Sakura of DOOM

It's funny, I remember enjoying this anthology a great deal, but story-by-story, I think I only really liked two or three. But I really liked those. Also, even if I hadn't, it would have been worth it just for a McKinley story I hadn't read before.

I read James P. Blaylock's "Paper Dragons," Robert Westall's "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" and Patricia A. McKillip's "The Old Woman and the Storm" around when I first got home from Wiscon, which means that I now don't remember them at all. I vaguely remember liking the McKillip but not being blown away by it, but that's it.

I wasn't very impressed with Michael de Larrabeiti's "The Curse of Igamor," which felt a little too self-satisfied and smug, despite the humorous tone, and I downright disliked Joan D. Vinge's "Tam Lin" (I suspect this, coupled with my dislike of The Snow Queen, means I am probably not a Vinge fan). Her Jennet/Janet flounced and described her own looks to me and defied her father's wish for her to get married by going to the fair; basically, she reminded me of every "spunky" romance novel heroine ever.

Jane Yolen's "Evian Steel" was a somewhat more interesting than usual take on Excalibur and Avalon, but a) I've read it before in another collection and b) so sick of Arthurian legend! Also sick of Celtic mythology and Welsh mythology! Have read entirely too many!

And despite completely not getting God Stalk, I still liked Hodgell's "Stranger Blood," which is odd and disturbing and has a whole background and world that I continue to not understand.

I loved Peter Dickinson's "Flight," which was the only story in the book that didn't feel white. I can't exactly pinpoint why it didn't read as your standard Eurofantasy to me (though Westall and Blaylock's stories aren't Eurofantasy either, from the little I recall). Possibly it was the mention of the World Elephant. "Flight" isn't really a story, and I could not for the life of me keep track of the timeline or the general narrative, but I loved loved loved the tone and the world and all the fun little details Dickinson puts in for his narrator, a historian of that world.

I loved Robin McKinley's "The Stone Fey" as well, though I am now completely confused about Damar. The Damar of "The Stone Fey" and The Hero and the Crown both read like the same country, but they don't feel anything like the Damar of The Blue Sword. I'm thinking about this mostly after having a few discussions post-Wiscon on Damar and the White Savior trope and all. Because the Damar of "The Stone Fey" reads very much as Eurofantasy (the dog's name is Aerlich, for example).

Aside from that, I really liked that McKinley subverts the standard "human lured by supernatural lover" trope, and, like almost all her things, I love the sense of the every day, of details like that of sheep and doggy mannerisms and farming.

I really wanted to like this, but it just didn't end up working for me. It probably doesn't help that Winter Rose is one of my favorite McKillips.

The closest I came to liking this was the first description of the Fiber Guild, of power in thread and needle, of bindings and stitches. Dude! Why can't I do magic knitting?

Anyway, that is probably because I have a Pavlovian response to yarn, so that entire chapter, I bounced up and down with delight and glee and recognition.

Sylvia Lynn is the descendent of Rois Melior of Winter Rose. Her grandfather has just died, and her grandmather has called her back to Lynn Hall, a place that Sylvia has been trying to avoid for most of her adult life. Fairy gets in the way, there are a whole bunch of mix-ups and really not all that much plot.

Normally I would not mind the no-plot factor, as McKillip's prose and imagery and characters usually make up for it. This time, the more contemporary language didn't work for me, and the imagery really didn't. There were moments of loveliness, as expected, but I just can't wrap my head around the modern setting. Sometimes it works for me, but in this case, Winter Rose felt so removed from this world, and none of the characters in Solstice Wood seem to be living in the same world I live in. They didn't really feel like modern people, so every time they used cell phones or talked about CDs, it was incredibly jarring.

I also wasn't too impressed by the conflict of the book, especially since one of the things I loved about WR was the otherworldiness of the Fae, how different and frightening they were. So the conclusion of SW sort of ruined that for me. And I find that in general, I am getting sick of stories of the Fair Folk/Fae/Faery/Fairy/Titania/Oberon/The Queen of Darkness/and assorted other Celtic variants. They just don't hold the same fascination for me anymore, and as such, I'm already resisting some of the magic of the book.

Links:
- jinian's review (halfway down the page)
- gwyneira's review
- cofax7's review

I swear I've seen more people's write-ups, but I can't seem to find them...

Heh, the ability to do this post was the reason behind why I started book blogging last year, and of course, now it's about a week late and I don't have much energy to write it. But write it I will.

I am shamelessly copying coffee_and_ink's format (I hope you don't mind, Mely), whose posts are the main reason why I started book blogging at all.

