Midweek Reading Meme Thing

[osprey_archer]

What I've Just Finished Reading

Mary Stewart's Rose Cottage, which I enjoyed very much. It's a sweet, gentle book, set in a charming English village in 1947; World War II is a shadow in the background, but everyone is moving on. A good comfort read.

I also finished Sarah Rees Brennan's Unmade (FINALLY). This book is kind of a mess, starting with the fact that the heroine is magically bound to a guy, and they can exchange thoughts and emotions and it is, we are told, intrusive and unpleasant. So intrusive that the only time he ever intrudes on the narrative is when we're being told that the mind-bond is intrusive. Otherwise he disappears for chapters at a time, to the extent that I was always vaguely surprised when he popped up again.

The other characters are a bit more well-realized - I'm particularly partial to Kami's friend Angela - but a lot of that is holdover from the first book, which seemed much more solid. In fact, I think the first book in The Demon's Lexicon trilogy is the strongest, too.

I think Brennan would write more solid books generally focused instead on slice of life stuff, maybe with some magical realism as garnish. What she's really interested in and best at is the relationships between the characters and fun magical visuals, like the Goblin Market in The Demon's Lexicon. Her epic magical conflicts, in contrast, never feel quite real.

What I'm Reading Now

Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia.

What I Plan to Read Next

Some more Mary Stewart, probably. The library has The Ivy Tree and The Stormy Petrel. Oh! And I got Eva Ibbotson's Madensky Square for my birthday.

I also have a bunch more gulag books that I've been planning to read, so I'll probably dip into those soon.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

"What she's really interested in and best at is the relationships between the characters and fun magical visuals, like the Goblin Market in The Demon's Lexicon. Her epic magical conflicts, in contrast, never feel quite real."

Yes! well put. I felt the same way about the magical conflicts. I can't pin down why they have that vague sort of unanchored feeling but they do.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think it's because the stakes are supposedly huge - the wizards are going to take over ALL OF LONDON, or whatever - but the whole thing is also so quiet that no outsiders notice. There's no property damage or accidental civilian casualties or anything else to make this feel like a genuine attempt to take over rather than a game.

Also, the supposedly deadly evil wizards are remarkably bad at killing or even seriously injuring the plucky young kids who are their only foes. And when the plucky kids are injured, it never lasts: Jared is locked in a hole in the ground for a month and then magically tortured, but he recovers from this ghastly experience in less than a week.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

I think I'd love to read slice-of-life fantasy with few to no epic magical confrontations. Can you think of any?

(Lud-in-the-Mist has elements of this, but I left it at home to finish when I get back, so I don't know where it ends up)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

There's my perennial recommendation for Pamela Dean, particularly Tam Lin and Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. Frances M. Wood's Becoming Rosemary does something similar in 1790s America.

For secondary world fantasy, Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel is like this, particularly in the second half. I think this is why Crown Duel is my favorite of her books: like Brennan, she's better at the magical slice-of-life than the epic confrontations.

[ladyherenya]

A Fistful of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman is about a young woman dealing with unexpected powers and revolves around family dynamics.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Seconding this! I also very much enjoyed her book A Stir of Bones, although I think that's a bit heavier than A Fistful of Sky.

I always vaguely meant to read some of her other books, but somehow I never got around to it. Perhaps I should remedy this.

[ladyherenya]

I really liked The Silent Strength of Stones and Spirits That Walk In Shadow.

Disappointingly, my library doesn't have any of her books.

[ladyherenya]

I agree that Brennan probably would be very good at interesting slice of life. My reaction to Unmade was that I'd have preferred to read about the characters all just stuck (or maybe just on holiday) on a desert island somewhere, because I enjoyed the characters and their interactions a lot more than the plot.
I reread The Demon's Lexicon and The Demon's Surrender recently - I think those plots work fine, but it was the character interactions that pulled me back into those stories.

Mary Stewart! The Ivy Tree is one of my favourites.

Also, slightly-belated happy birthday. :)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

If the only magical element in the Unmade trilogy had been the mental connection between Kami and Jared, I think the books would have been in many ways much stronger.

I'll have to get The Ivy Tree next, then! Once I've gotten through this pile of books I need to return to the library. I used to be able to get all my books read on time, but now they all seem to go back overdue.

[lycoris.livejournal.com]

Oh what a shame - I'd love to read a book about somebody having a magic bond where the telepathy was creepy and intrusive and dealing with that. If you were in totally differently places and you kept getting snippets of what they were doing ... that would be fascinating.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Right? The weird thing is that the first book in the trilogy actually does this reasonably well: Kami has a bond with a different dude at that point, and there really is the sense that they're in constant communication, getting snippets of each others lives. They're so used to it that it's not creepy, exactly, but they're definitely very present for each other. So I'm not sure why the third book fails at this so signally.