Monthly Archives: January 2019

Book Review: Silence Fallen

by

2

silence_fallen_layout.inddSilence Fallen
by Patricia Briggs
Urban Fantasy
371 pages
Published 2017

Silence Fallen is #10 in the Mercy Briggs series, and honestly, they’ve started to get a bit boring. Mercy gets into trouble. Mercy gets into SPECIAL trouble that werewolves would have a hard time with, but she’s special because she’s a coyote shifter, and her abilities give her an edge over the pure strength of werewolves! Mercy antagonizes enemies, escapes, finds her way home. Gets revenge. That’s basically the plot of almost every one of these books. I generally like them, but this one in particular fell short. Maybe it’s because I haven’t read them in a while, but it just lacked the urgency of some of her other adventures.

One thing that really bothered me was the big bad vampire in the beginning – who was creepy as ALL get out – turned out to not be that bad, I guess? They let themselves get used by him to fulfill a plot and weren’t mad about it? I would have expected Mercy’s pack to take the dude down, no matter the consequences, but that wasn’t what they decided to do.

And then, very frustratingly, they revealed something in the last ten pages or so that made me go re-read EVERY SCENE with a certain character and yep, there was no foreshadowing of that AT ALL. And there should have been. That’s something the reader should be able to guess, because the viewpoint character knows about it. And it’s absolutely not hinted at. So that’s frustrating, and changes the meaning of several scenes.

So I’m very meh on this one. I don’t know if I’ll continue this series. Sometimes series just overdo their lifespan. This should have been wrapped up and moved on to other characters some time ago. The second series in this world, Alpha and Omega, is still pretty good. But maybe it’s time to set Mercy aside. Do a series focused on the fae, or the vampires or something.

From the cover of Silence Fallen:

In the #1 New York Times bestselling Mercy Thompson novels, the coyote shapeshifter has found her voice in the werewolf pack. But when Mercy’s bond with the pack – and her mate – is broken, she’ll learn what it truly means to be alone.

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against Alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes – only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in a foreign country.

Unable to contact Adam through their mate bond, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a war between vampires and werewolves, and between werewolves and werewolves. And in the heart of the city of Prague, old ghosts rise…

Looking Forward – 2019 Goals

by

6

Well! 2019 promises to be a year of great change for me personally – my husband graduated from college in December, and went full time at his job at the beginning of the year. (Computer Science.) In April we’re planning to start the process to buy a house! So very soon, we’ll be moving, and we won’t have roommates anymore. (OH THANK HEAVENS.) With that in mind, I’m toning down my Goodreads goal slightly to 150 books this year, since the move will take a lot of my reading time. (And we have a two-week vacation planned later in the year.)

As for reading challenges, I’d like to do the 50 books in 50 states challenge, with a small twist – no straight white men. So a book set in each state of the US, while avoiding white male authors. (I made it straight white because there’s a few states – like Vermont – that it might be pretty difficult to find a non-white author in, but I should be able to find a queer white author writing there. I will be doing my best to avoid white authors entirely, though.)

My library is doing a reading challenge, but it’s only one challenge each month so that shouldn’t be hard to keep up with, and they’re all pretty easy tasks. For example, January is “Read A Book You’ve Been Meaning To Read” which is pretty much everything on my desk!

I’m planning to start the Dewey Decimal Challenge, but I’m not putting a time restraint on it. The Dewey Decimal Challenge is read a book for each category of the system – so each 10s place, I believe. I’ll make a page in the sidebar to keep track of it. I also need to make a page for the 50 states challenge and a page to keep track of my books about and by autistic people. I’m also planning to make a page to gather links to Chronic Illness books and posts. I could make a page for LGBT content, but that would be 75% of the fiction I read! I think using the tag is the better idea for that.

For the blog, I’m going to continue to try to post every day. I’d really like to get a short fiction series going on Sundays, I’m just having trouble writing the beginning of the story. I’d like to post more regularly on Instagram and Litsy, as well, I just keep forgetting about them! Lately I’ve been most active on Twitter. The Facebook mobile app changed and it’s a lot harder to post to my Facebook page from my phone, so that has just been getting the automated posts whenever I post here on the blog.

statsDecember was my best month ever, in raw views, and each month this last year was better than the last, except for the spike I had in July and August. I assume that’s related to people wasting time on the internet during the summer. I beat both summer months in December, though, so hopefully the growth will continue building! Maybe I’ll host a giveaway when I hit 1000 views in one month or something.

In more personal hopes for this year, my husband going full-time at his job means our insurance is changing and so is my doctor, which is actually a good thing. I’m going to be looking into a functional doctor (there’s a few in my area) who will be more willing to try other drugs for my thyroid and autoimmune disorders. I’d really like to kick these constant fatigue, insomnia, and digestive issues.

I’m also really looking forward to our wedding anniversary this year, we’re planning a trip to Toronto in early July to celebrate! I might simply take a short hiatus from the blog over those two weeks, if I don’t have enough of a backlog of entries built up. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

So those are my plans for this year. On Tuesday I’ll be talking about some of my most anticipated releases this year, so stay tuned!

Book Review: The Dreaming Stars

by

2

the dreaming starsThe Dreaming Stars
by Tim Pratt
Science Fiction
384 pages
Published September 2018

I don’t read a lot of hard sci-fi. It’s just not where my interests lie. But every once in a while, I do enjoy a good space opera. Firefly/Serenity (before I learned about the Confederate connection, dammit), Dark Matter, even the occasional episode of The Expanse. Tim Pratt has written a fantastic space opera in his Axiom series. (The Forbidden Stars should be coming out sometime in 2019.) The story started with The Wrong Stars and continues here.