This being the inaugural year, I have no idea how this matches up to my reading habits of previous year. Just off the top of my head, I would say that I feel like I've read a great deal of books this year, and most of them good. A big reason for that is because of LJ, because of all the recs that have come in, and for that, I am eternally grateful. I read many things I wouldn't have touched previously because of that. And now, my ten favorite books of the year, out of all the books I have read this year (excluding rereads), not out of all the books published this year. They may not be the best books I've read this year, or the most technically proficient, or the like, but they are books that grabbed me somehow and will most likely end up being reread very often. I'm cheating quite a bit on this list and including multiple books by authors and such, but hey, it's my list ;).

Listed alphabetically by author. I've blogged each book before, which you can find in my book memories section, if you want to read me blather on even more.

1. Megan Chance, Fall From Grace
   
   Both romances on this list are ones that push the boundaries of the genre. I love Megan Chance's romances because she doesn't bother to whitewash history; her characters are rarely the rareified nobility that populate most romances. In this book, they are outlaws, and there is no romance at all in the way Chance portrays their lives. She also inverts the trope and makes the hard-living, hard-hearted character the heroine, with a hero painfully in love with her. This is not a fuzzy romance; it's on the smothering of dreams and hopes, on the choices that life gradually takes away.



2. Michael Dirda, Readings
   
   Dirda is a kindred spirit in the book world, although I can only sit back and wish that I have read as broadly and as deeply as he has, as well as wish that I could write about the experience of reading and of books so beautifully as he does. But I can't, so I am incredibly glad that he exists in the world and writes the reviews he does. His book reviews are like recommendations from a close friend.



3. Dorothy Dunnett, The Lymond Chronicles
   
   If I had to pick just one book of them, it would be Pawn in Frankincense, where all the build-up of the previous three books comes to head in a tense climax that left me breathless. Dunnett is very often manipulative, I still don't like Lymond as a person, and Checkmate is pretty flawed, especially when you look at how Dunnett throws in every single romance cliche in the book, but the series as a whole is so large and epic and grand that they occupied a very sizeable chunk of my head and heart for a very long period of time. And despite the criticism, nothing I've read this year has swallowed me whole the same way this series did -- I read the first book over a few months, the second in a week, and by the time I had gotten to Checkmate, I had spent an entire week reading till 5 in the morning, and was so sleep-deprived that I went home sick from work and finished the last book at home in a frenzied rush.
   
   Also, it's hard to beat Dunnett for sheer amount of influence on other authors.
   
   The Lymond books consist of The Game of Kings, Queen's Play, The Disorderly Knights, Pawn in Frankincense, The Ringed Castle, and Checkmate



4. Kij Johnson, Fudoki
   
   This book is set in the same universe as Johnson's first book, The Fox Woman, and it has the same delicate touch in bringing Heian Japan to life in a way that feels very authentic to me. Finally, a fantasy set in Asia that doesn't grate on my nerves. The setting, while wonderfully done, is just one of the many beautiful parts of this book. The narrative centered on the dying princess Harueme is elegaic and full of regrets; the one on the cat-turned-warrior-woman is properly sharp around the edges, with charming touches like dreams of rice balls. A very good book that leaves a lingering sense of mono no aware.



5. Laura Kinsale, Shadowheart
   
   After I read this, I was nearly incoherent with glee over how it smashes romance genre tropes left and right, with the added bonus of sex scenes that don't just develop the characters, but are also so intrinsic to the plot and the meat of the book that it is unimaginable without them. While the plot in and of itself doesn't make too much sense (though it is much more coherent than many Kinsale plots), the heart of the book is in the character dynamics and the exploration of gender roles and issues of power and control. Also, Kinsale manages to do all this while writing a scorching romance.



6. Maureen F. McHugh, China Mountain Zhang
   
   Science fiction set in a world where China has become the one superpower and America has turned socialist. Instead of using the set up to explore overtly political issues in a larger setting, McHugh chooses narrate from the POV of the titular character and a few of the other people in the world whose lives he affects, no matter how obliquely. Because of this, the book has a much more intimate tone, even while it explores the larger issues of race, ethnicity, and cultural authenticity without ever losing sight of its characters, who are always human first.
   
   
7. Patricia A. McKillip, multiple novels
   
   I discovered Patricia McKillip this year, after many years of never understanding her books, and it has been a joy going through her backlist. It's probably unnecessary praising McKillip to most people who read this LJ, but for anyone who hasn't read her books, the beauty of the prose and the images, the clarity of the visual metaphors and, above all, the underlying humanity in all her characters have completely won me over. My favorite of her books, Winter Rose, is actually a reread, although I don't actually remember my first read of it at all.
   
