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juushikaTitle: Sister Light, Sister Dark (Great Alta Book 1)
Author: Jane Yolen
Published: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy, 2016 (1988)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 250
Total Page Count: 223,595
Text Number: 711
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The origin story of a prophesied destroyer/savior to a society of female warriors. This is told via straight narration, but also through fictional folklore, ballads, myths, and via modern historical academic analysis, and that meta-narrative is the highlight of the book. It isn't always successful—the modern sections are an academic pastiche with a grating tone—but the cumulative effect functions to contextualize and deconstruct the otherwise unremarkable tropes as well as the story's feminist themes, creating a story about stories, about history, about cultural perceptions and mythic archetypes. The story underneath that structure is only okay—the chosen one is a tired trope, even when reinvented—but Yolen's balance of a private coming of age and a prophetic origin story has a pleasant rhythm. I didn't fall in love with this, and I'm not compelled to read the sequels (especially as I'm under the impression that the direct sequel tones down the meta-narrative), but I found this reasonably satisfying.
Title: Wicked Gentlemen
Author: Ginn Hale
Published: Blind Eye Books, 2007
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 225
Total Page Count: 223,820
Text Number: 712
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A missing woman brings together a clergyman/detective and a disgraced demonic descendant. As the premise implies, the worldbuilding here is indulgent and stylized, something like Fallen London-lite: otherworldly Prodigal and their demonic magics, the strict and corrupt church-cum-police force, a city with its propriety and dirty underbelly. The pair of protagonists almost live up to that; they're ultimately too nice, and their romance resolves too easily, but between them they offer a diverse, ambiguous view of their world. The mysteries that fuel the plot are only adequate, dependent on coincidence and fairly simplistic in fact, but with a moral ambiguity that echoes the worldbuilding. I wish this lived up to its potential (and had stronger editing, especially re: dialog), but it's fun.
Title: Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire Book 8)
Author: Naomi Novik
Narrator: Simon Vance
Published: Tantor Media, 2013
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 450
Total Page Count: 224,270
Text Number: 713
Read Because: continuing the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: En route to China, an accident leaves Laurence shipwrecked, with amnesia, in Japan. Amnesia is the most cliché of all possible tropes, but it achieves what it's meant to, resetting, and thus recognizing, Laurence's character growth; allowing him to fall in love, again, with Temeraire. It's ill-excused, manipulative, and effective. Politics and battles then transpire, and they integrate the disparate plot points and return the focus to Napoleon and the war at hand, while still engaging issues of ethics and dragon/human society. This is what a penultimate book should be, a coalescing and revisiting; and while it doesn't achieve that with great grace, I'll be damned if I didn't love it anyway.
Author: Jane Yolen
Published: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy, 2016 (1988)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 250
Total Page Count: 223,595
Text Number: 711
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The origin story of a prophesied destroyer/savior to a society of female warriors. This is told via straight narration, but also through fictional folklore, ballads, myths, and via modern historical academic analysis, and that meta-narrative is the highlight of the book. It isn't always successful—the modern sections are an academic pastiche with a grating tone—but the cumulative effect functions to contextualize and deconstruct the otherwise unremarkable tropes as well as the story's feminist themes, creating a story about stories, about history, about cultural perceptions and mythic archetypes. The story underneath that structure is only okay—the chosen one is a tired trope, even when reinvented—but Yolen's balance of a private coming of age and a prophetic origin story has a pleasant rhythm. I didn't fall in love with this, and I'm not compelled to read the sequels (especially as I'm under the impression that the direct sequel tones down the meta-narrative), but I found this reasonably satisfying.
Title: Wicked Gentlemen
Author: Ginn Hale
Published: Blind Eye Books, 2007
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 225
Total Page Count: 223,820
Text Number: 712
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A missing woman brings together a clergyman/detective and a disgraced demonic descendant. As the premise implies, the worldbuilding here is indulgent and stylized, something like Fallen London-lite: otherworldly Prodigal and their demonic magics, the strict and corrupt church-cum-police force, a city with its propriety and dirty underbelly. The pair of protagonists almost live up to that; they're ultimately too nice, and their romance resolves too easily, but between them they offer a diverse, ambiguous view of their world. The mysteries that fuel the plot are only adequate, dependent on coincidence and fairly simplistic in fact, but with a moral ambiguity that echoes the worldbuilding. I wish this lived up to its potential (and had stronger editing, especially re: dialog), but it's fun.
Title: Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire Book 8)
Author: Naomi Novik
Narrator: Simon Vance
Published: Tantor Media, 2013
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 450
Total Page Count: 224,270
Text Number: 713
Read Because: continuing the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: En route to China, an accident leaves Laurence shipwrecked, with amnesia, in Japan. Amnesia is the most cliché of all possible tropes, but it achieves what it's meant to, resetting, and thus recognizing, Laurence's character growth; allowing him to fall in love, again, with Temeraire. It's ill-excused, manipulative, and effective. Politics and battles then transpire, and they integrate the disparate plot points and return the focus to Napoleon and the war at hand, while still engaging issues of ethics and dragon/human society. This is what a penultimate book should be, a coalescing and revisiting; and while it doesn't achieve that with great grace, I'll be damned if I didn't love it anyway.
