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very-grownup · 6 months

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Book 79, 2023

When Lois McMaster Bujold took a break from her Vorkosigan and Chalion serieses to write the Sharing Knife books, most of her pre-existing fans went "I am not digging this age gap rural fantasy romance" and romance novel fans went "this age gap romance in the fantasy American countryside is not romance novel enough" and I went "gosh she's having fun" because when someone is creating a piece of art or media that's wholly for them, I love their love for the work.

This is, I think, different from a certain kind of writing that Drops References to create a positive association between what you're reading and a thing you already like.

The podcast I Don't Even Own a Television (RIP) often had long digressions about music and bands and I rarely recognized the bands they were talking about, let alone possessing any kind of blanket familiarity with genres and scenes. But I loved getting a glimpse into their passions.

I hope you enjoyed this long walk to talking about Catherine Asaro's "Ascendant Sun", because I'm not sure I have ever read an author who is writing for herself and her passions as much as Catherine Asaro does.

I'm going to drop some creds both because I've literally never seen anyone but me talk about Catherine Asaro and also because I went to wikipedia to see if there were any egregious controversies like you maybe do about speculative fiction authors in this the year of our cursed lord 2023, so I have her wikipedia article open and it's fascinating stuff.

Asaro is a trained ballet and jazz dancer.

Asaro has master's degrees in physics and chemistry and a doctorate in chemical physics from Harvard.

Asaro is the daughter of one of the nuclear chemists involved in the discovery that lead to the theory that an asteroid collision caused the mass extinction event that took out the dinosaurs.

Until his death several years ago, Asaro was married to a NASA astrophysicist.

Asaro's main work is a series called the Skolian Saga. Some of the books in the Skolian Saga contain mathematical equations and quantum mechanic wave diagrams. The interstellar travel method she uses is based on a paper on special relativity that she wrote for the American Journal of Physics. I can't even begin to figure out what "spherical harmonic eigenfunctions" are. I don't understand any of it, but it appears to be the hardest of hard science baked into Asaro's worldbuilding.

Naturally, after assembling her world, Asaro has written a sprawling intergenerational political intrigue space opera full of fucking, incredibly tall, powerful, beautiful, and jacked men and women, complicated family trees and arranged marriages leading to genuine love and telepathy and telepathically enhanced super empathy sex, a planet of people who all have metallic gold pigmentation due to genetic modification for survival in that particular planet's hostile atmosphere and sun combo, AI cyberimplants and supersoldiers, with a key focus on the romantic entanglements of the members of this large family of aristocratic telepaths, members of whom are integral to the existence of intergalactic wifi.

I cannot overstate how thorough a manifestation of a certain kind of twelve-year-old girl's psyche this is, but also she has a phd. Did you ever make huge family trees because you wanted to have characters with all the different hair and eye colour combinations you thought of but also every character you came up with had to be related so they could always interact but also sometimes you just needed to make a new character to slap onto that family because you have a new interest or just saw a name in something that was too cool not to use?

Catherine Asaro is living that dream and making rocket scientists beta read about her over-powered OCs fucking.

"Ascendant Sun" is ALL OF THAT, in this specific case about Keldric, a prince of this empire and super telepath and interstellar fighter pilot and theoretical mathematician who's been missing for almost twenty years because he was stranded on a planet cut off from the wider galaxy, one ruled by warring matriarchal clans with harems of men whose value and rank is determined both by what they're bringing to the table physical-wise and what they're bringing to the table in the realm of ADVANCED MATHEMATICAL QUANTUM DICE PROBABILITY POLITICAL PREDICTION GAMES. He spent those years getting kidnapped and traded by various women and doing dice math and fucking but that was a different book, THIS book is after he fakes his death to both escape the planet and to settle some kind of brewing civil war, only to find that a tentative truce exists between his empire and their longtime enemy empire (made up of black-haired, red-eyed anti-empaths who get boners from suffering and love slavery) and also most of his immediate family is either dead or missing making him technically maybe the new hereditary military leader of the empire. Keldric has to find out what the fuck has happened while he's been presumed dead and figure out a way to claim his title and its wifi link without revealing that he's alive to definite enemies and potential enemies and yes it does involve a slave auction and a discussion on how to circumvent paying exorbitant tax on secret slave auctions.

