You know, if I ever catch up with article revisions etc., I might finish a story.
Today in crowdsourcing: (1) Test the AO3’s revisions, which we hope and expect will mean performance improvements! (2) And/or transcribe historic menus so they can be searched!
Fumi Yoshinaga, Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, vols. 5 and 6: I’m still enjoying this AU Japan in which most of the men die from the Redface Plague and imperial intrigue is the order of the day, though I do have trouble with the nested flashback structure and also with telling people apart; I imagine if I knew more Japanese history, or even history of Japanese fashion, I’d be doing better, because the outfits do change with the period. (True story: saw Contagion on Saturday. I enjoyed it a great deal. I said to my husband after, "I wonder what happened to X [a character with a significant role in the film played by a famous actor]," and he said, "X died, don't you remember [full-fledged scene]?" Dead X is shown with X's face taking up most of the screen, but I still didn't recognize X. So I don't attribute my inability to distinguish characters to the artist in the slightest! I've read that areas of the brain associated with facial recognition can be recruited for other tasks, and I maintain that's what happened to me.) Vol. 6 includes more explicit acknowledgement of lesbianism, and (different) disturbing sexual situations, in part because the story is spending more time outside the Inner Chambers where the shogun’s men are isolated.
Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo: Lightweight, gentle fantasy of a modern but folklorish Africa (there are buses and cellphones, but what matters to the story is the village, home cooking, traveling merchants on pack animals, and Spider, along with other inhuman actors). The protagonist has left her glutton husband and ends up in possession of great power that can be wielded for good or ill, but the lessons from her experiences are not necessarily the ordinary ones. Might be fun to read to a kid.
Jim Butcher, Ghost Story: It’s due to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightgetsin that I was very sad that Marcone has no on-page appearances in this book, though he plays a background structural role. Anyway, Harry’s dead, but, offered the opportunity to go back to the realm of the living and do what he can to solve his murder in order to keep his friends from harm, he of course takes it. Much angsting (as a spirit, Harry can mostly just watch, which is tough on a guy used to sending out blasts of fire to defeat his enemies at will) and ghostly shenanigans ensue. The idea of Chicago, and the world in general, in serious chaos as the result of Harry’s execution of the entire Red Court is an interesting one, and Marcone had better be back in the next book, because he’s one of the people doing something about it.
Jack Kilborn (aka J.A. Konrath) & Blake Crouch, Serial: Free ebook novelette (there’s a more expensive extended version) about a hitchhiker who kills the people who pick her up and a driver who kills the people he picks up. The book begins with them respectively dispatching some victims in horrible ways, and then they meet and throw down. It’s certainly bloody; a little too much serial killer and not enough thriller for me.
Today in crowdsourcing: (1) Test the AO3’s revisions, which we hope and expect will mean performance improvements! (2) And/or transcribe historic menus so they can be searched!
Fumi Yoshinaga, Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, vols. 5 and 6: I’m still enjoying this AU Japan in which most of the men die from the Redface Plague and imperial intrigue is the order of the day, though I do have trouble with the nested flashback structure and also with telling people apart; I imagine if I knew more Japanese history, or even history of Japanese fashion, I’d be doing better, because the outfits do change with the period. (True story: saw Contagion on Saturday. I enjoyed it a great deal. I said to my husband after, "I wonder what happened to X [a character with a significant role in the film played by a famous actor]," and he said, "X died, don't you remember [full-fledged scene]?" Dead X is shown with X's face taking up most of the screen, but I still didn't recognize X. So I don't attribute my inability to distinguish characters to the artist in the slightest! I've read that areas of the brain associated with facial recognition can be recruited for other tasks, and I maintain that's what happened to me.) Vol. 6 includes more explicit acknowledgement of lesbianism, and (different) disturbing sexual situations, in part because the story is spending more time outside the Inner Chambers where the shogun’s men are isolated.
Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo: Lightweight, gentle fantasy of a modern but folklorish Africa (there are buses and cellphones, but what matters to the story is the village, home cooking, traveling merchants on pack animals, and Spider, along with other inhuman actors). The protagonist has left her glutton husband and ends up in possession of great power that can be wielded for good or ill, but the lessons from her experiences are not necessarily the ordinary ones. Might be fun to read to a kid.
Jim Butcher, Ghost Story: It’s due to
lightgetsin that I was very sad that Marcone has no on-page appearances in this book, though he plays a background structural role. Anyway, Harry’s dead, but, offered the opportunity to go back to the realm of the living and do what he can to solve his murder in order to keep his friends from harm, he of course takes it. Much angsting (as a spirit, Harry can mostly just watch, which is tough on a guy used to sending out blasts of fire to defeat his enemies at will) and ghostly shenanigans ensue. The idea of Chicago, and the world in general, in serious chaos as the result of Harry’s execution of the entire Red Court is an interesting one, and Marcone had better be back in the next book, because he’s one of the people doing something about it.Jack Kilborn (aka J.A. Konrath) & Blake Crouch, Serial: Free ebook novelette (there’s a more expensive extended version) about a hitchhiker who kills the people who pick her up and a driver who kills the people he picks up. The book begins with them respectively dispatching some victims in horrible ways, and then they meet and throw down. It’s certainly bloody; a little too much serial killer and not enough thriller for me.
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