sandstone78's Reading Hideout, 2014 - Let's Go Again

This thread is a little tardy, but here at last now that I have a few minutes to start it!

As before, I read mostly fantasy and science fiction, with the occasional other book thrown in, but in general I am not much given to the gritty blood-and-body-count style of fantasy or any romance containing an "alpha male" (ugh).

I'm very interested in recommendations, especially current books from overlooked authors, out of print books to add to my used bookstore search list, or self-published works worth reading. I'm also interested in reading and discussing critical or informative articles about the genre at large or specific works, so I'll try to post those every so often too!

My 2013 thread can be found here.

Currently Reading

Survivor, Octavia Butler (mount tbr)
The Kindly Ones, Melissa Scott (mount tbr)
The Outcast, Louise Cooper (reread)
Rhetorics of Fantasy, Farah Mendlesohn (mount tbr)
Crystal Dragon, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (mount tbr)

Currently Listening To

Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey (reread)
The Pride of Chanur, C.J. Cherryh (reread)

Recently Put Aside

-

Thinking About Reading Next

Next (probably)

Patternmaster, Octavia Butler (mount tbr)
Lord of No Time, Louise Cooper (reread)
Hand of Isis, Jo Graham
The Romulan Way, Diane Duane and Peter Morwood (mount tbr)
A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle (reread)

Very soon

Day By Night, Tanith Lee (mount tbr)
Night Calls, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel (reread)
Wolfsbane Winter, Jane Fletcher (mount tbr)
The Master, Louise Cooper (reread)
Peacemaker, C.J. Cherryh
The Sleeping God, Violette Malan
These Mortals, Margaret Irwin
Beauty, Robin McKinley (mount tbr)
The Second Mango, Shira Glassman (mount tbr)
Serpents of Sky, Heidi C. Vlach (member giveaway)
Catspaw, Joan D. Vinge (reread)
Ring of Swords, Eleanor Arnason (mount tbr)
The Darkangel, Meredith Ann Pierce (reread)
Firebrand, Ankaret Wells

Real soon now

Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson
Golden Witchbreed, Mary Gentle (reread)
Jenna Starborn, Sharon Shinn
Far Harbor, Melisa Michaels
The King's Peace, Jo Walton
Servant of the Underworld, Aliette de Bodard (mount tbr)
Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey
Godstalk, P.C. Hodgell (mount tbr)
The Fortunate Fall, Raphael Carter
The Steerswoman, Rosemary Kirstein (reread)
Leaves of October, Don Sakers
Wheel of the Winds, M.J. Engh

Anthologies and Collections

Long Hidden, eds. Rose Fox and Daniel José Older (early reviewers)
Heiresses of Russ 2012, eds. Steve Berman and Connie Wilkins
Heiresses of Russ 2013, eds. Steve Berman and Megan Arkenberg
Crossed Genres Magazine 2.0 Book Two, eds. Bart R. Leib and Kay T. Holt
Scheherazade's Façade, Michael M. Jones (mount tbr, SantaThing)
Swan's Braid and Other Tales of Terizan, Tanya Huff (mount tbr, SantaThing)
Clockwork Phoenix, ed. Mike Allen
Conservation of Shadows, Yoon Ha Lee

Nonfiction

Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors, Jennifer K. Stuller
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, Lillian Faderman
Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam
Delusions of Gender, Cordelia Fine
Airman's Odyssey, Antoine de Saint-Exupery (mount tbr)
Gentlemen and Amazons, Cynthia Eller
The Georgian Star, Michael Lemonick
About Writing, Samuel Delany
The Furies, Lauro Martines

Thinking About Listening To Next

Huntress, Malinda Lo
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (mount tbr)
Jhereg, Steven Brust (reread)
Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner (mount tbr)
The Madness Season, C.S. Friedman (mount tbr)
Mystic and Rider, Sharon Shinn, narrated by Jennifer Van Dyck (reread, audio)

Anxiously Awaiting

Spiral Path, Katharine Eliska Kimbriel (2014?)
Clariel, Garth Nix (October 2014)
Sunchild, Melissa Scott (Summer 2014?)
Heiresses of Russ 2014, eds. Melissa Scott and Steve Berman (August 1 2014)

This is the list of works I have read to date this year.

January
1 My Enemy, My Ally, Diane Duane ★★★★½ (mount tbr)
2 After the Golden Age, Carrie Vaughn ★★★ (mount tbr)
3 Heiresses of Russ 2011, eds. Steve Berman and JoSelle Vanderhooft ★★★½ (mount tbr)
4 Travel Light, Naomi Mitchison ★★★★ (always meant to read)

February
5 The Honey Month, Amal El-Mohtar ★★★½ (impulse buy)
6 Tiger! Tiger! (aka The Stars My Destination), Alfred Bester ★ (always meant to read, group read)
7 Burning Bright, Melissa Scott ★★★★★ (reread, favorite)
8 In the Forests of the Night, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes ★★★★ (reread)

March
9 Sunbolt, Intisar Khanani ★★★ (impulse buy)
10 The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells ★★★★ (mount tbr, group read)
11 Whipping Girl, Julia Serano ★★★★★ (always meant to read)

April
12 Champion of the Rose, Andrea K. Höst ★★½ (mount tbr)
13 Relics, Michael Jan Friedman, read by James Doohan and LeVar Burton (abridged audiobook) ★★★ (impulse buy)
14 The Initiate, Louise Cooper ★★★★★ (reread, favorite)
15 Invisible: Personal Essays on Representation in SF/F, ed. Jim C. Hines ★★★★ (impulse buy)
16 Arrows of the Queen, Mercedes Lackey ★★★ (reread)

May
17 Arrow's Flight, Mercedes Lackey ★★★★ (mount tbr)
18 Ardent Forest, Nancy Jane Moore ★★★ (mount tbr, early reviewers)
19 The Serpent Sea, Martha Wells ★★★★ (mount tbr, group read)
20 Arrow's Fall, Mercedes Lackey ★★★½ (mount tbr)
21 The Siren Depths, Martha Wells ★★★★★ (group read)

June
22 A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle ★★★★★ (reread)
23 Indistinguishable From Magic, Catherynne Valente ★★★★ (impulse buy)
24 Still She Wished For Company, Margaret Irwin ★★★★ (mount tbr)

July
25 Miss Leavitt's Stars, George Johnson ★★★★ (impulse buy)
26 Clay's Ark, Octavia Butler ★★★★ (mount tbr)
27 The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin ★★★½ (group read)
28 Unexpected Stories, Octavia Butler ★★★★ (impulse buy)
29 Ravel, Heidi C. Vlach ★★★★ (mount tbr)
30 Shadow Magic, Patricia C. Wrede read by Nicole Greevy ★★★★★ (reread)

Year to Date in Summary

I read After the Golden Age with no expectations at all. I found it surprisingly amusing and fun.

Books one and two for this year were the excellent My Enemy, My Ally and a superhero novel, After the Golden Age.

My Enemy, My Ally is a Star Trek: The Original Series tie-in novel, the first of Duane's "Rihannsu" series where she fleshed out the Romulans. References are made to the episode "The Enterprise Incident," but overall if you know who Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are and have a vague sense of who the Romulans are (empire, split off from Vulcans but don't do the whole logic thing, vaguely Roman-inspired culture), you should be good- and that's good, because I believe this is absolutely worth reading if you like space opera adventure stories with interesting female and/or alien characters, whatever your feelings about or interest in Star Trek.

The main characters this time around are Kirk and Ael, a Romulan Commander who discovered something she shouldn't have and got reassigned from her ship, Bloodwing, and loyal crew to a broken-down Warbird out in the borders of Romulan territory. Because her honor demands it, she leaves her post, meets back up with her son and crew on Bloodwing, and joins with Kirk and the Enterprise to end the horrible experiment.

Ael is exactly the kind of female character I love to read about: a competent adult who commands respect, intelligent, ingenious, driven by honor and loyalty, and even an equal to Kirk (with whom she forms a sort of friendship based on mutual respect that has no overt component of romantic interest if anything, it's Uhura that keeps getting described as "gorgeous" when we're in Ael's perspective). There's a diverse cast otherwise too, both Romulans and Starfleet aliens and humans (many original characters that recur through Duane's Star Trek novels).

I'll be following this up with The Romulan Way in the not-too-distant future, and I'm sure I'll be reading it.

I picked up After the Golden Age on a whim when it was on sale last year, and enjoyed it more than I expected to. The characters are interesting, and the non-superpowered main character SPOILER does not get superpowers by the end of the story for once. I really liked the touches of domesticity, like Celia's mother using her fire powers to heat pasta sauce.

I wasn't too keen on the romance, though. I saw the blurb for Dreams of the Golden Age right after reading, which spoiled me on the resolution of that subplot, which ends up being sort of a love triangle (though with significantly less angst and drama than that normally implies). I thought that there were issues with Celia's choice of partner that weren't addressed, though- all we got was how great the benefits were without really addressing the fact that if things went wrong, they had the potential to go really, really wrong. I'm also just really not fond at all of romances where SPOILER the man knew the woman as a child, and realizes the girl he knew has "grown into a woman" while they were separated for her late teenage/early twenties years..

Vaughn's prose struck me as a little... flat, maybe as well- the tone of the story seemed consistently detached, bordering on omniscient (though focused on Celia), reporting events at the same pace regardless of what was going on in the story- action scenes and family home scenes and courtroom scenes all read the same, with no more or less information on Celia's thoughts, feelings, etc. It's a little hard to describe, and I couldn't make up my mind about it, but I think it detracted from the book a little for me.

I'll probably pick up Dreams of the Golden Age whenever it comes out in paperback (and the ebook price consequently drops), or possibly I'll check it out if I see it sooner at the library.

>4 JannyWurts: I was pleasantly surprised as well, certainly worth the $2.99 or so I spent on it, I think.

For many years, I read every Star Trek book there was. I finally stopped because they were getting pretty bad. My Enemy, My Ally, The Romulan Way, and Imzadi (TNG) were the best ones that I remember :)

Glad you've started the year with some good books. I'm planning to read The cloud roads this year too. I said that last year and didn't manage to fit it in, so this year is a must.

Have you seen this blog post on the Book Smugglers' website? Several new names for me, at least, to check out.
Shelves Full: the 99 Author Challenge

I'm just getting into Sword of Fire and Sea and my reread of The Magic of Recluce, so nothing much to say about either of those yet.

Browsing around E-Reads' back catalog on Kobo after discovering that The Shore of Women, which I'd always meant to read eventually, is now in ebook, I came across Marianne de Pierres, and author whose work I wasn't previously familiar with. Her Sentients of Orion series sounded interesting, but Burn Bright and sequels described on her website reminded me more than a little of one of my favorites, Biting the Sun- imagine my surprise when I went to Amazon and discovered the whole trilogy on Kindle for free! So that is now in the TBR...

(The ebooks seem to be Kindle only, and are not even listed for pay at Kobo or B&N.)

Other recently released ebooks of interest I've come across:

- The Steerswoman- Kindle only, with plans for other vendors and the rest of the series to follow evidently

- The Master of Whitestorm, which I tried a while ago and couldn't get into but mean to retry someday

- The Tainted, meaning the complete Isles of Glory series is now available in ebook- the second and third were quite pricy in paperback, so this means I can finally read the series, yay!

- Pen Pal seems to be getting mentions here and there from blogs I usually read- sounds interesting

In addition, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland both seem to be on sale for $2.99 around the internet, but I can't make up my mind on either even after reading the samples...

Now, for something different- a bit of non-SFF grousing today.

Looking through technical books on Amazon, I found that they have a new "portal" for same, "tech.book(store)" (the awkward punctuation makes me fairly sure that whoever named this was not conversant in method design, otherwise it would surely be store.techBooks() or books.store(tech) or tech.getBooks().store() or something more sensible), anyways, moving on, I saw a "Featured Blog Posts" section.

One of the articles is "The Modern Woman in Tech," by Mico Yuk. I've read enough of these articles- and I really don't know why I keep reading these articles- that I made a bet: the article is going to contain either "you don't have to dress like a man to be a woman in tech" or "you don't have to act like a man to be a woman in tech."

I was not wrong:

You don’t have to dress like a man to work in a male-dominated space! – The notion of completely denouncing your femininity or purposely denying yourself the luxury of heels, a fierce red lipstick, and some fab new hair color is coming to an end. Wearing grandma’s pants or late 80s pantsuits to work to avoid standing out as a woman is not the route to go, but more important, dressing outside of your personal comfort zone in the other direction, doesn’t have to be the case either. Instead, try embracing being a woman and your own personal sense of style, which is very unique in most tech companies. Forget trying to dress for what looks like male success, and instead, let your personality shine through by making fashion choices that are reflective of the real you!

Sorry, my femininity is jeans and a T-shirt, like many of the other female programmers I've known- and while I can totally get behind people wearing whatever they want to wear, I dearly wish women in tech fad articles would stop erasing us or pretending we're under some kind of anti-traditional-femininity mind control or something. I've also gone to school with and worked with women who wore "grandma pants" and women who wore high heels and lipstick and women with fab hair colors, and you know what? All of us were letting their personality shine through by making fashion choices that were respective of the real us- even those of us for whom fashion wasn't a traditionally feminine thing or for whom it just wasn't a big deal!

I'm not even going to touch the contradiction between point 2, "Speak up!, and point 3, "Don't be a B*tch, Be Yourself!" (Asterisks original to text.)

Okay, I lied, I am, I'll just put these two excerpts next to each other:

Often times, women tend to quiet down in meetings full of men. Rather than risk being seen as too aggressive or saying something wrong, the easy answer is to stay silent. Well, ladies that game is over! Not only are women in tech speaking more in the conference rooms, but they are also online making a voice for themselves and influencing decisions. And, you can too! No more excuses. Start focusing more on providing your point-of-view rather than having the right answer. And remember, if you don’t know the answer, there is a high chance others don’t either.

...

I’ve heard men tell me it’s such a turn off when they meet women who try to be powerful by being a b*tch instead of using their confidence and intellect to support their position. You have to remember, there is still an “old boys club” in many industries, and there are men who continue to view the female role as only a support role. When you play into the role of a b*tch, it can be seen as nagging and cost you the respect of your male counterparts, not to mention the respect of other women in the workplace. Be yourself – you’ve got plenty to offer without adding a bad attitude to the mix.

I... I just...

I don't even know.

But what I do know is articles like this are not helping women in tech.

Oh, no, why am I clicking on this other article, "Why Women Are on Track to Dominate IT"- somebody stop me, no, it's too late-

I swear, if this has something about women being better at communicating or people skills, I swear-

From experience, I know that IT will benefit tremendously from the creativity, resourcefulness, collaborative abilities and communications skills that women seem more naturally equipped with.

...

A polished and intelligent workforce that actually possesses people skills will excel in this setting, and the brightest minds now entering the field are women. When I teach advanced Cisco networking classes, it’s my female students who often catch on more quickly, they’ve completed advanced labs before many male students have even grasped the subject!

Okay, okay, so what does the second sentence here have to do with the first? How does that follow? It's not like your female students are learning through people skills- they're learning through hard work, dedication, and those bright minds!

The stereotype that women are better with dealing people just cause or that their achievements come from "working together" instead of hard work and dedication also isn't helpful to women, and it also creates the counterexpectation that it's cool for men to not act professionally or be able to work as part of a team- which, you know, is not okay in any professional team environment.

Argh.

That's enough, I'll stop... for now. There will be other terrible, frustrating articles, and maybe even some good ones.

(Python in a Nutshell, on the other hand, looks quite promising.)

>6 nhlsecord: I saw when looking up the later Rihannsu books (Swordhunt, Honor Blade, and The Empty Chair) that there were a lot more restrictions placed on authors sometime around the early 90s- a reviewer expressed disappointment that many of Duane's recurring characters had not been included in her 1990 McCoy novel Doctor's Orders. Wonder if that would correlate with the period of books where you stopped reading?

I liked Imzadi, but never have gotten around to reading Imzadi II. Uhura's Song and another Peter David TNG novel Q-in-Law both come highly recommended by my sister (I believe Lwaxana gets Q powers), so I'll probably try those out sometime too.

It seems like the books being currently published are all trying to unify TNG, DS9, and Voyager into a single epic story, which doesn't really interest me. (Killing off SPOILER Janeway rather sealed the deal, even if SPOILER they eventually brought her back.)

>7 Sakerfalcon: I did see that list! It's a great list! I found several new names, was reminded of several authors and books by authors I'd always meant to try, and was very glad to see several authors that deserve more attention- Cheryl J. Franklin, Laurie J. Marks, Melissa Scott among others. I haven't had time to go through the comments and make notes yet but it looks like there's even more good stuff in there!

Is there a way to nominate The Cloud Roads for a group read or something as extra incentive?

8> Oh, oh my. Yes, what you said. All of it. Articles that supposedly aim to 'help' women in the workplace (especially tech) tend to make me growl. I don't like interrupting people - that's not about being worried about being wrong, or being worried about what men might think, it's because my mother raised me to be polite. It's not remotely helpful for men to opine about how amazingly awesome women are in tones of such surprise (aren't we supposed to be past the point where we are surprised that women have brains and personalities?) and even less for anyone to tell women to speak their minds, but careful how you do it because some men interpret any form of female strength as bitchiness. Tch. But I guess we have another generation to churn through before the rhetoric shifts.

On 2.99 temptations - I enjoyed Girl who Circumnavigated immensely - not immediately, but as September's tone of voice developed and her adventures became increasingly erratic. It's borrowing left right and centre in terms of its faux Victorian narration and post-modern take on Fairyland, but I thought that was fun and September was an appealing heroine (being smart, feisty and not quite as heartless as she thinks). It's years since I read Jonathan Norrell back on its first release; I remember the experience as being like trying to swim through setting cement, although I've glanced at it a couple of times more recently and wondered about having another go. There's just too many other books I've enjoyed that call louder :)

Jonathan Strange seems to be one of those books that people either love or don't. I'm firmly in the "love" camp--it's one of my five top favorite books--but I love historical fantasy more than just about anything. You have to be willing to go along for the ride and fall into the story/world and let it carry you along--if you do, I think you'll be amply rewarded.

A book is mentioned that I've read! A first for everything! :) I too liked Jonathan Norrell, very much. In fact I made a point of looking for more of Susanna Clarke's writing--the stories, oh yes, The ladies of Grace Adieu. Liked them too, very much! But I read very little mytho-fantasy so perhaps it was all fresher to me. For instance, I was surprised and delighted that the fairies are so malicious and downright evil.

Also, I thought Clarke's control of the language was perfect. Notable because it seems that whenever I look at a fantasy book I'm hugely bothered right from the start by the linguistic affectations, typically the archaising cod-medieval lingo. But she's in a different category to that stuff.

