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mistressofmusesFor the month of November, I read seven books! The most for any month this year!
My goal was actually to get through one more, but tragically I didn’t finish it until December 1st, so alas.
I was pretty lucky this month in terms of enjoying everything I read.
Overgrowth by Mira Grant
Sci-fi/Horror (background m/f) - physical novel - read with Taylor
4/5
When Anastasia Miller was a child, she went into the woods and found an alien flower. She never came home, but something that looked just like her did. The new Anastasia has never hidden what she is: she is the vanguard of an alien species that plans to arrive on earth, a fact she is compelled to share with everyone she meets.
Even she isn't completely sure that she's telling the truth, and very few people in her life truly believe her. Then the signal comes, announcing the approach of the alien armada. Suddenly, people do believe there's an invasion impending, and they do not react kindly to the aliens already hiding among the human race. Stacia herself is torn, particularly as the humans grow increasingly cruel and violent in response to the alien presence: are her loyalties with the species she's always actually been, or the world that raised her?
My thoughts, vague spoilers:
This one was a reread for me, just reading it with Taylor this time.
My thoughts are mostly the same as the first time I read it. I feel like there were a few aspects I actually liked better this time, in terms of the pacing and watching Stacia weigh her options between the aliens and the humans. I remember previously feeling like she was too back and forth between the “sides” the first time (rather than it feeling like a steadier progression toward her ultimate decision.) This time that bothered me less, and felt like a more realistic struggle.
I feel like lots of people really didn’t like Graham, but I do. :( I still really like their relationship being based on believing each other about who and what they are, in a world that largely doesn’t. (And no I don’t think that this is an offensive 1:1 comparison of those identities; different things can have an aspect in common that creates sympathy without being identical!)
I also don’t hate the ending. It’s not a good ending, as in, good things happening to everyone/triumph over evil/completely uncomplicated good vs. evil/etc., but I wouldn’t have wanted it to end otherwise, tbh.
Finding out the “how this could have been prevented” still felt like a gut punch.
Something that bothered me more this time was the fucking editing. Again. Reading it aloud meant that I didn’t manage to gloss over a bunch of the typos that I apparently passed over last time. I know I’d noticed a few the first time, but there were more than I remembered. Mostly just stupid little “typo turned this into the wrong word” type stuff, but it’s so frustrating in a traditionally published book. If I’m noticing multiples on a read-through, what the fuck were the editor or copyeditor doing?
There was also one factual error that I really feel like the author shouldn’t have made in the first place, but also should have gotten caught by an editor. Stacia thinks something about it being a shame they weren’t in New Mexico, because then they could take her to Area 51, or something to that effect. Area 51 is not in New Mexico. The “Roswell crash,” if you’re into alien stuff, happened in New Mexico, but Area 51 is in Nevada. Like… maybe that’s “obscure” knowledge, but it doesn’t feel obscure to me, particularly in a book about aliens/alien invasion/conspiracy theorists being proved right, and was enough to bug me.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Horror (subgenres: vampire, religious, epistolary, classic) (m/f) - daily ebook newsletter/full-cast audio adaptation
4.5/5
It's Dracula. How much of a summary can I offer?
Jonathan Harker, newly-minted solicitor, is sent to Transylvania to assist a new client: a count who wishes to purchase property in London. Count Dracula is initially a charming and generous host, but as Jonathan's stay continues, it becomes clear that something is deeply, even supernaturally, wrong, and Jonathan begins to fear he is not going to leave the castle alive.
In London, Jonathan's fiancee, Mina, waits for his return. She spends quite a bit of time with her friend Lucy, until Lucy's health begins to fail in bizarre ways. Others who care about Lucy rally to try and solve her mysterious illness, even when it, too, seems supernatural in origin.
Eventually they discover that the entity stalking Lucy presents danger to far more than just her.
My thoughts, spoilers for a novel that's more than 125 years old:
Again, it’s Dracula, again, how much can I say? Lol
It definitely deserves its place as a classic, and I appreciate it existing and creating so many of the tropes that have been returned to again and again. Epistolary horror, my beloved.
It’s really quite funny at times to read, because of course few of the characters are terribly genre savvy (with the possible exception of Van Helsing), because this is where so many of the genre norms came from! Wow, the creepy, foreboding castle was, in fact, Not Good??
