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timerippleYesterday I had Ravel’s Bolero stuck in my head and hummed it at work all afternoon.
The day before that, someone in my Korean class suggested watching dramas with Korean subs to practice reading. I decided to watch an episode of something I had already seen and thus did not need to actually watch again. While searching for something entirely different, I came across Big Bang re-enacting Coffee Prince. Well, that was an entertaining ten minutes, but a total failure for subtitle reading. Then I decided I just had to find something I had already seen and had absolutely no interest in re-watching.
Two episodes of Boys Before Flowers later... I’m not allowed to subtitle-watch anything with Lee Min-ho’s face in it. XD
In other news, now that I have a brand new stack of galleys, it’s time to post some reviews of old galleys!
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
Ismae’s life as a Handmaid of Death in medieval Brittany is pretty great: she gets food, a home, and knowledge of an exciting array of techniques for killing evildoers marked for death. Or slightly suspect people marked for death. Or whomever the convent tells her to kill in the name of her country.
Her highly contested country. Politics happen. There are murders, conspiracies, daring escapes, and—-stunningly-—multiple male characters who respect female autonomy and are not total jerks about it. This is right up there with Graceling in terms of Men Respecting the Women They Love and Not Being Jerks About Female Autonomy. SO REFRESHING.
Despite a pretty badass premise, I did not expect to like this one as much as I did. The prose seemed sometimes painfully anachronistic. Characters sometimes missed really, really obvious clues. There was lots of thoroughly average Medieval Politicking. But I was drawn to the sisterhood of damaged, imperfect girls rescued from misery and abuse and trained to be badass assassins. Sure, I snickered a little at the cure for poison, but you know what, it was also a nice twist on the whole true-love’s-kiss thing. (Also, makeouts! Excellent.) And a good simmering love story is always appreciated.
I’m looking forward to the others in the His Fair Assassin series, which promise to be from the POV of the two other assassins whose stories I would most like to hear. (I also totally failed to realize that this is the same R.L. LaFevers of the Theodosia books.)
[Two months later, I got my hands on an ARC of Book 2, Dark Triumph, and had exactly the same reaction. Except that some of the vocabulary was used better. Perhaps by Book 3, the characters will respond to the question “How are you?” with something other than “I am fine.” I live in hope, and in appreciation of complicated, interesting characters exploring feminism through adventure, romance, and murder!]
Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff
Hannah’s anorexic best friend Lillian, dead these six months, has decided to haunt her as a beloved, overbearing, unhelpful ghost. Who is suddenly a lot more helpful when a string of murders shatters Hannah’s small-town life. While solving gruesome murders and getting closer to delinquent, unexpectedly kind Finny Boone, Hannah begins to come to terms with Lillian’s death and the darker corners of their friendship.
It’s no secret that I love Brenna Yovanoff. I flailed all over the adorableness of her debut novel, The Replacement. (Tate Stewart/crowbar OTP! Oh hello protagonist, you are also pretty adorable!) I wasn’t as crazy about The Space Between, but there certainly wasn’t anything wrong with it either. Five seconds after I finished Paper Valentine, I started sobbing uncontrollably. (I was on an airplane; it was kind of embarrassing.) Yovanoff has a way of making her romances feel both inevitable and miraculous, and I was especially pleased that the romance here shared equal importance with the friendship. (I do love me some friendship, you guys.)
In Recent ARC News, I just read Quintana of Charyn (third in the Lumatere Trilogy) by Melina Marchetta and have several notes that will probably only make sense if you’ve read Finnikin of the Rock and Froi of the Exiles:
1) Marchetta writes amazing, ruthless women in this series and it’s about time one of them was on a cover.
2) It’s a good thing Froi is smarter than Finnikin.
3) It turns out I am mostly okay with the message “babies solve everything!” in fiction if they solve the political problems but not necessarily the personal ones.
4) It’s super amusing when the polymath diplomat warrior king consort is the stupidest character in the room.
5) Seriously, it is SUCH a good thing Froi is smarter than Finnikin.
6) It’s really great to get multiple points of view. Polyphony ftw! But sometimes plot twists don’t work as well when the reader knows things the POV character doesn’t.
7) I would like a companion novel entitled Froi and Lirah’s Snarky Adventure, please.
