Where are you in Fantasyland? November 2012

Just finished a great trip in the world of New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear, an alternative-world detective fantasy. Very well thought out, and "real" characters. Reads much like a cross between the Lord Darcy mysteries and the Count Saint Germain books, but with a distinctive Bear quality: close to the bone (both in writing style and in worldview) but compassionate.
I look forward to the rest of the books in this set. Somehow I've missed it until now.

#1 rshart3 I love Elizabeth Bear! Such an intelligent writer with interesting, challenging books.

Personally, I just finished Red Hood's Revenge by Jim C. Hines and am waiting for my reserve to come in on the next one, Snow Queen's Shadow.

In Cincinnati with Rachel and Ivy in Blood Crime, and also reading Into the Woods (which also includes some non-Hollows stories under Kim's "real" name, Dawn Cook).

Rshart3, I'm so glad you found that series. New Amsterdam is one of my top 5 favorite books ever!

I am in Dark Currents, an urban fantasy by Jacqueline Carey. Daisy is trying to solve the possible murder of a mundane, a death that may have been at the hands of a fey. Carey is an amazing writer so I am struggling a bit with this prose told in snarky first-person. I know it is part of the Urban Fantasy Formula, but I picked this book up due to past experience with Carey. I'll continue the ride, not sure if I'll pick up the next in the series.

Just finished Blood Crime and posted a 5***** review.

Hi, I just joined the group.

I finished Chronicles of the Crusades today. I'm going to be continuing my first read-through of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, which I started in February while reading a non-fantasy book in-between each WoT book so as not to get 'burned out.' Tomorrow I'll start Winter's Heart then by the later part of the month I'll at least start It's True! It's True! by Kurt Angle.

In Talia, an alternate history version of Renaissance Italy, in Mary Hoffman's Stravaganza series. I do find the series so far rather bland, despite being well-researched and reasonably well-plotted. Perhaps it's the diffuse cast of characters or the confused mechanisms of time-travel that bother and disengage me (in the third of the series a character actually describes the plot-driver as "far-fetched"); nevertheless, each volume is, it has to be said, very readable and intriguing, and that more than helps to compensate.

Plus, if you have a little acquaintance with Italy and Italian culture, it's fun trying to recognise cities such as Venice, Siena, Florence and Lucca in their fantasy guises, and to appreciate the little touches that Hoffman adds to the narrative with her use of Italian words and phrases and allusions (for example, I've discovered, from reading Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano novels in translation that Talia is acutally Sicilian dialect for Italy, Italia in standard Italian).

I'm rereading Inkspell currently. I'd forgotten how beautiful a series it is.

Hello everyone, newbie here.

I've just finished my epic trip into the Malazan empire. Wow, what a trip it was. I feel a bit lost now I've finished. However, I'm now back in Westeros reading Dance with Dragons by George RR. Martin.
It's good to be back!

Finished Barbara Hambly's The Time of the Dark and started The Walls of Air.

>6 mattries37315:,9 Welcome!

>7 ed.pendragon: I had seen those on the shelf at the library recently, but the first book was checked out. It's never a good sign about the worldbuilding conceits when the characters start breaking the fourth wall to complain about them, is it? :) The setting does sound interesting; I am coincidentally taking a course about the Italian Renaissance now so I may have to check it out.

For said class, I've been reading Baldassare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, a Renaissance dialogue about ideal courtly behavior, for class, and alongside it I'm continuing my read/reread of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden series with Scout's Progress. The juxtaposition of a fictionalized historical discussion of mannerly behavior alongside a depiction of a mannered created alien society is interesting.

>11 sandstone78:
I think the 'far-fetched' comment was meant to be a little tongue-in-cheek, but I couldn't resist quoting it!

I ought to have a look at the Castiglione some time, but so much to read, so little time...

Still reading The Twelve by Justin Cronin (sequel to The Passage and so far very good...

Recently finished Red Country and Kalpa Imperial.

I am heading back to the Malazan Empire with Midnight Tides.

I'm in Swindon with Thursday Next in The Woman Who Died a Lot.

Started A Touch of Power by Maria Snyder. I love her stuff and I get to dive into the second book in the series as soon as I'm finished with this one!