It's fun. I can't comment on the accuracy of the science/math/sex, but it's a fun read, a sprawling, tumbling sort of narrative and we all know if a George R.R. Martin were writing this, dudes would be all over it.

It's got a buff shirtless Keldric in sex slave clothes on the cover while a sexy lady all in black ogles him from her setee.

I hope Catherine Asaro's having a good day.

#2023 books #catherine asaro #ascendant sun #science fiction #sometimes i feel bad about posting all this text #and then one of you motherfuckers do that colour of the sky shit again

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accidentalspaceexplorer · 6 months

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2023 Book Reviews: Science Fiction, Part 2

More of the SF I read this year!

1. Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro: 3.75/5

Pitch: romantic space opera; rival heads of empires fall in love and try to avoid war

Review: I quite enjoyed this book, despite the ways in which it feels very dated. It felt like Sauscony was at once an extremely complex character (I particularly appreciated the second act of the book, dealing with her trauma) and also weirdly one-dimensional at times, but especially with the audiobook narrator to voice her I grew to care about her. I was also of two minds about the way sex and sexual assault was treated - honestly basically every sensitive topic, I was surprised by how well it was handled while simultaneously squicked out by how it was handled. So I have complicated feelings about this, but ultimately I had a good time listening to it, so I plan to listen to the direct sequel, The Radiant Seas (which I DNF'd - review in the rotation eventually!).

2. Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor: 3/5

Pitch: science fantasy about a time travel organization trying to document history

Review: Didn't appeal to me much - mostly there was a lot of sexual trauma for the main character and I didn't buy the romance much. Some of the time travel was interesting though. Ultimately meh for me.

3. The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis: 3.5/5

Pitch: Space opera about two warring empires and the people trying to survive, support, and subvert them

Review: There wasn't anything wrong with this book, but it also just...didn't do it for me. I think partially that may be timing - in comparison with my recent read Some Desperate Glory, which has a similar vibe even though a very different plot, I can't help but feel like this book fails to live up. Again - there isn't anything wrong with the book, and if what you want is queer space opera about the solar system carved up between two empires, I'd try it! But I don't think I'll be continuing with the series.

4. Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot: 4/5

Pitch: a gunslinger on the run from her former faction, trying to save her sister with the help of a mysterious bounty hunter

Review: Definitely a fun ride, although I don't think it's going to take up a place in my heart. Fun characters, fun plot, lots of combat & ship dogfight scenes… But it didn't really hook me in the sense of making me deeply care about the characters. They were fun to spend time with though!

5. The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard: 4.75/5

Pitch: SF mystery novella (very Holmesian) with living mindships

Review: I really loved this. It's short but really dense in information and atmosphere, and I loved the loose Holmes retelling! Definitely want to read more in Xuya now

#sf reviews #2023 reviews #book review #roundup reviews

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rsadelle · 5 months

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The best books I read in 2023

I read 85 books in 2023, which is about two-thirds as many as I read last year. If you want more, shorter recs, I kept up an ongoing Twitter thread where I recced things as I read them. I've provided content notes where I remember them; as always, feel free to comment or message/email me if you want more information.

Top 11 fiction books/series I read in 2023

Major Bhaajan series (Undercity, The Bronze Skies, The Vanished Seas, The Jigsaw Assassin) by Catherine Asaro - This is a very fun sci fi in space series about a woman who was in the army but is now a PI who also leads her looked down upon people. It's a spinoff from the Saga of the Skolian Empire, but you don't have to read that (or remember anything about it if you have read any of it) for this to make sense. Also, you can skim a lot of the technobabble. My mom also read them and was irked by the gender politics of the world; they make more sense if you know that they're part of the established Skolian Empire, which Asaro started publishing in the mid-90s. Content notes: genre typical violence, somewhat of a military is good vibe.

