The most recent LJ stuff, brilliantly satirized here by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marcelo (or is it satire?), has helped push me to move more towards Dreamwidth. Also, my LJ list has been broken for a while, in the sense that I haven’t been adding anyone back or going beyond a tight filter because I got overwhelmed and neurotic, and I’d like to start again.
What this means for this journal on LJ: initially, I’m consolidating comments on DW, which I hope will help the conversations. I love comments, especially on stories! I really hope everyone comments at DW, or on the AO3!
As for my reading list: I’ll be trying to read new people as well as old friends via starting fresh on DW, so if you like, please do find me on DW, where I’m stillrivkat. If you crosspost to DW, I’ll be reading you there. (If I miss you, sorry, just let me know! I’m sure I’ve dropped more than a few balls in the transition.) If you don’t crosspost but don’t have locked entries (that I can see) I will probably follow you as a feed. For non-crossposting journals with locked entries, I will probably try tracking them. Suggestions welcome, of course.
Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, and Meljean Brook, Must Love Hellhounds: Novellas that are, from what I know, fairly representative, though Harris is writing in some freaky multiverse where mercenaries escort thieves to Hell, which is a planet, on which Amelia Earheart has accidentally been imprisoned, along with Narcissus—it seemed actually much more my style than Sookie Stackhouse. Singh writes about angels with what seemed like a fairly standard strong-woman-meets-strong-man-and-attraction-is-immediate plot; Brook had a similar structure, though in her case the mythology was different (vampires and mystic weapons) and the male protagonist was blind, except that he could see through other people’s eyes. I bought the book for Andrews and wasn’t disappointed: this is a side romance from the Magic series between one of Kate’s friends and the were who’s courting her, and Andrews made the woman’s skittishness completely credible without making her either weak or dumb. Whetted my appetite for the next book in the series nicely.
Mike Carey et al. (including Colleen Doran at one point!), Lucifer, vols. 4-11: Further on the politics of angels, the apotheosis of the archangel Michael’s daughter Elaine at Lucifer’s hands, the rebellion of Lilith and her children the Lilim, the trials of Lilith’s daughter Mazikeen, and so on. It was pretty entertaining, though Lucifer remains such a cool character, always anticipating every other move, that even his final confrontation with God was a bit of a letdown, but then I guess it would probably have to be. I liked the idea of creating new universes where the only rule is not to worship—and I liked how the Basanos (spirits of tarot cards) tried to screw that up. I’m leaving an awful lot out, including a bunch of Norse mythology, but if you like battles to save the universe, this might work for you.
Rob Thurman, Moonshine: I read the first in the series and it hit enough of my kinks (smart protective older brother will do anything to take care of mystically targeted/powered, violent and emo younger brother) for me to get the second, but I think I’m done now. The weakness of the first—loading up on the POV character’s angst and recriminations before I got to know him well enough to be on his side—was only increased in the second volume. His love interest is a total blank, existing only to (1) love him unconditionally, for reasons that are not apparent to me, and (2) get kidnapped so that he can angst about her. At the very end of the book, Thurman does something interesting with this, triggering an actual emotional reaction in me, but it was too late. I think there’s something here about switching media; the characters she set up could work very well audiovisually, where single perfect tears can substitute for pages’ worth of internal reflection, so you can get away with piling on the plot-generated angst earlier on (also I think visual characters induce emotional engagement after a relatively shorter period with them). But print strategies need to be different, either in revealing backstory or in the amount of time initially spent on how worthless the main character thinks he is. I’m just going to put my hopes in Sarah Rees Brennan for the urban fantasy brother angstfest I really want to read next.
Laurell Hamilton, Flirt: Anita Blake, still sleeping with a lot of guys, still recognized as Super Special Not Like Any Other Woman by all the guys with whom she interacts, not all of whom are sleeping with her (she doesn’t do a lot of interacting with other women; maybe the guys don’t either, which puts a new face on their claims that they’ve never met any woman like her). This novella has her forced to raise a zombie she really doesn’t want to raise. There wasn’t a lot of sex to skim over, which is of the good, but I am really tired of the misogyny infecting Hamilton’s treatment of any woman not Anita. Without that, the client’s desire to raise his explosion-killed wife could have been powerfully creepy. But instead the focus was all on how Anita’s men (called Brides at one point) were such big flirts, just like the dead wife had been (except that she was a fur-fucker who tried to get shapeshifters to sleep with her and treated them like whores, so she was actually worthless, not like Anita's men, but kind of like the female client who wanted Anita to raise her dead husband so she could take revenge on his reanimated body, but Anita declined because the woman was a bitch who’d deserved being married to a cheater who’d loved another woman—God forbid there be another woman who’s not a bitch-whore in one of these).
Remember Ronnie? I liked her before she got jealous-bitchified as well—actually, I still like her. I’m thankful I didn’t pay for this book, even though Hamilton has dealt with many of her non-misogynistic stylistic excesses. Weirdly, the latest Merry Gentry book, which I got seventy pages into before getting too bored to continue, seems to have actual female characters other than Merry, who need not be torn down for Merry to feel okay. My current working hypothesis is that because they all acknowledge that Merry is a princess/queen of Fae, they are not a threat to her in the way that all other women seem to be to Anita.
marcelo (or is it satire?), has helped push me to move more towards Dreamwidth. Also, my LJ list has been broken for a while, in the sense that I haven’t been adding anyone back or going beyond a tight filter because I got overwhelmed and neurotic, and I’d like to start again. What this means for this journal on LJ: initially, I’m consolidating comments on DW, which I hope will help the conversations. I love comments, especially on stories! I really hope everyone comments at DW, or on the AO3!
