Smith, Cynthia Leitich - Eternal

This is set in the same world as Smith's Tantalize.

Miranda has always been a shy girl, but once she's turned into a vampire (or as she prefers, an eternal), she's suddenly the princess of the eternal world. Zachary's not so happy, given that he was the guardian angel who failed to prevent her transformation and subsequently lost his wings, but soon, he gets a chance to make amends while Miranda tries to hold down fort when her vampire father is away.

This has the same funny-yet-dark tone of Tantalize, albeit without all the food (woe). As with Tantalize, I am left somewhat baffled about how to react. A large part of this is the overall pacing of the book. The beginning felt slow to leap into the plot, although it contains elements that are necessary to the ending; I either wanted more romance or less so that what romance there was didn't feel as unexplained; I wanted more of Miranda's moral dilemmas and the development of them; and I wanted more of the secondary characters' development. Overall, I think the book just felt too short for me. There are a lot of interesting things going on in there, or there could be, if there were more room for Smith to breathe. And the odd thing is, I can't even highlight that many of the interesting things, since many of them are fairly standard to vampire books, from the vampire dilemma of drinking blood to human chattel to secret vampire alliances. But the way Smith writes them makes them feel different, and I especially like Miranda, who wavers between wanting to be the high school girl she used to be and the vampire princess she now is.

The guardian-angel-falls-for-ward is apparently another button of mine, despite my overall not understanding why immortal creatures would fall for high school girls. I think Smith does a fairly good job as to showing Zachary's awareness of the problems inherent in the relationship, although I flinched a few times about the watching her naked thing. For me, Smith manages to get away with not fleshing out the relationship between Zachary and Miranda because Zachary's POV and how he knows her is so strong that I could ignore that for Miranda, she's only known him for a few days.

I also had problems with the angel thing, which is par for the course. Smith takes the route in which angels and therefore Heaven and Hell are for everyone; "we believe in you even if you don't believe in us" (paraphrased). It gets around the issue of Buddhist angels and etc, but I'm not sure it's a solution that sits well with me; it feels too co-opting. Then again, I haven't quite come across a good solution to the angel-demon problem, except the manga version in which you take the names and the mythology and handwave the actual religious elements (or go for broke if you are Yuki Kaori). And that solution has its own set of problems.

All this said, these are really interesting books that make me want to poke at them. I do think Smith is still juggling pacing, tone, and character, but I enjoy how her vampire/shapeshifter/angel world feels different from others, even if I can't quite figure out how.

Plus, I liked the way she ended this. I am not sure most people will, but that is why I liked it so much.

Wann - Snow Queen, vol. 01-02

I am so embarrassed I read this. After I had watched the entire drama too!

Tae-Woong is a scruffy boxer who used to be a genius mathematician until a traumatic event. Bora is a chronically ill and suicidal girl who closes herself off from everyone to keep herself from getting hurt. This is amazingly less melodramatic than the drama based on it, but that is probably only because there are only two volumes of manhwa and 16 episodes of drama. They had to fill those hours with something, preferably something as tear-jerking as possible!

Um. I do not even know what to say about this! I am not objective at all. I love the use of "The Snow Queen," and outside of that, I largely roll my eyes at the various twists and turns Bora and Tae-Woong go through even as I eat it all up with a spoon! This includes things like Bora thinking, "I hate you for being nice to me! If you hadn't been nice to me, I wouldn't have had to... feel!" or Tae-Woong thinking, "I always thought falling in love would be comfortable, not... like this!"

Also, there are shenanigans in which Bora runs off and Tae-Woong must run after her as her trusty chauffeur, last-minute tear-jerker plot twists, multiple suicide attempts, and several collapses.

I probably had entirely too much fun reading this, but I don't care!

McKinley, Robin - Chalice

(I'm sorry for spamming! I have a bazillion book posts to catch up on, and I should probably write up Wiscon some time as well...)

Mirasol has recently been appointed Chalice of the Willowlands after the previous Master and Chalice died unexpectedly. As Chalice, her job to connect the new Master to the land is made more difficult given that the new Master was to be a Priest of Fire, and is now not entirely human. Although it sounds like epic fantasy, McKinley adds her usual every day touches, focusing just as much on Mirasol's bees and honey as well as the "who will rule the land" plot.

I've missed reading Robin McKinley. I didn't read Sunshine or Dragonhaven when they came out, due to poor or conflicting reviews, so it's been almost a decade since I've read new McKinley. I am also desperately compartmentalizing her white guy with a tan comment about Obama because I am so tired of having writers I like flash their ignorance online.

Chalice is very standard McKinley, which is to say it is comforting, homey, and focused on small acts of niceness amidst larger epic going-ons. I have no idea how this would read to people new to McKinley; she's been a favorite author of mine since I was in middle school, so I have absolutely no distance. That said, I find her focus on ordinariness and niceness a little less comforting than I did as a kid; I keep remembering some of deepad's comments at Wiscon about how niceness is small, how it is used to limit people, how you can be nice to people and hope for change, but you cannot use niceness as a way to battle systems of oppression. None of this directly has to do with the book, save that I wonder how much of McKinley's focus on niceness and humility and being ordinary I swallowed unthinkingly as a teen and continue to retain today. It is a narrative I am extremely familiar with and used to, and ... I am not sure how comfortable I am with that anymore.

I also have issues with the notion of citizenship and rulership in the book; the focus on bloodlines and blood relationships to the land works in this fantasy but begins to fall apart when you poke at it. And one element in the ending really didn't work for me.

All this said, I loved the book and the characters, even though sometimes they were too accomodating and polite and humble for me. I love the tentativeness of their interactions, I love the story of someone rediscovering his humanity, I love the plotline of trying to figure out what you're doing while you're doing it. I especially love the bees and the honey. I am very glad I had a bottle of farmers' market honey with me as I was reading, otherwise I would have had horrible cravings.