Before She Finds Me by Heather Chavez - This is a really good thriller with alternating points of view between a pregnant assassin with a moral code whose husband took a job without telling her and a woman whose daughter was shot (but not fatally). Content notes: gun violence, murder.

Alias Emma by Ava Glass - This is a very well done action thriller about a spy taking an asset across London in one day - without getting caught on any of London's cameras. It would make an excellent movie.

The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin - This is the sequel to The City We Became, which was one of my best books of 2020. Jemisin originally intended this to be a trilogy but made it a duology instead, so you no longer need to wait to read the whole story. I loved everything, but also cared absolute most about the Manny/Neek romance. Content notes: eldritch horror, real-world racism and injustice.

Wild Massive by Scotto Moore - This book is ultimately a little forgettable, but it is also a super fun read. If you have watched or know about any long-running sci fi/fantasy TV series (Supernatural fans, I'm looking at you), you will probably enjoy the meta of it all. This was a sci fi book club choice, and people's responses ranged widely from loved it to couldn't finish it and included everything in between.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley - This is a very enjoyable book that plays with alternate history and time travel and is also queer. I loved it and when I was thinking about what I read this year that was definitely going on my list, this was one I immediately thought of. It also helped me develop my theory that "genre bending" in the description of a book actually means "this is a very specific type of story, but telling you the specific kind is a spoiler." Content notes: death/disappearance of people in different timelines, war-related violence, off-screen/past sexual coercion

When the Sparrow Falls by Neil Sharpson - This is more or less a thriller, and also funny. It's set in a future repressive anti-AI state in an otherwise benevolent AI-governed world, and has one of the funniest navigating bureaucracy scenes I've ever read. Content notes: repressive state violence.

Lay Your Body Down by Amy Suiter Clark - The book cover calls this "a novel of suspense," which I disagree with. This is a solid mystery in a small town with a megachurch and a former member of the church both investigating and confronting her own past. Content notes: all kinds of harm to women and girls in that kind of environment

First, Become Ashes by K.M. Szpara - This is a completely compelling queer story. The worldbuilding and the place of kink within it are much better done than in his first book, which I read two years ago and still occasionally think about. I loved the ambiguity about whether or not the magic was real. Content notes: cults and all kinds of physical and sexual abuse, including rape. It also has some Harry Potter references, which made me twitch. Szpara is trans and in the acknowledgements, he talks about fandoms, not necessarily creators/original stories: "To Drarry but not to JKR."

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - I loved this book. This is another one that immediately came to mind when I was thinking about this list. I thought Tesh did such a good job of putting the reader in the character's worldview, the worldbuilding was interesting, and parts of it were funny even inside a serious story. The rest of my sci fi book club disliked both the main character and everything else I liked and thought worked well, so it may or may not be your thing. Content notes: all kinds of fascism related horrors

This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel - This was a completely engrossing story. It did a good job building the characters and their stories, and I did not see the ending coming (in a good way). Content notes: a cult, self-harm as performance art, death.

Top 5 books/series I read and then thought about a lot in 2023

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker - This was so well-written, and I got completely absorbed in it. It is also about the sexual assault and forced pregnancy of young teenage girls (the protagonist is 14) in a cult in a drought in central California, and I kept thinking about it after I read it.

Adrift by Lisa Brideau - This is a thriller involving amnesia set in a climate change-devastated near future. It starts out a little slow, but I kept thinking about it after I read it and I enjoyed the building a new life aspect of the story. Content notes: climate change, storms, genre-typical danger.

Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons - A big part of why I kept thinking about this is that I had a lot of complaints about it that I was prepared to share at book club, and then everyone else liked it. The plot had potential, but what I found most annoying about it was that the author seemed to smugly think his ideas were new and revolutionary, which they are not.

