![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Suddenly, spooky season!
Title: Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children Book 5)
Author: Seanan McGuire
Published: Tor, 2020
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 205
Total Page Count: 334,695
Text Number: 1179
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is one of the present-timeline books, following Jack and the Moors after the events of Every Heart a Doorway. I love this setting, and there's always the hope that an outside view will bring new insight. But the present-timeline books are consistently weaker, cluttered with too much plot for a novella. There's not enough space to fully develop the relationships between the visitors and this inimical world, or the meta-examination of the relationship between the wayward children, portal worlds in general, and their particular worlds in specific. The clutter also simplifies the cast to their most achingly well-intended diversity bingo characteristics and renders Jack's dialog stilted (maybe this last has always been present in the hammy elements of the Moors? I can't remember). It's more coherent than Beneath the Sugar Sky, so I hope the present-timeline books are improving. But this still isn't one of the good Wayward books, despite that I was primed to like it.
Title: The Book of Werewolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition
Author: Sabine Baring-Gould
Published: 1865
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 165
Total Page Count: 334,860
Text Number: 1180
Read Because: werewolves!, honestly this has been on my TBR for a decade, read through Global Grey Ebooks/Gutenberg
Review: A nonfiction overview that attributes werewolves not to magical transformation but to insanity and violence which convinces individuals that they've become beasts and/or is so monstrous that it's described in inhuman terms. It holds together as an argument but not especially well as a book. I wish it asked why wolves in particular reoccur as a symbol of the dehumanized man; it shows its age in arguments such as "obviously, they weren't transforming—they were just possessed, but the prevalence of baptisms has since solved that problem"; the second half covers infamous or interesting murders, notably multiple chapters on Gilles de Rais, and while these cases are suitably monstrous they aren't, as far as I know or the text acknowledges, attributed to or framed in the language of werewolves.
But these issues don't impede the text's baseline readability. It's approachable, short, engaging. The breadth of research is impressive given that this was published in 1865. And insofar as it's one of the classic werewolf texts, its holds up—not for being especially good, but for being satisfying: the obvious, diverse love of the subject matter from ancient Norse mythology to modern folklore; the reasonable skepticism that wraps back around to a macabre and borderline-unjustified (in context, that is) fascination with monstrous acts. It feels right, regardless of objective quality.
Title: A Phantom Lover
Author: Vernon Lee aka Violet Paget
Published: 1886
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 100
Total Page Count: 334,960
Text Number: 1181
Read Because: recommended here, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library but it's also available through Project Gutenberg
Review: A portrait artist recounts his efforts to paint an unlikely lady whose distant affect is broken only by her singular, unusual obsession. This reminds me of Clemence Housman's The Were-Wolf in that queer women—even if operating through male names or male characters—write the most convincing portrayals of women who fascinate despite that/because they're not "traditionally attractive," women who are strange, monstrous, unfriendly—and utterly compelling. The subject of this novella looks past the narrator, past the reader, and leads our gaze. She's heartless and smug and playful, and engages gothic tropes with a devious delight. The early-autumn atmosphere is similarly indulgent; the ending is overlarge and borderline silly, but that's also true of a lot of gothics and I forgive it. This was a great introduction to Lee/Paget's work, and I look forward to reading more.
Title: Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children Book 5)
Author: Seanan McGuire
Published: Tor, 2020
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 205
Total Page Count: 334,695
Text Number: 1179
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is one of the present-timeline books, following Jack and the Moors after the events of Every Heart a Doorway. I love this setting, and there's always the hope that an outside view will bring new insight. But the present-timeline books are consistently weaker, cluttered with too much plot for a novella. There's not enough space to fully develop the relationships between the visitors and this inimical world, or the meta-examination of the relationship between the wayward children, portal worlds in general, and their particular worlds in specific. The clutter also simplifies the cast to their most achingly well-intended diversity bingo characteristics and renders Jack's dialog stilted (maybe this last has always been present in the hammy elements of the Moors? I can't remember). It's more coherent than Beneath the Sugar Sky, so I hope the present-timeline books are improving. But this still isn't one of the good Wayward books, despite that I was primed to like it.
Title: The Book of Werewolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition
Author: Sabine Baring-Gould
Published: 1865
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 165
Total Page Count: 334,860
Text Number: 1180
Read Because: werewolves!, honestly this has been on my TBR for a decade, read through Global Grey Ebooks/Gutenberg
Review: A nonfiction overview that attributes werewolves not to magical transformation but to insanity and violence which convinces individuals that they've become beasts and/or is so monstrous that it's described in inhuman terms. It holds together as an argument but not especially well as a book. I wish it asked why wolves in particular reoccur as a symbol of the dehumanized man; it shows its age in arguments such as "obviously, they weren't transforming—they were just possessed, but the prevalence of baptisms has since solved that problem"; the second half covers infamous or interesting murders, notably multiple chapters on Gilles de Rais, and while these cases are suitably monstrous they aren't, as far as I know or the text acknowledges, attributed to or framed in the language of werewolves.
But these issues don't impede the text's baseline readability. It's approachable, short, engaging. The breadth of research is impressive given that this was published in 1865. And insofar as it's one of the classic werewolf texts, its holds up—not for being especially good, but for being satisfying: the obvious, diverse love of the subject matter from ancient Norse mythology to modern folklore; the reasonable skepticism that wraps back around to a macabre and borderline-unjustified (in context, that is) fascination with monstrous acts. It feels right, regardless of objective quality.
Title: A Phantom Lover
Author: Vernon Lee aka Violet Paget
Published: 1886
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 100
Total Page Count: 334,960
Text Number: 1181
Read Because: recommended here, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library but it's also available through Project Gutenberg
Review: A portrait artist recounts his efforts to paint an unlikely lady whose distant affect is broken only by her singular, unusual obsession. This reminds me of Clemence Housman's The Were-Wolf in that queer women—even if operating through male names or male characters—write the most convincing portrayals of women who fascinate despite that/because they're not "traditionally attractive," women who are strange, monstrous, unfriendly—and utterly compelling. The subject of this novella looks past the narrator, past the reader, and leads our gaze. She's heartless and smug and playful, and engages gothic tropes with a devious delight. The early-autumn atmosphere is similarly indulgent; the ending is overlarge and borderline silly, but that's also true of a lot of gothics and I forgive it. This was a great introduction to Lee/Paget's work, and I look forward to reading more.
