december book lightning round

dec 27 2022

And now... it's time... for the DECEMBER BOOK REVIEW LIGHTNING ROUND! December is typically a month for me to finish reading books I've had half-finished or to speedrun books I've been meaning to read all year. Let's get into it!

The Beginning Place (Ursula K Le Guin)

Gorgeous as always. Le Guin always has something relevant to say and an interesting way to say it. This is a book about being stuck and is deeply introspective and metaphorical. Feels almost like a chivalric romance or something.

Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu)

Been meaning to read this forever (of course my baby gay self saw the webseries in 2014). Started reading it in October to capitalize on the #spookyvibes and it ended up heavily inspiring my group's game for our Lit and Games class project (the antagonist is a vampire named Mircalla). In an ironic twist of events, I then stalled out on the book because I was so busy writing the game. Finally finished the book and ended up liking it. Was surprised at how overtly romantic it was but that is because it's linking lesbianism with like, perverse unholy creatures of the night, soooo... not really a diversity win. But I liked it anyways!

Worlds of Exile and Illusion (Ursula K Le Guin)

Been reading this once since December of LAST YEAR! This is a collection of three novels in Le Guin's "Hainish cycle," which is a collection of loosely connected sci-fi novels. The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favorite books of all time and I've been dying to get my hands on The Dispossessed so I figured I should try to read some of the other books in the series. I really liked Planet of Exile and City of Illusions, but I wasn't crazy about the first novel Rocannon's World, which I think is what made me stop reading this book for a long time. Glad I finally finished it and I'm glad I read it! Le Guin has so much interesting stuff to say about being an outsider/trying to find a home/trying to find community and her books usually resonate with me so much. These novels were no different!

Beartown (Fredrik Backman, trans. Neil Smith)

Another book that I've had on my shelf for like a year! Was recommended to me by a dear friend and I read a little bit of this and then just got distracted by life + other books. I typically am a fantasy/sci-fi enthusiast (not fiction) so I just was reading other stuff. I randomly picked up another book from this author (Anxious People) and loved it so I picked Beartown back up. It was good, if a little hard to read. Found it struck a nice balance between being realistic and being uplifting. It would've been easy for this book just to feel like tragedy porn, but it wasn't at all.

The Poppy War (RF Kuang)

Another that came highly recommended to me by a friend! This book has been hyped in the fantasy sphere and I think it really holds up. Worldbuilding was immaculate, interesting characters and dynamics, chock full of history, and a lot of potential. First book in a series so it was a lot of setup but it doesn't feel like setup, which is refreshing. Can't wait to read the second book!

The Bone Shard Daughter (Andrea Stewart)

Maybe it's just because I read this right after The Poppy War (which was excellent), but I didn't love this book. It gets a lot of praise in the fantasy book community for its worldbuilding and magic system and I came to realize it's because the book really doesn't have anything else going for it. Cool magic, interesting world, vaguely interesting plot; not a lot in the way of characters or cohesive themes. Unlike The Poppy War, this book has a lot of setup and it feels like setup; it drags. There are too many character POVs and too many plotlines for me to really get attached to any beyond maybe Jovis and Lin. The lesbians are done particularly dirty in this book. It starts out treating Phalue and Ranami as main characters, and then as the book progresses they mainly get shunted to the side in favor of Jovis and Lin. Which just begs the question of why their POVs were there in the first place if the author didn't want to actually treat them like major characters (and if we were seeing everything that happened on their end anyways through Jovis' POV). Phalue and Ranami spend the beginning of the novel unhappy with each other and fighting and then get sparse chapters for the majority of the book (where they're still mostly unhappy with each other) and then all of the sudden at the end get a chapter where Phalue proposes marriage to Ranami, and Ranami, who has been against marrying Phalue this whole time, accepts. Contrast this with Jovis' dead (?) wife being a major character in the story and a main driving force despite her lack of actual page time. And it's just insult to injury that Lin spends a bit too much time thinking about how hot and nice and sexy her foster brother is. Foster brother incest got more pagetime than lesbians!

I'm probably insane for this, but I feel like this book could've been really good if it had just focused on Lin and her insane Bluebeard's wife dynamic with her father. It ends up not being well developed enough because of how many other POVs and plotlines the book is juggling. But it's not a bad book and I'm interested enough to check out the sequel. I have a weakness for pathetic, depressed men in fantasy books who get put through the wringer because they keep trying to help everyone else out at their own expense (bonus points if they get adopted by some kind of supernatural creature trying to help them), so yes, I love Jovis.