I've started Flesh and fire by Laura Anne Gilman. I'd never heard of her before, does anyone know this book or the author? So far I really like it and it has very original magic: it's activated through wine!

#18
Gilman wrote a series called The Retrievers (first book, Staying Dead) which was quite good. Very typical of contemporary urban supernatural fiction: tough protagonist, different supernatural races; more than a touch of romance. But she does it very competently. In this case, the protagonist's power works through electricity.
I couldn't get my head around magic activated through wine, so I haven't tried that series.

In between, with Jim Butcher in Ghost Story

@19
Thanks, rshart13. I like the book so far! I like the wine thing, it's original...

I'm on Discworld reading Equal Rites

Still in the Liaden universe and currently reading The Crystal Variation. These are far, far back prequels to the core Liaden books. Strangely I have liked them more than most of the others -- they are certainly far better than the books in The Dragon Variation.

I did take brief detours to try and read Karen Chance (don't bother) and Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison (REALLY don't bother) based on "oh, they're awesome" reviews. They are not awesome. In fact, I found Dragon Bound so appalling I had to stop reading it after the 200th eye roll.

#18 I found the idea of wine based magic really cool when I heard about it but something distracted me and I never got around to reading it. I'm excited to hear how you find it!

Also, hello mattries37315 and smallblondehippy!

>18 zjakkelien:: Flesh and fire is on my tbr pile. I'll have to move it up, based on your positive comments.

Have moved on to Reader and Raelynx now. Shinn's Gillengaria books are so compulsively readable; my only problem with them is that I read them too fast.

After finishing The Singing, and having no problems whatsoever following its plot even though I omitted The Crow, I've moved on to another YA title, one I was lucky enough to stumble across at a used bookstore: Meredith Ann Pierce's Birth of the Firebringer. It would be hard for me to resist a Watership Down-like story centering on magical creatures without a human in sight (at least, for now...). But now I have to track down the next two volumes.

I'm not quite sure yet if I'm in an alternate England or a completely different fantasy world, but I'm starting Ironskin.

I've just finished the Liaden book Scout's Progress, and am moving on to its recently published direct sequel, Mouse and Dragon. I enjoyed it. Scout's Progress is a much stronger book than the one that comes before it chronologically, Local Custom- more character driven than authorial-fiat driven. (For those keeping score at home, Local Custom and Scout's Progress are collected in the omnibus The Dragon Variation that @anatwork.k mentioned earlier.)

>23 anatwork.k: It's always a disappointment when something gets tons of rave reviews and you just don't get it, especially when it should be right up your alley.

I can tell from reading excerpts that Dragon Bound probably isn't a book I would enjoy- I find that when a book refers to men (especially supernatural/non-human men) as "males" rather than "men," it's almost certain to also contain a controlling "alpha male" love interest, and probably will also contain a lot of heteronormative or gender essentialist ideas about what men and women are like that I would find unpalatable, especially since these ideas are often ingrained into the rules of magic in the author's universe (see "mating bonds" and similar tropes). I see this most often in urban fantasy and paranormal romance.

>14 beniowa: How did you like Kalpa Imperial? It's been on my radar since I saw it recommended as similar to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Did you read Ursula Le Guin's translation?

>26 kceccato: How is Birth of the Firebringer? I read Meredith Ann Pierce's The Darkangel years ago and found it wonderfully weird and original- it takes place on the moon of a gas giant, for one thing, but the tropes and tone were very firmly fantasy from what I remember. I could never get into the sequel, A Gathering of Gargoyles, though.

I've been in the castle of Broe, and following the wanderings to, from and back to it of the warrioress Chien du heaume as she was searching for her birth name and origins.

I'm reading The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still, the 6th in a series of humorous detective stories set in an alternative reality version of the Welsh town where I went to university.

28: So far I'm liking Birth of the Firebringer; it has a lyrical style, and the descriptions of unicorn culture are vividly detailed. It's a coming-of-age story, so the hero is learning that right and wrong are not as simple as he'd always believed, and it's interesting. (I enjoy reading well-written YA because the idea of coming of age, of developing an identity and an ethical sense, intrigues me.) Also, even though the protagonist is male, females are everywhere, playing important roles, even among the unicorns' enemies. The unicorn society falls under what TV Tropes calls "Gender Is No Object"; males and females may play any role they choose. We see this all too rarely in fantasy fiction that centers on humans. (TV Tropes lists few fantasies under "Gender Is No Object," although science fiction, as you might expect, has more entries there.)