   I read her The Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy, Alphabet of Thorn, The Book of Atrix Wolfe, The Changeling Sea, In the Forests of Serre, Ombria in Shadow, Song for the Basilisk, The Tower at Stony Wood, and Winter Rose this year.



8. Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
   
   While I wanted a non-Nafisi POV at times for balance, Nafisi's memoir is still an effective look at not only a woman's life in Iran, but also the importance of reading and imagination. For me, it works better as an investigation into why we read than a chronicle of post-revolution Iran, but that is largely because of the constraints of the memoir format. This book hit some very deep spots in me regarding questions of morality and art and why the great books are always revolutionary in some way. A perfect demonstration of how books at their best can push boundaries and shape the mind.



9. Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
   
   Like Nafisi's book, Satrapi's Persepolis is a memoir of the Islamic revolution in Iran; however, Persepolis is also a wonderful graphic novel with stark black-and-white art and an often bizarre sense of humor. Satrapi's memoir is much less overtly political than Nafisi's, and it is more effective for me because of that. Satrapi focuses on the commonplace, on the seemingly trifling changes that the revolutions causes, and because of this, the truly horrific things that happen in her country are made that much worse in context of the everyday. Smart, funny, and engaging.



10. Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot
    
    An epistolary fantasy Regency novel! This is the book that I've been pushing on all of my friends, to the point of buying a copy and bringing it all the way over to Taiwan just so I could make yet another person read it. There's something incredibly joyful about this book -- one can sense how much fun the authors had writing it, and it makes for a delightful reading experience.

Also recommended: Lloyd Alexander, the Westmark trilogy; Connie Brockway, The Bridal Season; Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa; Jennifer Crusie, Bet Me; Judy Cuevas, Bliss and Dance; Karen Cushman, Catherine, Called Birdy; Pamela Dean, the Secret Country trilogy; Patricia MacLachlan, The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt; Margaret Mahy, The Tricksters; Ellen Raskin, The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America; Elizabeth A. Wein, The Winter Prince

ETA: Added more books to the also recced list, because I am hare-brained and forgot a few.

Total read: 167 (8 rereads)

( Books finished in 2004 )

I am very much in love with this book, and the book within this book, and everyone in the book, except, strangely, Nepenthe and Bourne.

I am also too tired to do anything resembling an intelligent write-up, and I'm never very good at pinpointing why I like things in McKillip books anyhow, so this is mostly going to be unconnected sentences.

I think I didn't like Nepenthe that much because she had the aura of Destiny about her, or something, and also, I completely did not understand the relationship between Bourne and her. I did very much like Vevay and Tessera, though, especially Tessera, because she was unsuited for the job everyone wanted her to do but had her own hidden strengths (me? projecting? never). I also loved that one of the acts that had the largest impact on the plot was the act of translating ^_^. It's interesting reading this right after Atrix Wolfe and remembering the power of words and names in that book and the power of stories and also of names in this book.

( Spoilery? )

( Really spoilery )

Links:
- rilina's review

I sank into this very quickly as a comfort read (while Dunnett is interesting, Lymond isn't exactly a comfort read for me), and sort of marvelled at how quickly McKillip has attained comfort read status. But it was just so easy to sink into.

I really loved the way she played around with old fairy tales, especially the fox princes and the assorted talking animals. And the last scene in the witch's house felt much more madcap than what I've come to expect of McKillip.

I actually half expected Sidonie to find her magic power in the place she made up, given the power of words and stories and tales in the book.

Sigh, I'm really awful at talking about McKillip's books. But it was just lovely and funny and about hearts and words and stories and monsters where you didn't expect them, and I gasped at the description of the firebird because it was so beautiful.

Links:
- rilina's review

I feel particularly stupid writing about some McKillip books... I mean, what do I say?

I loved the thought of a shadow city hidden amidst Ombria, I loved Mag in particular with her pin-laden straw-gold hair, I loved Faey and Domina Pearl's mustiness and Ducon and his charcoal. It has the same sort of non-logical-logic that pervades The Changeling Sea and Winter Rose, and while the strangest, dreamiest things happen, it all makes a sort of twisted sense.

And now I am basically repeating everything I said about Changeling Sea!

I wasn't that big of a fan of Lydea, but I didn't dislike her. I particularly adored Mag (as mentioned above) and her Magness, even though, stripped of McKillip's prose, she very easily could have been the stupid romance novel heroine who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So it was a beautiful, lovely book, and now I want to pick up more, but I also want to sort of keep them as especially rich chocolates to binge on once in a while.

Links:
- sophia_helix's review
- pocketgarden's review

Like Stevermer's book, I feel like this one will improve vastly on rereading.