I know--I hope it isn't another ten years till her next book. From what I understand, though, her health is not the best. And I so agree about her control of language--I don't think I was ever yanked from the time or world.

Oh dear, I hope she'll be okay, I thought she was a young(ish) woman...

I believe she has multiple sclerosis, which can mean periods of complete remission interspersed with very bad periods indeed. I hope her remissions outnumber her bad times.

2> I was a fan of Elantris. I had a few minor quibbles with it, but on whole, it was a very good book.

8, 9 > I couldn't get into The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland. I read the first fifty pages or so, but never made it further. The style grated on me.

8: It would have been in the 90's that I stopped reading the Star Trek books. I also liked Uhura's Song and Q-in-Law. I liked Peter David. In those days I was reading the newsgroups - the grand daddy of LT - and Peter David was one of the people in the SciFi group. Very entertaining days! But of course, not as polished as LT.

3 Heiresses of Russ 2011, eds. Steve Berman and JoSelle Vanderhooft ★★★½

This was very, very much a "but just one more story before I go back to what I was supposed to be doing" anthology. Most of the stories are well-written as well, though I was bemused at the way the majority of the collection ends with the protagonists separated from or outright betrayed by their lovers, with the happiest endings for the first two-thirds of the book involving characters contentedly setting out on their own alone after said loss or betrayal. There were one or two happy romantic ending stories by the end to balance things out, though I remain iffy about the ending of N.K. Jemisin's story The Effluent Engine SPOILER where the action heroine is going to give up actioning for her new lover, the scientist, since the scientist will make enough money to support them both...

Nevertheless, Heiresses of Russ 2012 and Heiresses of Russ 2013 have already found their way into my library. Heiresses of Russ 2012 seems so far, one and a half stories in, to be much more generally optimistic about the potential for happy lesbian relationships- I'll see if that remains true.

Other current reads...

Sword of Fire and Sea just isn't the book I hoped it would be. This is an interesting setting, with the usual elemental magic, and so far seemingly one of my very least favorite tropes: the More Special Than Women Guy (as seen in The Wheel of Time, where Rand is more awesomer than all of the female Aes Sedai, and Dune, where Paul is more awesomer than all of the female Bene Gesserit).

Elemental magic seems to be the provenance of priestesses, given to them by goddesses... and then there is our male hero, who is a special chosen one with really strong magic and two elements, therefore outclassing all of the priestesses. He also gets to talk to a goddess, which no man has ever done before! and be let in on gryphon lore which no human has done before! (Certainly not the priestesses who work closely with them like all the time...)

The gryphon transport is cool, but it really had me wondering why a. they didn't just transport Ariadel that way (I can accept that it might be conspicuous and vulnerable, though), but even more so b. why gryphons are considered mythical and story book creatures when people must see them flying overhead...

I want to like this one because of the way that people with magic show curiosity about and experiment with their magic, it's not a fixed entity where all of the rules are known, but there are a lot of magic terms used that are neither explained nor terribly clear to me from the context.

I'm struggling with this one, but I will keep at it for now...

I've started but put aside several books as well:

The Magic of Recluce just wasn't holding my interest. It's not that it's particularly bad, but not much seemed to be happening. Maybe at a later date.

I found that my library had Dragon's Blood and sequels, including Dragon's Heart, the fourth book which I haven't read, so I picked up the first book to give it a re-read- I remembered it being the best of the three.

I put this one down at "Some of the older bond boys spent their time and gold at the baggeries as well, where girls waited to be filled like empty bags." Ech! No. Maybe later, when I'm in a mood more forgiving of background sexism.

Elantris really didn't get a fair chance between the above three books fairly souring me on special male protagonists at the moment, but I do still plan to read it.

Then Burn Bright, which I had been quite interested in... I gave this one several strikes before putting it down, which it used in the first two chapters on a. the random mean girl who dislikes the protagonist on sight, b. characters tossing around the word "retarded," c. the villains(?) being named Ripers, which just threw me out of the text every time I saw it for some reason because it looks like "Rippers" misspelled, and d. the nice boy who shows up as a contrast to that mean, horrible girl, and:

"No!" said the boy. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. "Don't! That's where the Ripers took the over-age. Ruzalia will search everywhere. Especially down there."

His touch shocked Retra but something about his voice made her feel safer. He had confidence, like Joel (her brother). She automatically moved closer to him.

Why why why do YA heroines find boys violating their personal space in an aggressive manner attractive and comforting?? Though I see this with adult heroines as well.. It boggles me every time.

I scowled, gave up, and went back to Heiresses of Russ in a curmudgeonly manner after the heroine didn't get kidnapped by pirate queen Ruzalia, there were more "isn't he hot, oh no, we're so close I can hear his heart beat" etc descriptions of boy, and the heroine became jealous of the mean girl because surely potential love interest boy prefers attractive worldly girls rather than naïve girl-next-door types... Sigh.

I am really, really not the target audience for YA with heterosexual romance plots, never having been interested in the hotness of teenage boys when I was a teenage heroine, but I keep hoping... and every once in a while I am rewarded with an interesting story and a romance subplot I like, as with The Swan Kingdom last year, a rare relationship built on mutual interest, curiosity, and respect rather than omgggg hotttt.

How about more recent backlist ebook releases:

- Katharine Eliska Kimbriel's Kindred Rites, sequel to Night Calls is out from Book View Café and otherwise around the internet- I need to reread these before the third one comes out later this spring!

- More of C.J. Cherryh's backlist seems to be making its way into ebook: Invader and Inheritor, completing the first Foreigner trilogy and leaving only the second trilogy paper-only, and the first three Chanur novels, Pride of Chanur, Chanur's Venture, and The Kif Strike Back- the second two of those are part of a trilogy that ends with Chanur's Homecoming, though that is not in ebook, and neither is Chanur's Legacy- I'm hoping for The Morgaine Saga and The Faded Sun myself, as my mass-market paperback omnibuses of those are not in the best of shape

About the bargains, I waited too long- trying to be good and wait until I finished one of the books I had been reading- and both of the prices went back up. In a way I'm relieved, though, as while both caught my interest I suspect they would have remained (virtual?) shelf-sitters for quite a while- and both are available from my local libraries, should I become of a mind to read them.

I am not completely out of luck with bargains, however- I came across a package of Star Trek books on tape at my local antique mall- eight of them for $4! Relics, Dark Mirror, Spock's World, Sarek, Enterprise: The First Adventure, The Devil's Heart, Best Destiny, and Final Frontier.

Most of them are read by actors from the series- James Doohan, Leonard Nimoy, Mark Lenard (Sarek), Gates McFadden, John DeLancie and others.

My sister and I began listening to Relics while out driving around this past weekend (since my car, being old, has a cassette player)- there are Real Star Trek Noises and everything, it's fantastic. (James Doohan goes for a rather jarring LOUD-RO-BOT-IC-MO-NO-TONE for Data's voice that takes some getting used to, though.) Much entertainment will be had for the price.

>9 imyril:,15 The style of The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland put me off a bit too- it felt to me like it was talking down to the reader, which is evidently the exact opposite of what Valente was going for. I remain quite interested in trying Valente's adult fiction, though, and will probably find my way back to this series eventually.

>12 Marissa_Doyle:-14 That's a shame, I second the hope that remissions vastly outnumber the bad periods.

I was ambivalent about Night Calls-- interesting story idea, but mediocre storytelling and writing. Is Kindred Rites better?

I picked up Ceaseless Steam from Weightless Books' sale yesterday, and Travel Light and The Honey Month along with it. (The last seemed only fair since El-Mohtar's article on Travel Light is one of the things that compelled me to finally pick it up- also, vignettes! I love vignettes.)

Stress also leads inevitably to book buying, so ebooks of Elantris (I suspect it will work better for me in ebook than the large library hardcover I'd checked out) and Kushiel's Dart joined my library as well.

I have an ebook sample of The Stars My Destination for next month's group read as well, and read through the introduction by Neil Gaiman- it sounds like a book I might find interesting, but which might also put me off. I'm looking forward to going out of my comfort zone a little for this group read.

I read and was utterly charmed by the first chapter of Travel Light. Sword of Fire and Sea keeping my interest is sadly a lost cause for now, between this and Heiresses of Russ 2012 (which is less depressing than its predecessor so far). I also saw the audiobook of Barrayar on the shelf in the library, so I took that home as well to continue reading- this one is going much better for me than Shards of Honor.

>18 Marissa_Doyle: It's been quite a while since I read them, so my memories of which scenes belong to which book are blurred, but I want to say that Kindred Rites goes a bit more in depth with Alfreda's training and things like that, which were my favorite elements of the books.

I read them before I had much awareness of things like prose style and mechanics like good or bad pacing and so on, though, so I can't say for sure if there's much difference either way in that quarter.

wrt Cloud Roads I am planning to read it this year. I'd be glad to join you.

11: Can you please explain this expression? I'm having trouble understanding it: "archaising cod-medieval lingo." I'm guessing that "cod" is a typo, but I don't know what it's meant to be.

#21

"Cod" as in "cod philosophy", i.e. prefix denoting something pseudo, ersatz, pretend, kitsch...

#23

I put this one down at "Some of the older bond boys spent their time and gold at the baggeries as well, where girls waited to be filled like empty bags." Ech! No. Maybe later, when I'm in a mood more forgiving of background sexism.

Ha, yecch, gag! "Baggery"? WTF? What a ridiculously ugly image, girls as "empty bags".

17, 22: When I read Jane Yolen's Pit Dragon trilogy, I was too focused on Heart's Blood (and too angry about what became of her) to pay close attention to much else -- but now that I'm reminded of that quote, I have another reason to be glad those books found their way into my Used Bookstore Trade-In pile.

It's cold outside, so spent the afternoon and evening inside and tried a new recipe, three cheese semolina bread- between risings has proven a good time to catch up on my reading updates.

Somewhat as I expected, this year has been a slower one for reading- there's been a lot of the type of stress and anxiety that makes it hard for me to concentrate on books. I did, however, manage to finish four books last month, so I'm not far off from my hope of 60 for this year.

4 Travel Light, Naomi Mitchison ★★★★

Book four for 2014 was Travel Light. This is a strange little book. I was quite surprised and not a little disappointed when I reached part two, and Halla was put into the background in favor of three men from the fictional country of Marob trying to appeal to the Emperor in Byzantium to replace their cruel governor- with Halla's as interpreter and general helper, but no longer the focus of the story. The mention of one of their number, Tarkan Der, being the descendant of the Corn Kings of Marob got me thinking- I looked up Mitchison's other work, The Corn King and the Spring Queen, published in 1931 to Travel Light's 1952 and discovered that not only it is also set in Marob, it follows a young woman named Erif Der.

The third act brought the focus back to Halla, changed by her experiences in Byzantium and interaction with humanity in the person of the three men from Marob but still uncomfortable with human social norms and particularly the expectations placed on her being a woman. (This, however, read to me less as said expectations being unreasonable than them not being applicable to Halla- SPOILER I think it's possible to read her as asexual or possibly lesbian given her discomfort with Tarkan Der's physical affections- moreso the former than the latter, I think, but there aren't really enough women in the story to tell.) The ending took things in a direction I didn't expect (averting the path I'd dreaded), and left me wistful- I found myself wishing the story continued in the light of the revelation about the All-Father's gift to Halla... or was that, too, resolved given Halla's last action?

I'm going to re-read this one, for sure, and I would like to track down The Corn King and the Spring King and read them together next time to try to find the connections.

I'm currently reading The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and vignettes inspired by the author's tasting of twenty-eight varieties of honey; continuing with Heiresses of Russ 2012 which seems to be picking back up after a couple of stories that weren't to my taste; and I've started The Stars My Destination, which I'll reflect on over in the dedicated group read thread as I make my way through it.

In audio, I'm into the last third of Mystic and Rider, and feeling much the same I did as the first time I read it- I like the characters, especially Senneth, well enough, but the setting and character motivations just don't hang together for me. I'm also continuing with Barrayar, which overall I'm liking far better than Shards of Honor, but the "was bisexual, now he's monogamous" line... yeah. No.

>20 majkia: I would be glad to discuss with you! I plan to start the audiobook as soon as I finish Mystic and Rider.

>21 Meredy:,22 I know the faux medieval language is always on the list of fantasy cliches to avoid, but I can't remember the last time I actually read a novel that used it. Maybe I'm reading all of the wrong wrong novels?

>22 LolaWalser:,23 The "bag" here I believe is supposed to refer to the leather pouches that the bondservants in the setting fill with coins through labor to earn their freedom. Labor for men is manual, taking care of dragons- labor for women seems to be... prostitution, because what else are women good for? An implication that went completely over my head when I was younger and really liked the book for the dragon training parts...

I wasn't pleased with my reread of Sister Light, Sister Dark a couple of years back either- a book set in a separatist female society that fails to show any substantive non-antagonistic relationships among the women, except between the protagonist and her best friend, who is set aside pretty much immediately once a ~boy~ comes on the scene (and it's cool, cause the friend decides she's not to be cut out for being a warrior so she's not important by the end of the book anyways, and also her crush on the protagonist was just like a phase too). It boggles my mind that that one still shows up on feminist fantasy lists.

>20 majkia:, 24: I'll join you too! We could start a dedicated thread and maybe others will join in, or possibly people who've already read it might post their thoughts too.

25: I already read them, but would be happy to join in on the discussions. I really liked The cloud roads.

>25 Sakerfalcon:,26 Oh, good! How does March 1st sound as a target start date? If it goes well, perhaps we could do a book discussion every other month- that would put us on target for the release of Stories of the Raksura Volume 1 which is due out at the beginning of September (though I think the two novellas within are supposed to come out in ebook sometime sooner, dates not yet announced).

Speaking of release dates, the fourth Old Kingdom book, Clariel, has a release date now- October 14th in the US. Looking forward to this one a lot, I really like this setting and enjoyed revisiting it last year (even if I had a lot of issues with the second half of Lirael and Abhorsen, the two largest ones being named Nicholas Sayre and Prince Sameth).

27: Sure, whenever you're ready! I know someone else who has read the books and is on LT. When the time comes, I'll see if she wants to join as well...

March sounds good to me!

#24

I know the faux medieval language is always on the list of fantasy cliches to avoid, but I can't remember the last time I actually read a novel that used it. Maybe I'm reading all of the wrong wrong novels?

Ha, no, it'll sooner be my small sampling number, and sheer bad luck! The latest was Kushiel's dart, brought to my attention in another thread. I read about twenty-thirty pages, the writing was competent and the style at least consistent, but I just could not, would not, agree to the affectation. Although, the irritation was compounded by the "French" streak. No doubt it sounds charming to English ears, to me it was jarring because the choices and imagery conveyed by these "Frenchy" names etc. seemed so obvious and trite. Like naming a perfume "Amour" or something. I returned the book, otherwise I'd give examples, sorry for being vague.

5 The Honey Month, Amal El-Mohtar ★★★½

I wanted to love this collection of poetry and vignettes centered around the taste of twenty-eight varieties of honey more than I did- there is some lovely, dreamlike imagery- but ultimately I was disappointed by the repetition of images and situations throughout the different pieces. The first story, about fireweed honey, remained my definite favorite throughout the collection. I saw that someone on FantasyFans was reading this collection with one honey per day this month- I think that might have been a better approach to take than reading several honeys at a time, and I will try to pace myself better when I re-read this one.

I've seen this one compared in reviews a lot to Catherynne Valente, so fans of her work may like this.

The Stars My Destination is irritating me- the prologue provided an interesting world, and the first chapter started off with a tense survival-in-space scene that gave me high hopes (until I realized it didn't square with the prologue at all), but it's unfortunately been mostly downhill from there, feeling more and more dated as it goes on.

I intensely dislike books that start with one set of rules for how something works (teleporting, called "jaunting" here) and then can't seem to stay consistent- the rules seem to change arbitrarily to the point of contradicting each other, as I've expounded on at length in the group read spoiler thread. The characterization is paper-thin, the plotting seems to go from one coincidence to another (alternately complicating things and resolving complications), and the "supercool thief woman" that Neil Gaiman promised in his intro has, so far, provided an education to the protagonist and fallen in love with him in conversations that are summarized over, and her on-screen action has amounted to wringing her hands because she doesn't know what to do while the protagonist tells her to shut up while he Takes Action, then sleeping with him afterward. (I hope this improves, because right now I am really raising my eyebrows at Gaiman's taste in "supercool women.")

Haven't had a chance to read my audiobooks lately, but I will note that narrator Jennifer Van Dyck does a wonderfully creepy Coralinda Gisseltess in Mystic and Rider.

>28 zjakkelien:,29 March it is!

>30 LolaWalser: Ah, yes, the tried and true worldbuilding through naming rule, where good characters will have "beautiful, melodious" names and evil characters will have awkward or "harsh" sounding names.

I just came across this extensive list of Formidable Female Protagonists- ouch, my wishlist!

32> Oh wow. That may demand some serious perusing. Let me just get the cushions out to try and fend off the book bullets!

33: I think a blindfold would be more effective, @imyril! *grins*

34> You may have a point :D

>34 zjakkelien: More effective, but not nearly so much fun! Protective cushions can conveniently double as a reading pillow fort once suggestions have been acquired.

36: Let's just get a protective comfy chair as well then, and perhaps a protective cup of tea. You know, while we're at it... Comfy chairs are excellent for ducking behind and dodging book bullets, after all. And I'm sure if I think about it, I can find something protective to do with that cup of tea as well... *grins a bit more*

>37 zjakkelien: Oh, yes, that sounds like a very safe space to take book bullets. I will have to install some comfy chairs here in the hideout, with a replicator nearby for appropriate supply of protective hot and cold beverages.

37, 38> Don't forget the protective biscuits!

32: Thanks for the new Bookmark! It will take me a little time to explore that list as thoroughly as it deserves.

>37 zjakkelien: I don't know about that. My comfy chairs tend to hold me down and prevent me from moving when I try to dodge book bullets. They're obviously in cahoots.

And now all I can think of is Michael Palin doing the Spanish Inquisition sketch: "Now you will stay in the Comfy Chair till lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at eleven!"

I stayed up last night and finished The Stars My Destination. I'm still working through my thoughts. The second half was much stronger in almost every category than the first half, engaging enough that I read it in two sittings, but I still find its underlying themes dubious (really, anything that boils down to "I know how to fix the poor!" is going to raise my eyebrows- and there's a particular irony here in a book where the villains are privileged rich people who dehumanize the poor).

There's a surprising ambiguity to the representation of the female characters that shows up in the second half as well- they have lives and agendas of their own separate from the male protagonist finally, and by the end, we end up with most of their respective morally questionable or outright actions springing from a desire or need to acting out against a society that severely represses women and limits their roles.