I finished Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon which are far back prequels to the main Liaden novels. They were excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Far more than I enjoyed any other package of Liaden books. I heartily recommend them.

I also then picked up Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold based on recs in the "tall women" thread. I *loved* both The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. I am a convert to LMB and might even give Dag and Fawn another chance in The Sharing Knife books. :)

28 - The problem is I didn't do too good a job of vetting Dragon Bound. I read one "oh its awesome" review from a site I normally trust (Smart Bitches, Trashy Books ;-) -- don't laugh you guys, they have introduced me to such treasures as Sharon Shinn ) and promptly picked the book up. I didn't realize till later that it was a guest review during a review contest. Sigh.

I also totally do not mind alpha men heroes as long as the heroines are equally as heroically alpha and kick ass. Sadly this was so completely not the case here it ran in the other direction.

Anyway, I am feeling very happy tonight because I have thoroughly enjoyed the last four books I read. So no more griping. :)

Also, Happy Diwali everyone.

32: Interesting that Bujold has come up here. I just started Cordelia's Honor. I'm getting a very good vibe from it so far; it's what I wish On Basilisk Station had been -- an intriguing space opera with fascinating new worlds to explore and a smart, strong heroine to explore them with, NOT overburdened with an abundance of military technobabble. I expect I will be exploring the Vorkosigan series further, though I greatly fear I may be let down a little -- just a little -- when the emphasis shifts from the awesome Cordelia to her son Miles.

Also started Morgenstern's The Night Circus, completely different in style and tone from the other books in my rotation right now, which is a good thing considering that's why I have a rotation in the first place.

I was in Saramyr in Chris Wooding's, The Skein of Lament. Planning to read the third and final book in the trilogy soon.

> #28, sandstone78

Yeah, I read Le Guin's translation and the book was pretty good. It's kind of a literary epic piece on power and politics. It's less a novel than a collection of short stories connected by theme so it's better read piecemeal than in large chunks.

Totally in Middle Earth, right now!

Added The Hobbit to my list of books I don't really have time to read.

Lol, I am afraid to re-read The Hobbit before the movie. It is one of my best beloved books and I know there are going to be changes and I don't want to be more outraged than necessary. :/

37 - I highly recommend the audio book narrated by Rob Inglis, if you can get your hands on a copy.  Or ears, depending on your mode of purchase.  @Groxx and I listened to it a couple weekends ago, when we were picking up our kitten.  Bilbo's encountered with Gollum occured on the return trip, and during that sequence, we saw a license plate with the lettering PRSHSSS.  I choose to believe that is none other than a Tolkien reference.  I wish I could hunt them down and find out if this is the case.  Buy them coffee or something. :D

>31 kceccato: That sounds promising, I'll have to keep an eye out for it, though it looks like the latter books are disappointingly hard to come by (and my local libraries, of course, have only the first volume- if I had one wish for my local libraries, it would be that more care could be taken to ensure they have a complete series instead of a first volume here, a last volume there!) Thanks also for the pointer to the "Gender is No Object" page- that is one of my favorite worldbuilding tropes. Another example with humans I didn't see mentioned on the page is Laurie J. Marks' Fire Logic and sequels.

>35 beniowa: Sounds interesting, I don't mind a book to savor in between my faster-paced reading. I will have to track a copy down, thanks.

I'm still in the Liaden Universe with Mouse and Dragon, somewhat dragging my feet on this one...

I enjoyed Scout's Progress, which this is a direct sequel to- it was the story of Aelliana, a mathematician abused by her brother, finding confidence in herself and reaching out to others again, and Daav, the leader of Korval, who sneaks out of his house sometimes to work as a mechanic among his former Scout friends and is trying to deal with an arranged marriage to a woman he doesn't particularly like one way or the other. Of course Aelliana and Daav end up together in the end, and like the previous book in the series, Local Custom there are some things that are more than a little eye-roll worthy, but unlike Local Custom attempts are made to address them and there is a cohesive plot arc. The focus throughout was on Aelliana's personal growth and their growing friendship and mutual respect rather than romance, and even better, the "other woman" that Daav is engaged to, didn't end up demonized or jealous or evil by the end of it.