What’re you reading these days?
The day before that, someone in my Korean class suggested watching dramas with Korean subs to practice reading. I decided to watch an episode of something I had already seen and thus did not need to actually watch again. While searching for something entirely different, I came across Big Bang re-enacting Coffee Prince. Well, that was an entertaining ten minutes, but a total failure for subtitle reading. Then I decided I just had to find something I had already seen and had absolutely no interest in re-watching.
Two episodes of Boys Before Flowers later... I’m not allowed to subtitle-watch anything with Lee Min-ho’s face in it. XD
In other news, now that I have a brand new stack of galleys, it’s time to post some reviews of old galleys!
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers
Ismae’s life as a Handmaid of Death in medieval Brittany is pretty great: she gets food, a home, and knowledge of an exciting array of techniques for killing evildoers marked for death. Or slightly suspect people marked for death. Or whomever the convent tells her to kill in the name of her country.
Her highly contested country. Politics happen. There are murders, conspiracies, daring escapes, and—-stunningly-—multiple male characters who respect female autonomy and are not total jerks about it. This is right up there with Graceling in terms of Men Respecting the Women They Love and Not Being Jerks About Female Autonomy. SO REFRESHING.
Despite a pretty badass premise, I did not expect to like this one as much as I did. The prose seemed sometimes painfully anachronistic. Characters sometimes missed really, really obvious clues. There was lots of thoroughly average Medieval Politicking. But I was drawn to the sisterhood of damaged, imperfect girls rescued from misery and abuse and trained to be badass assassins. Sure, I snickered a little at the cure for poison, but you know what, it was also a nice twist on the whole true-love’s-kiss thing. (Also, makeouts! Excellent.) And a good simmering love story is always appreciated.
I’m looking forward to the others in the His Fair Assassin series, which promise to be from the POV of the two other assassins whose stories I would most like to hear. (I also totally failed to realize that this is the same R.L. LaFevers of the Theodosia books.)
[Two months later, I got my hands on an ARC of Book 2, Dark Triumph, and had exactly the same reaction. Except that some of the vocabulary was used better. Perhaps by Book 3, the characters will respond to the question “How are you?” with something other than “I am fine.” I live in hope, and in appreciation of complicated, interesting characters exploring feminism through adventure, romance, and murder!]
Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff
Hannah’s anorexic best friend Lillian, dead these six months, has decided to haunt her as a beloved, overbearing, unhelpful ghost. Who is suddenly a lot more helpful when a string of murders shatters Hannah’s small-town life. While solving gruesome murders and getting closer to delinquent, unexpectedly kind Finny Boone, Hannah begins to come to terms with Lillian’s death and the darker corners of their friendship.
It’s no secret that I love Brenna Yovanoff. I flailed all over the adorableness of her debut novel, The Replacement. (Tate Stewart/crowbar OTP! Oh hello protagonist, you are also pretty adorable!) I wasn’t as crazy about The Space Between, but there certainly wasn’t anything wrong with it either. Five seconds after I finished Paper Valentine, I started sobbing uncontrollably. (I was on an airplane; it was kind of embarrassing.) Yovanoff has a way of making her romances feel both inevitable and miraculous, and I was especially pleased that the romance here shared equal importance with the friendship. (I do love me some friendship, you guys.)
In Recent ARC News, I just read Quintana of Charyn (third in the Lumatere Trilogy) by Melina Marchetta and have several notes that will probably only make sense if you’ve read Finnikin of the Rock and Froi of the Exiles:
1) Marchetta writes amazing, ruthless women in this series and it’s about time one of them was on a cover.
2) It’s a good thing Froi is smarter than Finnikin.
3) It turns out I am mostly okay with the message “babies solve everything!” in fiction if they solve the political problems but not necessarily the personal ones.
4) It’s super amusing when the polymath diplomat warrior king consort is the stupidest character in the room.
5) Seriously, it is SUCH a good thing Froi is smarter than Finnikin.
6) It’s really great to get multiple points of view. Polyphony ftw! But sometimes plot twists don’t work as well when the reader knows things the POV character doesn’t.
7) I would like a companion novel entitled Froi and Lirah’s Snarky Adventure, please.
What’re you reading these days?