Does this negate the characterization of women as helpless, or the gratuitous rape scene whose cause or implications are never explored and which is eventually just forgiven, and make the book some kind of feminist work? Absolutely not- all of those things are still there, but it's curious that the other is as well- and mentioned in passing, in characterization and minor characters and dialogue, downright subtle compared to the explicit "I know how to fix!" elsewhere. No solution is, in fact, provided.

For now, I'm glad to be done with this book, and while I would be fairly happy with anywhere but a 1950s science fiction book generally regarded as an enduring classic my destination, following on with my Blake theme for this month I'm back on Melissa Scott's Burning Bright- and while I didn't plan it, I can't think of a more comfortable fictional place to spend another Valentine's Day single and still in the closet to almost everyone I know in the real world than a planet where the same-sex relationships among the majority of the cast are completely unremarkable as they engage in business and political intrigue, run well-received role-playing game scenarios, and find it very amusing to unnerve people by paving garden paths with little carved-stone faces:

Cella followed a few steps behind, but he ignored her, stooped to examine the stones. A dozen, a hundred tiny faces looked back at him, all smiling slightly, as if they were amused by his surprise. He caught his breath, controlled his instinctive revulsion-- how could anyone stand to walk here, if they saw those looking back at them?-- and said "Ransome's work, I take it?" His voice sounded strange to him, strained and taut, but Cella didn't seem to notice.

"I would say so."

"They are," Damian said, with precision, "very strange men, he and Chauvelin."

Thank goodness for speculative fiction.

>40 kceccato: You're welcome! It's heavy on military SF, which is not a genre I generally read, so there are many authors I'm not familiar with- it's good to know what's out there. I still need to go back and make note on the list @Sakerfalcon linked back up in post 7 too, Shelves Full: the 99 Author Challenge- there looked to be many gems in there and in the comments as well.

>41 Marissa_Doyle: Shhh... Don't let tell anyone, or "my comfy chair happened to miss this one so I had to sit stay sitting down and read it to recover" will no longer be a valid excuse.

I am a visitor from outer space and do not comprehend these alien Anglo holidays muchly, but, HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! ~~*heart* PINK *heart* RED *bunny* GLITTER *chocolate*~~xoxoxoxo!

I've looked at the Bester read, trying to jog my memory. I remember generally that I liked very much both The demolished man and Stars my destination, the former more than the latter, but not why exactly. I thought Stars had a female character who was unusual in some way (in The demolished man, there's only a spunky secretary/helpmeet type--IIRC, which may not be very correct.) I remember thinking Bester was a much better/more interesting writer than the usual sci-fi "grandmaster" type, that his language had a vigour and spring to it, and the concepts were of a higher order of complexity (or more original?) than usual.

I thought I might reread those but as I've semi-accidentally just procured a rare book of his--blurbed as a "psychological thriller", not sf--and because it seems to have a significant woman-related plot, I'll read that first. It's curious in that it seems to have been written in the eighties but harks back to the fifties--because that was the period of Bester's youth, success or when he felt most comfortable? It sounds like it might shed more light on how he saw women/female characters. (Tender loving rage--possibly a scary title, huh?)

I know that there are many readers who don't reread for various reasons, but for me, I'm not sure there is any reading experience more satisfying to me than an old favorite that remains a favorite when you return to it.

>43 LolaWalser: Are bunnies are a Valentine's Day thing I'm not aware of (hardly impossible), or did that one sneak in from Easter?

I found that The Stars My Destination has some vivid imagery, and occasionally genuinely tense, interesting scenes now and again, but even beyond the rape and other issues the whole thing just felt sloppy and in need of a good edit- the characters moved around as the plot needed them to rather than acting based on human emotions (though part of that could be me- I never even really saw enough to buy into Gully's revenge raaage, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for most other readers), and the rules of things like jaunting changed as the plot needed them to rather than the plot unfolding within the constraints laid out. ("I forgot how to jaunte for six months while I was stranded in a broken-down starship and had to do regular spacewalks to retrieve rations and air tanks" is a bit hard for me to swallow in a world where that should have been equivalent to "I forgot I could drive while I was stranded in an unforgiving desert, just barely scraping by for six months, and there was a serviceable car next to me with the keys in the ignition and a full tank of gas.")

The morality seemed simplistic as well, the asking of big questions undermined for me by the reliance on convenient answers that work this time at best and armchair generalizations that bear no resemblance to the real world at worst (poor people like Gully at the beginning of the novel are naturally amoral slacker criminals but if they just had the right motivation they would make something of themselves, become rich, and learn morals!- where have I heard that one before?)

I'm glad to have read it because I think it is an important historical work, and good to know for the references and influences it's had. For one, the way it wants it both ways, having the hero rape someone to show how amoral and edgy it is and later waving that aside with an "it's cool" from the victim thirty years in the future to show he's really a nice guy at heart (with the "it's cool" and "he feels bad about it" substituting for any actual, you know, inconvenient negative consequences like accountability, punishment, or jail time cause that would get in the way of his awesome star-spanning future adventures)- that's all very reminiscent of the way rape is handled in the current "grimdark" fantasy novels on the shelves now.

We're just over sixty years on, in fact, and some of the most popular works of the genre at large still seems to be dealing with rape in the same way- see the "sympathetic rapists and wife-beaters" section of this post, for example. And it is possibly a direct line of influence from here to there- George R.R. Martin lists The Stars My Destination as the second best science fiction novel ever on his blog, and explicitly lists it as a book that's inspired him elsewhere.

That's the problem with the way science fiction and fantasy have of putting classics on a pedestal as examples of how things should be done- The Stars My Destination has been widely influential, and widely acclaimed, and I think maybe its widespread acclaim has made it an example of how to do things right in places it doesn't do well at all.

It seems unanimously agreed from what I've seen that Bester's later novels were not good, but I'm curious to see what you think of Tender Loving Rage. Evidently it was published posthumously, and the original title was "Tender Loving Rape," which... er. The Publisher's Weekly quote "In the end, after Bester skirts around an appalling view of rape and its victims, love triumphs over all—sort of." does not sound reassuring in the least. I'd be curious to hear what you think of it!

"Tender Loving Rape,"

Zounds!!!!!

I did not know that! Well, well, well. Did I say it might shed some light...? :) It's practically a neon billboard. Geez. Wonder if that had anything to do with it not being published in his lifetime... So, fun times ahead.

As you say, there's always the "historical influence" angle to make reading these books not a complete loss, if they really have nothing else to recommend them (or too much to make them obnoxious). At the same time, it is very depressing to have a contemporary madly popular author unreflectively (or deliberately!) promulgate the same attitudes... I've seen the first season of the HBO series (didn't grab me, beyond appreciation of a few actors--not enough to continue watching) and read the first book of The song of ice and fire, thought it a mediocre and even boring rehash of well-known myths and fairy tales. So, minuses already, but then the misogynistic aspect just doomed it.

The cake-taking bit was that platinum blondie learning to love the oaf who rapes her--and people being fans of that relationship. He so sexxxxy! So willllld! And thirty years old, but apparently never in his life did it occur to him to even, I don't know, flip around the wretch he's banging, just for variety's sake. Whatta mind, whatta lover!

The impression I get is that people choose such settings and characters precisely to indulge sadistic fantasies of violence and domination--typically directed against women, of course. I don't understand how they get any, or so many, female fans...

>45 LolaWalser: I can't find much about this particular Bester- there's one five-star review on Amazon that says "it simply sets the scene between the sexes circa '50s New York, and lets the reader come to his or her own conclusions about the nature of Love." That doesn't sound ominous at all. The timeline's unclear, but Wikipedia has sources from an article not readily available online that the novel was written in 1959 and went unsold, then Charles Platt convinced Bester to have it published by a small press- that must have fallen through at some point, though. That claims that the title change was from Platt as well.

I also came across Golem100 while researching this... a novel where bored rich women play with occult rituals and actually summon a demon, evidently.

One of the LT reviews (here) of this one is interesting:

Gretchen Nunn becomes possessed and imitates the behavior of a candidate queen. Bester has a character explain she’s going back to an old pattern of nature as she kills her competitors in the Hive, mates with every male in sight, and kills lover Blaiseshima in a particularly gruesome way -- she rips his penis off. Then we find that Subadar is now the incarnation of Golem. We also hear Nunn say that men are to be used but never anything else. We have also seen Nunn has freakish psi talents (a Bester trademark) which mark her as the next stage in evolution. At novel’s end, Nunn seems to imply the Golem was unleashed because of man’s oppression of woman’s true, unconscious nature. Or Bester may be, in Subadar’s possession, likening the dictates of evolution to blind possession by the id.

The novel, to me, seems confused as to whether it wants to be a feminist work or Bester’s usual monsters from the id, or, perhaps more appropriately, monsters from sociobiological imperatives. The last chapter, with its nearly incomprehensible future argot, implies some vast changes have been worked on the human race, but we don’t know what. It’s beyond me and quite annoying.

This one sounds similarly full of mixed messages- stating oppression of women is bad, but goodness there appears to be some... anxiety about women in power there, and given the mention of "old pattern of nature," one wonders about the supposed suppressed true nature of women...

I read A Game of Thrones quite a while ago- it was one of the book club selections at my high school back in 2004-2005 I think, and though I wasn't in the book club, there were tons of copies around. I remember it being compellingly plotted, in that soap opera can't stop watching kind of way- even the egregious sexism probably wouldn't have registered for me then though, honestly. I don't remember much of the specific events going on in it, and do remember skimming quite a bit. The library didn't immediately have the second book (or it was perpetually checked out or something), and though I would have no doubt read it if they had, I never did make the effort to seek it out because I was too irritated at the arbitrary character deaths.

I think one of the comments on that Tiger Beatdown post I linked is particularly astute regarding your points:

Basically, I am convinced the reason these books are so popular is because male nerds identify with the characters who get killed off, thus affirming their martyrdom complex. And female nerds identify with the one character who is going to be fine, while getting to watch women who are all the things they’ve been criticized for not being get punished.

It’s an appealing emotional experience, even if it is an appalling series.

That probably would have fit fairly well with my experience and emotional reasoning at the time. I didn't like women very much at that age, especially feminine women.

I didn't like women very much at that age, especially feminine women.

It's tragic, how we all grow up as woman haters. But I did like women--all women, but especially feminine women!--in one important sense, being sexually attracted to them, and that helped to counter the poison a bit.

I'm afraid to wade into the waters of pop-psychology too deeply, but as these female fans seem to be mostly straight women, I'd guess (until/unless learning better) that what attracts them is the classic dynamic of a romance, intensified and sharpened in this "brutal" context . You know--taming the alpha-male and all that, only the alpha-male isn't just sarcastic and cold but liable to knock you about a bit. Actually, now that I think about it, I recall from the Harlequin-type fare I read as a tween (German "Herz" Romane from the seventies and even earlier my mum would have lent to her when we lived in the book-poor Near East), physical violence and even rape were routinely parts of the plot--perhaps even more than in English novels? The woman was always submissive and meek, afraid and virginal, and the guy would frequently despise her and treat her horribly (hiding his "true" feelings, natch). Really, the whole phenomenon is too sick for words. But, whatever, this was (is?) a popular genre and as far as I know that dynamic survives--I remember looking at the Harlequin guidelines some years ago and they were saying things like: the guy MUST always be dominant, always in charge, never write from his point of view, it must remain mysterious, unemotional etc.

Plus ça change...

The 2013 Tiptree list is out: the winner is Rupetta by N.A. Sulway, an author I've never previously heard of. The book sounds interesting, but I'm wary of the line "Rupetta’s power does not come from her brain, but from her heart." I've downloaded a sample, hmm...

The other works on the honor list are Eleanor Arnason's Big Mama Stories, Aliette de Bodard's "Heaven Under Earth," Nicola Griffith's Hild, Alaya Dawn Johnson's The Summer Prince, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, Bennett Madison's September Girls, Sarah McCarry's All Our Pretty Songs, Janelle Monáe's The Electric Lady (not a written work but a musical one- interesting!), Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni, and S. M. Wheeler's Sea Change.

Hild, The Summer Prince, and Ancillary Justice are in my list, and I've heard good things about The Golem and the Jinni, but I'll have to check out the others. Interesting!

>47 LolaWalser: I think attraction to women I wasn't able to recognize or deal with was a large part of my problem, actually (hello, internalized homophobia! with all of these internalized problems, it's a wonder there's room for anything else- assuming there is anything else in there)... Certainly a lot of it came from feeling like an alien when all of the girls around me started talking about hot boys and include me in the conversation mostly out of good intentions (hot boys being a "safe" common topic which all girls have in common... theoretically).

I was lucky enough to have a couple of female friends, but they, like me, were "exceptions" in my mind from the category of Woman (because we had become friends over interests like anime and manga, or working together in art class, and avoided the "hot boys" conversations entirely.) Exceptionalism is the logic escape hatch that lets you reconcile horrible stereotypes with all of the numerous counterexamples right in front of your face.

There are certainly awful romance plots out there- Kristen Cashore's Fire made me see red in the not too distant past, even more so because I had expected it to be a safe choice because I continually heard Cashore's work referred to as feminist. The "hero" pinned the heroine against the wall by her wrists, leaving serious bruises that she had to cover up the next day (to hide them from her overprotective current boyfriend a the time)... and in the midst of the scene was flowery description of his face and eyes and so on. Among other things... sigh.

I suspect the two of us having a conversation about the appeal of the alpha male to that certain segment of straight women would be fairly unproductive... From what I've gleaned from reviews, it seems like the draw is a combination of a "chosen one" plot- chosen to heal the damaged badass' emotional wounds, get behind his barriers, and be his confidant and true emotional healing love- and the "man as protector" thing that I see in a lot of heterosexual romances, where he is such a badass and can take on anyone- but he will never hurt her (after she gets past those emotional defenses that cause the bruises and emotional harm, I guess).

For what it's worth, I suspect the ubiquity of this trope is an imprint or genre branding thing rather than authorial choice in at least some cases- just recently I saw this post about a romance author who got edits back requesting she make her male lead more typical. The comments are interesting, some on both sides where people like to know what they're getting and others who want more variety.

Thanks for the Tiptree list. I've been reading less SF lately, so it might help me try some new stuff. I'm currently enjoying Ancillary Justice based on comments from several GD journals.

>49 Jim53: You're very welcome- I'd be curious to know what you think if you try any of them! I really need to read Ancillary Justice...

I see our tastes don't always match up, but based on your ratings for some Le Guin, Fool's War, and To Say Nothing of the Dog I see in your catalog, I wonder if you wouldn't like Cherryh's Foreigner series too- it starts off with an extensive prologue, but the moves into exploring the interface between humanity and the alien society on the world humans crashed onto several hundred years after the initial contact, misunderstandings, and war. It moves from anthropological SF almost to alien fantasy of manners and political intrigue over the course of the long series as the protagonist gains competence and respect, but the first book stands fairly well alone too.

I've been reading a lot of good articles lately, some in the genre and some out of the genre, so I think it's time for another of my periodic link clearances- a big one this time. The more I read, the more things seem interrelated- I've tried to arrange things in some sort of loose narrative order.

There is a debate raging over the use and purpose of speculative fiction- not only about who gets representation, but also at a "meta" level, who gets to talk about representation.

Adam Roberts' article below characterizes this as the genre being divided into those who see the greater or lesser distance from reality as room to explore social differences, and those who see it as hardline extrapolation of scientific concepts (and presumably alternate historical concepts, in the case of fantasy, given the amount of "but things were like that for women!" justifications I see for gratuitous rape and the like).

Roberts associates this with liberal and conservative politics, respectively, which recalled David Forbes' crowdfunding attempt for an article about the history of certain conservative science fiction writers and their positions in government and other positions of power (an article I'm very curious to read).

Adam Roberts, War of the worlds: who owns the political soul of science fiction?

It's a puzzle – not why these writers sell, for there are plenty of perfectly decent, book-loving rightwing people in the world (I take it as axiomatic that liking SF is an index of decency). I mean it's a puzzle for the genre. How can SF be both centrally about the articulation and exploration of marginalised and subaltern voices, and a projection of contemporary ideological concerns outward on to a cosmos in which the laws of physics themselves tell us to vote Conservative?

David Forbes, The Old Iron Dream (looks like this has reached funding- I'm interested to read the full article)

Rather than harmless eccentrics, the doyennes of the sci-fi far right advise the federal government, occupy important posts, head think-tanks and shape policy to this day. They've played a major role in creating an environment that, as shown in the case of Beale, can still make sci-fi hostile territory for women and people of color. Despite decades of courageous critical backlash within the genre, much of this impact and history remains unexposed.

Knowing how that political side of things has translated into real world power, it's... interesting to look at the disparities Cora Buhlert and Cheryl Morgan in response to criticism by members of underrepresented groups and criticism by this same politically conservative segment of writers about how the SFWA is censoring them by saying that articles lamenting the good old days where women were like Barbie are gone:

Cora Buhlert, On Internet Debates and the Tone Argument
Cheryl Morgan, On Internet Outrage
Cora Buhlert, More on Internet debates, the tone argument and issues of power and privilege

In her post, Cheryl points out two different ways in which such internet debates progress. The first one goes as follows:

Privileged person posts something clueless → Less privileged people disagree, sometimes loudly or snarkily → Friends of the original poster and bystanders complain about the toxic atmosphere on the internet.

The second one goes as follows:

Marginalized posts about asking for more representation of themselves → More privileged people have a fit and feel that their freedom of speech is endangered → Marginalized person receives rape and death threats for their trouble → There are comparatively few complaints about the toxic atmosphere on the internet.

Of the debates raging currently in the SFF community, the debate about “masculine” writing and the debate about awards eligibility lists are examples of No. 1, while the debate about post-binary gender in SFF is an example of No. 2.

There's a pervasive attitude that this group of more privileged people is just misguided, displaced in time from the era they're a product of, an era that was more favorable to them, but I think it's maybe something more than that. If respect in the genre is a lead to actual political power, this game isn't being played for Monopoly money but for real money; if the genre is not centered around them, if the genre is not concerned with scientific extrapolation but rather social exploration, it's no longer a valid starting point to get to those political positions.

A selection of recent articles on representation and criticism of representation and who is telling the stories...

Kameron Hurley, SFF in Conversation: Kameron Hurley on “A Complexity of Desires: Expectations of Sex & Sexuality in Science Fiction”

Because when I spun out fantasies about spending time with her, it wasn’t me, Kameron the woman, that she hung out with. It was me, Kameron the guy. Or, better yet, me transported into some other identity all together – a guy named, oh, whatever, with some other life and a great job and easy laugh and great sense of humor. I’d have these long reveries about how, if I was a guy, I’d chat with her and ask her out and how much fun we’d have and how awesome I’d be and how we’d travel around the world together.