Mouse and Dragon throws pretty much all of what I liked about Scout's Progress out the window, and so far (halfway through the book) has been a series of incidents without much of a driving factor behind them, more like a fix-up of short stories and character sketches than a novel. I wouldn't have a huge problem with this, since I liked both Daav and Aelliana enough to read on, but unfortunately their characterization has changed for the worse: Aelliana's excitement about piloting seems to have evaporated, as if the only reason she enjoyed it was because it was as an escape from the abuse, her talent for math is only a quirk mentioned in passing rather than central to her mindset, and her social awkwardness has been traded for manic-pixie-dream-girl like enthusiasm for making Daav happy, and Daav has lost his humor and interest in mechanics and become the brooding loner type, reduced to romance genre cliches like "I'm so much stronger than you are that I'm afraid I'll hurt you" and this paragraph after he is reflecting on Aelliana:

"It was not to be expected that his growth would be so exuberant as hers; he was her elder - in years, and in experience. Yet with all of that, he felt lighter of late, as if his experience was buoying him rather than bearing him groundward."

So, instead of two equal partners who like each other and pursue their common interests together, we now have young, naive, fresh Aelliana healing old, jaded Daav with the power of love. Their story has turned from the type of equal friendship/romance story I like to read to the woman-teaches-man-emotions type I most loathe, and I find that very disappointing. I hope to see some of their old character resurface in the rest of the book, but the fact that this book is nearly 200 pages longer than Scout's Progress and not half as much has happened does not give me much hope.

40> Yeah, I chalked Mouse and Dragon up to the general inconsistency in the Liaden books. It was very much a "how did we get from there to here book" without any more than the marriage plot to it. I found the sex arc to be particularly infuriating with the barrier being that Daav was afraid he would overwhelm poor, delicate, innocent Aelliana with his desires. eyeroll

You should read Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon. They were really good.

I just finished The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold which was good but not as wonderful as Paladin of Souls and am now thinking about starting Sharon Shinn's Troubled Waters. But work is interfering. :(

34> The Cordelia books were the other option for next reads but I already have Troubled Waters handy and those would require work! So they are going next. :)

40: "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" is another among the tropes I strive to avoid like the proverbial plague. My impression, based on this and on the Liaden thread, is that a few of the Liaden books employ this trope. Is it necessary to read the entire series in sequence, or can readers pick and choose among the books, and avoid the ones that place undue, rather nauseating emphasis on male strength/wisdom and female weakness/naivete?

Finished up Black Powder War, and currently spending time on the island of Taishu with the emperor of fantasy!China with Jade Man's Skin.

>41 anatwork.k: Yes, especially their first scene in the sex arc where "his desires psychically overwhelmed her." (Mild spoiler) The whole thing with their lifemate bond being that he couldn't sense her but she has the full bond with him makes no sense, given that at the end of the last book she was supposed to be the psychically "damaged" one. The explanation I've been working with when his unusual strength came up was that her receiving had been damaged, so his sending had increased to compensate, but when the Healers "fixed" Aelliana they accidentally left her vulnerable because they took away the natural compensations in the link, but the narrative doesn't seem to support this- it keeps treating it like a problem with him, like he's just so naturally strong with projecting that he overwhelms her.

It bothers me as well that the arc we see on screen basically has Aelliana convincing him it's okay and she doesn't mind being overwhelmed because she's "strong enough to take it," and we don't see Daav making effort to checking himself and devote his conscious attention to her needs to make sure things are equal. We only see her learning to accommodate him, not the reverse at all- this may be because scenes are in summary or off-screen, but I just don't get a sense of him changing for her at all or making as much of an effort to learn about her interests and so on as she does about his; the complement to "she learns to love him" is presented not as "he learns to love her," but as "he learns to accept her love," and that's just not cool with me.

Overall, I feel like the authors fell in love with Daav a bit, and so the story became all about him and his manpain to the detriment of Aelliana's character. There's just been a vacuum of conflict in the novel so far, and angst has rushed in to fill it, as in Local Custom. I think this book could have been better if the initial scenes that show aftermath of Scout's Progress it begins with had been offloaded into a short story or novella, and then the whole focus of the novel was on, say, Aelliana and Daav working Ride the Luck- like you say, it's a "How did they get from Point A to Point B?" novel, and I think the problem is that the book is too self-aware of what Point B is in its tone and the way it has the characters act.

