(no subject)

[nilchance]

What I'm Reading
Audio: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Scott Lynch) in preparation for the next book in the Gentlemen Bastards series coming out in October. The narrator is hilarious because his voice for Locke is a dead ringer for Jack Sparrow, and the book involves pirates. (Black single mother badass pirate captain!) I'm really enjoying the story, which is pirates + heists + con artists over their heads + fantasy pantheons. I really love me some alternate mythology, guys, it is a thing.

E-book: The Shattering (Karen Healey), which is New Zealand YA thriller involving three teens investigating the suicides of their siblings, who (as it turns out) might not have been suicides at all. I haven't gotten too deep in this book yet, just 50 pages in, but it's good so far. Healey does an excellent job of humanizing characters that would be cliches in other works.

What I Just Finished
I finished Lunatic Fringe (Allison Moon), a lesbian werewolf story. I should have loved this book, because it involved lesbians and werewolves; two of my favorite things! And it's especially bitter because for the first hundred pages, I was really picking up what this book laid down. There was a feminist sorority with realistic depictions of mainstream feminism's failure to recognize trans* issues or intersectionality of race and gender! But then the whole thing derailed into the protagonist not being like Those Mean Feminists. Also there was surprise!fisting, which is like my least favorite kind of fisting.

What's Next
I'm thinking about reading Preacher, the graphic novel series. I read Crossed by the same writer and was Not Impressed, but Preacher involves supernatural horror in Texas and so I'm giving it a shot. As for audio, I'm probably going to read Hearts in Atlantis (King), finally, after saying I'm going to pick that up next. King is a reliably great storyteller with reliable failings, which draw me in and push me away in equal measure.

Also I'm writing again. So. That's pretty neat.

Comments

[realpestilence]

I read the first 3 Preacher books, a long time ago, and found them disturbing but interesting. Or is that interesting but disturbing? o.0


I can't remember if we've talked about Tanya Huff's Vicky Nelson series. Vampires, werewolves, strong female protagonist, het and slash, mysteries, etc.

[nilchance]

I am down with interesting/disturbing (inter-turbing?). Have you read the Lucifer series? Man, that was gorgeous/troubling.

We did! I am really interested in picking that up again, actually, since my tastes have changed a LOT since I last tried it. \o/

[thatyourefuse]

Preacher: I admired parts of it a great deal, but I've rarely read anything for which I and people like me were so clearly Not The Intended Audience. So, y'know, just as a datapoint.

[nilchance]

(I don't know why I didn't see this comment until just now. Sorry!)

Thank you, I appreciate the datapoint and I agree with you. It definitely feels like it's pointed away from me towards... I don't even know how to quantify the intended audience.

[thatyourefuse]

"Cisgendered male," I think, would be the starting point.