First, the diversity is fantastic. The crew runs the gamut of genders, sexualities, ethnicities, and religions. Our two main characters, Captain Machedo and Elena, are both bisexual women, and the Captain is also demisexual. (One of the first things she does in this book is crash her own funeral being held by her ex-husband!) I enjoyed seeing Elena and Callie’s relationship continue to grow.

Second, the dialog is hilarious. The Captain and her ship’s AI are both smart alecks, and sarcasm and snappy comebacks abound.

The action is also very well-done; the physics of traveling through space aside, most of the science is feasible. All of the Axiom-tech is pretty far out, and some of the other science is….well it’s such a long shot that it only worked because it’s in a book, but it IS conceivable it could work.

This is one sci-fi series I will continue to watch for. (And I wonder how long before it gets optioned for TV?)

From the cover of The Dreaming Stars:

In the breathtaking sequel to The Wrong Stars, Tim Pratt brings you much closer to that ancient race of aliens, the Axiom, who will kill us all – when they wake up. 

In deep space, a swarm of nanoparticles threatens the colonies, transforming everything it meets into computronium – including the colonists. The crew of the White Raven investigate, and discover an Axiom facility filled with aliens, hibernating while their minds roam a vast virtual reality. The treacherous Sebastien wakes up, claiming his altered brain architecture can help the crew deactivate the swarm – from inside the Axiom simulation. To protect humanity, beleaguered Captain Callie Machedo must trust him, but if Sebastien still plans to dominate the universe using Axiom tech, they could be in for a whole galaxy of trouble.

Friday 56 – The Dreaming Stars

by

11

the dreaming starsThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from The Dreaming Stars by Tim Pratt, the sequel to The Wrong Stars that I read earlier this year. Both books are sci-fi with fantastic minority representation. The following is an exchange between the ship’s AI and the ship’s captain:

“This is a spaceship, not a sailboat. Squishy organic brains can’t be trusted in such circumstances.”

“Squishy organic bodies have more fun, though.”

“Pfft,” Shall said. “Have fun crudely manipulating your nervous system and brain chemistry through tactile physical inputs. If you’re lucky you might vaguely approximate the kind of transcendent pleasure I can experience at will just by altering my own sensorium.”

“Oh, Shall. There’s nothing wrong with masturbation, but I’ve always had more fun collaborating.”

“You have no idea what goes on in the machine-intelligence-only parts of the Tangle, do you?”

Book Review: Confessions of the Fox

by

0

confessions of the foxConfessions of the Fox
by Jordy Rosenberg
Historical Fiction/Contemporary Fiction
329 pages
Published June 2018

Confessions of the Fox is an #ownvoices novel – written by a trans author, about a trans professor writing about a manuscript about a trans eighteenth-century thief. In that way, it’s quite unique, and valuable for its observations about being trans.

But story-wise – it drug on about a hundred pages too long, got bogged down by the footnotes that tell the professor’s story, and ultimately went off on some conspiracy tangent that added nothing to the plot. It got weird. I think the book would have been better if it had just been Jack Sheppard’s story, without the “professor-annotating-the-manuscript” framework built around it.

Jack is a very compelling character, but we keep getting distracted from his story by the professor’s career and love life problems, so it feels very fragmented. I did enjoy the colorful, metaphorical language constantly being used to talk about sex, though! Make no mistake, this is a dirty book. It’s mostly dirty in the most flowery of terms, so it’s more entertaining than titillating, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re thinking of gifting it to someone!

Ultimately, I wish I’d skipped it. I know there are people that like the book-within-a-book framework, and I do sometimes, but I feel like it distracted from the story I really wanted to read, here.

From the cover of Confessions of the Fox:

Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess were the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of eighteenth-century London. Yet no one knows the true story; their confessions have never been found.

Until now. Reeling from heartbreak, a scholar named Dr. Voth discovers a long-lost manuscript – a gender-defying exposé of jack and Bess’s adventures. Dated 1724, the book depicts a London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with the city’s newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of the Plague abound. Jack – a transgender carpenter’s apprentice – has fled his master’s house to become a legendary prison-break artist, and Bess has escaped the draining of the fenlands to become a revolutionary.

Is Confessions of the Fox an authentic autobiography or a hoax? Dr. Voth obsessively annotates the manuscript, desperate to find the answer. As he is drawn deeper into Jack and Bess’s tale of underworld resistance and gender transformation, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined – and only a miracle will save them all.

Confessions of the Fox is, at once, a work of speculative historical fiction, a soaring love story, a puzzling mystery, an electrifying tale of adventure and suspense, and an unabashed celebration of sex and sexuality. Writing with the narrative mastery of Sarah Waters and the playful imagination of Nabokov, Jordy Rosenberg is an audacious storyteller of extraordinary talent.

Library Loot Wednesday

by

1

 

I picked up two nonfiction books on chronic illness this week. Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness: How to stay sane and live one step ahead of your symptoms and Are You Tired and Wired? Your Proven 30-day Program for Overcoming Adrenal Fatigue and Feeling Fantastic Again.

endless water starless skyOn my second visit to the library this week, I picked up the sequel to Bright Smoke, Cold Fire, Endless Water, Starless Sky. Really excited to read it, as I LOVED the first one. Rosamund Hodge is amazing.