I own Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon and am really looking forward to them based on your comments and the brief excerpts from Cantra's logs that provide the flavor text of chapter headings throughout the books- I have the five books of Agent of Change to read first from the library, though. I will probably move on to somewhere else in Fantasyland after the Crystal books.

>42 kceccato: The series was written out of chronological order, so there is no problem with skipping around, but there are a handful of books that are best read in chronological order because they depend on prior knowledge. Every on-screen romance plot in the series so far between main characters (with the probable exception of the Crystal duology since it predates Korval and the possible exception of Balance of Trade, which has no Korval main characters) can be summed up as "Man from rich, powerful Clan Korval finds troubled outsider woman, helps her overcome her baggage, brings her into Korval, and they find out they're lifemates."

Scout's Progress is pretty good, and can stand alone, but it does have a little bit of Daav being the older, more experience Pilot against inexperience Aelliana (though her skill with mathematics makes her a better pilot than he is, so he takes the position of her copilot). Avoid Mouse and Dragon (unless it subverts these tropes later on, but I don't see that coming). Local Custom is more Woman of Kleenex, Man of Paper Towel and suffers a bit of the same conflict-vacuum-filled-by-angst that Mouse and Dragon has.

I haven't read the others recently enough to make a good judgment about the romance.

I find that this type of trope, with the man being "elder in years and experience" and the woman being "exuberant in personal growth" often comes hand-in-hand with almost every romance plot or subplot that has an older man and a younger woman. Lois McMaster Bujold fans, I want to read her work because of the rave reviews, but I'm put off by the fact that she seems to pair older men with 10+ years younger women a whole lot- The Sharing Knife being perhaps the most glaring example, but I noticed Aral is quite a bit older than Cordelia, and I believe the Chalion books have some rather large age-gaps in their romances as well. Does she avoid making them all into jaded, battle-hardened men and younger women with passion for life who teach them how to feel again?

Really disppointed to hear the feedback on Mouse and Dragon, as I had loved the dynamic between Daav and Aelliana in Scout's progress. They were both strong but in different ways that complemeted each other. Now it sounds as though Aelliana's strengths have been brushed to the side to make her the Mouse of the title. Boo. I love your one sentence description of Local custom, btw!

I'd say that so far, Miri and Val Con (in the Agent of change storyline) and Shan and Priscilla (Conflict of honors) are better matched couples in terms of having equal strengths and skills. They are also more nearer in age to each other. I agree that it would be nice to see a Korval woman pick up a non-Korval man, thus reversing the usual trend of the Liaden books!

Cordelia is younger than Aral in the Vorkosigan books, but she is herself pretty battle-scarred and certainly not naive and dewy-eyed. She has her own strengths and abilities and is formidably strong-willed. The romance in Curse of Chalion does follow the trend you're worried about, but it is such a small part of the book that you can almost ignore it. The rest of the story is so fantastic that you shouldn't miss it! Paladin of souls stars a middle-aged widow who herself needs to recover her passion for life; she is one of the most refreshing heroines I've come across.

44,45: If a heroine is referred to, in the title of the book and elsewhere, as "mouse," that automatically rings my "Avoid It!" bell. I won't be reading that particular book.

Cordelia, I believe, is thirty-three when we meet her in Shards of Honor, and Aral Vorkosigan is in his early forties. Age differences of ten years bother me a lot less when both characters are at least well past their youth; difference aside, both hero and heroine are mature in this book. Ista and her beloved in Paladin of Souls have no wide age discrepancy; both are middle-aged. And Sakerfalcon is right about Ista being an unusual and refreshing heroine, and at least partly BECAUSE she is past her prime. It's somewhat rare to see fantasy heroes who are pushing fifty. It's even rarer to see a fortysomething fantasy heroine. Speaking as a fortysomething, I find it nice to be represented.

44: Thanks for the heads-up on the Liaden books, the assurance that I can skip around in the series. I will be watching this and the Liaden thread to get an idea of which books to seize upon and which to shun.