All For The Game Trilogy (Nora Sakavic)

I loved these books when I was fourteen, and I still do. But looking at these books with an older and more critical eye, even I can admit that they're probably middling/average YA fiction books and not the masterpiece my young gay self thought they were. But what YA fiction book popular on Tumblr in 2016 wasn't exceedingly average and problematic in some way? People will complain about how "problematic" this book is and then turn around and gush about books that are just as bad. So that aside, I think that AFTG genuinely stands out because of a couple things:

• Exy

Exy is a made-up sport, kind of a mix between hockey and lacrosse. You can tell Sakavic put a lot of time and effort thinking about this game and what it should be, and it serves as a strong backbone to the novel. Neil and the majority of the other characters are obsessed with this sport, and it could have easily felt boring or repetitive if Sakavic hadn't done the work she did fleshing this sport out and bringing it into the "reality" of the novel. Like all good sports-focused novels, these books do a good job of balancing the actual gameplay with other aspects of sports that make them so fun to play and watch, like teamwork, strategy, and a good underdog. It's kind of ironic that I like this series so much, considering how heavily it revolves around sports, when I usually hate playing and watching sports!

• The level of drama

These books have fucking soap opera levels of dramatics. There is a literal mafia subplot, and it's still not treated as important as winning an exy game (most of the time). Like, I can't describe how funny this is. Neil is literally getting tortured by mafia goons thinking, "Damn, I hope I can still play exy after this." And you know what? It totally works! You are completely drawn into the dramatics and you also deeply care about Neil and his stupid lacrosskey game! I think some people get hung up on how "unrealistic" this series is, and honestly? Who cares! If you're reading books for complete and utter realism, why are you reading YA fiction instead of nonfiction manuals? The novel's internal logic and tone are consistent, which is really all that matters to me.

• The gay relationship at the core of the series

I can see why to teenagers today, the relationship between Andrew and Neil doesn't seem super revolutionary. The book was written by a woman, not a gay man. Neil and Andrew don't explicitly express interest in each other until the end of book 2 and nothing overtly sexual or romantic happens until book 3. At first glance, their relationship can seem "toxic" (which I honestly don't agree with, and more on this later). People today might read the first book and immediately brush them off as a toxic, problematic, fetishized and barely present gay couple whose relationship is based on violence and sex.

But they're not. Read further and that couldn't be further from the truth. Andrew and Neil are both violent people, yes, but that violence is never turned on each other. They protect each other and try to help the other find something worth living for, instead of just surviving. Andrew has carefully drawn boundaries because of his history with sexual assault, and Neil always respects those boundaries. Their relationship moves at a snail's pace because they're both insistent that they not do anything that makes the other person uncomfortable. While they only start having explicitly romantic and sexual scenes in the third novel, their relationship is a backbone of the novel and hugely important. Neil only stays at Palmetto State because Andrew promises to protect him and asks him to stop running. Andrew starts to become interested in exy because Neil works hard to help him open up and stop closing everything out for his own protection. Neil helps Andrew reconcile with his twin brother. Andrew gives Neil a key to his house, a big deal for a foster kid and a runaway. Their relationship is carefully crafted and genuinely sweet, a far cry from the other gay rep we had in 2016.

Where was Captive Prince, which was a fetishizing, racist mess that tipped into dubcon and outright assault frequently. Adam and Ronan in The Raven Cycle aren't overtly Problematique™ or bad rep, but they also only get together in the third book of their series, and unlike Neil and Andrew, they aren't the main characters. Adam and Ronan's relationship isn't a focus of the book; it's all about Gansey and Blue. The media landscape now was not the media landscape then. Neil and Andrew were kind of your only option when it came to gay main characters. And I think even now, their relationship holds up. It’s well written and compelling.

These books aren't for everyone, and that's okay. They're self published books about a made up sport published in 2013, and they've aged gracefully in some places and super poorly in others. The prose is sparse in a way that contributes sometimes and detracts at other times. Sakavic seems to think she needs to spend time recapping the previous novels and reintroducing us to characters at the beginning of every book (I just read the other books, Nora. I know Dan is short for Danielle and I don't think it matters). The covers suck. These books aren't the only option for gay rep anymore, and that's genuinely great! You don't have to read these! But I still think they have a lot of heart and charm and I love them 😊

Witch Hat Atelier Volumes 1-6 (Kamome Shirahama)

Had my eye on this one for a while because the art is so beautiful! Finally found a place to read these online (gonna buy physical copies too, to support the author) and I really love it. The art is so beautiful and it's just a really lovely story. I really appreciate the way it talks about children and unpacks the way that adults can be neglectful, dismissive, and dehumanizing to children and how harmful that can be even if they're not physically abusive. The magic system is really interesting and the plot takes its time without dragging. I have adopted all of these children and I feel out of my mind with lust for Qifrey.

And that's it for now! Still sloooowly working my way through The Great Hunt (Robert Jordan), because Rand is really annoying in this book. Also have been chewing on The Return of the King (JRR Tolkien) for ages now. Something about the prose just hurts my brain, but I love the story. Coming to terms with the fact that I'll probably take these books into the new year. Also on the read/reread list for next year:

• Sabriel (Garth Nix) reread
• Finish Witch Hat Atelier
• Reread ASOIAF?
• Maybeeee a reread of the Inheritance Cycle if we get more Eragon Disney+ news
• The Dispossessed (Ursula K Le Guin)