This will be of interest to no one but me; I've just been wanting to document, for my own navel-gazing interests, what fics I've written and received for Yuletide over the last 9 years. :)

( Read more...Collapse )

Hello, LJ! Hello, Dreamwidth!

Fic Rec!

So eleveninches has posted her latest Inception fic, When a Man Loves a Pasiv! And it's not like the other boys! By which I mean it's a Cobbfic. By which I mean, like Cobb, it's a really, really impressive blend of pathos and dark comedy and sociopathy and cluelessness and sympathy. It's a wonderful, smart fic.

Usually when I beta Erin's fics I know where they're going to end up. This time I didn't, and so when I finally read it through, it left me really satisfied, emotional catharsis ringing deeply. I really, really love this one, and if you've ever looked at Cobb and thought:


(source: the mighty beatonna, of course <3

--but still liked the bastard anyway, then this is the story for you. :D

Book Rec!

omg omg omg omg you guys. So, there is this book, Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge. and it is THE MOST WONDERFUL BOOK. *_*

It first came to my attention when I saw jibrailis wistfully tweet about how incredible the writing was, and I thought, 'wow, okay, any book that has Nance envying the writing style is a book I have to pay attention to.' And then chibi_lurrel chimed in to agree with her, so that's two fantastic writers I know talking about how amazing this book is. So I bought it without knowing anything about it, which turned out to be the best decision I made in ages!

(time out to rant about how much i hate that they placed the BANNED banner over this edition of the book. it covers up the gorgeous artwork and makes you think you're in for some kind of YA dystopia, which is not what the book is like at ALL.)

Unbeknownst to me, my lovely friends over at The Book Smugglers had also heard about this book around the same time I did, and they wrote a fabulous review of it here, which you can read! Or you can check out the excerpt-heay review by The Eager Readers on YouTube!

The Smugglers went on to get their eager hands on all her other novels, including the sequel, Fly Trap / Twilight Robbery (UK title), which I am finally reading even as we speak. Quoth Ana: "I am bolting at high speed to buy ALL THE BOOKS by Frances Hardinge and proceeding with great alacrity to read them AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE." This is exactly how I felt, EXACTLY, which is why I now have a blessed stack of Frances Hardinge novels courtesy of the Monroe County Public Library, because the bookstore could not order them fast enough.

The Smugglers' review of FxN says everything I could possibly want to say about the book and also includes my favorite writing excerpts! But I have to add one thing, which is: ZOMG EPONYMOUS CLENT.

This is the first description of Eponymous Clent that we get in Fly by Night:

A week before, a man named Eponymous Clent had arrived in Chough and talked his way into every heart and hearth. He had bewitched the entire village with one urbane twinkle. Clent had brought phrases as vivid and strange as spices, and he smiled as he spoke, as if tasting them. That afternoon, however, Chough had fallen out of love with him just as quickly and completely. Word had spread that a visitor to the magistrate's house had exposed Clent as a notorious trickster and cheat.

....are you thinking what I'm thinking?



( EPONYMOUS. CLENT.Collapse )

People always talk about how such-and-such book makes them experience joy in the act of reading, but it's so rare that I feel that way when I'm reading a book, taking delight in the way words fall on a page. But I know I'm going to feel that way with all of Frances Hardinge's writing, so: heads-up, there may be more incoherent babbling from me about this author in the near future.

At the very least, I am nowhere near done babbling about my opprobrious love for Eponymous Clent.

__________________

Finally:

Webseries rec: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

I've never really gotten into web series before this. I watched nearly all of The Guild and was like, meh. Then The Lizzie Bennet Diaries happened, omg.

They're exactly what you'd expect them to be from the title: that is, a modernization of Pride and Prejudice in vlog form. But they're also witty, cute, modern without being ~edgy~, and often laugh-out-loud hilarious. Bing Lee is a doctor who carries around stuffed elephants and wants to watch period romance with Jane. Charlotte is a pedantic film school nerd, Collins is a blogger who awkwardly follows Lizzie around Vividcon :DDDDD!!!, the coming of the Regiment has now become Swim Week :D and Jane is........... still Jane and Lydia.............. is still Lydia. :D

It's so so brilliant, and fun, andover 30 eps in we haven't even met Darcy yet, and I'm just enthralled. Caroline is not a bitch REPEAT, CAROLINE IS NOT A BITCH!!! AND SHE AND LIZZIE are FRIENDS and they MAKE FUN OF DARCY TOGETHER AND IT'S THE GREATEST THING EVER!!, and Lydia and Lizzie love each other so much (okay I totally ship Lizzie/Lydia in this P&P AU, but not as much as I ship Lydia/Goth Nerd Cousin Mary ahhhh) and can I just say this is THE GREATEST THING IN MY LIFE right now I love it so much. Deep down all I really want in life = endless quality retellings of Pride & Prejudice. Right now, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is on its way to becoming the best non-fanfic fanfic of P&P I've ever seen.