I read The Curse of Chalion a few years ago and have just picked up Paladin of Souls. I'm wondering if I should reread Curse first or if remembering the main story points is enough before starting Paladin?

Well, re-reading Curse of Chalion is NEVER a waste of time but I think you can safely read Paladin without a re-read :)

Finished Barbara Hambly's The Walls of Air and started The Armies of Daylight. Sill working on Tolkien's The Hobbit.

>45 Sakerfalcon:, 46 Thanks for the comments on Bujold. I tried to read Curse of Chalion ages ago on the recommendation of a friend and just couldn't get into it, but if memory serves it was because I'd just read Carol Berg's Song of the Beast and Transformation and Revelation, and before that tried Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, so I was just not in the mood for another "male main character comes to terms with the fact that author of the book is a vengeful deity trying to smite them" story at the time (which Cazaril's past and injuries seemed to be setting up for), so I should probably give it a second try sometime.

I am somewhat reassured about Cordelia as well- enough to give the copy of Cordelia's Honor I have sitting around a shot soon, anyways; maturity on both sides is always good. I enjoy reading about older protagonists when their age is more than cosmetic- when an author does it well, you end up with a character who has a lifetime of successes, failures, abilities, and relationships to get them in and out of trouble.

Plus, as a twenty-something, I get tired of the way that stories with characters my age or younger (I'm looking at you, YA) end at the end of books, with them having saved the planet/world/kingdom/city and found true love, maybe popped out a few kids in an epilogue to end up in happily-ever-after stasis. I don't like the implication that adventures end when you hit twenty, or thirty, or forty and then you step aside for your kids to have adventures, or the subtext that I ought to have come of age and found my true self and found true love and saved the world by now. One gets a complex, you know :)

This is the same thing that Catherynne Valente talks about in children's fiction in On Childhood and Growing Up, but taken further along the age scale. I think she falls a bit into the trap she's arguing against by having her heroine's story end at age 16 or 17- I know that teenagers can have adventures, there's an entire genre of YA these days that tells me so, but what happens after age 18? After 21? (YA comes with its own set of problems with the way it makes burgeoning sexuality the universal most important issue of adolescence. I realize I'm probably several standard deviations away from the norm here, but sex didn't even register in my list of most important things to me at that age, and that makes it really hard for me to empathize with narratives where figuring out what you want from a sexual partner is the hallmark of "growing up," especially when the "correct answer" for what I'm supposed to want is usually portrayed as "the right hot boy.")

>46 kceccato: I will note that "Mouse" is used in the book as a slur* against the heroine, and it seems that the authors intended it to be a reversal where people think she's a mouse but she's actually awesome rather than a straightforward or "gosh, isn't that cute?" descriptor, but that is severely undermined by the way they actually portray her. Like Sakerfalcon says, she is made into the Mouse of the title.

* Used by No-Fun Stodgy Sister Kareen who, as we see in Local Custom, Just Doesn't Understand her Cool Non-Traditionally-Liaden Brothers our protagonists Er Thom and Daav, and who we are not supposed to like. Korval women do not fare well in these prequels- Kareen is also a Bad Mother who was inattentive to her son to the extent that Daav took him away from her and put him in the custody of Korval's "lovable bumpkin cousin" Luken (who constantly reminds us that he's "not as clever as Er Thom and Daav," but the brothers love him anyways), and Petrella, Er Thom's mother and Daav's foster mother, is also a Bad Mother because she is Bitter and Set In Her Ways and will not let her son marry That Woman because she is Terran. In short, they are types pulled from Georgette Heyer and reused whole without examination- the narrative attempts to justify Petrella's bitterness by allowing her nostalgia for the time when her beloved twin sister was alive, but it never actually empathizes with her, or allows her the possibility of being right. She and Kareen both are obstacles rather than people. Kareen isn't even allowed that much of an inner life- she's merely a prop for Daav to score cool points off of by displaying his anger through cold eyes and mild voice.

>45 Sakerfalcon: Yes, I was quite disappointed as well. I hasten to add that reviews I have seen elsewhere for this book have been overwhelmingly positive, so your reading and mileage could well vary from mine. Regarding Local Custom, I didn't not enjoy it per se- it's nice to see men with wider ranges of emotional expression than "stoic" and "angry", for one- but neither can I overlook its flaws :)

(spoilers in the rest of this post)

I'm into mid-book, with Aelliana and Daav running Ride the Luck as a courier ship, and there are glimpses in a paragraph here, a scene there of their old dynamic, but usually Aelliana just defers to Daav's superior experience on everything.