If only. If only I was a guy.

I couldn’t conceive of a desire outside of a hetero one. All I saw, all I ate, was women desiring men. In books. In television. In movies. In fairytales. I knew that desire. I know what to do with it. But this was different. Incomprehensible. I had no name for it. It existed in some fantastic realm where I was a dude.

...

And then I read On Strike Against God, Joanna Russ’s semi-autobiographical book about coming to grips with her own sexuality. I was 24 by then, and thought I had my shit figured out. Russ talks about all the social constructs that enraged her about the marriage and children trap. She talks about being married. And then, later, she talks about this strange compulsion she has…

She talks about how she’s sitting in her car outside a bar and imagines flirting with one of the women there. In order to make it work, though, she imagines she’s a man. She can’t write the narrative of this desire any other way. It’s too alien. She’s never seen it before. And she realizes, in that moment, that it’s not at all that she wants to be a man – she’s quite comfortable in her female body. What she wants is the freedom to feel she can act on her impulse.

I sat there in bed and just stared at the page. I had never, ever, seen another person put into words this very strange occasional fantasy of mine, and name it for what it was – desire.

Brit Mandelo, Reading Joanna Russ — On Strike Against God (1980)

It is shortly after that scene, Esther’s breakdown after having been verbally attacked and belittled one time too many by a male academic threatened by her sheer existence, that Jean and Esther are having a conversation about being feminist, about being “radicalized,” in which the most-often quoted part of this book comes up.

“Oh, Esther, I don’t want to be a feminist. I don’t enjoy it. It’s no fun.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t either.” People think you decide to be “radical,” for God’s sake, like deciding to be a librarian or a ship’s chandler. You “make up your mind,” you “commit yourself.” (Sounds like a mental hospital, doesn’t it?)

I said, "Don’t worry, we could be buried together and have engraved on our tombstone the awful truth, which some day somebody will understand:

WE WUZ PUSHED.” (37)

And there we are. That’s the part of the book that will freeze you cold, if it speaks to you, if you are one of these folks who saw what can’t be unseen, and once you’ve seen it, well. It’s not like making up your mind. It’s unavoidable. Russ has a way of telling the truth, the capital T-R-U-T-H, that is like no-one else; part of why her nonfiction is so unbelievably riveting, I suspect.

Myke Cole, What PTSD is

I’ve talked before about genre writers who have been very open about per­sonal trials, par­tic­u­larly the kind of depression/anxiety con­di­tions that I feel are a nat­ural part of the uneven ter­rain all authors have to walk. I’ve always appre­ci­ated their will­ing­ness to go public with these issues, as the first (and false) thing that most people suf­fering from these sorts of things think is a.) that they’re alone and b.) the problem is unique to them. When your lit­erary heroes step into the spot­light and say, “hey, this is more normal than you think and you can figure out how to live with it,” well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be sur­prised if there are more than a few folks still pushing air past their teeth because of a blog post they read.

Ann Leckie, It's not a real heart, it's a real artificial heart.

Imagine that you dearly love, absolutely crave, a particular kind of food. There are some places in town that do this particular cuisine just amazingly. Lots of people who are into this kind of food hold these restaurants in high regard. But let’s say, at every single one of these places, every now and then throughout the meal, at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn’t punching them in the face, and the non-white, non-cis, non-straight, non-guys who love this cuisine keep coming back so it can’t be that bad, can it? Hell, half the time the white straight cis guys don’t even see it, because it’s always been like that and it just seems like part of the dining experience. Granted, some white straight cis guys have noticed and will talk about how they don’t like it and they wish it would stop.

Every now and then, you go through a meal without the waiter punching you in the face–they just give you a small slap, or come over and sort of make a feint and then tell you they could have messed you up bad. Which, you know, that’s better, right? Kind of?

Also Ann Leckie, Untitled post on related subjects

So what I mean when I say that I think all of us are trying to write great stories is that we are all trying to hit our targets, whatever those are, in the best way we can. Not that we are all attempting to be the next Shakespeare, or to write the Most Serious Fiction. Okay, maybe you are. That’s fine. Or maybe your ambition is to write the most perfect and delectable cotton candy fiction, some adventure, some romance, some explosions, a happy ending. No mean feat, actually. And good candy is not something to sneer at. Imagine if there were no candy in the world! It would be a much, much sadder place. And we all know there’s a difference between a Hershey’s kiss and, say, a sea-salt caramel from KaKao. There is such a thing as great candy. Or maybe the idea of turning out a dozen shiny, foil-wrapped kisses enchants you. The world needs those, too! I have no doubt you’re trying to make them the shiniest, kissiest kisses ever.

Foz Meadows, A Rule of Thumb for Escapism

Because escapism, as a concept, is complex, and though our desire for it can certainly be as simple as “this thing is fun, therefore I crave it uncritically”, there’s a very real sense in which a default policy of abstinence from the critical analysis of narrative is itself a product of privilege: of being afforded so many positive representations of oneself in so many different media that negative portrayals are never demonstrative of authorial prejudice towards, ignorance of or disinterest in the type of person you are, because the variety of portrayals on offer is itself proof of the fact that everyone likes, knows and is interested in you – or at least, in your attention. Negative portrayals are never correlated with personal attacks, because the negative characteristics are seldom described as being representative of who you are; and if they are, it doesn’t matter, because that particular representation is one of many, subsumed in public knowledge beneath a weight of positive impressions such that its perpetration can neither contribute to your being misunderstood nor leave you feeling alienated. For such a person, the ability to escape into fiction is therefore the equivalent of being able to holiday anywhere and enjoy it: no matter how much shit is flung at you, none of it sticks, because even if you’re escaping into a narrative that paints you in a position of utter powerlessness, when the story is over, your power remains intact.

Kali, The Space Between (not writing from within the genre, but I came across this while browsing and it feels just as relevant)

The space between people with disabilities and people without could easily be narrowed by real disability narratives – our stories, told by ourselves. How much better we might be understood with a few less ‘wheelchair bound’ narratives and a few more ‘wheelchair using’ stories! I wish that people could see Paralympic athletes as what they are – people who have trained and are at the peak of fitness and skill at their sport, instead of ‘poor crippled folks who have overcome their disabilities’. We overcome nothing but societal prejudice, and work WITH our bodies! One of the first things we have to learn is to stop fighting our disability and adapt to it. But your average journalist has never had to learn that, and doesn’t have the training to listen to us explain it. As long as our stories are told by people without disabilities, people who can’t really understand us, this gap will continue to be, and we – people with disabilities – will suffer for it.

Jim C. Hines' blog, various posts about identity and representation in SFF:

Mark Oshiro, Parched
Katharine Kerr, Boys' Books
Susan Jane Bigelow, Clicking
Charlotte Ashley, The Princess Problem
Ada Hoffman, Autism, Representation, Success
Katie, Gender in Genre

See also a number of fine essays on Lightspeed Magazine's Women Destroy Science Fiction! project.

But, having established the need for diversity in both stories and storytellers...

Janny Wurts, The Unrecognized Trajectory of Slow Burn Success

What made Martin’s work, and the evident literate quality of Kay such an uphill push? Why during this period did so many excellent female authors change their bylines, mid-career, and why did some truly excellent titles with adult protagonists fall under the radar entirely? (Authors like Matthew Woodring Stover, Lee and Miller’s Liaden books, Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman series – the list is long and in some cases, still sorrowfully unlamented).

(bold mine)

Judith Tarr, The League of Shattered Authors

Most of those authors, the commenter told me, are gone. Books out of print. No new books published. Sales weren’t high enough, new contracts weren’t offered, buh-bye. The commenter had tried to contact some of them, and found that many didn’t appear to be on the internet. Those who were reachable were, almost without exception, crushed.

And comments on the same...

What is wrong with this world? And why are so many of these writers female?

...

A lot of the authors that come to mind that are shattered seem to be women. Is it because I keep thinking of authors like Liz Williams, or Martha Wells (fighting but woefully underappreciated) or MacAvoy, or Elizabeth Willey, or Lyda Morehouse (who changed names and only now is having her original novels reappear)

E. Catherine Tobler, The Women We Don’t See

So, was it actually a coincidence? Could a reader not realize they hadn’t read a female author in two years? Unfortunately, I believe the answer is absolutely and completely yes, because male authors remain the default. Readers just go there, without thinking twice.

And this last circles right back to Janny's comments about how readers find books and stories, and bloggers sticking to popular titles to draw an audience...

I don't have a neat and tidy conclusion today, but I hope that some of these links may be of interest.

The Link "Boy's Books" was interesting, but the division of "Girl's Books" and "Boy's Books" isn't a problem confined to the past.

When I was in fifth grade (about five years ago?) there was some sort of family reunion that took place on a Disney cruise ship. The ship's room for children had two distinctly gendered bookshelves. At the time, I was really into the Artemis Fowl series - which was placed strictly on the "Boy's" shelf along with all the other books I liked. I vaguely remember being asked why I was reading from that shelf by one of the supervisors there. I remember being annoyed and upset and thinking that there should be one shelf. Why were all the books I liked about magic and adventure on the blue shelf? And why did the pink shelf clearly set aside for girls just have gossipy books about school? It really bothered me, and the memory of it still does.

Last year, I was at a middle school library for a Latin competition. There were two large book cases by the door - one clearly "Girl's" and the other "Boys." I'd read hardly any books on the girl's shelf - just some by Ally Carter and Meg Cabot, both of who's books I enjoyed. I remember having to defend these books to the other (male) members of the team I was waiting with. Clearly, no worthwhile books would ever be put on the "Girl's" shelf...

But I do see where they were coming from. I'd hesitate to read anything shelved with the stuff they had in the "Girl's Books" section.

Hmm, I've just posted something relating to that ("boys' books"), and, so as not to cross-post for the third time (link to a post in Fantasy Fans group):

http://www.librarything.com/topic/151833#4556854

#48, 51

Tons of interesting stuff there, thanks, I hardly know which point to pick.

{On the personal side, it's interesting to compare notes as I'm considerably older than you (about 9-10 years?), and grew up in probably very different circumstances. I hope it was possible for the burgeoning virtual world to give you some help in your youth; I keep thinking how different my life might have been if only the WWWeb had existed in the eighties. (Maybe not stunningly better, but less odd and isolated. Plus--it's just possible I wouldn't have married. For instance.)}

Leckie's analogy in particular resonates with what I've tried to explain so many times over the years (I've used almost the same example) but it's odd how resistant people can be to the idea that how they perceive the world--or how it perceives them--isn't the same, or may be dangerously different, for someone unlike them. It somehow calls in question what they know about the world, which is, I guess, destabilising. Or they feel guilty by implication. Or just hate being asked to put themselves in an uncomfortable position for a second.

But that's the sort of thought-experiments I think might profit us all.

Re: #50 It's very thoughty of you to go to the trouble to look at my library and make a recommendation. I'll be sure to check out Foreigner.

Re #51 Wow, what a treasury! That will keep me busy for a while ;-)

#51 - Thank you for putting the link to the guest post I wrote for A Dribble of Ink, just put up two days ago, and for listing the wealth of others.

Aidan Mohar who runs the blog is one of the FEW who took a closer look at his reading list and acknowledged, in a very respectful way, his change of awareness regarding female authors in a public post on Tor.com. (I contacted him privately afterwards as an acknowledgment, and this led to the article just written.

Aidan had suggested I write about the 'history' of significant women in the field, and I chose not to do this, because, one, that's been done brilliantly before, and two, I wanted to create an insight that was NOT gender oriented so that it would not be overlooked as 'another' outcry on this topic.

So the article covers the field in general, but with some notices flagged to the inequality of the problem - the number of issues or anecdotes I COULD NOT post in public, the back-scene events that were related to me in PRIVATE - would have created ten articles, and more stinging points, still.

Judith Tarr's article about crushed female authors - and ones still fighting - people have NO idea. Even titles mentioned by women authors here - ones you'd not think were fighting their guts out or EVEN - dumped since the books I've seen mentioned, and not knowing where they will go next - the list would terrify and shock you, the amount of sheer talent tipping into despair, or writing on the edge, battling the tides of depression and futility.

And the ones still soldiering on, the few, the mighty, who WILL NOT let the climate of social bias kill their creative output.

And I will tell you outright: these are almost inevitably the ones who are not only women, possibly not even writing about women protags, but WRITING ABOUT MATURE PROTAGONISTS OF EITHER SEX with adult sensibility and complexity.

Most have had to change their bylines, some, more than once. "Start Over" is a huge curve to face, in effect plowing the ground all over again.

Most are hanging on a thread, just a FEW HUNDRED numbers away from being ditched by their publishers.

Some are already ditched, facing doing everything on their own, and just worn out from the effort.

Some are just gut slinging it on courage and bravado.

Altogether too many have switched to YA (nothing WRONG with that genre, but folks, if you are preferring to write from an adult perspective - and you are ADVISED BY YOUR EDITOR to change venues TO SURVIVE!) Others have split off into historicals or outright romance.

Some hard-headed ones resist that 'advice' at the penalty of staying in obscurity.

If I attached the names, I am sad to say, there are Green Dragon readers who would be shocked at the toll, because the books produced by these authors are top drawer, quality storytelling, all the way.

sandstone78, thought this might interest you and some of your readers:

The Public Voice of Women by Mary Beard (London Review of Books)

That moment when you realize your "short" list of books you want to read right now! contains at least 30 books, and you've managed only six books total in almost two months. Sigh...

>52 pwaites: That's disheartening. Middle school is such a hard time period to get through already- I think that's when peer pressure and so on is at its worst, especially when it comes to conforming to expected gender roles.

>53 LolaWalser: I saw your post over there, yeah. Still very much a thing in video game marketing, unfortunately.

The Leckie example is very good, I've already started referencing it.

Regarding your personal note, I have thoughts on that that I'll try to get together.

>54 Jim53: It's harder to stop myself from making recommendations, really :) I would be curious to know what you think if you give it a try!

>55 JannyWurts: You are quite right that your original article is not gender-specific, and I'm sorry if I skewed it to look that way with my quote and bolding. I found your recounting of the publishing history of Lord of the Rings in the US fascinating as well- I'd heard about an illegal edition, but never the specifics.

Your statements are truly crushing to read- when I look at how many of @AndreaKHost's 99 women to read are available only out of print, secondhand...

I would gladly welcome reading suggestions for the type of author you mention- I saw Carol Berg, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Rosemary Kirstein, Matthew Woodring Stover, and Karin Lowachee in your article, and I have Whitefire Crossing on my list to try sometime from your reading thread too I believe.

I'm inclined to add Laurie J. Marks and Doris Egan to the list being similar in thoughtfulness and tone, but I'm not sure how much of their absence is just the author's writing speed in Marks' case and a career in another industry in Egan's case...

>56 LolaWalser: A very interesting article, with much food for thought, thank you. Things haven't changed so much. A couple of years ago I took a course on Women and Gender in Renaissance Italy, and wrote a paper on prescribed behavior of women in Baldassare Castiglione's The Courtier, which is written as a series of conversations, and it was remarkable how little some of the rhetoric in this area has changed.

It's timely as well- I'm back in Latin class (working at a university has the excellent perk of being able to take up to two undergraduate evening classes per semester without cost), and Cicero was just killed last week in the textbook readings. Not a single word about Fulvia... but this textbook, Oxford Latin Course, College Edition, is firmly on Cicero's side. (As was my previous Latin textbook, Wheelock's Latin, come to think of it.)

Our professor keeps saying that women of that time did not think of themselves as oppressed, but as "protected," and I've been meaning to look for sources to back her up or disprove her on this, but I've not got around to it. Most of the ancient history courses I took in college (my degree is in computer science with dual minors in Japanese language and Ancient History) were focused around Sumeria and Old Kingdom Egypt, occasionally going as late as Akkadia and Babylonia but still much earlier than classical antiquity.

Do you (or you, @pwaites, you mentioned Latin) or anyone else have a good reference for nonfiction about women in classical antiquity? There are many titles that look quite promising...

(The thought that I have readers is simultaneously amazing and intimidating.)

#57, Sandstone 78, goodness, I need to smooth out this: I was NOT distressed about you flagging that line from the article pointing to a gender specific bit of history. Quite the contrary! I did not write the article to be gender specific BECAUSE OF THE OVERREACTION furor currently flaming the internet in the field - if I'd written a gender specific piece, it could potentially have been swept into that riot of hot issue, and definitely CERTAIN people would have not read it, or if they did, missed the point.

While the disparity exists, and no question, there are a few angry individuals tearing into it with a nasty edge of righteousness, and they're causing a counter-productive backlash and it was THEM I needed to distance, (to have the point in that post seen and heard with unclouded vision) not you! Or your post!

One correction: that edition of Tolkien was LEGAL - through a copyright loophole that set it into public domain (probably written when 2000 pages was an IMPOSSIBLY high press run and left on the books....) Houghton Mifflin ought have registered the copyright when they bound more than 2000 imported loose sheets - and they didn't. Ian and Betty had been LOOKING for a way to get rid of the unethical non-payment to authors exploited in this way - and this gave them the opportunity to fire up a furor through a press campaign. As Betty put it, "The respected Oxford professor taken advantage of' caught on with the press, and the rest is history.

I will send you a list of authors whose careers were adversely affected, if not killed, by the pressures mentioned in that article, but privately.

If you have never read Carol Berg, or Rosemary Kirstein definitely do! And Whitefire Crossing and sequel The Tainted City by debut author Courtney Schafer deserves to see daylight, and fast. It is a beautifully written book with sharp handling of characters and tension - (sorry, male protags at first, but you will like the heroine who emerges to prominence as the story unfolds, she's a treasure, and no minor character at all).

#57

Our professor keeps saying that women of that time did not think of themselves as oppressed, but as "protected," and I've been meaning to look for sources to back her up or disprove her on this, but I've not got around to it.

It might be worth it asking in the history or classics groups. I've read little on the topic of women in antiquity so far (a couple books by Eva Cantarella--I think they have been translated into English); in general, as there seems to exist almost nothing written by women themselves, I just don't feel enthusiastic about delving into oceans of inferences and suppositions.

That said, there are indications that your professor could be right--just look at the attitudes among women themselves in modern Mediterranean (to keep the geographical connection), or, really, almost anywhere.

Of course, there's no telling what thoughts any individual woman might have had, and I'm pretty sure the human ability to get pissed off didn't dramatically change in 2500 years. But if an educated modern woman in today's London can rail at Mary Beard as being in cahoots with bra-burning men-hating etc. feminists ("feminist" still a curse word)*, and if almost half the Turkish women still think it's okay, even expected, that their husbands will beat them if they are "disobedient", it's no stretch to imagine that Roman women bought into whatever vision and role the society offered them.