Title: The Shattering
Author: Karen Healey (karenhealey)
Genre: Young Adult Horror, Young Adult Fantasy, Young Adult
How I got it: folks, I popped my NetGalley cherry for this book. The moment I heard it was available I went running. I regret nothing, etc etc.
Where to buy it: The publish date in the US is 9/5/11, but you can order it from from your local independent bookstore or the book depository!

Disclaimer: I got to meet Karen Healey last year and was even fortunate enough to be on a panel with her and jlh at Infinitus. I already thought she was awesome beyond words before I met her, so I am pretty much a lifelong fan of her and her writing. I will try to be objective in this review, but no promises. Really you could just stop reading this right now, because all you need to know is: if the author is Karen Healey, BUY THE BOOK.

In a nutshell: You're about to find out why it never rains in Summerton.

Straight from the book jacket: Seventeen-year-old Keri likes to plan for every possibility. She knows what to do if you break an arm, or get caught in an earthquake or fire. But she wasn't prepared for her brother's suicide, and his death has left her shattered with grief. When her childhood friend Janna tells her it was murder, not suicide, Keri wants to believe her. After all, Janna's brother died under similar circumstances years ago, and Janna insists a visiting tourist, Sione, who also lost a brother to apparent suicide that year, has helped her find some answers.

As the three dig deeper, disturbing facts begin to pile up: one boy killed every year; all older brothers; all had spent New Year's Eve in the idyllic town of Summerton. But when their search for the serial killer takes an unexpected turn, suspicion is cast on those they trust the most.

As secrets shatter around them, can they save the next victim? Or will they become victims themselves?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Do the characters make you want to rip your own face off? No, no, not ever, not once. There's nothing better than sitting down with a book that you know is going to give you fully realized, three-dimensional characters, a diverse cast, and complex dynamics.

Okay, I actually have to put the rest of this review below the cut because it's long eta: and, i have been informed, super-spoilery!!! be warned!. But there are many pictures of West Coast New Zealand below to entice you!

( And for that man there was a grave, and from that grave there grew a treeCollapse )

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Title: Fury of the Phoenix
Author: Cindy Pon (cindypon)
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy, Asian Fantasy, Folklore
How I got it: personal purchase (via Indiebound)
Where to buy it: From your local indie bookstore; from Powells; from the Book Depository.
In a nutshell: Fury of the Phoenix is the beautiful follow-up to Cindy Pon's debut novel Silver Phoenix, which was one of my favorite books of 2009. When we left our heroine, Ai Ling, things had settled down for her considerably after a long and tumultuous journey to the capital of Xia (the fictional country based on China's historical Xiang Province), and an epic final confrontation with the villain. Fury of the Phoenix not only picks up where Silver Phoenix left off, but sets us right down in the middle of the action, with Ai Ling fearlessly chasing down a ship bound for the West in order to protect Chen Yong, the hunky dreamboat who's traveling to look for his long lost father.

Ai Ling has had visions that evil awaits Chen Yong, but what she doesn't expect is that instead of launching her into new adventures, her journey will pull her deeper into the past, entangling her further with Zhong Ye, the man she recently killed. In order to finally be free of him, she will have to understand him, as well as the mysterious Silver Phoenix.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Do the characters make you want to rip your own face off? Not at all.

Does the plot make sense? Yes. This book is actually a bit of a surprise (and this seems to be a consensus garnered from my brief perusal of reviews across the internet), in that it centers around the plot of the first book rather than plunging us into a new adventure, which I think most of us were expecting to be Chen Yong's search for his father. It's a risky move, but IMO it pays off beautifully.

Is the prose abysmal? Never. Cindy Pon has sharp, vivid characterizations but a very subtle way of rendering them: she doesn't mire you down in detail or try to be snappy, and her prose style is just flat-out pleasurable to read, in a way few YA authors are.

Does it end on a cliffhanger only designed to make you buy more books? No! At first I thought it might not be accessible to people just picking it up without having read Silver Phoenix, but I've changed my mind: there's enough context, and enough to enjoy in Cindy Pon's prose style, that readers will enjoy this book even if they're coming to it cold.

