Forgot to hit post last night
Mar. 5th, 2019 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotMade myself crepes after dinner and put some lemon curd on them. Shrove Tuesday! Britaboo level: increased! (They were delicious.)
I am watching Saving Mr Banks this evening and it is just ... why did I not realize how adorable this movie is? Emma Thompson is such a delight. She made me laugh out loud multiple times before I was halfway into it. (Bob Sherman's son made a revue about his father, it's called A Spoonful of Sugar, you can find it on Spotify.) Also, I had NO idea Ruth Wilson and Colin Farrell were in this and as amazing as they are.
Books lately:
Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding, by Rhys Bowen - the latest in the "Royal Spyness" series. An adequate continuation; I mostly read them out of momentum, and really, they are better than most formula series mysteries. Better-written, I mean, and Georgie's mother is always fun to read. But as mysteries I always feel like they lack something - partly because mysteries set in the 1930s inevitably make you draw a comparison with Sayers which everyone else will always lose, but partly because Georgie just ... she just sort of walks around and the most obvious clues get left in front of her, every so often she does something insanely risky without seeming to realize it, and then she mainly solves the mystery because she runs into the criminals doing crimes. So just not quite satisfying. But as the title hints, she marries Darcy, so at least we can stop being reminded that she's a virgin every book!
An Unkindness of Magicians, by Kat Howard - a standalone urban fantasy novel, probably could be categorized as "new adult" although it isn't as far as I know. The premise is that New York City is controlled by various magical families/Houses, and every so often they have to participate in a tournament to see which House will be in charge. I'm going to get a bit spoilery about the worldbuilding, so I'll shift into a cut: Underneath this, we have the dark truth of where the magic comes from - every House that loses in the tournament (except for those whose champions actually die) donates a child, either one of theirs or one they find elsewhere, to be sent to the House of Shadows and tortured to provide a pool of magic everyone else can draw on. Kind of a "Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" deal. Magicians can use magic without that, but they suffer headaches and other pain afterward if they draw it from within themselves. Our main character is Sydney, who grew up in the House of Shadows and actually managed to qualify(?) to get out; she goes to be a champion for Laurent Beauchamps, a young black man who wants to start his own house, and has a romance with Ian Merlin, another champion. Miles Merlin is the old head of House Merlin, a very shady fellow who does some bad stuff; Grey Prospero is a real asshole who lures young women with a bit of magic, but not enough to be Important in the magical world, then kills them and removes their fingerbones so he can use them to augment his own magic.
It reminds me a lot of Jessica Jones in that I got about halfway into this and then went, "OH, NOW I SEE WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT." Privilege! There's pretty strong critique of old white men who think they should control everything and young white men who are mad because they don't control everything, but definitely the deepest critique is of people who blithely consume without really thinking about the origins of what they consume. Yes, it simplifies the RL problem - magicians can use magic without drawing it from others' suffering, as long as they take it on themselves, and I can't make a new phone or pair of sneakers just by accepting that I'll get a migraine after they're fashioned - but I like that it combines the attack on the system as a whole with an understanding that you have to take personal responsibility for your own choices as well. When Sydney explains to Laurent where the magic he draws on came from, he immediately starts to relearn how to access his own. Sure, there's no ethical consumption under late-stage capitalism, but if you don't at least try, what are you doing?
But also: entitled young white men who aren't allowed to do everything they want and snarl "bitch!" at any woman who fails to conform to their wishes are the worst.
Now I'm working on The Victory Garden, also by Rhys Bowen, and it's interesting to see where it is and isn't like the Royal Spyness series, in terms of voice and character-type and plot. (It's a standalone novel, not marketed with the RS books at all, but close enough that she's not using a pen name, so ... I have to say, it seems like she phones it in with Spyness.) Though I hit a Stupid Corset Scene - really stupid - and about ten pages later there was an unexpected Australian slur, which is like ... if you're going to have characters be "oooh modern young women who all agree about corsets and jobs etc.", can't you have the Australian perfect-man love interest have some slight racial awareness?
Also started The Haunting of Hill House, don't know if I can/should read it at night.