Everybody does it.

*I linked to Beard's article in the LRB; she posted an excerpt also on her blog, where she receives public comments.

57> Roman women had greater rights than many of the surrounding civilizations - especially the Greeks, who so influenced the Romans culturally. Greek women couldn't even leave the home, while Roman women were able to have an active social life outside of the house. Roman women could also hold their own property and maintained control of their dowry after divorce (which was fairly common). If Roman women were comparing their status to what they know of other cultures, they might think of it as an improvement.

Unlike other cultures, Roman women remained under the control of their fathers - even after they'd married (adult sons did to by the way. Paterfamilias and all that). If a women wanted a divorce, she would have to ask her father instead of her husband. However, if they did get divorced, the husband would have control of the children. Wealthy widows who's fathers had died would have had the most direct freedom.

But there would be a big difference depending on social status. The wife or daughter of a prominent citizen would have a very different life compared to a slave women, and slave women probably would have been more concerned about their status as a slave than their lack of rights as a women.

There were some female gladiators, but it is debated how common they were. Some researchers hold that they were novelties while others think that they were fairly widespread.

None of the books I've read have mentioned how women viewed their status in society, and I can't recall reading any writing by Roman women. This is not surprising as all we've really read so far is Caesar's Gallic Wars and the Cambridge textbooks. Also, Roman women were less likely to be able to write. Really, most of the records we do have come from wealthy male citizens. It is from their viewpoint that we see other members of Roman society.

IIRC, women also had somewhat more freedom under the Republic than in Imperial Rome--I'll dig through my collection and see what I can find re this topic.

#61 Didn't everybody have more freedom under the Republic than under the Empire?

Thought I would let you know how my Bester read went... I first re-read The demolished man and Stars my destination. Depressingly, it turned out I recalled very little of these books, and even worse (but telling perhaps) what sort of thing I completely... forgot. I can't explain it, the only thing that occurs to me, besides having a terrible memory after all, is that the lively plots and comic-strip language focussed my attention away from what I found repellent. I remembered liking something, and suppressed the unpleasant rest. (I used to do it a lot--how could a woman otherwise bear 99% of stuff ever written.)

So, The demolished man is chock full of secretaries (completely unimportant) and female helpers (relatively unimportant); that much I recollected. What I can't explain is how I could forget the mysterious blonde "lunatic" who is made to regress to her childhood (beginning at the baby stage), during which process the hero falls in love with her. Yes, she calls him Dada and he calls her "Baby" and it's perfectly creepy. I don't know, I call traumatic amnesia! ;)

Almost as bad is the attitude these women (perhaps I should say "girls", which is what Bester's female characters are usually called) exhibit: desperate to get a man, submissive, eager to be bossed, mastered and even physically abused (yes, there is explicit invitation by one character to abuse her). And, finally, there's a distasteful reference to rape, which I can't help but associate with Alfred Bester forever after these three books. (Is that really what he would have wanted? I'll come back to that.)

The stars my destination I remembered liking less than the earlier novel; too bad I didn't remember why. Yes, I found my "interesting" female character, Jisbella--but again, how did I manage to forget completely Robin Wednesbury? Olivia Presteign I barely recollected too. I can't imagine forgetting Robin was random--what was dealt to her character, the rape and the aftermath, which was in a way as bad as the rape--it's tailor-made to piss me off.

Finally, Tender loving rage. A strange book, more in structure and writing than plot. First, it's very badly written and quite boring. Bester was apparently over seventy when he wrote it, or at least when he tried to get it published, and it's painfully evident that 1) he had nothing original left to say 2) he lost the power to say anything in an original manner. The book is sad with its references to his two fifties' hits--the time period itself, the charismatic ad-man whom the "girl" of his dreams calls "tiger", the other, nice man, who is very much like the detective Powell in The demolished man, and the girl herself is the usual long-haired blonde with dark eyes, as neurotic as they come.

The ad-man and the nice man are both after the blonde model, who is in addition being stalked and harassed on the phone by a stranger. The ad-man doesn't know that she's in love with the nice man; the nice man doesn't know that she had slept with the ad-man once, unwillingly but feeling constrained because (long story short) he put her under obligation. After a storm warning disrupts a photo shoot on Fire Island, the ad-man and the model find themselves in the situation of being alone for the night. The nice man appears unexpectedly. The truth of her relationship with the nice man comes out and both men walk out on her. The stalker shows up, beats her up, rapes her, and leaves her hanging in a crucified position on the curtains. The ad-man gets help but the stalker nevertheless manages to come back and kidnap her, whereupon the ad-man, the nice man and a cop set off after them. It all ends happily, but not before we get to learn that the ad-man ditched her as "shopworn" because of the rape etc. etc.

While there are many obnoxious remarks about women, men and sex in the book (Dr. Freud can never pay enough for all the trouble he caused and the brains he addled), and the stalker, the ad-man and a couple other male characters get to air rapist philosophy (look around at all these attractive women, making themselves available, of course they are waiting, wanting for us to rape them, men are fundamentally beasts, all men, etc.), I get a very strong impression that this wasn't the book Bester had wanted to write, that he was compelled, either by others or his own better judgement, to soften it up. The title change points in that direction, but there's also a general feel of clumsiness, unfinished business, odd timidity amidst prurience.

Not that it matters much, because nothing could make this book good or interesting, not even an interesting failure. As literature, it's simply crap, and even as a time capsule, the fifties novels, inserted in their own time, are more valuable.

So, what was it with Bester and rape? I suppose the key is in the obsessions of his times, the bad psychology, behaviourism, a fascination with the "subconscious" and human animality, and, last but probably not least, in the resistance to feminism.

Stress has gotten the best of me lately, but thank you for your responses, everyone- I have enjoyed reading them and will try to respond soon...

64: Sorry to hear that, @sandstone78... I hope you can find peace and time for yourself. *Sending positive energy your way*

I'm sending good thoughts your way as well. Hang in there!

Likewise - lots of good wishes. Be kind to yourself.

65-67 Thank you, you guys are awesome :)

Wishing you happiness, health, and comfort.

68: Just don't forget to take care of yourself, @sandstone78...

What Zjakkelien said. Remember to take care of yourself. Hope 'it' gets better soon.

Regards! Hope stress eases up soon!

Sending good wishes your way! :)

I'm catching up. Thanks for your support, everyone! I no longer need to write you that post about how the internet has been a force for good in my life, @LolaWalser- it's in evidence right here, the way I've been able to meet so many lovely people and have such interesting conversations across otherwise unbridgeable distances of space and coincidence. May all of your good wishes be returned unto you many times over Jane Fletcher's Celaeno books, Elizabeth A. Lynn's Chronicles of Tornor, Point of Knives and Point of Dreams, Babel-17, Tiptree's Brightness Falls from the Air, Wells' Emilie and the Hollow World, Glenda Larke's Isles of Glory trilogy, and more by several authors and series I've been curious about- Courtney Schafer's Whitefire Crossing and sequel, Walter Jon Williams' Drake Maijstral trilogy (actually in my TBR for quite some time in paper) and Alexei Panshin's Villiers books, Shea Godfrey's Nightshade, M.J. Engh's Wheel of the Winds ("culture where gender equality is the norm, where men and women can be friends without being lovers" is one of those review phrases that always catches my interest), Jeannie Lin's Butterfly Swords, Anne Lyle's Night's Masque trilogy (historical fantasy is not generally my thing, but comparisons to Cherryh's Foreigner and negative reviews complaining about too much homosexuality? okay!), and Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy (grimdark settings are even less my thing, but I've really enjoyed Hurley's essays on gender and other topics).

Also (I know...) picked up a variety of non-fiction, which I want to try to read more of this year: Miss Leavitt's Stars, about a computer at the Harvard Observatory who discovered a way to measure distance using variable stars, The Georgian Star, about a brother and sister astronomy team somewhat earlier, Whipping Girl, about gender identity and the hate of femininity so prevalent in society, Delusions of Gender about what we actually know about biological sex differences specifically from a neuroscience perspective, Gentlemen and Amazons about the origin of the myth of a peaceful prehistorical Goddess-worshipping matriarchy (ruined supposedly by an incursion of horse-nomad men), Between Women about lesbianism and female friendship in Victorian England, Airman's Odyssey, a collection of three aviation memoirs by the author of The Little Prince (possibly to read alongside Melissa Scott and Jo Graham's Lost Things and sequels when I get to them), and Samuel Delany's About Writing.

There goes my Mount TBR increase allowance for the next six months... (I have at least managed not to start with digital manga- Flame of Recca, W Juliet, I always meant to finish Angel Sanctuary, Ceres, Basara..... not going there!)

I did manage to set up the group read of Martha Wells' The Cloud Roads over here- this is a setting without humans that I've heard uses that fact to great effect in its worldbuilding. I've had this one in my TBR for quite some time, and am just into the third chapter- lots of setup so far, but very interesting.

Besides The Cloud Roads, I've also started Champion of the Rose and Miss Leavitt's Stars, which I'll try to post about later this week.

7 Burning Bright, Melissa Scott ★★★★★

Burning Bright. In no world am I going to be objective about this book- I've heard the "Golden Age of Science Fiction" variously given as twelve years old, fourteen years old, somewhere in there, and I read it right in that period, give or take a couple of years later. I found this and Trouble and Her Friends at my local used bookstore at the same time, having found Scott on a list of recommendations somewhere online for cyberpunk written by women. I was blown away by Trouble, to the extent it took me several months to a year to get around to reading Burning Bright for fear of disappointment... and when I finally did read it, I was not in the least disappointed.

This book has since sat on my shelf for at least ten years, possibly more, while I looked at it anxiously, holding off on rereading it for fear of disappointment...

I wasn't in the least disappointed this time either. I still love the setting, the Game and the intrigue (interestingly, this work with Chauvelin the ambassador debuted in the same year as Foreigner), and the characters and their interactions- of course Ransome and Chauvelin as I quoted earlier, but Ransome and Lioe as well, bonding over the Game, and Ransome trying to convince her it's a waste of her talent, and Lioe and Roscha... This time I also noticed how much Scott does with such a small cast- Lioe, Ransome, Chauvelin, and Chrestil for perspective characters, Roscha, ji-Imbaoa, and Cella for secondary characters, and there's a fantastic economy of scene as well, keeping all of the different scheming in order while also building the world in lavish detail- there's room for not only the life of the rich and powerful, but also normal people going about their daily lives.

Having finished it, I found myself torn between reading it over from the beginning immediately and setting it back on the shelf for another few years. This is a book I badly want to discuss (that last Game scene! augh!), and if the Raksura read goes well I just might try to start a group read for it.

SPOILER I remembered the ending. Through the last thirty percent or so of the book, I was tense, hoping I'd remembered wrong and things would work out differently this time- but of course they didn't. It wasn't out of character, it wasn't unforeshadowed, it would have been a cheat to do anything else, to keep the inevitable offscreen, and yet... Sigh. But how can that last Game scene work, given what happens before it? From the characterization, it couldn't be anyone else, but it couldn't actually have happened- there wasn't time for it. Yet the very last chapter takes place after it does... Any opinions on this?

8 In the Forests of the Night, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes ★★★★

I'm not a big fan of young adult, urban fantasy, or vampires, but I do find Atwater-Rhodes' writing very compelling. I read this, Shattered Mirror, and Demon in my View in high school, and decided to revisit them and fill in the gaps in the series after finding out that her Kiesha'ra series, one of my favorite reads last year, was set in the same universe. This is a short book, about 150 pages that I read in a single sitting, written when the author was 13, and in some places it shows- the occasional purple prose and the pronouncements about humans not understanding anything, the hundreds of years old vampires wearing trendy black tanktops and spiked dog collars and hanging out in clubs, as you will- but it moves right along, and has a female character who is very strong among the vampires and comfortable with that, who is not the only female character in the story, whose story is about overcoming a rival male vampire who's a jerk to her rather than falling in love with him... and it, too, recognizes the existence of daily life- there's a short scene where Risika goes to a coffee shop she often visits and spends an afternoon people-watching, catching up on the small human dramas going on around her, that I really liked, and a tie in to Demon in my View I hadn't remembered.

I'll be continuing with the series off and on, but haven't yet decided whether to go in publication order or chronological order yet- I believe Demon in my View is next either way... Yes, the one about the girl who writes vampire novels whose characters, including the villain from In the Forests of the Night, show up in her real life- as students at her high school. (Vampire drama in high school, a full five years before Twilight!)

9 Sunbolt, Intisar Khanani ★★★

I saw this book and Thorn, the author's retelling of "The Goose Girl," reviewed during A More Diverse Universe and decided to check this one out. It's a fairly standard YA, a girl hiding her mage talent and helping a rebellion work to overthrow an evil lord, circumstances throw her together with a mysterious guy who is older and far more powerful than she is yet who needs her help... Hitomi is resourceful, but some of her assumptions or actions didn't quite make sense to me (she sees a particular person she thought was dead apparently alive and well from a distance in the evil mage's residence, and the thought that that person, an enemy of the mage, might be there against their will does not even cross her mind- just "How could that person betray me?") I didn't find much to particularly like or dislike with this one, but I might pick up the sequel when it comes out to see where it goes.

Further responses still owed!

Zing! Good book bullet - you got me. I'd be in for a group read of Burning Bright :)

>74 sandstone78: I tried checking out Burning bright (by the way, most of the touchstones go to a book by Tracy Chevalier) on GR, and man, what a horrid cover and blurb! Still, I'm intrigued by your recommendation, so I might join a group read as well. I've come across unattractive blurbs before where I actually loved the book, so blurbs are not everything!

75-76- I just might put one together after the Raksura read then!

>76 zjakkelien: D'oh, I thought I got them all- fixed, thank you! I suspect this is a hard book to blurb without resorting to cliché or oversimplifying things...

Nice haul! Of those, I've only read Babel-17. Very interesting, and with a great (perhaps a bit too perfect) central female character. Delusions of gender have come across my radar before, definitely ought to get it. God knows I've had my fill of reading about the "female" and "male" brains.

I'm tempted by the group read too!

I have a copy of Burning bright so would definitely participate in a group read. Hope you continue to enjoy The cloud roads - I finished it this weekend having been completely sucked into the world and its peoples.

The non-fiction books look particularly interesting... and I think I might also be checking out Burning Bright.

Ah, my poor, neglected hideout- it is in need of a spring cleaning. I have a little time to spend...

The Group Reads of the Raksura are underway, following Martha Wells' The Cloud Roads and sequels, fantasy in a secondary world without humans (focusing on humanoid-lizard-person-like shapeshifters, some of them with wings- just look at those pretty covers)! Group read for The Cloud Roads is here; group read for The Serpent Sea has started and is here.

March

10 The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells ★★★★

Most of my thoughts so far are in The Cloud Roads' thread- this is an interesting setting with a whole lot of potential, but there are some definite issues here as well that I am reserving judgment on, mostly the villains, the Fell, who are about as stereotypically evil as it's possibly to get (up to and including a homophobic subtext which I am pretty sure is unintentional given that Wells has had sympathetic gay characters in her other works, eg Death of the Necromancer I think?) The characters were likeable, and the setting is really cool, but I'm really hoping for a subversion or complication about the Fell in the second volume.

11 Whipping Girl, Julia Serano ★★★★★

This book was fantastic and thought-provoking, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in reading about gender and/or trans issues. I realized some of the blind points I had regarding trans women in particular- the unconscious impression that all of them were super-feminine in particular, instead of having gender expressions that ranged across the same spectrum as cisgender women from femininity to masculinity, and the way that portrayals of trans women in the media reinforce that stereotype by almost universally depicting them putting on makeup, extraordinarily feminine clothes, and so on.

Serano is a biologist, and her conceptualization of gender identity (what she calls "subconscious sex"- the sex the body expects itself to be), gender expression, and sexuality as different, independent factors springing from a yet-to-be-understood biological source because of repeating patterns across history and cultures is interesting. She acknowledges as well that there is also a social component to these factors, and that the popular conversation of gender being rooted in biology is fraught with gross oversimplifications and bad science, the things have always pushed me personally toward a social constructionist model. I'm rethinking my views on gender after having read this book; though I wish she had had the page space to go more in depth on the repeating patterns she infers, the ideas she presents make a lot of sense, and I am still mulling them over.

I learned how to use the highlighting feature in my ereader/ereading app to mark interesting passages, and ended up with over a hundred:

My gender identity always felt more like a puzzle that I had to put together myself, one in which many of the pieces were missing, where I had no clue as to what the final picture was supposed to be. And the twenty years between my conscious recognition that I wanted to be female and my eventual decision to transition was a time when I painstakingly ruled out the possibilities that my female inclinations were merely a manifestation of my sexuality or of a desire to express femininity. And after many years of exploring and experimenting with femininity, masculinity, and androgyny, with crossdressing and role-playing, and with heterosexuality and bisexuality, I realized that for me, being trans had little to do with sexual desire or social gender; it was primarily about the physical experience of being in my own body.

In what is now considered classic research, sociologists Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna showed that in our culture, when people (both women and men) gender others, we tend to weigh male female cues as far more significant than female ones, and almost invariably consider the penis as being the single most important gender cue of all (i.e., its presence trumps all other gender cues; the presence of a vagina does not elicit a simliar effect).

The mistaken belief that femininity is inherently helpless, fragile, dependent, irrational, frivolous, and so on, gives rise to the commonplace assumption that those who express femininity are not to be taken seriously and cannot be seen as legitimate authority figures. While such assumptions regularly undermine feminine people of both sexes, they often have a greater net effect on women, because traditional sexism targets female bodies as well as feminine expression, and because traditional and oppositional sexism act together to put women in a double bind: If a woman acts feminine, she will be delegitimized by traditional sexism, and if she acts masculine, she will be delegitimized by oppositional sexism.

The notion that sexism can only be overcome if women work to become more masculine, more androgynous, or more "naturally womanly" all artificialize femininity by assuming that one's gender expression is easily malleable, and can be reshaped according to one's politics. Such one-size-fits-all approaches falsely presume that femininity is monolithic, ignoring how significant differences in class, culture, and biological predisposition give rise to a vast diversity of feminine expressions and perspectives.

It is an extraordinarily convenient tactic to artificialize, and even demean, an inclination (such as femininity or heterosexuality) when you personally are not inclined toward it. Indeed, this is exactly what straight bigots do when they dismiss queer forms of gender as "unnatural." When we feminists stoop to the level of policing gender and start inventing etiologies to explain why some women adopt "unnatural" feminine forms of expression, there's little to distinguish us from the sexist forces we claim to be fighting against in the first place.