( Why I absolutely loved it--which incidentally is the reason other people might hate it:Collapse )

Above all, though I am disappointed with the whitewashed cover, and I wanted more of the fairy tale and folklore aspects that made the first novel so unique and remarkable, there was enough in this book to deliver an extremely satisfying and beautifully penned resolution to Ai Ling's tale. In the end I just wanted more of everything: more female characters, more folklore, more food :D :D :D, more sultry moments of UST between her and Chen Yong, more of the hot captain, more of Silver Phoenix--just more of everything.

Which of course, leads me to say that I hope everyone who bought and enjoyed Silver Phoenix will support the sequel. You will want a copy on your shelf. And if you haven't read Silver Phoenix (my review is here), omg what are you waiting for, READ IT, READ IT!

We need writers like Cindy Pon. We need her commitment to telling stories about grace, love, and forgiveness, and we always need her luminous writing style and her proud heroines. I can't wait to read whatever she writes next.

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Title: Bliss
Author: Lauren Myracle
Genre: Teen Horror, Southern Gothic, Young Adult
How I got it: personal purchase
Where to buy it: From your local indie bookstore; from Powells; from the Book Depository.
In a nutshell: Our heroine is a true hippie, raised on a commune in the 60's before being sent to live in - gasp! - the non-hippy, racially charged South, with all its traditions and mannerisms and simmering tensions. Complicating issues, our heroine, determined to stick to her upbringing and never judge anyone by their outward appearances, rejects the friendship of the pretty, popular, virtuous blonde prom queen, and takes up instead with an outcast, overweight, socially awkward, mentally unstable lesbian. Who's plotting to kill people. And using a whole bunch of Southern gothic-style black magic to do it.

(It's kind of hard to make this plot sound less facepalmy than it is. More on that to follow.)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Do the characters make you want to rip your own face off? From, like, chapter two. Actually, I was mostly too busy being mystified by the subtext of this story, and second-guessing myself by assuming that the plot couldn't really be this straightforwardly sizeist/homophobic, not to mention this... typical.

Does the plot make sense? Yes! it's actually very straightforwardly a narrative about how not everything is straightforward, and sometimes things that appear to be straightforward actually are straightforward, because sometimes stereotypes are GOOD, except when they're not. oh my god.

Is the prose abysmal? The prose is actually really engaging and LM does this thing that's super-effective where she takes all these Andy Griffith Show quotes out of context and makes them somehow CREEPY AS ALL GET-OUT. Also she switches to the POV of our villain, which was actually really chilling, though the longer her narrative voice went on, the more Alpha's Evil Chipmunk voice from Up took over in my head.

Does it end on a cliffhanger only designed to make you buy more books? No, but some things make a little more sense when you realize that Bliss is actually the prequel to another book, Rhymes with Witch.

Okay, since the plot is pretty much handed to you on a platter with no surprises from page one, I'm going to come right out and say that I spent the whole book waiting for the plot to not be the plot. It made for a super-confusing read and after it was over I basically begged Cathy to tell me what I thought about what I'd just read. Which she obviously didn't do, so instead ( I'm going to ramble at you about Lauren Myracle's weird ambivalence about morality versus the South, and also GAY SERIAL KILLERS.Collapse )

The problem, for me, is that while the text was saying, over and over, "don't stereotype people, take them on an individual level," it was really hard to swallow that when the text was *also* putting forth the predatory lesbian trope, the overweight loner trope, the physical deformity = mental instability and both = evil tropes. Those are a hell of a lot of tropes to put in one story, unchallenged, to force on to one character. Literally all the suspense this book provided for me was wondering when and if they would ever be subverted at the last minute. They weren't. And while I enjoyed Bliss as a read, I think the only real takeaway I can pull out from its mish-mash of cultural clashes, racial tensions, and prejudices being alternately challenged and upheld is, "some stereotypes are there for a reason." And I think, even in a book that stringently challenges its readers to think for themselves and make individual judgments about people, that's a ridiculously disturbing moral for a book to have.

But then again, maybe that's what makes it a truly effective horror novel.

Your thoughts?

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Note: This essay is a revision of an essay I wrote for death_note a while back. (Okay, like, 3 years ago. What.) It is a commentary on the manga, anime, and both films of Death Note, and contains major spoilers for all of them.

Death Note is one of those iconic, apocryphal stories that it feels like everyone's read or at least heard of by now and presumably not just because Zefron is playing Light in the remake.