I am watching Saving Mr Banks this evening and it is just ... why did I not realize how adorable this movie is? Emma Thompson is such a delight. She made me laugh out loud multiple times before I was halfway into it. (Bob Sherman's son made a revue about his father, it's called A Spoonful of Sugar, you can find it on Spotify.) Also, I had NO idea Ruth Wilson and Colin Farrell were in this and as amazing as they are.
Books lately:
Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding, by Rhys Bowen - the latest in the "Royal Spyness" series. An adequate continuation; I mostly read them out of momentum, and really, they are better than most formula series mysteries. Better-written, I mean, and Georgie's mother is always fun to read. But as mysteries I always feel like they lack something - partly because mysteries set in the 1930s inevitably make you draw a comparison with Sayers which everyone else will always lose, but partly because Georgie just ... she just sort of walks around and the most obvious clues get left in front of her, every so often she does something insanely risky without seeming to realize it, and then she mainly solves the mystery because she runs into the criminals doing crimes. So just not quite satisfying. But as the title hints, she marries Darcy, so at least we can stop being reminded that she's a virgin every book!
An Unkindness of Magicians, by Kat Howard - a standalone urban fantasy novel, probably could be categorized as "new adult" although it isn't as far as I know. The premise is that New York City is controlled by various magical families/Houses, and every so often they have to participate in a tournament to see which House will be in charge. I'm going to get a bit spoilery about the worldbuilding, so I'll shift into a cut: Underneath this, we have the dark truth of where the magic comes from - every House that loses in the tournament (except for those whose champions actually die) donates a child, either one of theirs or one they find elsewhere, to be sent to the House of Shadows and tortured to provide a pool of magic everyone else can draw on. Kind of a "Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" deal. Magicians can use magic without that, but they suffer headaches and other pain afterward if they draw it from within themselves. Our main character is Sydney, who grew up in the House of Shadows and actually managed to qualify(?) to get out; she goes to be a champion for Laurent Beauchamps, a young black man who wants to start his own house, and has a romance with Ian Merlin, another champion. Miles Merlin is the old head of House Merlin, a very shady fellow who does some bad stuff; Grey Prospero is a real asshole who lures young women with a bit of magic, but not enough to be Important in the magical world, then kills them and removes their fingerbones so he can use them to augment his own magic.
It reminds me a lot of Jessica Jones in that I got about halfway into this and then went, "OH, NOW I SEE WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT." Privilege! There's pretty strong critique of old white men who think they should control everything and young white men who are mad because they don't control everything, but definitely the deepest critique is of people who blithely consume without really thinking about the origins of what they consume. Yes, it simplifies the RL problem - magicians can use magic without drawing it from others' suffering, as long as they take it on themselves, and I can't make a new phone or pair of sneakers just by accepting that I'll get a migraine after they're fashioned - but I like that it combines the attack on the system as a whole with an understanding that you have to take personal responsibility for your own choices as well. When Sydney explains to Laurent where the magic he draws on came from, he immediately starts to relearn how to access his own. Sure, there's no ethical consumption under late-stage capitalism, but if you don't at least try, what are you doing?
But also: entitled young white men who aren't allowed to do everything they want and snarl "bitch!" at any woman who fails to conform to their wishes are the worst.
Now I'm working on The Victory Garden, also by Rhys Bowen, and it's interesting to see where it is and isn't like the Royal Spyness series, in terms of voice and character-type and plot. (It's a standalone novel, not marketed with the RS books at all, but close enough that she's not using a pen name, so ... I have to say, it seems like she phones it in with Spyness.) Though I hit a Stupid Corset Scene - really stupid - and about ten pages later there was an unexpected Australian slur, which is like ... if you're going to have characters be "oooh modern young women who all agree about corsets and jobs etc.", can't you have the Australian perfect-man love interest have some slight racial awareness?
Also started The Haunting of Hill House, don't know if I can/should read it at night.
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Date: 2019-03-06 08:08 pm (UTC)I always enjoy your book reviews. :)
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Date: 2019-03-07 02:05 am (UTC)Glad you like them! I like to sort through my feelings after I read something.