The story just seems to be hitting all of the wrong emotional notes. The emotional core of the story and all of the supporting characters were just written out, and never brought to mind- Clan Mizel was written out, with Aelliana accepting Korval's protection; Binjali's was written out early in the story, with Aelliana moving her ship to Korval's shipyards; Aelliana's teaching career was written out with her resigning from her position, realizing that she'd been cheated out of salary increases for seven years, and rather than being angry at the school that took advantage of her, she "hates the thought that she had been cheated; hates the woman she had been, who had been so poor a thing that she was so easily cheated" (emphasis original). I can understand this contempt and even self-hatred as part of an in-character coming to terms with how she had been, especially given that the Healers seem to somewhat detach people from their traumatic memories, but the narrative does not contradict this insinuation that she was so weak that she let people do this to her, and every part of me recoils at this implication that because she was so busy surviving ongoing abuse that she didn't have the spoons to also be an assertive, extraverted self-promoter she is worthy of contempt and disgust.

So far, 278 pages (almost the full length of Scout's Progress) in, we have had the writing out of all of the secondary characters from the previous book, the sex arc with Daav that was discussed upthread, a nice scene with her bonding with Anne as Anne takes Aelliana shopping for a wardrobe and having lunch (I approve, and would love to see more traditionally-feminine-gendered activities taking place onscreen in genre with both men and women), and Aelliana deciding to run Ride the Luck as a courier ship. Daav's crushing workload that made him seek escape at Binjali's is written out through delegation via dea'Gauss-ex-machina, leaving him free to be her co-pilot. They accept their first courier run, end chapter, and... the next chapter starts with a sentence saying it was a difficult run and they just barely made it on time, here they are now in port at their destination. Yes, this scene, which should have been a huge emotional turning point in the book as the culmination of everything the two of them were fighting for and building toward in Scout's Progress, happens offscreen between chapters. Evidently the run was covered in short story in one of the chapbooks, but to me that is no excuse for omitting it here, especially when the authors already showed a willingness to work the text from the end of Scout's Progress into the beginning of this novel word for word.

Also, minor compared to the above, I was okay with it last book, but it's beginning to get too much that Aelliana's revision to the ven'Tura tables has saved the life of every pilot she meets. If the errors were severe enough and on common routes that pilots were going missing or dying left and right, the Scouts would have had an entire team of mathematicians on that- it makes much more sense that it would have been in a part of the table rarely referenced.

50> (YA comes with its own set of problems with the way it makes burgeoning sexuality the universal most important issue of adolescence. I realize I'm probably several standard deviations away from the norm here, but sex didn't even register in my list of most important things to me at that age, and that makes it really hard for me to empathize with narratives ....)

Great comment. I've just about given up on YA Fantasy/Paranormal for this reason. I've been going back to old favorites to cleanse the palate. I just read Dune and Ender's Game, among others. I 'm reading The Hobbit with my 7 year-old daughter and listening to The Divine Comedy and then Beowulf. A breath of fresh air.

Speaking of YA, I'm currently taking a break from Richard Yancey's series The Monstrumologist to read some more grown up work, though the graphic nature of The Monstrumologist series as a whole keeps surprising me. Love the books, but I have *no* idea how they qualify as YA. Anyway, I've moved on to Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey, and I have The Passage and The Twelve by Justin Cronin lined up next.

I'll take a break from ghouls and things that go bump in the night at some point so I can finish One of Our Thursday's Is Missing by Jasper FForde. I don't know why, but I seem to gravitate more toward horror and surrealist absurdity when I'm writing.

Speaking of YA, I just started Zoe Marriott's The Swan Kingdom. I'd noticed Marriott's work and thought it might be worth checking out. 99.9% of the YA books I read do NOT have contemporary settings; in fact, I tend to shun contemporary-set YA because it is a bit too often saturated with Sex (some thoughts of sex may be realistic, but it gets old when preoccupation with SEX obliterates all other concerns) and because contemporary high-school angst doesn't interest me. Give me a good coming-of-age story in a fantasy setting, and I'm there. So far I'm enjoying Marriott's lyrical writing style, though I can tell the narrator heroine is going to save the day precisely because she's trying to hammer home how ordinary she is. Though I'm willing to give her some benefit of doubt, this trope is a bit tired.