Captive Prince trilogy (Captive Prince, Prince's Gambit, and Kings Rising) by C. S. Pacat - This was on my best books of 2021 list. This year, I watched all of Black Sails and wanted to read some other twisty plotting, and ended up rereading this whole trilogy twice. I still love it, and reading it closely twice means I started to see that some elements of both the worldbuilding and writing style start to fall apart if you think about it too hard. Content notes: Ancient Greece-style slavery, consent issues, war-related violence, explicit sex scenes.

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti - This is an Anna Delvey-inspired story that's built around diary entries, emails, etc. I don't know how much I enjoyed reading it in the first place, but the final reveal at the end recontextualized the parts I thought were boring enough to skim and made me keep thinking about it.

Top 2 nonfiction books I read in 2023

"You Just Need to Lose Weight" and 19 Other Myths About Fat People by Aubrey Gordon - I sat down on a Saturday morning planning to read just the beginning of this and finished the whole book by lunch. I found it much more accessible than her first book, while still being grounded in facts and pointed toward justice. I highly recommend it if you have any interest in social justice and/or the science behind weight. I do have two criticisms: 1. There's a heavy reliance on the implicit bias tests, which in my understanding are not fully scientifically validated as useful. 2. The last chapter is dedicated to pointing out all the other kinds of discrimination that are alive and well in our world today, which is great! Except she leaves out antisemitism, which seemed like a bad thing to leave out.

Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan - I was glad I bought a copy of this instead of trying to get it from a library. It's very good and also very intense, so I needed time to recover between chapters and it took me almost four months to read. I greatly appreciated her voice as a fan of TV wrestling with some of the same issues I've been working through, and her turns from thoroughly reported facts to conversational opinions. I do think she lets Damon Lindelof off too easily - sure, he says the right things now, but has he changed his behavior? Content notes: All kinds of interpersonal, institutional, and systemic injustices, harms, and crimes.

The authors I read the most in 2023

There wasn't anyone whose books I read in large amounts this year. I read four or six books by a few people, and they're worth mentioning because they're representative of the kind of easy reads I read a lot of this year.

Jessie Mihalik - I read a total of six of her books in two trilogies. They're sci fi romances with political intrigue and space adventures. I liked the Consortium Rebellion trilogy better than the other one I read. The content notes for these sound very serious, but they're mostly just adventures with space ships. Content notes: genre typical violence, past intimate partner violence, results of nonconsensual human experimentation.

Annabeth Albert - She was one of the authors I read the most in 2021. This year I read the four books in her Hotshots series, which are m/m romances about smoke jumpers in Oregon. I continue to appreciate the diversity of relationship dynamics in her books. One of these deals with disability issues, including sexual functioning after a spinal cord injury, in a way that seemed respectful to me. Content notes: grief/mourning, injury.

A.M. Arthur - I read four of her books this year, and I've read several others before. She writes basic contemporary m/m romances, which is sometimes all I want to read. Content notes: explicit sex, various past traumas.

#books #book rec

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mild-lunacy · 7 months

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I think I view romance as a sort of crutch, perhaps, in terms of things I'd like to read. I really like the *idea* of friendship-based stories rather than romantic narratives, and yet I have some weird PTSD-like avoidance of them. This probably is a product of my over-familiarity with fandom and particularly the frustration of the source material. I'm afraid that somehow friendship wouldn't be enough, even though this is unlikely for me. Half the time I actually find the stupider/more immature parts of romance (jealousy, misunderstandings, love triangles, imbalance with the physical attraction, etc) more frustrating than friendship by far. I mean, one main reason I stick to genre romance is that there's little time to spend on those plot lines. I actually prefer extraneous sex scenes to extra scenes about romantic anxiety and misunderstandings. Not to say I don't like well done romantic tension, 'cause I do.

Mostly thinking of this as I found a new sci fi/fantasy author, Rachel Neumeier, and I'm thinking about reading the series starting with Tuyo. It's one of those super-close male friendship fantasy epics that I both adore and avoid like it's kryptonite. It also gets old *always* seeing men and women interact romantically. I actually try to avoid this even in romances-- I like where the female main character is only secondarily 'a woman', as opposed to whatever else she does or wants to do.