As for my reading list: I’ll be trying to read new people as well as old friends via starting fresh on DW, so if you like, please do find me on DW, where I’m still
rivkat. If you crosspost to DW, I’ll be reading you there. (If I miss you, sorry, just let me know! I’m sure I’ve dropped more than a few balls in the transition.) If you don’t crosspost but don’t have locked entries (that I can see) I will probably follow you as a feed. For non-crossposting journals with locked entries, I will probably try tracking them. Suggestions welcome, of course.Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, and Meljean Brook, Must Love Hellhounds: Novellas that are, from what I know, fairly representative, though Harris is writing in some freaky multiverse where mercenaries escort thieves to Hell, which is a planet, on which Amelia Earheart has accidentally been imprisoned, along with Narcissus—it seemed actually much more my style than Sookie Stackhouse. Singh writes about angels with what seemed like a fairly standard strong-woman-meets-strong-man-and-attraction-is-immediate plot; Brook had a similar structure, though in her case the mythology was different (vampires and mystic weapons) and the male protagonist was blind, except that he could see through other people’s eyes. I bought the book for Andrews and wasn’t disappointed: this is a side romance from the Magic series between one of Kate’s friends and the were who’s courting her, and Andrews made the woman’s skittishness completely credible without making her either weak or dumb. Whetted my appetite for the next book in the series nicely.
Mike Carey et al. (including Colleen Doran at one point!), Lucifer, vols. 4-11: Further on the politics of angels, the apotheosis of the archangel Michael’s daughter Elaine at Lucifer’s hands, the rebellion of Lilith and her children the Lilim, the trials of Lilith’s daughter Mazikeen, and so on. It was pretty entertaining, though Lucifer remains such a cool character, always anticipating every other move, that even his final confrontation with God was a bit of a letdown, but then I guess it would probably have to be. I liked the idea of creating new universes where the only rule is not to worship—and I liked how the Basanos (spirits of tarot cards) tried to screw that up. I’m leaving an awful lot out, including a bunch of Norse mythology, but if you like battles to save the universe, this might work for you.
Rob Thurman, Moonshine: I read the first in the series and it hit enough of my kinks (smart protective older brother will do anything to take care of mystically targeted/powered, violent and emo younger brother) for me to get the second, but I think I’m done now. The weakness of the first—loading up on the POV character’s angst and recriminations before I got to know him well enough to be on his side—was only increased in the second volume. His love interest is a total blank, existing only to (1) love him unconditionally, for reasons that are not apparent to me, and (2) get kidnapped so that he can angst about her. At the very end of the book, Thurman does something interesting with this, triggering an actual emotional reaction in me, but it was too late. I think there’s something here about switching media; the characters she set up could work very well audiovisually, where single perfect tears can substitute for pages’ worth of internal reflection, so you can get away with piling on the plot-generated angst earlier on (also I think visual characters induce emotional engagement after a relatively shorter period with them). But print strategies need to be different, either in revealing backstory or in the amount of time initially spent on how worthless the main character thinks he is. I’m just going to put my hopes in Sarah Rees Brennan for the urban fantasy brother angstfest I really want to read next.
Laurell Hamilton, Flirt: Anita Blake, still sleeping with a lot of guys, still recognized as Super Special Not Like Any Other Woman by all the guys with whom she interacts, not all of whom are sleeping with her (she doesn’t do a lot of interacting with other women; maybe the guys don’t either, which puts a new face on their claims that they’ve never met any woman like her). This novella has her forced to raise a zombie she really doesn’t want to raise. There wasn’t a lot of sex to skim over, which is of the good, but I am really tired of the misogyny infecting Hamilton’s treatment of any woman not Anita. Without that, the client’s desire to raise his explosion-killed wife could have been powerfully creepy. But instead the focus was all on how Anita’s men (called Brides at one point) were such big flirts, just like the dead wife had been (except that she was a fur-fucker who tried to get shapeshifters to sleep with her and treated them like whores, so she was actually worthless, not like Anita's men, but kind of like the female client who wanted Anita to raise her dead husband so she could take revenge on his reanimated body, but Anita declined because the woman was a bitch who’d deserved being married to a cheater who’d loved another woman—God forbid there be another woman who’s not a bitch-whore in one of these).
Remember Ronnie? I liked her before she got jealous-bitchified as well—actually, I still like her. I’m thankful I didn’t pay for this book, even though Hamilton has dealt with many of her non-misogynistic stylistic excesses. Weirdly, the latest Merry Gentry book, which I got seventy pages into before getting too bored to continue, seems to have actual female characters other than Merry, who need not be torn down for Merry to feel okay. My current working hypothesis is that because they all acknowledge that Merry is a princess/queen of Fae, they are not a threat to her in the way that all other women seem to be to Anita.
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*waves cheerily*
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*wry grin*
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Re: *waves cheerily*
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It feels like a clean slate over here. I hope it grows and grows.
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:-D
:-D
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I adored it up through The Killing Dance, and thoroughly enjoyed Obsidian Butterfly, but after that I kind of lost interest in the series. I have no objection to steamy sex, but more and more it seemed that the plot was only 25% of the book and it was all about Anita's personal life. I liked Ronnie, too, back when she went jogging with Anita and was dating Louis.