Finding good YA with fantasy settings can be a challenge, because so much of the genre is contemporary-set, thanks largely to the notion that today's teens can't relate to a story unless it takes place in a world exactly like their own. (Way to underestimate readers.)

I'm in Leadville, Colorado. Reading The Dead of Winter by Lee Collins

Just starting Libba Bray's The Diviners.

53> There's a lot of dysotopia too, but not much straight fantasy. If it is fantasy, it's probably a twisted version of our world. You may be right about underestimating the readers. Sometimes, the don't seem as well written - probably on the assumption that YA reader's don't care.

50, 51 - About YA: I totally agree. I used to think I enjoyed reading the non-sexy YA but I have realized this was a mistake in my comprehension of genre headings. I actually enjoy reading the books classified as middle grade! Like the Diana Wynne Jones', Angie Sage's, Eoin Colfer's and Rick Riordan. Basically I read like a 12 year old. I skip the 13 to 18 crowd and then I read adult. :/

Right now I am in Ann Aguirre's Mexican borderlands in the Corine Solomon books. I was feeling very meh about most of the first book then it abruptly got good towards the end. Lots of violence though. And the main character is in her own too much of the time. What I like though is at least the attempted focus on multi-cultaralism. The main love interest is Asian although his features are typically romanticised to be "somewhat asian" and we don't get to hear much from him. There are several important Mexican secondary characters. Its imperfect but its better than the average in UF. Which is actually a low bar, but oh well. I don't like all the catholic mysticism though with the angels and demons and nephilim and whatnot. I am more agnostic in my reading tastes and don't like other peoples religious beliefs shoved down my throat. I stopped reading Jeaniene Frost for that reason. So far the Solomon books haven't been preachy about it so I am still reading. :)

Returning to Malazan in The Bonehunters, and thanking my lucky stars it's about characters and places I already know this time, even though the prior volume was my favourite so far.

Continuing my Discworld travels with Carpe Jugulum. Love the Witches, and vampires are pretty fun, too.

I am joining others in Middle Earth with The Hobbit. I haven't reread this in years, I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm also re-reading The Hobbit. I'm about to enter the forest of Mirkwood. Can't wait.

Just finished Touch of Power which was great! Now I'm back in the 15 realms with Scent of Magic.

@donnao: I am reading The Hobbit too! One of my mom's friends re-reads The Hobbit and The Ring Trilogy every New Year.

I just finished Delirium by Lauren Oliver and quite a few books by Gail Carson Levine.

I've finished the three books I posted about in post #6. Today I started Crossroads of Twilight in the continuation of my read through of The Wheel of Time series.

I'm under a Traitor's moon in my reread of the Nightrunners books.

I dropped everything else and am reading my brand new Ilona Andrews book!! It is called Steel's Edge and is the last book in their Edge series. It is very good so far. :)

I'm in Gotland - reading In a Fix

I'm in Chicago (and other places, earthly and not) catching up with Harry Dresden in Changes.

I got somewhat bogged down in Aestival Tide, the second in Elizabeth Hand's early science fantasy trilogy set in a baroque, decadent, post-post-apocalyptic North America. I'll finish it, but I needed a break from all the bleak, so reading The Hobbit :-)

69 > Wow! I think you have just helped me to find a book I read a long time ago but could never remember enough about to search for properly. I was convinced that It was called Winterval, and all I remembered was that it was about a brother and sister, the cover had a leafy, garlandy sort of look to it, and a vague feeling of fantastical/grotesque/theatrical masques.

So now I am thinking that it s probably Winterlong the first in the series, and that my memory must have melded "Winterlong" and "Aestival" into one word.

Thank you.

I'm in NYC - reading Dead Waters by Anton Strout

Now in Adrilankha and surroundings as I'm enjoying some Vlad Taltos adventures.

70> Yep, and the third in that series is Icarus Descending, which I found in a used book store the other day. But I like "Winterval".