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missroserosePosting late again - between Sculpt in the morning, errand-running all afternoon, and teaching class in the evening, my Wednesday filled up quickly. Today I'm much less busy, but one of the squat exercises from yesterday did a number on my right hamstring. Luckily I have today off, so I'll forego the biking and hope it's just a mild strain...cross your fingers for me?
What I just finished reading
Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho. I wanted something lighthearted and fluffy, and a story of romance and magical intrigues set in Regency England seemed likely to fit the bill. I absolutely adored Cho's novella The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, especially its matter-of-fact portrayal of life as an ethnic minority in 1920s England and its strongly-drawn protagonist.
I'm pleased that I got some of the same here; the two protagonists are both ethnic minorities, and the narrative explores the fraught history and circumstances thoroughly while managing not to fall into maudlin character-defined-by-their-hardships territory. Unfortunately, the greater narrative is somewhat less well-drawn; the middle act in particular, where much of the juicy intrigue happens, feels rather jumbled and unfocused, with many excellent opportunities for worldbuilding ignored and a general feeling of narrative Calvinball. This isn't precisely helped by Zacharias being a frustratingly passive main character; he keeps hearing about these various machinations being fomented against him, but he never seems to do anything about it. By midway through the book I was genuinely wondering at the source of his confidence, and whether he was a champion minimizer or in active denial.
Luckily, things pick up towards the end, and the denouement nicely ties up all the loose ends. My one other complaint is that the two main characters are both so emotionally closed-off that, while I could see thow they would admire each other, I wasn't really buying the romantic angle; they simply hadn't grown emotionally close enough for the sort of love they were professing. I feel like that might have been better saved for a sequel, when the two of them have spent some time together that isn't taken up with politicking or putting out magical brushfires. Still, I enjoyed the story on the whole, and I hope Zen Cho continues to write.
What I'm currently reading
The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Still enjoying this trek, even if I'm not sure where it's all going. At one point, one of the characters talks about how he's reading Don Quixote, and that set off a ping of recognition in my brain - I've never read the whole thing, but I seem to remember that it's written in much the same style, a string of anecdotes that combine to (in theory) produce a greater narrative. The atmosphere here continues to be all-encompassing; I swear there are times reading it when I can feel myself in the Sonoran desert again.
What I plan to read next
So many options! I'm leaning towards a genre trilogy of some sort; I've been hearing from all sides that Leckie's Ancillary books are amazing, butivy recommends Jemisin's The Broken Earth series. I may do the latter in audiobook form and the former on paper (the Ancillary audiobooks are notoriously awful); I'd taken a break from audiobooks while I was mainlining The Adventure Zone, but I've listened through their entire first campaign. (How did a podcast of three nerds and their dad playing Dungeons & Dragons make me cry. How.) So, as usual, we'll see!
What I just finished reading
Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho. I wanted something lighthearted and fluffy, and a story of romance and magical intrigues set in Regency England seemed likely to fit the bill. I absolutely adored Cho's novella The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, especially its matter-of-fact portrayal of life as an ethnic minority in 1920s England and its strongly-drawn protagonist.
I'm pleased that I got some of the same here; the two protagonists are both ethnic minorities, and the narrative explores the fraught history and circumstances thoroughly while managing not to fall into maudlin character-defined-by-their-hardships territory. Unfortunately, the greater narrative is somewhat less well-drawn; the middle act in particular, where much of the juicy intrigue happens, feels rather jumbled and unfocused, with many excellent opportunities for worldbuilding ignored and a general feeling of narrative Calvinball. This isn't precisely helped by Zacharias being a frustratingly passive main character; he keeps hearing about these various machinations being fomented against him, but he never seems to do anything about it. By midway through the book I was genuinely wondering at the source of his confidence, and whether he was a champion minimizer or in active denial.
Luckily, things pick up towards the end, and the denouement nicely ties up all the loose ends. My one other complaint is that the two main characters are both so emotionally closed-off that, while I could see thow they would admire each other, I wasn't really buying the romantic angle; they simply hadn't grown emotionally close enough for the sort of love they were professing. I feel like that might have been better saved for a sequel, when the two of them have spent some time together that isn't taken up with politicking or putting out magical brushfires. Still, I enjoyed the story on the whole, and I hope Zen Cho continues to write.
What I'm currently reading
The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Still enjoying this trek, even if I'm not sure where it's all going. At one point, one of the characters talks about how he's reading Don Quixote, and that set off a ping of recognition in my brain - I've never read the whole thing, but I seem to remember that it's written in much the same style, a string of anecdotes that combine to (in theory) produce a greater narrative. The atmosphere here continues to be all-encompassing; I swear there are times reading it when I can feel myself in the Sonoran desert again.
What I plan to read next
So many options! I'm leaning towards a genre trilogy of some sort; I've been hearing from all sides that Leckie's Ancillary books are amazing, but
ivy recommends Jemisin's The Broken Earth series. I may do the latter in audiobook form and the former on paper (the Ancillary audiobooks are notoriously awful); I'd taken a break from audiobooks while I was mainlining The Adventure Zone, but I've listened through their entire first campaign. (How did a podcast of three nerds and their dad playing Dungeons & Dragons make me cry. How.) So, as usual, we'll see!
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Date: 2017-09-14 06:10 pm (UTC)