I do often forget how much religious stuff is in the story? Like, crosses and holy water being primary weapons against vampires makes it hard to ever forget entirely, but the whole thing about Mina being bitten and then corrupted/damned/removed from God’s light is a lot. (And like, I morally hate it. She’s a victim! I hate that being a victim damns her to hell! Though yes, she gets saved, and they save Lucy’s soul, and apparently even Dracula’s in the end. The damnation is the “true horror” of the vampire, even more than the murder and drinking blood and all. I just don’t love it.) In terms of dated contextual everything, those gender roles certainly do be gender role-ing, too. I am not judging the book for that context, hopefully obviously, but it is certainly there. (Though not without at least some complication: Mina knowing shorthand because she wanted to help Jonathan with his work is a huge help in the story! The attempts to protect Mina by refusing to give her information almost always lead to things getting worse!)
The experience of reading this as “Dracula Daily,” which shares the story in chronological order on the dates that each part of the book happen, is very fun. I got behind a few times, and of course there are a few long stretches with no entries, but overall getting to read it all “in real time” is a really enjoyable way to do it. I read along with it, but also listened to it this year via “Re: Dracula,” which is a full-cast audio drama adaptation, released the same way, where each episode is one day’s worth of the story. Some of the episodes are just a few seconds long for quick entries, while some are a couple hours long, so it’s a bit of an uneven experience/time commitment, but again, worth the real-time aspect. (The cast is also very good, as is the sound design and background score.)
Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian
Horror (subgenres: supernatural, western, historical) - ebook novel
4/5
Sadie Grace is a witch, and the town where she resides knows she is the cause of every misfortune they face. When a bounty is placed on her, dead or alive, bounty hunters from across the west come to collect.
One of them is witch-hunter Tom, traveling with a strange mute child named Rabbit. They’re joined by a pair of cowboys, Moses and Ned, and widow Rose.
As the group travels, they encounter all sorts of bizarre supernatural horrors, from demonic possessions, to haunted forests, to towns that you may never get to leave.
My thoughts, tried to avoid spoilers:
This one was pretty good! Warning for some pretty grossly descriptive gore in a couple parts. And why did the toads have to be evil. ;_;
The story is told in a very episodic fashion, with a lot of the places the group travels through being pretty discrete sections of the story, but I thought those bits still built on each other and came back around in ways that were worthwhile. While episodic, none of those episodes felt like they didn’t matter, which was nice. I also liked how there were occasional chapters that introduced characters that were unrelated to our main group, but ultimately got folded in to the story.
I really liked the ambiguity around Sadie and her motives for most of the story. I thought that it was well-constructed, how we get a lot of other people’s views on her before we get much information about her directly.
[Redacted late reveal] had not occurred to me in advance, but seemed like an obvious thing in retrospect, which was kind of nice. It’s possible I was simply terribly unobservant about it, but it’s nice to be surprised by something that also doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere.
In the utterly petty complaint department: this is absolutely the curse of “more knowledge on one specific, usually inconsequential thing than the average person,” but boy do I wish more authors understood horse words. Mostly descriptive color/pattern words, in this case. This wasn’t the most egregious example of an author clearly not knowing the terms (or thinking they mean something other than they do) that I’ve ever seen, but it was noticeable to me a few times, even when I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt to force the descriptors to make sense.
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
Fantasy - physical novel
5/5
Kell is an Antari, a particularly rare and powerful kind of magician, capable of wielding all the elements, but also the power of blood. One of the powers this grants him is the ability to travel between the three existing worlds: each very different, but tied to each other by the fact that each of them has a city called “London.” Kell lives in Red London, in a world rich with magic; Grey London (our world) is part of a world completely cut off from any magic; and White London is in a world where magic burned out and what remains is now viciously fought over. Once there was a fourth London, Black London, but that world has been long dead, having consumed itself completely as the magic ran wild.
Adopted into the royal family to serve the Red London crown, one of Kell’s duties is to travel between the remaining Londons, sharing messages with their rulers. Other than the sanctioned letters he transports, any transference of objects between worlds is strictly forbidden. When Kell is tricked into transporting a relic of Black London across the border between worlds, it places all of Red London, including his brother, crown prince Rhy, in horrible danger. Kell is assisted by a Grey London thief named Lila, and is thrown against Holland, the only other living Antari, and the brutal White London rulers he serves.
My thoughts, some spoilers:
This was a reread for me, but it’s been several years since I read the series.
