Lindholm, Megan - Harpy's Flight

I was a little afraid I wouldn't like this book, given that I've been searching for the series in used bookstores for nearly five years now.

I love it!

Ki's husband and two children were killed by Harpies, and thought she avenges them, it does nothing for her. Instead, she must contend with her husband's family and somehow manage to stay alive through a treacherous journey. And then this scrawny guy named Vandien tries to steal her horses and just keeps messing with her plans.

I adore Ki, who is stern and strong and yet bent under so much grief and rage and pain. I very much like that Lindholm doesn't gloss over her pain, that it's such a central part of the narrative, and that it isn't easy to give up. I also adore Vandien. We don't get to see much of him or his POV; Ki's largely concerned with her memories of her husband's family (creepy!) and with her crippling grief. But what we do see is great. Also, it doesn't hurt that this book hits every single one of my strong, cold heroine with happy-go-lucky yet secretly angsty hero kinks.

I should probably say more about the worldbuilding and how Lindholm slowly gives us more and more information about Ki's in-laws and how they are incredibly creepy, but mostly I am just in love with Ki and Vandien and want to see much more of them.

Ohba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi - Death Note, vol. 08-10 (Eng. trans.)

( Spoilers play convoluted mind games )

Maxwell, Ann - The Jaws of Menx

The seemingly backward planet Menx is about to decide whether it should join the Concord or not; due to complicated politics, if they don't, the planet will essentially be strip-mined. Rhane of Siol has to get down there to recover the memories of his cousin's death. Along the way, he clashes with Menx's seemingly primitive belief in gods and runs into his childhood friend and crush Shiya.

That is a spectacularly bad plot summary, mostly because I can't remember the plot at all. In fact, there's a whole lot of this book that I don't remember, largely because I couldn't keep track of all the names and cultures and who meant what to whom and what insult meant what in what language.

Also, Rhane's cousin dies of a dread melting sickness, and I spent half of the book giggling hysterically any time anyone mentioned the melting sickness. Because it's a melting sickness! People turn into puddle of goop! There are tragic death scenes with one person essentially cradling a skin with goop! And my brain keeps going, "I'm meeeelting! I'm meeeelting!" a la Wizard of Oz. Sadly, I am pretty certain Maxwell meant for the disease to be heartwrenching and angsty, not giggle-inducing.

Well, my fit of being twelve does subside at the end, and the melting disease does become tragic, but not after a whole lot of laughter on my part.

I think I'd enjoy the worldbuilding more the second time around; this a book that focuses more on the revelations about the world than on the character relationships. I had gone in thinking it was the other way around, so I sort of skipped a lot of the worldbuilding details and therefore was a bit confused by the conclusion. I do wish we'd see more of Rhane and Shiya's relationship, though; what little is there is very interesting, and Shiya's very different from Maxwell/Lowell's standard too-innocent-to-live heroines.

Konno Keiko - Star (Eng. trans.)

Why yes, yes I am trying to catch up on writing up all my weekend reading!

I really like Konno's yaoi series Kawaii Hito, which is very PWP, but also very sweet, with the additional bonus of an ex-girlfriend who doesn't make me want to strangle the mangaka. Star is a one-off about the antisocial Sudou and the friendlier Hirokawa.

The neat thing is that Sudou is the shorter, more feminine-looking one and Hirokawa's older and taller. Even neater is the fact that they're both working. I.e. manga about people older than teenagers! Amazing.

The manga ends up being about Sudou's attempts to get used to interacting with people, as opposed to his usual brusqueness. He's got a reputation for seducing and abandoning women, but he's not much of a ladies' man. Rather, he's more a person who uses other people without emotionally connecting to them, man or woman. I would dislike Sudou except the mangaka clearly portrays his antisocialness and his antagonism as a flaw, not a virtue. Also, I have a thing for grumpy ukes. It's a nice change from the usual oblivious cluelessness and mad protestations.

Hirokawa is much mellower, which is again a nice change from the usual aggressive, alpha-bastard semes.

I didn't like the way Konno portrayed some of the women in the beginning, but she makes up for this by having a secondary female character who has slept with Hirokawa and doesn't villainize her, shunt her to the side, or make her unsympathetic. Instead, she's a character who values her work and her relationships and keeps sex separate from love.

The only problem with this was that I didn't quite buy the Hirokawa-Sudou relationship. I'm not quite sure why -- I think Sudou protests a little too much in his mind for me. There's just too much back-and-forth about the relationship; I tend to like stories that start after the relationship is in place, rather than stories that are about getting to the relationship.

Still, Konno remains on my list of mangaka to look out for.