I could go on for a long time... but it would be easier to just recommend the whole book. :)

I think there's a lot of material here that is particularly relevant for speculative fiction writers from a worldbuilding standpoint as well, if gender is something you are interested in- and I found the second passage very interesting as well in the context of girl-disguised-as-boy/woman-disguised-as-man stories.

April

12 Champion of the Rose, Andrea K. Höst ★★½

This isn't the book I hoped it would be, and I am still trying to untangle that personal, biased disappointment from other, independent problems I had with the book- I will say that despite these problems, I thought there was still enough potential in the setting and concepts to buy the second book in this setting, Bones of the Fair.

I am going to wait and give this book its own post later on, I think; there will be numerous spoilers when I do.

13 Relics, Michael Jan Friedman, narrated by James Doohan and LeVar Burton (abridged audiobook) ★★★

This is one of a package of Star Trek books on tape I picked up from an antique mall- my sister and I have been listening to it as we drove around town on the weekends running errands. This is evidently a novelization of a two-part TNG episode, which we did not realize when we started- Picard's Enterprise comes across a ship in distress, and finds Scotty, who has stored himself in the transporter buffer. Geordi and Scotty do not get along, but then they do. The ship is in distress because it crashed into a Dyson sphere (oh no!), and the Enterprise gets pulled inside the Dyson sphere (oh no!), but then they get out thanks to Engineering. Predictable, but entertaining- Doohan, who played Scotty, narrates the bulk of the story, with Burton (Geordi) providing an intro and outro. Doohan's Data voice is an-odd-ge-ner-ic-ro-bot-mo-no-tone, and his Worf is... hmm, I don't even know. Super gruff?

Anyways, there are Real Star Trek Noises, and incidental background music, and everything, and occasional internal monologue about men this, and men that, and men need to be respected, and so on that comes across as very odd in Roddenberry's deliberately gender-neutral TNG (eg "where no man has gone before" was explicitly changed to "where no one has gone before"). Amusing for what it is, but we are looking forward to an original story- probably The Devil's Heart next.

>58 JannyWurts: Thank you for your response, Janny! I have indeed read Kirstein's The Steerswoman (the first two books), and am very glad to see them becoming available in ebook so they can be more widely available. I have added The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City to my TBR. (And I am keeping watch on the progress of the third book on the author's blog off and on- I despise the seeming recent trend of publishers picking up two books in a trilogy and then dropping the series! This series, Jo Anderton's Debris, and Laura Lam's Pantomime are just three examples that come to mind- though I think that there is still some hope of the third book getting published with Pantomime.)

I am not opposed to male protagonists, though it's true I am far more likely to pick up a book with a female lead than with a male lead these days. (The Foreigner series is among my favorites, eg, and that does not have the best track record for female characters- Ilisidi and Jago are fantastic, but beyond them there aren't a lot recurring among the huge cast, except Bren's unlikeable mother and girlfriend- I'm pleased to see Damiri getting a larger role as of the last book though.)

I have decided to, as the platitude says, be the change I wish to see in the publishing industry- besides writing up the type of books I like to read in my thread, I plan to hold group reads focusing on midlist authors and series I would like to see get more attention, starting with my current one of The Cloud Roads. :)

> 59-62 Thanks for the information- I'm still looking around for a good book on this, and will let you know if I find a good one.

>63 LolaWalser: Thank you for reading Bester so I don't have to :) That sounds like an awful, awful book. Oddly enough, it was (according to Wikipedia, albeit citing a print book about Bester) written in the 1950s, so not long after TSMD and The Demolished Man.

> 75-76, 79-80 June? Burning Bright group read in June, once we're done with The Books of the Raksura?

81> The Cloud Roads has now jumped onto my "To Read List."

Sandstone78 - so welcome! Glad to see Rosemary Kirstein being discovered - her work has been in obscurity for far FAR too long, and I hope you enjoy Courtney Schafer as much as I did - I remain astonished her work was not picked up by a bigger house, and hope more people will check her out. I am awaiting the third in her trilogy with pleased anticipation.

>81 sandstone78: June works for me!

>83 JannyWurts: I completely agree, her books are awesome. I don't understand why she is not better known...

I've been thinking, I used to find books through Amazon's user-created Listmania and So You'd Like To lists- I'd search for an author I liked, then find other books through the lists that contained that book. Strangely, I'd forgotten this until just recently... these features seem to have all but disappeared from Amazon's site, in favor, I suppose, of algorithmically recommended books. I'm pretty sure I discovered Melissa Scott and Patricia Wrede's Shadows Over Lyra this way. It makes me want to make lists of my own, using LT's list feature...

Having recently acquired Louise Cooper's Daughter of Storms trilogy, I've decided to do a full read of the series in publication order, beginning with Lord of No Time, which I picked up for the ReadaThing. While reading, however, I ended up deciding to read this one side-by-side with the trilogy it was later expanded into, the Time Master trilogy. I finished the first half of Lord of No Time for the ReadaThing, and picked up The Initiate, which covers the same portion of story; I'm going on to The Serpent Sea for the group read now, but after I'm done with that I'll finish Lord of No Time and move on to The Outcast and The Master.

There are a number of intriguing differences. Tarod in Lord of No Time is only saved from being the most unlikeable character I've read this year by virtue of my having read The Stars My Destination, but even then it's a very close thing, given his awful misogyny and the way the narrative bends the world to accomodate him, while Tarod in The Initiate is instead a private person with a few close friends and a tortured soul, a change that brings to mind TV Tropes' "woobification," where a character who is distinctly unlikeable in a story universe's canon is reimagined as just such a tortured soul in fanworks. Themila Gan Lin, who is a low-level sorceress and substitute mother for Tarod in the Time Master trilogy, is instead the most learned sorceress of a gender-divided Circle whom Tarod seeks out for advice and her renowned knowledge of history in Lord of No Time, however Sashka, a girl Tarod uses and callously throws away in Lord of No Time, is instead an intelligent young woman Tarod finds himself smitten with in the Time Master trilogy. The most striking difference, however, is that Lord of No Time is not about Chaos and Order- in fact, Aeoris and the Gods of Order are completely absent from Lord of No Time, at least so far, while the banishment of Chaos by Order is possibly the central piece of the worldbuilding in Time Master. This gives the story somewhat more subtlety in handling its themes, and also makes things somewhat less predictable, I think, but it does change the tone of the story and character motivations significantly too.

The Chaos Gate trilogy (about sixty years? after the Time Master trilogy), the Star Shadow trilogy (taking place long before the Time Master trilogy), and the Daughter of Storms trilogy (about forty years after Chaos Gate, so a hundred after Time Master) will all be new reads for me- I'm curious how the universe will evolve as Cooper writes further works in it. Cooper had written at least one novel, Bad Seed, following the Daughter of Storms trilogy, itself the first in a new planned trilogy, but unfortunately it was never published due to her untimely death in 2009.

14 The Initiate, Louise Cooper ★★★★★

This trilogy was one my very favorites when I was first getting into fantasy. It at first appears to be a farm-boy type story, but is not. I can't recall if I was ever fooled into thinking it was, on my first read. I want to say that I had a pretty good idea what was coming, but I'm not sure if that came from the prologue- which seems blatant to me now- or perhaps wherever I found the book recommended had already spoiled me. This is the best starting point for Cooper's Order and Chaos works for a number of reasons.

This book borders on horror at times, but there is also a haunting beauty to many of the scenes, as is typical of Cooper's work. I believe this was the first book I read set at an institution of mages- excepting the White Tower of the Aes Sedai in The Wheel of Time, most likely- and it's quite different from most (especially post-Harry Potter) in that the story focuses not on Tarod's training as a child and his school life but instead on his arrival at the school and then skipping directly to his life as an adult initiate haunted by strange nightmares.

The female characters are somewhat stereotypical in this one- Themila, the substitute mother figure; Kael Amion, the religious leader who fears where events may lead; Sashka, the highborn social climber who falls in love with Tarod; Cyllan, the boyish peasant girl with a natural psychic talent she has trained herself to use to read omens of the future*. However, Cooper gives all of these characters inner lives and agendas and problems of their own, apart from Tarod- this goes a long way toward ameliorating things for me, but I may feel differently if I came to the book now without the rosy glow of nostalgia.

(*Cyllan was my favorite character, obviously. Cyllan doesn't show up at all in this part of the story in Lord of No Time- I think moving her introduction earlier is one of my favorite changes between the two versions, especially with the lovely, haunting scene of Tarod and Cyllan looking out over the sea and watching the song of mysterious, fey sentient mer-creatures- a scene I hadn't even remembered before rereading, which turned out one of my favorite parts this time around.)

I look forward to revisiting the rest of the series.

>82 pwaites: It's interesting; not perfect, and not as much to my taste as Laurie J. Marks' Delan the Mislaid, which covers very similar themes also in a setting with no humans, but it has a lot of potential. I'd be curious about your thoughts!

>83 JannyWurts: I am glad that self-publishing is an option these days for authors like Schafer whose series is dropped mid-stream by their publisher.

>84 imyril: June! I'm excited. (Now I will finally be able to ask other people something I've been wondering about with the ending for years!)

I'll join a group read of Burning bright too.

Still making progress on The Serpent Sea; I hope to have time to just sit down and read a large chunk of it sometime soon, as a couple of pages here and there doesn't seem to be an ideal way to read this one for me. I've picked up a long-suffering Early Reviewers book, Ardent Forest, for my lunch break and other assorted stolen minutes of reading. Protector has similarly fallen by the wayside for the moment.

I have been in the mood for lighter, magic-heavy, character-driven fantasy recently, and I have pondering reading some of the Valdemar series, of which I have read The Black Gryphon and The White Gryphon some time ago, and Arrows of the Queen somewhat more recently.

I'll probably start with Arrows of the Queen again, but Lackey's The Last Herald-Mage is popular, and I've been told there are two gay men who are fairly major characters in the Mage Storms series- I'm wondering if there are any lesbian or bisexual women among the protagonists (I don't believe there are any, but some of the books seem to be ensemble casts) or POV characters that I can look forward to in the series? I'm aware that one of the characters in Oathbound and that segment is asexual, which is cool, and I remember a couple of fairly minor characters in Arrows of the Queen from when I read it before, but I'm hoping for characters in a larger role. (Preferably ones who make it through the story without dying tragic deaths or sacrificing themselves to save everyone or losing their lover.)

Also, book sale season is fast approaching around these parts! Does anyone have any hidden gems I should particularly keep an eye out for?

15 Invisible: Personal Essays on Representation in SF/F, ed. Jim C. Hines ★★★★

A collection of essays on representation in literature (as the title indicates, mostly science fiction and fantasy). Most- possibly all?- of these are available free to read on Hines' blog here, and I highly recommend doing so, especially if you are of the writerly persuasion and interested in the conversations about the hows and whys of diversity in the genre that seem to be getting more attention lately. I think this might pair well with Cynthia Ward and Nisi Shawl's Writing the Other, which discusses how to research and provides exercises for writing characters different from oneself.

>88 sandstone78: Glad to hear it! I'm interested to see what you think of it.

Nice to have you back!

>88 sandstone78:: I read most of the Valdemar books up to about Exile's honor and can't remember any lesbian protagonists or major characters. This seems to be a common problem in fantasy (I believe we had a thread devoted to the subject a while back); gay male protags can be found without looking too far, but lesbians star far less frequently.

I found the essays on Hines' blog to be very interesting reading. They deserve to find a wider audience.

>90 Sakerfalcon: There are lesbian characters, but not major ones, I believe. There is a lesbian couple in the Talia books (but one of the two dies. The other finds someone else, though).

88> Thanks for the links to the articles! I've been reading through those. There are a couple I'd already read "The Princess Problem," for instance, but I hadn't realized that they were part of a series. It's interesting to see how books have impacted so many different people's lives, and it really does expose some of the problems within the industry.

My attempts at The Serpent Sea keep bouncing off, I'm hoping to get to it this weekend. For now, I'm a little ways into Arrows of the Queen... wondering why exactly the Companion makes Talia forget they have magically bonded (or whatever the setting-specific term is). I remember wondering about this the last time I read the book, but don't remember a satisfactory answer. I'll see if I find one this read... (I am also bemused by the number of things Talia mentions sneaking away to do- so far, reading, reading in her Father's library, stealing rides on the horses, and now skinny dipping so far.)

I always wanted Talia to go back and rescue her friend that she mentions is beaten by the man that they married her off to, but that never happens, I don't think. I was surprised to find that the friend is only mentioned in one throwaway line- perhaps I'm thinking of another book. (Perhaps I read too much into "I don't want to be Married!" occurring right after reading about Vanyel and his male lifemate. Sigh.)

I did find an interesting curiosity when browsing through first books in later trilogies, considering where I was interested in starting. This excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter of Storm Warning, published in 1994:

"Let lesser beings assume thrones of gold or marble; the Emperor held court from his Iron Throne, made from the personal weapons of all those monarchs the Emperors of the past had conquered and deposed, each glazed and guarded against rust. The throne itself was over six feet tall and four feet in width; a monolithic piece of furniture, it was so heavy that it had not been moved so much as a finger-length in centuries. Anyone looking at it could only be struck by its sheer mass- and must begin calculating just how many sword blades, axes, and lance points must have gone into the making of it...."

Huh. So, a throne, made out of swords. That sounds... familiar...

A Game of Thrones with its throne, also made of weapons of vanquished enemies, and also called the Iron Throne, was first published two years later, in 1996. How very odd.

>89 LolaWalser: Thank you, it's good to be back :)

> 90-91 That was my understanding. Disappointing.

I've still never quite gotten over Lackey's remark in her introduction to Oathblood (which I came across out of order in a library), where she wanted to write a "token heterosexual" sword and sorcery heroine because there were too many lesbians in the genre- and my subsequent disappointment when I tried to find them and discovered possibly Lythande, where Bradley basically has an essay about how she didn't want to write Lythande as explicitly being a lesbian because straight boys might read it and be titillated (I'm not sure whether my recent discovery that Bradley wrote lesbian pulp fiction under a pseudonym makes that more or less understandable); possibly some characters in the Darkover series- although most (possibly all?) of them that I read seemed to only become interested in women after (and at least sometimes because of) being raped by men; possibly Joanna Russ' Alyx, who I had an omnibus about that I could never get very far into...

I eventually found Silverglass, whose female protagonists are both bisexual, which I really enjoyed (though the first book was kind of weak), but with just 96 members owning it on LT and it being published a year after Lackey's first Tarma and Kethry story was published and all, I just can't imagine that's the overwhelming majority Lackey had in mind. Meanwhile, in straight heroines, there were The Blue Sword, Alanna: The First Adventure, Heir of Sea and Fire, The Tombs of Atuan, The Ladies of Mandrigyn, Shadow Magic, Jirel of Joiry, several Witch World books, at least one volume of Sword and Sorceress already published... The field, in other words, was sparse, and these obscure, hidden straight gems with straight heroines were just completely buried under the huge pile of blockbuster sword and sorcery books with lesbian heroines. (I'm perfectly okay with Lackey writing straight characters. That's cool. I take issue when she says she's doing it in reaction to a trend that demonstrably did not exist.)

Only tangentially related, I find it odd that the most popular gay or bisexual male protagonists are written by women, too- The Last Herald-Mage, Nightrunner, Swordspoint, Melusine, Point of Hopes and so on- rather than gay or bisexual men themselves, and this often goes unremarked in discussions about representations in the genre. (The tagmash of fantasy + gay really shows this- the first thirteen works on the list are by women.)

>92 pwaites: You're welcome! I have a number of further good links to post too, I've been using Pocket to track them and just need to cull the list a bit.

93> Majority lesbians in the sword and sorcery genera? Did she really say that? Urgh.

>94 pwaites: This is the introduction in question- I copied it from the "look inside" preview of Oathblood on Amazon.

Tarma and Kethry were created because heroic fantasy was finally “coming of age,” not the least because of people like Marion Zimmer Bradley and her Sword and Sorceress anthologies, but I saw two problems.

The first—most of the stories were about brawny C*n*n types, strong like bull, dumb like ox, iron-thewed and not something you’d invite to a nice restaurant. The remainder were equally divided between the incredibly depressing eternally doomed hero type, and the female counterpart to the C*n*n type. Trouble was, the latter seemed to share her male counterpart’s taste in women.

Mind you, I have no personal objection to this, but I thought it would be nice to have at least one token heterosexual female hero. And hey, not every fantasy hero or heroine has to be as highly sexed as most of the then-current crop seemed to be!

So I invented Tarma and Kethry. Tarma is celibate, chaste, and altogether asexual; Kethry isn‘t, and though she doesn’t think with her hormones, she definitely is fond of men.

Two books (three if you count the beginning of By the Sword) and many short stories later, things have changed for the better, insofar as there is now a vast cornucopia of books and stories in heroic fantasy, which incorporate a vast spectrum of heroes and heroines, but I’m still glad I invented Tarma and Kethry. Figuring out ways to get them in trouble and getting them out again has been highly entertaining for all concerned.

So actually, she implies that all sword and sorcery heroines prior to hers were lesbians, that this was a "problem," and that "things have changed for the better" in recent times. (Also conflating "chasteness," celibacy, and asexuality there.) I just can't even.

I think this is the same old specter of the "man with boobs" rising again. Clutch your pearls, because there are too many women in the genre who are completely unfeminine- they don't have time for femininity, they dress and act like men, they don't have romantic subplots- when they do, they're... *gasp* lesbians!!!

This attitude is rampant, and completely bizarre. You've just seen for yourself in your list of SFF with heroines without romance subplots how hard books like that are to find, and yet the myth that romance is a dying and contemptible genre is alive and well. I don't want to pick on Rachel Aaron/Rachel Bach, whose Fortune's Pawn has recently caught my eye on my library's shelf in fact, but her article here for Fantasy Book Cafe's Women in Fantasy month displays this attitude perfectly:

There’s a deeply rooted belief in our culture that falling in love and admitting it makes a person weak. I can understand the logic. Loving makes us deeply vulnerable, and even the euphemisms for it—softer feelings, going mushy, melting for someone—are all in the language of surrender. That’s scary stuff for a character like Devi who is so invested in being strong and invulnerable, and I understand how a reader could view my decision as an author to have Devi succumb to these softer emotions as a betrayal. It doesn’t help that falling in love is also seen as a stereotypically female weakness, making it a double punch to my strong leading lady. So yeah, I get it. I also think it’s wrong.

The whole concept that badasses can’t be in love is one carried over from the hyper-masculine ideal of the stoic, hard as nails hero. This manliest of men is only allowed to feel affection when the object of his love is the prize at the end of his quest or dead. (Sometimes, she’s both at once!) Either way, the relationship between the hero and his love is always a static element while the story is in motion. It has to be, because an evolving romance and all the emotional muddiness and feelings that go along with it is “girl stuff,” which we all know is verboten in manly hero stories. Sex with random women is cool, of course, so long as no significant attachments are formed.