If you've somehow missed it, let me sum it up for you as:



( three-year-old meta, five-year-old manga, 3,000 words of L/Light shipping disguised as ~social commentary~, what could possibly go wrong?Collapse )

Title: Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks
Author: Lauren Myracle
Genre: Teen/Young Adult
How I got it: personal purchase
Where to buy it: From your local indie bookstore; from Powells; from the Book Depository.
In a nutshell: Carly's just returned from a bohemian summer camp to her upper-class white Southern family, and a sister who's starting high school with a whole new set of assets, if you know what I mean. Returning home carries its own challenges for Carly, always the smart, responsible daughter; and returning to school is a whole different set of problems: changing friendships, a sister who's terrified of her new body and her new environment, and unexpected challenges to her new progressive belief system.

Throw in a surprise crush, some serious pining (from multiple characters), a swim coach on a power trip, and an adorable set of abandoned ducklings, and you have Lauren Myracle's brand of mayhem: Southern values with a helping of irony on top, and equal parts hilarity and tear-jerking as Carly and Anna learn to trust their new identities, and each other.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Do the characters make you want to rip your own face off? Nope! They're great. I especially liked younger sister Anna, and Carly's new best friend Vonzelle.

Does the plot make sense? Yep! It's a pretty simple, though layered, story of two girls coming of age and learning to understand themselves, each other, their embarrassing parents, and their own privileges and responsibilities as they move closer to adulthood.

Is the prose abysmal? No! Lauren Myracle's narrative invigorates this story through a smart, confident, self-aware heroine. But like all girls her age, she's still woefully unaware about the big stuff, and that comes through with hilarity and poignancy.

Does it end on a cliffhanger only designed to make you buy more books? Nope! This is a great, solid standalone book. Before I left Virginia I gave my copy to myrafur's oldest daughter, for her to read when she's a little older and trying to cope with her younger sister. :)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Verdict: Taken by itself, I really enjoyed this book. It's got a fresh narrative voice, a really engaging dynamic between two headstrong and vibrant siblings, and an important take on things like privilege and race from a Southern teen trying to deal with and be aware of her own privilege and social responsibilities.

As a Southern who had a very similar experience of returning from summer camp w/a whole new value system and finding everything back home in total upheaval (to put it mildly), I related a lot to Carly in this book. As an only child with no siblings, I still related to, and greatly enjoyed, Carly and Anna's relationship. This book made me want a sister of my own for a second--that's quite an achievement, believe me!

I always relate to LM's experiences of the South, which are honest and unflinching but also loving. And the way LM writes parents interacting with their teenage kids is spot-on. Often when I was reading I was cringing in embarrassment and recognition (for both generations)! The cast of characters is well-handled, and although you can see early on who the sympathetic friends are and who will turn out to be total jerks, there's still a bit of subtlety involved as Carly comes to our own conclusions.

A subplot involving Anna's fear of heights and her swim coach's tyranny over her inability to perform a high-dive in public is the most compelling of the various threads of conflict that Myracle weaves together, but there are powerful, funny, memorable moments throughout the book, and I bawled my eyes out at the ending.

At the same time, I have to tell you, guys, I don't know what to make of what I've labeled LM's "weird girl dichotomy," wherein it feels like she wants to deconstruct the gender roles her heroines inhabit, but at the same time, she also wants to teach young girls how to inhabit them. It creates a very odd sense of imbalance for me.

(As I write this I am listening to Shina Riingo sing, "I don't know how to be a girl," because it sums up my life and especially my feelings with regard to this writer, this book, and this post.)

Quibbles (Mild spoilers below):

( So here is my deep dark confession about Young Adult literature.Collapse )

But more of that in the next review. For now, I'll just say I really loved this book, warts and all, and obviously-- obviously! -- I wanted to go run out and adopt a basket full of baby ducks when I was done. <3

P.S. I love this cover! The cover of my edition was the hardback edition, which is also uber-cute, but I loooove the poolside image of the paperback cover a lot. It's so pretty, and far more true to the book itself.

~in which the reason we have the greatest love triangle in literary history is because a fangirl shipped Gwencelot~



So I'm reading a series of Arthurian romances by the 12th-century storyteller Chrétien de Troyes, who after Geoffrey of Monmouth invented much of what's now our standard Arthurian canon.

The first time in known history that the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot appeared was in Chrétien's romance The Knight of the Cart. This romance, according to Chrétien himself in the prologue, was a plot provided to him by his patroness, Countess Marie de Champagne (daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine).