I have a lot of the personality preferences of the readers who *never* read romance, except that I constantly do. One of the things I look for that resolves this sort of dynamic is that in a genre/romance *series*, by book 2-3, the couple is usually already together and the focus is on their partnership and meeting new obstacles and their friends and family. Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs-- urban fantasy books in general-- are well established in doing this.

So I've read pure urban fantasy as well as genre romance-adventures but I've been avoiding pure science fiction. In part because it's more often written by male writers who focus on plot to the exclusion of characterization. On top of that, I like a certain kind of character/culture centric story, even if it's focused primarily on plot. Women tend to write that kind of story even with science fiction (eg, some old Ursula K LeGuin or Lois Bujold and Sharon Lee/Miller or Catherine Asaro, and recently I've found Rachel Neumeier and Dorothy Grant).

Anyway, so while I dip my toe periodically in non-romantic fantasy and particularly sci fi by women, I've still been avoiding genre stories (by women) that are about male friendship. There's no good reason for this, rationally, particularly when I only like family stories when they're in the background of an individual's life (though I love that background, and I love Ilona Andrews, Seanan McGuire and Nalini Singh partly for that reason). Without a focus on primarily family dynamics, without friendship what else is there? And this is how I get to settling on romance. I just like books about 1-2 people *primarily*. Even 3 protagonists is really pushing it if they're dominant.

So I'm wondering if I did read Tuyo, would it be a beginning of something? Or would I never get over my fandom trauma. That would be sad.

#me myself and i #reader response #pointless rambles #fantasy #romanticism

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tea-with-eleni · 5 months

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Okay, if my brain had to ruminate on something, I am very glad that it has now settled on a particularly weird novella I read when I was about 14 that seemed like it was going to be a slightly trope-y "woman gets kidnapped by a barbarian warlord and falls in love with him" romance but that turned out to be a vehicle for the author to talk about imaginary numbers and topology.

Weirdly, that novella probably influenced my college career more than anything else I've ever read.

It's called "The Spacetime Pool", by the way, and it's by Catherine Asaro.

#weirdly influential books #book recommendations

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sistahscifi · 1 year

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Oh, our Goddess!!!! Congrats Tempest!!

Everyone, Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion is a finalist for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction!!! The final decision will be announced this weekend, so please light a candle and say a meditation for Tempest and the Ruby Finley vs is the Interstellar Invasion team!!!

About then Andre Norton Nebula Award - The Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction (formerly the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy) is an annual award presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) to the author of the best young adult or middle grade science fiction or fantasy book published in the United States in the preceding year. It is named to honor prolific science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton (1912–2005), and it was established by then SFWA president Catherine Asaro and the SFWA Young Adult Fiction committee and announced on February 20, 2005. Any published young adult or middle grade science fiction or fantasy novel is eligible for the prize, including graphic novels.

@sfwa_inc

@ktempestbradford

@fsgbooks

@macmillanusa

#SistahScifi #KTempestBradford #RubyFinley #middlegradefiction

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mar-ginalia · 1 year

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Books I read in January 2023:

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Peter Frankopan (ebook, PL transl.)

Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (ebook, ENG orig.)

Lewica dla opornych, Tomasz S. Markiewka (physical, PL orig.)

Undercity, Catherine Asaro (ebook, ENG orig.)

Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You, Jenara Nerenberg (ebook, ENG orig.)

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Emily Austin (ebook, ENG orig.)

January was a mixed bag. Undercity was the most forgettable, bought on a whim for purely escapist reasons, and didn’t really serve its purpose. Meh.

Divergent Mind was the most thought-provoking, although, like many books of this type, it suffered from annoying oversimplifications. I’m tired of neurodivergent people being portrayed as (potential) artists, diplomats, scientists, entrepreneurs… What if you’re just a regular person, working a desk job, or a taxi driver, or a cashier, or a homemaker? You can’t exactly go tell your boss that you’re “enriching the working environment” or whatever by having zero focus and being tired all the time.

