makes everyone around her go totally batshit. This is easily a candidate for the worst book I’ll read this year.
Smoke and Summons (Numina Book 1) by Charlie N. Holmberg - In a fantasy Dickensian London built atop the ruins of a magical empire, a woman who can become a vessel for summoned monsters escapes her master and meets a thief with an artifact that allows him 60 seconds of immortality each day. Clever, interesting worldbuilding; with a perfectly-sensible in-universe reason why the main character has been a slave but we don’t have to deal with rape as part of it. Of course, it leaves off on a giant series of sequel hooks, having only resolved one major issue and possibly/probably ripping a number of others back open. (I might read one more book if it promised actual answers, but I strongly suspect this is going to be a “series” that will never address some of its core mysteries.)
Greek Mythology Explained by Marios Christou & David Ramenah - Given the title, I would have expected more “explaining” of the myths. There’s maybe two pages of musing (and not even particularly academic musing) for each multi-chapter myth. For that matter, the style of retelling of each myth is questionable—there’s no situation where “whilst” and “puking” should appear as narration in the same story. It’s sorta-modern, sorta-casual, sorta-academic and doesn’t actually strike a balance well.
The Hidden Witch by Molly Knox Ostertag - A suitable sequel to The Witch Boy, further exploring supernatural gender roles and the importance of forgiveness and having social support. I wouldn’t say it’s incredibly deep, but it’s well done.
Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology by Cory O'Brien - Having a passing familiarity of all of the mythologies discussed here does help the humor, in the “I know you aren’t making this up, it’s really that absurd” sort of way. I suspect this would actually get old very quickly if you weren’t familiar with the myth, because then it’s just course-language absurdities all the way. As it stands (as this has been a heavy-mythology reading month), this would be tiring if you were to read it all in a row, but makes excellent “I have five minutes and this is on my phone” sort of fodder.
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman - I’m led to believe it’s fairly accurate to the original myths, but it’s also in a very tongue-in-cheek style. Gaiman, as has been noted by my and many others, is a very good writer; and given the prominence of the Norse pantheon in many of his other works, it’s not surprising he has a particular fondness for them. And as his introduction notes, it makes you sad to learn how much of the surrounding mythos is just lost at this point.
The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry - By “psychological thriller” we apparently mean “foreshadow something terrible, then do 200 pages of poor communication couples theater”. I have to wonder if half of those chapters were written for a by-the-book story about new parents of an infant and were just repurposed for this. Sleep-deprived, overly-hormonal, moderately self-absorbed new parents discount each other’s feelings/experiences and jump to conclusions; also, water is wet. (Also, by a quarter of the way into the book, the main characters’ experience as a doctor and a nurse has been wholly forgotten in favor of “helpless dumbass parent” mode. I think the author forgot their backstories for about half the book.) Then she ups the ante with another baby, ratcheting up the crazy everywhere, and the crazy things that almost make sense when you’re an exhaustion-addled first-time parents…well, no, their choices don’t make sense at all. I was annoyed enough by the “giving us chapters from someone’s perspective but leaving out all of their crazy” technique that I was hoping for a “the child is an evil genius” absurd over-the-top twist at the end (or at the least that the father was sleeping with the social worker whose chapters really don’t make much sense otherwise); but no, the only twist was the murder foreshadowed back at the very beginning and apparently the child just makes everyone around her go totally batshit. This is easily a candidate for the worst book I’ll read this year.
Smoke and Summons (Numina Book 1) by Charlie N. Holmberg - In a fantasy Dickensian London built atop the ruins of a magical empire, a woman who can become a vessel for summoned monsters escapes her master and meets a thief with an artifact that allows him 60 seconds of immortality each day. Clever, interesting worldbuilding; with a perfectly-sensible in-universe reason why the main character has been a slave but we don’t have to deal with rape as part of it. Of course, it leaves off on a giant series of sequel hooks, having only resolved one major issue and possibly/probably ripping a number of others back open. (I might read one more book if it promised actual answers, but I strongly suspect this is going to be a “series” that will never address some of its core mysteries.)
Greek Mythology Explained by Marios Christou & David Ramenah - Given the title, I would have expected more “explaining” of the myths. There’s maybe two pages of musing (and not even particularly academic musing) for each multi-chapter myth. For that matter, the style of retelling of each myth is questionable—there’s no situation where “whilst” and “puking” should appear as narration in the same story. It’s sorta-modern, sorta-casual, sorta-academic and doesn’t actually strike a balance well.
The Hidden Witch by Molly Knox Ostertag - A suitable sequel to The Witch Boy, further exploring supernatural gender roles and the importance of forgiveness and having social support. I wouldn’t say it’s incredibly deep, but it’s well done.
Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology by Cory O'Brien - Having a passing familiarity of all of the mythologies discussed here does help the humor, in the “I know you aren’t making this up, it’s really that absurd” sort of way. I suspect this would actually get old very quickly if you weren’t familiar with the myth, because then it’s just course-language absurdities all the way. As it stands (as this has been a heavy-mythology reading month), this would be tiring if you were to read it all in a row, but makes excellent “I have five minutes and this is on my phone” sort of fodder.