While historians have been able to trace other parts of The Knight of the Cart to earlier sources, there is no earlier source for the love triangle. So, if the author is speaking the truth about getting the story from the countess, then it's possible and plausible that the countess came up with that piece of it on her own, and suggested that Chrétien work the romance into the plot.

In other words, he went to tell the story of King Arthur and Countess Marie was like, YOU SHOULD MAKE LANCE AND GWEN GET TOGETHER I TOTES SHIP THEM :D so he did! --thereby proving once again that everything is fandom. :D

I have a backlog of book reviews that I wrote while I was on hiatus! So I am going to go in random order and they will basically be nonsensical. Also now that I'm back I'm going to start writing more reviews on a regular basis, so be forewarned. Also, kindly note the ~new book review~ format. I am cleaning up my act! It is musty and full of cobwebs.

Title: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake
Author: Sarah MacLean
Genre: Regency Romance
How I got it: personal purchase
Where to buy it: From your local indie bookstore; from Powells; from the Book Depository.
In a nutshell: Our Hero's family gains an extra member when a spirited long-lost sister comes to town; his only hope for introducing her into good society and making her the belle of the haut ton is to rely on the patronage of Our Heroine, whose good breeding and spotless reputation will smooth over any scandal.

Little does he know that, armed with her new list of Nine Ways To Become a Spunky Heroine In A Sexist Society, she's chosen just this moment to throw off her bonnet and have a little fun!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Do the characters make you want to rip your own face off? No! At least not until well into the book, and then it's just the hero, mainly, which I will talk about!

Does the plot make sense? Yes! - but there's a bit of a trade-off in pacing due to the hero and heroine's reluctance to get together at the defiance of general logic.

Is the prose abysmal? Not at all! It's charming and light and quite well-written, very much in the best Regency romance pastiche style-- until you get to the any of the numerous sex scenes, wherein the writing suddenly becomes quite flowery, overly euphemistic, and very heavy on the heaving bosoms. But those sections were all very tongue-in-cheek, so it didn't really bother me. (To be fair, the internet and the intended audience will tell you that Sarah MacLean's sex scenes are smoking hot, so I am in the minority here.)

Does it end on a cliffhanger only designed to make you buy more books? No, but it did make me want to read the sequels. There is a definite setup for a plot that doesn't show up again til the third book in the series, I believe, and that's the one you'll want to get your mits on.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Verdict: I really enjoyed this book. I found all of the characters, bar the hero, to be exceptionally engaging and endearing, and not in the odious way where the author keeps trying to show you family bonds by way of having the peripheral characters constantly telling the heroine and hero how they need to get together. This book had a lot of family conflict that felt very natural and well-handled, and by the end of it I really wanted to read the rest of the books in the series to find out what happens next to all of the other members of the cast.

Wanting to follow the family is almost unheard of for me regarding romances--in fact I generally tend to stay away from series romances for just this reason. But Nine Rules is perfectly fine as a standalone, and it's testament to the light, humorous, warm qualities of MacLean's writing and characterization that I was left wanting more.

However, I did have a ton of problems with the progression of the relationship between the two main characters, specifically with the fact that our hero more or less becomes an insensitive prick as the novel progresses.

Quibbles: Warning: book spoilers below the cut. semi-adult language ahead as well!

( wow, we have got to stop almost-having public sex!Collapse )

I am making it sound like I hated this book. I actually really enjoyed it, apart from the sex scenes, which were far better than a lot of romance writing but still ridiculously cheesily euphemistic, with lots of "stroking tongues" and the like.

I think my biggest problem overall, especially regarding the hero and the tropes off which MacLean is building, is that this feels like a much better, but equally self-indulgent, version of the novel I wrote when I was 17 and voraciously reading every Georgette Heyer I could get my hands on. This novel doesn't even try not to go straight down the list of Heyer Hero attributes.