Lots of interesting bits in The Silk Roads, too. I enjoyed the Asia-centric perspective.

***

Consistently keeping track of stuff is a chore for me. I stopped updating Goodreads over a year ago. Maybe this is the place to do this? Sometimes I envy people like my SO, who have their lives summed up in neat, separate spreadsheets. I’ll try this and see what happens.

#mar reads books in 2023 #personal stuff

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tediousreviews · 4 years

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Analog (July/August 1999)

Minus last week but one's novella, it's time for the Analog double issue.

We have one more novella, a trio of novelettes, and a trio of short stories. Plus, we have the conclusion to the Quantum Rose serial.

Please accept my thoroughly insincere apology for the delay in this review, and proceed beyond the cut.

Serial

The Quantum Rose, Catherine Asaro

Ok, so over the last two episodes our heroine avoided being forced into a marriage by being forced into another marriage, learned her new husband was a telepath with a drinking problem, and also learned that she was part of a genetically engineered slave-race. Fun stuff.

This time she gets kidnapped, forced back into the original marriage, raped repeatedly, and then stuck in the middle of a really obnoxious trial centered around coercing her into talking about who exactly is coercing her more.

Cheery.

Novella

Emperor Penguins, Joseph Manzione

As far as reasons for advanced cultures initiating first contact go, using us as an excuse to advance legislation allowing males to sue for custody of their children in a divorce is... well the particulars are a bit rare but the general tone is about average I'd say.

Novelettes

As Time Goes By, Amy Bechtel

More in the ongoing adventures of a vet, some sea monsters, and a few other people.

Eh, it was a nice little bit of weirdness.

Live Bait, Shane Tourtellotte

In the future, people will entertain themselves by passing through living not-whales the long way. Some other people with have problems with this. Also murder.

Because of course the environmentalists have to be murderers.

E-Mage, Rajnar Vajra

Ugh. Why do so many hacking stories inexplicably involve VR and bizarre metaphors?

Don't answer that.

Short Stories

Tempora Mutantur, H.G. Stratmann

Time travel, a stupid hoax that wouldn't work, and the world's worst brother.

You lost me at time travel.

Out of Warranty, Gordon Gross

Nanites and evil corporations.

I'm pretty sure I've reviewed an almost identical and clearly superior story, although whether it was in Analog or Asimov's I couldn't tell you and I'm not willing to go looking.

GCEA, Laurence M. Janifer

It's a carnival mystery story with like two throw away lines to make it SF. Also random ukelele references that I had to look up and be disappointed by.

The whole "I forgot this story was supposed to be SF, better make it IN SPACE." thing keeps almost getting me in trouble with my fake advice column. So I sympathize.

Final Thoughts

I mean, I guess I could with this one, but let's just let it slide.

#analog #Catherine Asaro #Joseph Manzione #Amy Bechtel #Shane Tourtellotte #Rajnar Vajra #H.G. Stratmann #Gordon Gross #Laurence M. Janifer

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valeriec80 · 2 years

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What I’m reading

So, I intended this blog to mostly be me talking about stuff that I had read or watched or whatever, with the idea that I could put tags in on tumblr, people would click, and then I would somehow convince them to read my books or something.

It made sense in my head.

But I’ve been striking out hardcore lately with books. I tried to get into this book about a girl who’s supposed to marry the king, but falls in love with his dragon-shifter bodyguard instead, which sounded amazeballs. It was by an author I had tried before and wasn’t real keen on, but I jumped in with both feet, and... nada. Just not dark enough for me. Just... too easy. Just... were I that dragon bodyguard, I would not fall in love with that girl. I don’t know. Something about me means I just don’t dig that author, which ANNOYS ME, because said author is fairly popular, and it would be fun to tag this post with her. I could mention her and do it anyway, but I don’t want her to be, like, googling herself and have this come up and give her a sad. I well know what that is like. I also read two sentences of a Karina Halle book, which excited me, because I thought she was doing epic fantasy, and it was URBAN FANTASY. *shakes fist at sky*

No, I am only in the mood for epic fantasy, thank you.