I still really enjoyed the first book. I love the magic system, with the division between the elemental magic that a fair number of characters can use, and the blood magic that only the Antari have access to. I love the Arnesian language (which has enough similarity to existing roots that sometimes the meaning can be sussed out even before it’s given, and it feels consistent.) As conlangs go, it’s certainly not the most complex ever made or anything, but it flows really naturally to me, without feeling forced or like I’m trying to do translation homework. I love the differences between the Londons, and how horribly creepy White London is. The Dane twins are so awful!
I’d forgotten that Kell is kind of an asshole, haha.
I feel bad that I often have less to say about the books I enjoy the most…
Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
Horror (subgenre: psychological, pandemic, post-apocalyptic) (background f/nb) - ebook novella
4/5
A pandemic swept the globe, but rather than a virus, this contagion spread by eye contact. Seeing another person’s eyes, no matter how briefly, could send a person into a violent, homicidal and then suicidal rage. Years in, the people who remain live in total isolation as a method to survive. Riley has retreated to a cabin on a lake, a place that her family used to come. Her only contact with anyone else is through the sometimes-unreliable internet. Until Ellis moves in a few doors down. Riley’s new neighbor is a mystery; a new person brushing up against her carefully cultivated isolation. As dangerous as it is, Riley finds herself drawn to Ellis, but when strange, possibly threatening things begin to happen in her house, it seems natural to suspect the new person is behind it. As she tries to find out what’s happening, it becomes harder to tell: is it Ellis who has ulterior motives, or is it Riley losing touch with reality?
My thoughts, minor spoilers:
This was clearly covid pandemic fiction. Not like it hides it, but this drew really heavily on the experience of covid, I think.
It definitely had some relatable quotes:
“It’s horrifying. Then it’s weird. Then it’s inconvenient. Then it’s just every fucking day.”
Or
“In the end, maybe it’s disturbing how easy it was to adjust. How easy it is for the worst things imaginable to become normal.”
(Sure, a pandemic that causes people to try and commit immediate, violent murder/suicide would be worse than covid. Probably. But that arc sure feels familiar.)
Riley’s growing paranoia was definitely dread-inducing.
Ellis is very carefully never gendered at any point in the book. (I think there’s one place where a “they” could be arguably applied to Ellis, but Riley may have meant it more generally.)
The ending is a bit ambiguous, so I will not be recommending this one to Alex, lol. I don’t think he’d like that.
A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab
Fantasy (background m/f) - physical novel
4/5
Having left Red London behind, Lila has followed her lifelong dream of boarding a ship. It may not be her ship (yet), but serving on the crew as a thief under privateer Captain Alucard Emery will do for the time being, particularly as he agrees to help train her newly-emerging magical gifts.
Back in Red London, Rhy and Kell both struggle with the aftermath of what Kell sacrificed to save Rhy’s life.
Meanwhile, Red London prepares to host a tri-annual tournament, bringing the best magicians from all three empires to compete. Among the competitors is Alucard… and more than one magic-wielder planning to compete in secret.
My thoughts, some spoilers:
There’s nothing wrong with this book, and I do generally enjoy it… but not nearly as much as book 1.
There is a lot of important stuff happening in this book, and the character stuff I like a lot. Lila discovering and working with her magical gifts is important. The struggle between Rhy and Kell, and having their lives bound together is something I find super engaging. The guilt Rhy feels over what that means for Kell, along with the additional layer of guilt when he isn’t sure he even wants to have been saved. The far worse, absolutely heartbreaking divide between Kell and the rest of the Maresh family. Kell and Lila reconnecting. Everything happening in White London. Alucard getting introduced, because I do love him.
Even so… the stakes just feel so much lower in this book that it’s tough for me to get as into it. The first book focuses on a truly world-ending threat, with the Black London stone, plus White London’s attempt to take over Red. This book, the main plot is… just the tournament. Who will win, who will get unmasked and possibly disqualified, etc. It’s not a bad plot, and I’d probably be more into it if it were a standalone or part of a different series, but the stakes, while not meaningless, are just a downgrade from the first book.
Yes, we get the glimpses of Ojka and what’s happening in White London, and so there’s some awareness that there’s another big world-spanning threat, but none of the other characters are aware of that, so it doesn’t really create any urgency in terms of plot, and it doesn’t really pay off for the reader until the very end. Which is a cliffhanger, as a warning.