This is the classic, sexist vision of acceptable action-hero love, and one Devi herself actually believes hook line and sinker, which was a great source of fun for me. You see, Devi, the soldier who will charge a breach ship full of carnivorous aliens twice her size without batting an eye, is terrified of love for all the reasons listed above. She’s trying as hard as she knows how to be that macho action hero, and a huge part of her development as a character is how badly she fails. Not because she is a woman, but because she is human, and humans fall in love. It is a natural part of being a person, and the irony of Devi’s situation is that she actually made way more trouble and danger for herself by denying her feelings than she would have if she’d stopped being so pigheaded and just accepted that being in love is part of being alive.

Now... okay. I agree with this argument to some extent, that romance is devalued because it's feminine. But... the key thing in this argument is that falling in love is devalued in men. In women, it's expected. It's celebrated. How many times have you actually ever seen a "badass" woman in the stereotypically masculine role who didn't end up in a happily monogamous heterosexual relationship- often with a man who is objectively stronger or more powerful than she is in some dimension physically, magically, knowledge-wise, socially? More than you can count on one hand? Anywhere approaching the number of stories where this does happen, in any volume close to threatening the ubiquity of this trope?

No, the hordes of masculine, promiscuous, romantic-love-hating women actually aren't knocking at the door, wanting to take and burn anyone's stockpile of romance novels. There is no epidemic of lesbians in the sword and sorcery novel, pushing out the straight heroines.

Have you noticed that the more "terrified" a female character is of love, the more sure you can be that she's wrong, wrong, wrong, and there's a heterosexual-relationship-shaped void in her life just waiting to be filled? The more successful and single woman is, the more likely she is to have a man come into her life and upset everything, overturning her whole world and giving her a prize much worthier than success- marriage? The way the stories seem to delight in their comeuppance, as the "frigid bitch" unthaws and the Amazon is tamed?

And what it all comes down to is this line: "Not because she is a woman, but because she is human, and humans fall in love. It is a natural part of being a person..."

Sorry, aromantic people, guess you're not human, or are maybe artificial life forms, or something! Or- stop me if you've heard these- maybe you just haven't met the right person yet, maybe you're repressed, I bet something happened to make you this way, maybe you're just scared of growing up and entering the adult world...

Rather than empowering love, I can't help but see this trope as just another part of the narrative that women don't know best for themselves, that secretly, deep down, every woman wants to fall in love, that every woman wants to have sex, to have sex with men, to have sex with men who they reject... This is toxic stuff. These ideas, this narrative being omnipresent in the back of everyone's minds, has real repercussions for real people in the real world.

Both of these fall into a pattern of- unconsciously, unintentionally, reflexively, I'm fully willing to allow because this kind of hierarchal thinking is all but the air we breathe- trying to legitimize decisions to write characters from a privileged group on a scaffolding of prejudices against more marginalized groups, as if saying "I'm writing a story about two heroines with a deep, trusting lifelong friendship- but don't worry, they aren't gay!" or "I'm writing a story about a tough female mercenary- but don't worry, she doesn't sleep around, she has a vulnerable side, and she even falls in love with a man!"

>93 sandstone78: I do remember Talia going back to her village to rescue her sister(?) who turned out to be content with her life and rejected Talia's offer very strongly. I think this was mentioned as having happened, rather than being shown to us though.

>96 Sakerfalcon: Really? I don't remember any of that. Or maybe it was in one of the later books?

I'm about 20% into Arrows of the Queen, and Elspeth has shown up. Heh. I think Lackey falls into the same subsection of the genre as Tamora Pierce and the Liaden books for me, and certain of the Pern books (eg the Harper Hall trilogy)- interesting and generally likeable characters overcoming the sometimes overwhelming odds ranged against them. I'm a little disappointed that the fantasy genre as a whole seems to have mostly shifted away from this type of story in favor of gritty realism and deconstruction- yes, these type of stories often have flaws, and often blind spots that are in good need of discussion, but I don't think they are unredeemable at heart.

> 96-97 I don't recall it either in the first book, but I didn't read past the first one.

I found the passage I'd been thinking of, though it was later than I'd thought:

And poor Vris; she'd been terrified at the prospect of marriage to old Fletcher, and it seemed she had been right to be so fearful. The few times Talia had seen her at Gatherings, she'd been pale and taut-looking, and as silent as one of the Lady's Handmaidens. All the sparkle had been snuffed out of her, and nothing was left but the ashes.

Talia shuddered--Vris' fate could so easily have been her own. The Companion's timely arrival seemed little less than miraculous in that light.

My Kindle app helpfully tells me that the last sentence of the first paragraph is one of the most highlighted passages in this book. I do hope Talia tries to go back and get her, or at least thinks of it, but I don't recall that happening at least in the first book, which is as far as I've read into the series- if not, it seems uncomfortably like writing her off as "damaged goods" with no point to trying to save her. Of course, seeing Vris happy after this would feel a lot like Stockholm syndrome too, so I'm not sure I would be any happier with that.

Vris just seems like a plot device to highlight what could have happened to Talia rather than being developed as someone Talia actually knew and loved. It's an understandable enough flaw, this being Lackey's debut novel and all, but still kind of uncomfortable- settings that have an underlying conceit of "really awesome people get picked to be part of the elite group!" (Dragonriders, Heralds, and so on) cast an unpleasant shadow implying people who don't get picked for the honor deserve what they get- even more unpleasant when one considers that the Heralds and all, held up as the epitome of justice and rightness, seem to know how bad things are at the Hold for women and so on, but don't particularly seem to care (from what I remember, and up to this point in the story in my reread.)

This realization lends itself to a story where the elite group ensures that there is a certain number of children suffering horribly as a cult-like recruitment technique to ensure a population willing to sign up wholeheartedly for their dangerous conditions requiring almost complete abnegation of the self to their Duty as the lesser of evils- if I was the mean-spirited fanfiction or parody writing type, I could have some fun with that, though I doubt I'm the first one to arrive at that conclusion.

I still find it cruel and unnecessary that Rolan didn't explain everything from the beginning, though, but I stopped reading right before the formal explanation. It threw me because Talia's daydream seemed like she had a really good idea of how Heralds work because it was spot-on, but then the story had her be ignorant of it.

Edit: I read a little further while taking a break at work. From the Dean's inner monologue... "And this wild-animal shyness spoke of abuse; mental and emotional, and perhaps physical abuse as well. Fortunately, she may have had her spirit bent but it wasn't broken; Rolan never would have Chosen her otherwise." Ech. I remember this line standing out unpleasantly to me as well before, now that I see it- it reinforces my thought of no "damaged goods" earlier.

I can't help but bring to mind Molly Grue in The Last Unicorn, and her "Where were you when I needed you?" speech to the Unicorn...

I am at last making progress in The Serpent Sea; the missing seed has been discovered, and everyone is looking for the trail of those who took it. I will finish that book by the end of the month, one way or another!

Meanwhile, more Arrows of the Queen...

I was joking about Heralds deliberately encouraging terrible conditions to produce superior Heralds.

The Housekeeper was plainly shocked. "Married? At thirteen?

"It's pretty common to marry that young on the Borders," Sherrill replied. "They don't wait much longer than that back home. Borderers treat themselves and their children just like they do their stock; breed 'em early and often to get the maximum number of useful offspring. There's no one true way, Housekeeper. Life is hard on the Border; if Borderers were to hold by inKingdom custom, they'd never be able to hold their lands."

"It still seems--barbaric," the Housekeeper said with faint distaste.

"It may well be--but they have to survive. And this kind of upbringing is what produced us a Herald that has a chance of turning the Brat back into a proper Heir. You'll take notice that Rolan didn't pick any of us." Sherrill smiled down at Talia, who was trying not to show her discomfort. "Sorry about talking about you if you weren't there. Don't let us bother you, little friend. Not all of us have had the benefits of what Housekeeper calls a 'civilized upbringing.' Remember what I told you about not washing in winter? Housekeeper had to hold me down in a tub of hot water and scrub me near raw when I first got here--I was a real little barbarian!"

And Talia accepts the justification of her horrible misogynistic culture and takes the bait to change the subject...

Bolds mine, of course. My goodness. This is like Ender's Game level "molding the perfect child we need by being horrible to them" stuff.

I am a bit mollified by characters later telling each other when Talia isn't around that they didn't know how bad the Holds were, so I am going to go with that, but goodness.

On the plus side, this book is full of interesting female characters and thoroughly passes the Bechdel test, something I like in a good light read. I can see why these books have so many fans.

>98 sandstone78: Although I see what you mean about Vris being just a plot device, I also think this has something to do with the tolerant Herald attitude. I seem to remember contact between Holderkin and Heralds being mentioned in one of the books, where the Holderkin were pretty reticent. I don't think the Heralds like Holderkin culture, but they allow people to live how they want. They go a bit too far in this perhaps: they should insist in being allowed to talk to anyone in private, 'even' the women, so that they can offer them an alternative. I'm not sure how much good it would do; it's quite difficult to get out of a culture like that. Still, a few of them might listen.

As for 'broken' people not being eligible for being chosen by a Companion, that sort of makes sense to me. Being a Herald is a tough job, it's not therapy (well, a little of course, but that's not the point of it, is it?). The Companions only choose people who are able to do that job. I remember there being other reasons not to be chosen, for instance because someone has other talents (healing, or artificer), and once (but I didn't think that was fair) because it would cause too much pain to an existing herald.

>99 sandstone78: In all fairness, the reasoning is not 'let's keep horrible conditions to breed heralds', it is 'we allow people to live life their own way, and they do what they must to survive'. That's about the Borderpeople though, not the Holderkin. Sherrill doesn't seem unhappy about her borderlife...

>100 zjakkelien: The "broken, but not too broken" idea doesn't bother me so much from an in-universe standpoint, because it's justifiable to me along the same reasons you give, but it rubs me the wrong way a bit from an our-world perspective, seeing as this book reads very much like a "comfort the disturbed" wish-fulfillment fantasy with the way it focuses intensely on Talia and her (justifiable) emotional difficulties- I just don't like the sense it gives me of a judgment that some people aren't worth saving in a story that's all about finding a place where people value you and you can come into your own.

In the excerpt in >99 sandstone78:, they are specifically talking about the Holds when talking about Talia being shaped by her background into the solution to their problems, from context (they start on this topic by Talia telling them she was about to be married)- Sherril is sort of the Holds in with her culture and others on the Borders, though. I've just passed a part near the end of chapter four where Talia meets other girls and explains about their marriage customs and sexism and gets a "So that's why they only send male Heralds to the Border!" in return- that implies to me that the Heralds are aware of the treatment of women there, or at least lack of respect. It just seems a logic gap that they would let it be that bad, unless they believe the "We must have as many children as possible to hold the land!" line, which doesn't make that much sense in a world with magical healers where presumably the mortality rate is much lower than a more realistic Earth setting.

In any case, the awful Hold setting feels the same way Vris does to me- it's backstory for Talia rather than anything that is actually relevant to the plot of the story, or able to be interacted with during the plot of the story as a dynamic thing. Minor characters and setting features being used as characterization for the main character rather than entities in their own right (and therefore being more subject to the rules of narrative convenience rather than the rules of extrapolative logic) is, however, a pretty common feature of stories like this where readers are expected to intensely empathize with the lead character (possibly to the extent of inserting themselves into the story in her place or as her friend, the way Talia inserts herself into stories of Vanyel and the Heralds in her daydreams at the Hold).

I was, however, only being facetious regarding the breeding of Heralds through adversity- it's quite obvious in-story that isn't their actual reasoning for leaving the Holds alone, given their obvious sympathy and kindness towards Talia and their (possibly too great) tolerance towards others, but if you bend the story a little while reading (or looking at the subgenre of "horribly mistreated child comes into their own after being chosen by supernaturally good creature" in general) it does make a certain horrible sense as a way to reconcile "supernaturally absolute-good creatures of justice and their human partners in positions of authority" with "existence of numerous nearby locations where children are treated horribly and subsequently rescued by supernaturally good creatures."

Cover amusement of the day: heterosexual paranormal romances with a shapeshifting dude that feature both a shirtless dude and the animal he shifts to on the cover. How is he in two places at once? Even more amusing, ones with the female lead and the shirtless dude and the animal. If you're, I don't know, clinging to him, and both of you are there, is that one of his shapeshifter buddies watching you as a tiger? Because that's kind of creepy.

Huh. (Arrows of the Queen again- I'm just past halfway now and still generally enjoying myself.) I'd forgotten that Talia's family made the break so final- that explains, I suppose, why she never went back even for her friend, and I can't blame her for that. The naming makes me wonder, though, she is from Sensholding and her name was Talia Sensdaughter- I wonder if the implication is that each holding has one male head of household, the father, and the holding is named after him, or if all children are named as being son or daughter of their hold? In that case, Vris would have been somewhere else... It's a plot hole, I'll let it go.

I'd forgotten Likeable Harper Herald Guy. He is, in fact, likeable. It's a little odd to me that Talia ended up at the Collegium alone over Midwinter when it was a plot point that her teachers eg Keren were watching out for her specifically because of her family situation- did they all just drop the ball?

I'm really wondering about this, though:

One of the "most highlighted passages" I noticed as I was reading is this one:

"It's the tradition of the three Collegia that everyone share the work, so there are no servants anywhere around here. In fact, the only people in the Collegia that aren't students and teachers are the Cook and the Housekeeper."

However, when Talia and Harper Guy are together, in his rooms in the Heralds' private quarters at the Collegium, we get this:

... She was so enthralled that she never even noticed how late it was getting until a servant arrived to light candles and inquire as to whether Jadus preferred dinner in his room.

...

By the end of this, the second day of her lessons, the servants had gotten wind of what was going on and could be seen lurking in the vicinity of the Herald's room...

Um... what servants? Heralds going about their shared duties? But all of them left, and there are no servants by tradition...?

And then they get invited to the servants' party? In Servant's Hall, which is three times the size of the Collegium common room? I could understand if this was in the Court or something, but we were clearly established as still being in the Collegium when Talia came upon Jadus... and now all of the servants have special sympathy for Talia's plight.

I probably wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been a specific highlighted plot point earlier. Maybe Jadus' servant is one assigned to him from the Court... or something? Despite the fact we're explicitly told that the Housekeeper and Cook are the only people who aren't students or teachers....? And he invited all of the servants ever to sneak away from their duties X distance away to this remote hall to hear them perform?

>102 sandstone78: Huh, I never thought of that. I always thought the one servant for Jadus was assigned to him from the court, but that wouldn't explain the servant's party. Except if that is at Court? Isn't Talia spending a lot of time at court, which is unusual for a trainee, but she has to mind Elspeth?So then it would be possible that 1) a servant is assigned to Jadus and 2) the servants notice Talia while she is at court and 3) they get invited to the court's servants' party?

>101 sandstone78: I always got the feeling that the Heralds were aware of the treatment of women, but perhaps didn't know the extent of it. Plus, I had the feeling that a lot of the women were brainwashed, as in, they also thought this was the right way to live, or at least it was the only way for them. If you have that, plus no opportunity to speak to people privately, and if you do, they do not trust you, it makes it very difficult to do something, I think.

>102 sandstone78: AFAIR there are servants for the full Heralds, it's only the students who have to do all the chores. I think it's a courtesy, considering so many of them are back to rest from long and dangerous tours of duty and others are retired because of injuries gained during same. I think that the Heralds' private quarters, while technically in the Collegium area of the Palace complex, are considered part of the Palace and not the Collegium. I certainly remeber at least one Herald (possibly Talia) who is rather bemused by suddenly having servants to do their chores, once they gain full whites.

I read a review of Rachel Bach's Heaven's Queen, and what should show up but... yes:

There’s a touch more emphasis placed on the relationship between Devi and Rupert than in previous volumes, but it doesn’t bog down the action. These are two characters who are sure they won’t live to see tomorrow and know their time together is precious. The romance never becomes cheesy and it never compromises Devi as a strong, smart woman fighting for her survival. I found that really gratifying to read. Sometimes it feels like the archetypal “badass” female character isn’t allowed to be an actual woman with desires and needs and instead becomes a harmful stereotype. Devi was allowed to be unsure and to be emotional. She was allowed to fall in love. She was a fully well-rounded and multi-faceted character who will hopefully be an example to other genre writers on how to write an amazing female character.

Bolds, of course, mine, as usual.

Reading list of stoic, ultraconfident women who don't end up in love by the end of their story, please, in sufficient quantities to convince me it's an "archetype"? I'm not even that interested in "badass" characters, but it's becoming a sticking point. Possessing one or more of the traits listed above seems more likely to get a character labeled a Mary Sue than revered, in any case.

Latest thoughts about Arrows of the Queen... Talia discovers one of her close friends is, in fact, a lesbian.

The reveal was just odd, but I kind of had to laugh that Ylsa couldn't keep her mind off her lovely girlfriend enough to focus on the task at hand. Heh.

I hadn't remembered that Keren becomes such good friends with Talia because Keren's love for Ylsa and her attraction to women in general is looked down upon by a lot of people even among the Heralds, and she's in the closet to everyone outside the Collegium. I had retained the impression that Valdemar was generally an open and welcoming place in that way, except for isolated places like the Holds (turns out I was evidently wrong about them, though)- the Wikipedia article about the Valdemar setting is all about acceptance in this regard, going so far as to say that "all sexualities and orientations are welcome" in Valdemar. If only there were more lesbian characters later on, so that I could actually enjoy the representation in that regard. :/

Speaking of the Holds, I'm having a hard time reconciling Talia's offhand mention of same-sex "special friends" relationships being common among the wives of the Hold with the Hold culture we actually saw as well, as patriarchal and misogynistic as it was- I don't think it's implausible, but it has no impact on the wives as we see them or on Talia's relationships with other women, so I'm having a hard time placing it.

I have been thinking a lot lately about representation, and who representation is targeted towards lately. I'm still mulling over Champion of the Rose, which was a story in a bi-normative setting in which all of the same-sex relationships were off-screen in favor of a disappointingly typical disparate heterosexual relationship and yet another heroine out of her depth and surrounded by ultra-competent men. (I have hopes that the sequel will be better in this regard, though I believe it again centers on a heterosexual couple...)