Or, as it happens, science fiction set on primitive worlds and written in the 90s-00s. I was in the mood for something Mercedes Lackey-like, but I was not pleased with her science fiction offerings, and I somehow ended up on Catherine Asaro’s kindle page, and then someone had reviewed The Quantum Rose as a Harlequin romance in space, and I was like, “Here for it!” (But then it was out of print, and though she does seem to have some kindle editions of her books for sale, like The Last Hawk, which I’m currently reading, that one isn’t, and I did have to pursue alternate means of procuring a copy. For shame, Catherine Asaro! If you are putting your out of print books out as ebooks, maybe do the one that won the Nebula?) Yes, I think I will tag Catherine Asaro in this post, so that if she googles herself, she’ll be like, “You whipper snapper author, get off my lawn” or something. Idk.

Dear Catherine Asaro, You are my new hero. It’s a travesty your books are out of print. The world is not fair. Maybe one person will read this blog and buy a book, but don’t expect anything.

Where was I?

Okay, so she is GREAT! There’s this whole complicated backstory about the universe and the people who live there. The guys are metallic and they have metallic chest hair, and I’m just enamored with this, and it’s NOT really romance. It’s sci fi with a strong romantic element, but it’s not Harlequin at all. The climax in The Quantum Rose is not whether or not the H and h will get their shizz together and make it work, but a really tense almost courtroom drama thing? And the bad guy is soooo insidious. The female character in this reminds me of an Anne Bishop main character, like soooo innocent and sweet. Such a 90s thing, I think. I don’t mind this.

This just goes back to the thing I said in the very first blog, where I am harder on indie books than trad books. Case in POINT. If an indie author had written The Quantum Rose, I would have bailed. It took me a good three chapters to even get into it. I was all, “This won the Nebula. It’ll be worth it. Push through!” Okay, to be fair. I did a good bit of pushing on that dragon book too. I tried, okay? Sigh.

Where was i?

So, I’m currently reading The Last Hawk, which is about a guy who is the metallic kind of guy and he crash lands onto this planet where the women are the warriors and the men are subservient and they all have these, like, harems and they play this game, which I first thought was like chess, but is turning out to actually affect the actual world, so it’s a substitute for warfare. And the main guy has so far been in one harem, and then tried to escape, and then got captured and sentenced to this awful jail, and then rescued, and put into a rival’s chess group of men, and I don’t have any idea what might happen next, and I love it so much!

I’m going to really shut up now. That was just a lot of babbling, and I don’t think any of it made much sense.

#catherine asaro #the quantum rose #skolian #out of print #babbling #have you even ever read a harlequin #my attempts at self promo are useless

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scifi2feature · 6 years

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#Analog #1999 #astronaut #Wyoming #Adam-Troy Castro #Jerry Oltion #Amy Bechtel #G. David Nordley #Catherine Asaro

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very-grownup · 6 months

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It's time! for! the best books! of 2023! according to me! Ingrid! the only person whose opinion you should listen to!

Best character name: Sir Bonamy Ripple, "False Colours" by Georgette Heyer

Best book you could use as a weapon: "The Counte of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas

Best 'how dare you write a first novel this good?': "I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself" by Marisa Crane

Best book picked up because of a social media post: "If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English" by Noor Naga

Best tragic only novel because the author died of a brain tumour soon after publication: "The Auctioneer" by Joan Samson

Best book I read then gifted to a niece: "Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor" by Xiran Jay Zhao

Best book I could never read aloud: "Everything Abridged" by Dennard Dayle

Best book I lent to a friend with a warning not to read one story because of the main character using a sword to pleasure himself: "The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation" by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Best book by an author I discovered because of John Finnemore: "Headlong" by Michael Frayn

Best mystery novel with a detective who's a little weirdo: "The Village of Eight Graves" by Seishi Yokomizo