Feeling the Heat: Part One by Emily Antoinette
M/M/M/F Romance (subgenres: contemporary, omegaverse) - ebook novel
4/5
On her fortieth birthday, Camille gets an unexpected and undesired surprise: rather than the beta she always believed herself to be, she’s actually just an extremely late-presenting omega. When she visits a heat clinic, she discovers she’s a scent match with the handsome clinic doctor, Ambrose, and also meshes incredibly well with the beta she selects to help her through her heat, a man named Jackson.
Coincidentally, Ambrose and Jackson are already part of a pack together, and neither of them can get Camille off their minds. Despite some terrible past attempts at finding an omega to join their pack, they get the third member of their pack, alpha River, to agree to court her… but things quickly grow more complicated than they’d hoped.
My thoughts, some spoilers:
As per usual, don’t judge me for liking omegaverse, lmao.
This was pretty good. I like this author; her stuff is generally competently written, which is way better than a lot of the random indie romance or erotica books that I’ve picked up. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but I genuinely mean it: there are actual plot arcs, she fleshes out the relationships between the characters (and especially does so for all the different connections in a poly story), and there are few typos or errors that jump out at me, which is honestly better than a lot of tradpub stuff. It basically always gives me just what I’m hoping for when I say I want a brain-candy read. Light enough to enjoy, well-constructed enough to be worth enjoying.
Unfortunately, even when it’s an author I like, mdom/fsub stuff still squicks me out. (Tragic, since it’s probably the most bog-standard and popular thing to find.) This is pretty mild on the kink scale, but still, bleh. Most of the characters are kind of switchy (so there’s also some mdom/msub, and a brief very light fdom/msub scene as well.) It wasn’t enough to make me dislike the story or anything, and I at least buy that the characters are having fun, even if I wouldn’t be, but that personal preference does keep it from being a 4.5 or a 5.
There are also a couple little omegaverse worldbuilding things in particular that I don’t love in this incarnation. Specifically, I’m not a fan of settings where characters refer to their designation as something separate from them. “My alpha doesn’t want to let her go,” or “my omega adores the feeling” or whatever. (Werewolf or shifter type stories do this too sometimes “my wolf tells me to…”) I don’t like it, unless it’s a character choice for a specific character who uses that to try and distance themselves from that trait. Just as a standard? Nah, grates on me. Petty complaint, and not really something that mattered too much to my enjoyment, but just didn’t care for it.
On the other hand, I really liked how the scent stuff worked in this one. Beyond just pleasant scent, or even enjoyable emotions attached to one that a character is compatible with, I really liked that it called up a whole sense memory for the characters. A pleasant tea scent turns into a specific memory of a particular cup of tea on a perfect day, or things like that. It wasn’t overbearing, but felt like more than just “smell good.”
Also, it is a fully poly romance, which is by far my preference, as opposed to a v-type where everyone is into Camille. Two of the men are in an established relationship, while the third is “platonic” but harboring some not-so-platonic thoughts that book two promises to explore, while also being the target of “unrequited” love on the part of one of the other men.
I liked all three of the dudes who are love interests, but hate that I’m a predictable bitch, because of course my favorite was River… the one that there's ~drama~ with, haha. The other two are comparatively straightforward, and while I like them, of course I was most interested in how the mutual “I mistakenly think the other one hates me for Reasons” arm of the story would turn out.
This one ends on a cliffhanger… which is also not my favorite. Not the cliffhanger per se, but the fact that it’s A Big Misunderstanding. It’s set up well enough that yes, it makes sense for both characters to come to the conclusions that they do, but I hate when shit would be solved with one conversation that the characters simply refuse to have. We’ll see how it gets solved in part two, which I will certainly read. (Also, parts one and two are very much full novels on their own; it’s not two novella-length things that should have been one story being split up for algorithm or ‘sell more things’ reasons.)
For December, I’m off to a good start so far: On December 1st I finished another horror ebook, and Alex and I finished our co-read.
I do have five more books that it’s my goal to get through before the end of the year. (Book three of the Darker Shade of Magic trilogy, plus the first (currently only) book in the sequel series, the two remaining horror ebooks, and one other book that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, yet somehow keeps getting put off.) I don’t know if I’ll manage to get through them all, especially with other stuff coming up for the holidays, but I’m going to try!
Currently I am reading three books, soon to be four:
- A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab (my main read)
- Feeling the Heat: Part 2 by Emily Antoinette (my brain candy side read)
- Queen Demon by Martha Wells (co-read with Taylor)
- TBD co-read with Alex (sounds like he wants to read another Stephen King book he has, but I don’t remember which one.)
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