Seriously, I could make a bingo card. The prototypical Heyer hero:

• always wears polished Hessian boots
  
• is ridiculously skilled at everything, especially curricle-driving and gambling
  
• always has horses that are better than everybody else's in London's (except, presumably, the other Heyer heroes; I always wonder if there's a universe where they all meet each other and then implode because NONE OF THEM CAN BE THE BEST)
  
• has a great and manly loathing for the poetry of Lord Byron
  
• is always manfully attired in perfectly styled cravats
  
• turns up his nose at anything foppish or dandyish, because fops are totally queer and he is a manfully restrained man's man, a diamond of the first water, a Corinthian of the ton

So, Sarah McLean totally has all of this down with her hero, he is a by-the-book Heyer standard, except for how he is also an asshole. He tries to apologize for much of his asshole behavior, but he does so in ways that seem to indicate he is just going to continue being an asshole, and isn't really going to change. So I keep being reminded of all the Heyer heroes (okay, really just Mr. Beaumaris from Arabella, because he is just dskj;j;s;sdkdfjasdjklssfsdfsad he is the Nonpareil, all right) and thinking:

YOU, SIR, ARE NO NONPAREIL.

______________

P.S. The questions in my general run-down of the book were provided me by two_if_by_sea when asked what primary things she wanted to know about a book. (She also wanted to know, on a scale of one to Orson Scott Card, how many babies were in the book. Answer: none!) What primary things do you want to know about a book? Let me know!

Aja: I JUST BOUGHT A ZOMBIE T-SHIRT FROM THINKGEEK
Aja: i really like zombies :(
Aja: i will wear it with my TEAM ZOMBIE PIN THAT I GOT AT THE BOOK BLOGGER CON
Aja: maybe on the day Zombies vs Unicorns is released! MAYBE I WILL STAND OUTSIDE BARNES AND NOBLES EXCITEDLY
Aja: GLARING AT ANYONE WHO APPEARS TO BE TEAM UNICORN
Cathy: a;lsfdkja
Cathy: ~is team unicorn then~
Cathy: just to be contrary
Aja: >:E
Aja: BUT CATHY
Aja: ( UNICORNS ARE POWERLESS TO STOP THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSECollapse )


we are at an impasse.



eta: WHEN THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE HITS YOU ARE ALL FIRED >:O

hello, all! the list of books i have read this spring and need to review has been getting longer and longer so in an effort to purge myself of this one of many sins, my Riesling-soaked brain and I are taking pen to hand and attempting to write about them all in one fell swoop! -- Not to be confused with one fallen swoop, fell swoop's disgraced step-cousin. (I have been reading romances; the influence is obvious.)

Unless otherwise noted I ordered all of these books through my local indiebound bookstore or occasionally picked them up at B&N on a shameful shopping splurge.

MY LIST IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER IS LIKE SO:

• ( Salt & Silver, a modern paranormal romance by Anna Katharine:Collapse )
  
  
• ( Fade by Lisa McMann - YA urban fantasy, 2nd in the Dreamcatcher TrilogyCollapse )
  
  
• ( The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, epic literary fantasyCollapse )
  
  
• ( The Reckoning by Kelley Armstrong, YA urban fantasy, concluding the Darkest Powers trilogy (spoilers abound)Collapse )
  
  
• ( Zuko's Story: the Prequel to Avatar, the Last Airbender, by Alison Wilgus, Dave Roman, & Nina Matsumoto, manga-style graphic novel & epic fantasy franchise tie-inCollapse )
  
  
• ( Think of a Number by John Verdon, mystery/suspenseCollapse )
  
  
• ( Mistwood by Lea Cypess, YA fantasy (spoilerssssss)Collapse )
  
  Other books I've read lately: the first 2 books in the Song of the Lioness quartet, Cover Her Face by P.D. James, Ice by Sarah Beth Durst (I think i will just never buy any modernization of a fairy tale where a polar bear stalks a girl from birth and climbs into BED with her, just. NO WHAT NO; also i seriously want a story where the guy/bear/wolf/mancub/whatever who's been stalking his destined whatever from birth finally gets to talk to her and then realizes that THEY HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON AND HE DOESN'T EVEN REALLY LIKE HER THAT MUCH, god), White Cat by Holly Black (A++!).
  
  Also, the other day I was in Barnes & Noble and it just hit me out of the blue that they shelve "Romance" in the VERY BACK OF THE STORE across from the cookbooks & self-help, miles away from all the other fiction sections, like some kind of shameful stepcousin: you have to let it sleep in your house, but you really only have space in the attic, that's okay, right?
  
  And along with this lightning bolt came the instant reaction: SCREW THIS. I WILL READ ROMANCE. So I did. Which means shortly to come I will have ROMANCE REVIEWS, yay. including Wicked all Day by Liz Carlyle, A Lady's Guide to Improper Behavior by Suzanne Enoch, Monkey Business by Sarah Mlynowski, and Proof by Seduction by Courtney Milan. Hurrah!
  
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