Best book in which someone is crushed to death by giant gears: "The Mill House Murders" by Yukito Ayatsuji

Best book with an autistic protagonist in spite of when it was written: "Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls" by Jane Lindskold

Best book with a main character who shares the name of a friend: "The Jasmine Throne" by Tasha Suri

Best book set in a parallel dimension: "Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle" by Vladimir Nabokov

Best book I've owned for 20 years and finally read: "Dragon Sword and Wind Child" by Noriko Ogiwara

Best sequel: "The Dragon Republic" by R.F. Kuang

Best book in translation from a translation: "The Howling Miller" by Arto Paasilinna

Best book where a tiger mauls a clown: "Stars of Chaos" by priest

Best tiny collection of short stories: "Instead of Three Wishes" by Megan Whalen Turner

Best book where talking about it gave me an excuse to mention Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service: "Guardian" by priest

Best memoir by a man who tried to kill Peter Sellers: "Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall" by Spike Milligan

Best work in translation about how much Agamemnon sucks: Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's "The Iliad"

Best book by someone I first knew of through old school webcomics: "The Twisted Ones" by T. Kingfisher

Best road trip novel: "The Road to Roswell" by Connie Willis

Best book I subscribed to a service for the purpose of reading: "Healthy Choices" by Lydia Bugg

Best dinosaurs: "Cosmonaut Keep" by Ken McLeod

Best 'huh I forgot I preordered that' book: "Beast in the Shadows" by Edogawa Rampo

Best book by an author living her best life: "Ascendant Sun" by Catherine Asaro

Best book with a protagonist who definitely isn't gay: "The Talented Mr Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith

Best book I was explicitly told to read by a friend: "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" by Becky Chambers

Best manga: Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service

#2023 books #best of 2023

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accidentalspaceexplorer · 1 year

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May Monthly Recap

I read so many books in May (27!!) - I guess that’s what happens when you get hooked on cozy mysteries and binge a bunch of them! My favorite, though, was Some Desperate Glory, which was excellent although you should absolutely look at the content warnings, as well as my reread of the first couple Lord Peter Wimsey books, which are better now than they were when I read them in high school.

Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire: 4.75/5

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older: 4.5/5

How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole: 2/5, dnf

How to Keep House While Drowning by K. C. Davis: 5/5

Much Ado About Nauticaling by Gabby Allan: 2.75/5, dnf

Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro: 3.75/5

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor: 3/5

The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan: 4.5/5

Mimi Lee Gets a Clue by Jennifer J. Chow: 2/5, dnf

Farm to Trouble by Amanda Flower: 2.75/5

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel: 4/5

Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers: 4.5/5, reread

White Sand, Vol. 1 by Brandon Sanderson: 3.5/5

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh: 5/5

Dead Eye by Alyssa Day: 3.75/5

Private Eye by Alyssa Day: 3/5

Evil Eye by Alyssa Day: 3.75/5

Eye of Danger by Alyssa Day: 4/5

Eye of the Storm by Alyssa Day: 3.25/5

Apple of My Eye by Alyssa Day: 3.5/5

Witchful Thinking by Celestine Martin: 4.25/5

The Radiant Seas by Catherine Asaro: 2.75/5, dnf

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers: 5/5, re-read

Through a Glass, Deadly by Sarah Atwell: 4.5/5

Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon: 4.5/5

Pane of Death by Sarah Atwell: 4.25/5

Snake in the Glass by Sarah Atwell: 4.25/5

And my goal progress under the cut:

23 in 2023: 13 [+3]

Read 100 books: 90 [+27]

Translated works: 1 [+0]

Physical TBR: 10 [+2]

Top of TBR: 3 [+1]

Books in Spanish: 0

Read 40% AOC: 21.1% [-1.1%] (SIGH)

Discworld Books: 1 [+0]

Series: 15 started vs. 22 caught up/finished [+6/+6]

Storygraph recs: 1 | avg. 3/5 [+0]

Indigenous authors: 1 [+0]

#monthly recap #may 2023 #book review

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