Hrm, that sounded very negative. It wasn't meant to be -- it's just I had the feel that there were many subtle things happening in the background, or with emotions, that I didn't quite catch onto during the first reading because I was still trying to figure out the plot. It wasn't a book that swept me off my feet and had me reading feverishly till four in the morning (like many romances), but it's probably going to stand up much, much better.

I adore Raederle, particularly when she brushes off Morgon's attempts to leave her behind. And she got triple bonus points when she wasn't like a romance heroine, who protests and forces the hero to bring her and then proves to be absolutely useless!

I very much liked how it was a big, epic conflict without the standard, Tolkien structure of big epic conflicts -- big army holds off despite having little to no chance while a small team of people fight through despair or whatnot to get to the mystical goal which will defeat the giant hordes of doom. Ok, maybe it's just Terry Brooks that does this. But I liked very much how small the world felt, how everyone seemed to know each other. The sense of intimacy was helped along by the land-rule, I think.

I also enjoyed the discussions of power in the book -- Morgon's resistance to becoming anything more than the Prince of Hed, Raederle's fear of her heritage. I don't quite know how McKillip did it, but she manages to have the reluctant hero from a rural area come across as non-stereotypical and non-whiny. I think much of that was helped along by the fact that Morgon didn't seem to be protesting change per se -- he truly loves the land he is from, he really desires peace, and he is truly afraid of his unknown power and destiny. Rand/the Ohmsfords/etc. tend to feel like they are more against the change itself, or against leaving what they know out of ignorance, not what the change means for them.

The plot wasn't that surprising, with the exception of the last part of the first book, but McKillip manages to make it seem natural and still not rote. That's one of the problems I tend to have with Meredith Ann Pierce -- I can see the "surprise" ending coming from a mile away. Maybe they aren't supposed to be surprises; maybe they're supposed to be like fairy tales, in which you already know how they end. Except it doesn't quite feel that way. Anyhow, I digress.

And, haha, I couldn't help but notice that Morgon and Deth are incredibly slashy. I've been in fandom too long ;).

And on a minor note, I want to know how to be a tree.

I actually finished both of these a few weeks ago, after reading them in bits and pieces over a month or so. For some reason, neither book really caught me.

With The Porcelain Dove, I admired what Sherman was doing, and I liked seeing the influence of the conte de fee (horrendous spelling), but in the end, I had a really, really hard time getting into the book because I disliked the characters so much. I didn't even despise them as characters (like my strange antipathy toward Vaughn, for example). I was just put off by the lot of them -- Adele was a ninny, as was Justin, the older boy was sadistic and cruel, and Adele's husband wasn't much better. So because I was a bit dismayed by Adele's behavior, I never was really able to get into the mind of the narrator, who adores her (with an ability to see her weak points, but adores nonetheless). The only characters I did kind of like were Pompey, who wasn't really focused on, and Linnotte, who Berthe didn't like, which also rubbed off. And then Linnotte (sp) had to do something horrible to free her dreadful family from their curse and ends up being completely exiled!

I think I also had a problem with the structure of the book -- it begins so we know the family and their estate has somehow been removed from the world and time, suspended in some sort of fairyland. And since none of the family seems particularly happy with this arrangement, I guess I started wondering if halfway through the book Berthe would finish her story so they could figure out how to rejoin the world. Instead, Berthe narrates how they got there.

I have a feeling I'm getting more and more sensitive to these things in books -- I find it very hard to read on if there isn't anyone I can identify with. Also, if the worldview feels too bleak or depressing without anything good redeeming it or casting it into a different light, I have a hard time continuing: ex. George R. R. Martin. LotR and Tigana and the Kushiel series and the Assassin series, while dark, still have that spark of good in the human characters despite horrifically dark times, and that's what makes me hang on to the books.

I think this is also the problem I had with The Cygnet and the Firebird. Heh, I feel horrible confessing this, but I'm not that much of a McKillip fan. I loved her Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Winter Rose, but I don't really remember the Book of Atrix Wolfe or this book. Sometimes her lush prose can distance me a little too much from the emotions of the story. Also, sometimes I just get confused in general as to what is going on in terms of action. And while I didn't dislike Nyx or Meg and company in this book, as I did in Porcelain Dove, I didn't have much on them to hook onto. I was also really confused because I hadn't read the earlier book, which I suspect is about Nyx being found by her mother or something.

On the other hand, there were some things that I really did like: that Meg loved the gatekeeper and didn't fall for the mythical firebird creature. I loved the description of the firebird and his despair in not accessing his memory. I loved how McKillip and Meg were able to describe the firebird's cry.