At least Valdemar has a handful of important named lesbian and gay (possibly bisexual as well?) characters who get to do things on screen... but when authors have settings where diversity of sexual orientation is normal, and yet the stories are still only about straight characters who end up happily together at the end or a portion of the cast seems to be bisexual/pansexual but they all end up paired off in couples of one man and one woman (yes, I'm looking at you, Liaden Universe) and the gay protagonists don't get a happy ending but die instead and the lesbians are all but absent and so on, it starts to feel uncomfortably like tokenism to me- as if this representation is more for straight people to learn about non-straight people in a setting where they can still remain comfortably in the center of the story. I'm not discounting the value of this- or of helping people on their own journeys to self-understanding, in a world where any positive or sympathetic representation at all is still rare- but I can't help but be disappointed, and want more.

Other, more eloquent essays that I've been thinking about:

Lesbian Genre Fiction: The Importance of Having All 31 Flavors:

Alas, while there's a booming market in lesbian novels with contemporary settings, there's a much smaller one for historic novels, historic romances, or SF. Now every time I say something like that, people start bombarding me with lists of all the novels they can think of with lesbian characters in all those categories. Well, novels with gay or lesbian characters anyway. (And in my experience when you ask for GLBT fantasy and science fiction, most of the suggestions involve gay male characters, not lesbians.) And people think that the fact that they can list off half a dozen novels having those characteristics invalidates my complaint. At this point, I feel like I'm standing in the mall surrounded by a Baskin Robbins, a Dreyer's, a Ben & Jerry's, and a Cold Stone Creamery and I've been handed a dish of Neapolitan artificially flavored ice milk and told that I shouldn't complain because I get three whole flavors. Well, I'm complaining.

Options:

And so, I fight when and how I can for representation. I get angry when people try to deny it. I feel hurt, too personally sometimes, when people say it’s not necessary. I cry when we get small, too tiny pieces of the pop-culture pie because at least there’s a piece for us. Sometimes, I honestly don’t know if those tears are of rage at the smallness or of joy at the existence. Sometimes, I know they’re both. We’ve got such a long way to go, so it’s especially important to me when celebrities and athletes and everyday people come out.

Invisible Bisexuality in Torchwood:

What I see going on here is a strange hesitation to put a label on Toshiko concurrent with a sensitivity that just adding “lesbian” sexual content could be construed as something cheap (as we saw in “Day One”) and that being a lesbian isn’t an “issue” meaning that it isn’t a bad thing. But if it isn’t a bad thing, why did Mori repeatedly and explicitly remove that label from her character?

In a generous reading, I can see hints of Mori reaching for a utopia that doesn’t yet exist. One where sexuality is widely accepted as fluid, and even if a person is normally attracted to the opposite sex, they can find themselves attracted to someone of the same sex under certain circumstances. And in an ideal world in which the issues of representation and marginalization aren’t a problem, I can see this being sufficient. As a writer of fiction myself, I often advocate that science fiction and fantasy authors should depict the world they want to see as often as they reflect the troubling aspects of the world as it exists now.

Still, I keep looking at that tiny list of queer female characters in relation to the much longer list of queer male characters and the shadiness of that woman on woman action in “Day One” and this feels less like a utopian vision and more like an erasure.

Why Is Lesbian Romance So Unpopular When Compared to Gay or Straight Romance? :

Of course this heteronormatively acceptable homosexuality or homonormativity is really only available to white, cisgender gay men who conform to the acceptable stereotypes of a gay man. But these 'acceptable types of gay masculinity' are exactly what the overwhelming majority of m/m romance novels promote. They are comfortable and non-threatening images of gayness easily consumed by an audience that might even be, in many ways, homophobic. People can feel good about being "supportive allies" to the GLBTQ community through consuming these images of very normative white, able bodied young men. While these images also mean that they never have to question any of the deeper homophobic, biphobic or transphobic views they might still hold.

The Goblin Emperor and the female gaze:

A third vector: I tried a couple of female-written male/male romantic fantasies a few months ago, noting the storytelling, plot, and emotional patterns. One was by Ginn Hale, and the other by C. S. Pacat. Women seem to be the main audience for female-written male/male romances. Why aren’t these women reading romances written by gay men? Some of them are, but I think what they like in the female written ones is that the men in the stories are seen through the female gaze. Roles, power, meaning, are played with in ways that don’t map over the old rules, pleasing a female audience.

> 103-104 Actually, while both of your suggestions are plausible (and I wouldn't be surprised if Lackey does expound on things as you suggest in a later book, @lohengrin), it says shortly after that that Talia hadn't seen Selenay or Elspeth since her first day there. Also, Jadus is in the Collegium rather than the Court, which would have made sense to me- it talks about Talia finding him by hearing the harp being played "somewhere beyond the doors that closed off the Heralds' private quarters from the rest of the Collegium." The line I quoted above sounded to me like all Heralds, Bards, and Healers in residence took their turn at chores, but in practice, it does seem like we only ever see trainees doing them, Talia and her peers- Heralds having their own servants seems pretty jarring with that ideal, though.

>103 zjakkelien: That plot point of Talia not going back is bothering me less in light of her family making such a final break with her.

>97 zjakkelien:, >102 sandstone78: Talia's return to the Holderkin is mentioned in passing in either Arrow's flight or Arrow's fall. I'll have to reread to find the exact location, but it really was a "blink and you'll miss it" reference, which fits with the general treatment of the Holderkin as a character-building device rather than a real issue to be tackled.

Okay...

This...

Her success prompted her to try intervention in the emotions of others several times more--though always choosing only to try to redirect the more negative emotions of anger, fear--or once, in the case of a quarrel and a gross misunderstanding on the part of two of the court servants, hatred. Her successes, though not always complete, were enough to encourage her in the belief that such interventions were "right."

Talia... Talia, no. This is not okay. Using your gift to understand and listen? Awesome. Manipulating away others' anger? Not okay.

Also her bond with Rolan makes her aware when he's having sex. I'm... hmm, not sure I needed to know that. I hope this doesn't become a Pern style plot point.

Is Keren still a major character in Arrow's Flight and Arrow's Fall? I like her a lot, but I'm, like last time, a little on the fence about continuing with the trilogy, and knowing that she is still in a large role would make me more curious to read them.

>106 Sakerfalcon: That explains why I wouldn't remember it, then.

I'm feeling uncomfortably like Jadus and Keren and Ylsa are also to make Talia look better as much as they are characters in their own right sometimes. Rather than "diversity is great!" I'm sometimes getting vibes of "Talia is great- look, she's even friends with the lesbians, and the disabled guy!" that make me uncomfortable. I think I would feel better if there was even a passing mention of their having other friends than Talia, especially ones that also shared their particular marginalized experience...

>106 Sakerfalcon:: Found it! There's a paragraph in Chapter 4 of Arrow's flight. I was beginning to think I'd imagined it ...

>107 sandstone78:: Flight and Fall take place away from the Collegium so we see less of the characters based there, although they do have roles to play. Other characters become more important though.

>108 Sakerfalcon: Yeah, I saw Flight was about her Internship, and Fall is when she goes somewhere on assignment and gets captured and tortured? It also seems from the reviews I've read that they are a lot more romance-focused than friendship-focused too? How much does the romance overshadow the non-romantic relationships of the story?

Flight and Fall are both Mount TBR reads for me, though, so I may progress just to clear them from my backlog before I forget what's happened in Arrows of the Queen again...

>109 sandstone78: Flight is indeed about her internship, when she goes 'on circuit'. In Fall, I think she's back at court, there's some todo about her relationship with Elspeth, then she and one of the other heralds have an assignment. I don't remember it being that romance-focused, even though there is some of that too.

I've finished Arrows of the Queen...

The resolution of Keren's issue just still comes out of left field for me. I never noticed Keren as being so fragile on the page, and I never noticed Sherril looking wistfully at Keren and Ylsa either. Even if that had been on-screen, assuming Talia had seen it, "She really wants to be part of that relationship" or "She really wants to be with Keren" is not the first thing that would have come to mind, especially since Sherril is what, in her late teens or early twenties and both Keren and Ylsa are described as middle-aged? Wouldn't "hero worship" or "she is questioning or uncomfortable with her sexuality and wishes she could have a relationship like those two" make more sense? Why on earth (or equivalent) would you throw a child at an adult woman who has just lost her partner and tie them together in a mental bond and expect them to be a happy couple and make things all better, especially when you have only one-sided circumstantial evidence that one of them might like the other and "they're both from a place where same-sex relations are accepted!" to go on?

I guess it has to be chalked up to Talia's empathic gift- though that's not mentioned as part of the decision-making process- or to Rolan's (or Talamir's?) special Queen's Own knowledge.... But urgh.

I also didn't really understand Skif portrayed as being Talia's closest friend ever in the later part of the book- they were definitely good friends, yes, but her bond with him didn't seem nearly as close as the friendships she had with Jadus and Keren?

Also also- heh- I completely pictured Selenay's late and unlamented husband as the smarmy prince from Frozen this time around.

16 Arrows of the Queen, Mercedes Lackey ★★★ (reread)

I like a good friendship and finding-one's-place story (see also Dragonsong and Sandry's Book), and this one delivers for the most part. Talia is likeable, and if the events and people that surround her seem a little flat to make her look better, this book still does a pretty good job of representing a likeable secondary cast that's pleasantly diverse as well. Some inconsistencies and a really boggling plot point brought it down for me, but I think I liked it well enough that this time I will continue with this trilogy.

For now, though, it's back to The Serpent Sea!

>110 zjakkelien: Thanks- some romance is all right, but I'm not too excited about what sounds like a love triangle in that regard, especially with sizable age differences in both options again... I'll see.

What's the recommended reading order after finishing this trilogy? Assuming I'm still in a Valdemar mood, should I head for The Last Herald-Mage trilogy next?

>111 sandstone78: Definitely a possibility, but you could also read By the sword.

I'm enjoying The Serpent Sea. I'm about a quarter of the way into it and hope to make a significant dent this weekend. So far, it's more like I had hoped the series would be than The Cloud Roads- I'm really appreciating the different gender dynamics in Moon and Jade's romance more than I did in the first book, the relationships between the characters (though the size of the cast does make them all hard to keep track of sometimes), and the fact that there are no Fell so far. (Yay!)

I picked up Arrow's Flight after all as well, and have been skimming through the prologue... The magic wars (which I believe I read about ages ago in the first two gryphon books) clearing out the land which is slowly getting resettled is interesting- I had wondered why there was empty land there for the taking. I'm bemused at seemingly arbitrary gender things mentioned in passing though- more boys are chosen to be Heralds than girls? The Monarch's Own Companions are always stallions? Any particular reason why...? (No, on second thought, don't answer that. Please, please don't answer that, so I can pretend it's just coincidence and not some bizarre gender essentialism reified in the metaphysics of the world...) Also, "The Queen's Own, an aged Herald called Talamir, was frequently confused and embarrassed at having to advise a young, headstrong, and attractive female." What?

>112 zjakkelien: Noted.

Today in unfortunate OCR typos...

Talia reflected that bringing them together was probably the best thing she'd ever done. The bond between them was easily as strong as the one Keren had shared with Visa...

Her bond with who, Mastercard? Talia, I told you to stop signing Keren up for credit cards...

Whoops.

In other thoughts... So now it's that Keren and Ylsa might have both had a lifebond with Sherrill. That's interesting- Lackey also had a polyamorous relationship in Bedlam's Bard (though I believe it fell apart and "would never have worked" after that book in the series, among other continuity errors and retconning- I never read that far.) But they've been around each other for years, how come it hadn't already happened? Sherrill holding herself back, I guess? But why wouldn't Keren and Ylsa have been drawn to her? Talia seems super drawn to the blue eyed older Herald guy (Dirk?) that I'm guessing is her lifebond, and she's only spent like five minutes with him ever.

113: More boys are chosen to be Heralds than girls? Monarch's Own Companions are always stallions?

I believe I've figured out the reason why, despite my enjoyment of some of Lackey's other work, I have not read much in the Heralds of Valdemar series. I did enjoy the Mage Winds trilogy; ironically enough, my predilection for female Others led me to it, since both of the significant Companions in this series are female, and the gryphon Hydona is a presence. But if this kind of institutionalized preference for males runs through the series, I doubt I'll be reading many more of these books.

>115 kceccato: I didn't remember those things about boy and girl heralds, so I can't be completely sure, but I never had the feeling that there was a preference for men. There are plenty of cool female heralds and fighters. In that respect By the sword is a good one by the way.

>115 kceccato:, 116 I seem to remember more female Companions than male, although I may be remembering wrongly. It is certainly true that in the more recent Valdemar books most of the protagonists have been male - Take a thief, Brightly burning the Exile duology and the Foundation series spring to mind. But I gave up on Lackey entirely after the first part of Exile, because her writing had become so awful and her characters felt like stock types rather than living breathing individuals.

117: I don't think you're wrong, at least based on what I know of the "middle period" of the Valdemar series. Kerowyn's Companion is female. Skif and Elspeth both have female Companions who get a lot of page time in the Mage Winds trilogy (although it bothers me that Elspeth's supposed "bond" with Gwena seems shaky at best; Elspeth doesn't even seem all that upset when Gwena might be mortally injured). The ill-fated Companion in Brightly Burning is female. The protagonist of Magic's Pawn also has a female Companion.

This makes it all the stranger that the Arrows Trilogy should specify that the Companion to the King or Queen of Valdemar must always be a stallion. I don't see that kind of preference for male in the other Valdemar books I've read -- not on the part of the Good Guys, at any rate. But then, the Arrows Trilogy came first, and as I understand it, in that one we see mostly male Companions.

I read further in The Serpent Sea, past a third of the way through- I am enjoying this one a lot. Moreso than the first book, I think. I saw on Wells' blog that it looks like the first set of novellas is still on track for September, and the second set will be released early next year. Fun!

>118 kceccato: Thought I had replied to this, but I guess not? In any case, yes, this seems very strange to me. I never would have noticed the Collegium wasn't roughly equal in Arrows of the Queen (except for a scene pointing out that with Talia's three male year-mates, the population is now tipped towards boys)- the major characters we have are roughly evenly split or tilted towards female characters: Keren, Ylsa, Sherril, Elspeth, and Selenay for the women who get significant screen time, and Teren, Jadus, Skif, and Talia's Companion Rolan (who is oddly not even that much of a presence, more a plot device) for the male characters. There seem to be more named male minor characters, maybe, and screentime-wise Jadus and Skif probably hold their own against the female characters, but that didn't even seem too skewed.

By Monarch's Own Companion, Lackey means not the Companion of the Monarch but the Companion of the Monarch's Own, ie Talia's Companion Rolan in the current timeline. Elspeth's Gwena has just shown up in Arrow's Flight, and Elspeth seems quite taken with her- offscreen, however. I understand that Lackey isn't too big on continuity, though.

119: If Gwena is introduced in Arrow's Flight, that might explain why the relationship between her and Elspeth in the Mage Winds books is somewhat cool; they've already been Companions for a while.

Lackey is generally good, I agree, at balancing her cast of characters between male and female; the irksome "female protagonist surrounded by dudes" trope is rare in her work. (I think the closest she's come to that -- of the books I've read, at any rate -- is Fire Rose, an otherwise excellent book.)

I've been absent for a while!

Not only due to the normal ups and downs of life, but also because I've been rereading my own trunk stories, an undoubtedly interesting experience (I can only shake my head in amusement at the now blatantly obvious to me lesbian subtext between the two female leads in one story- for goodness' sake, one faints and, melodramatically, tells the other to "take care of her," the other constantly makes up excuses for them to be together, and later they go out to dinner and get to know each other on what is clearly a date!), but not one particularly conducive to discussion, especially since these particular stories are likely to remain unpublished for a number of reasons.

I will recommend the combination of Scrivener to prepare books in mobi format and Amazon's Kindle Personal Document service for reading, though- a fairly painless way to see your own writing "in print" in a real e-reading environment for reviewing purposes.

Now back to published books, I am desperately trying to make up ground with The Serpent Sea, and also continuing Arrow's Flight, which I am, sadly, not liking quite as much as Arrows of the Queen. The trend of other characters making Talia look good has intensified, with Lackey often outright switching POV so we can join other characters in thinking about how awesome Talia is- often beyond the niceness, affection, and respect that made Arrows of the Queen a pleasant read to the extent that it feels they have no inner lives of their own. Meh. I'm also dipping into Lord of No Time here and there.

>120 kceccato: I keep being irritated by Talia being absolutely dwarfed by the men around her in Arrow's Flight, for which awareness I partially blame your tall heroines thread. This is my unfavorite:

Dirk smiled with more than usual warmth at the tiny female half-hiding in his shadow, and felt his smile returned.

Of course she has also engaged his protective instincts in numerous places. Sigh.

I'm moving on with Arrow's Flight. I'm pleased that Lackey has explored the consequences of some of the things that I wondered about with Arrows of the Queen- quite a bit of the Hold stuff is tied up, and the ethics of Talia's powers are a big deal. I also like magic power training stories.

However, I'm ambivalent about the way it was done, inserting events into the past timeline that surely would have been noteworthy and remarked upon in Arrows of the Queen if Lackey had thought of them then- there were some timeskips in the previous book, but things like recurring severe nightmares of Hold life during her first several years at the Collegium and news of the death of family members seem like they should have made an impact, for example.

I'm not a big fan of Kris.

He's nice enough to Talia, but I just don't think he has much of a personality, and I'm not pleased with the way he handled Talia and her powers- that's some serious cluelessness there. Given the rules of Companions, shouldn't he have figured that Rolan would keep Talia from using her powers for evil, no matter how much he distrusted her? Shouldn't he have done a little research about Talia's past and her self-esteem issues if he was going to be her mentor?

Also, still irritated with his "little" this and "little" that nicknames for Talia, which feel like nicknames for a child instead of a grown woman- especially done now that they are sleeping together!

Regarding ethics of Talia's power and consent, though, still waiting for acknowledgement of Talia using her powers to "fix" people and situations in the last book, but I'm guessing that's going to be ignored away going forward.

Still Arrow's Flight...

I would be much more convinced of Dirk's virtue if he was actually on screen- I suspect this combination of traits is much easier told than shown, though. Maybe next book or later in this one.

I didn't expect the stayover in the Waystation when they are snowed in to last so long. The detail about living and dealing with the ice and cold is giving me flashbacks to The Left Hand of Darkness- not unpleasant, but unexpected.

The magic training detail, while still interesting, is making Talia's previous teacher (Teren?) look really awful at teaching. I think Lackey tries to excuse it as Talia's Gift being different, but grounding and centering seems basic to many things, like Kris' Gift, and leaving it out seems like a gross oversight.

>124 sandstone78: Agreed. You'd expect that that is the kind of thing that would get mentioned at more advanced lessons. Like: 'Well, we start with grounding and centering, like always, but then we're going to...'.

I have to say, this was not my favorite book in the trilogy. I didn't like the parts about Talia loosing control of her gifts. Sure, what's his name helps, but I don't like that he seems to think it is easier than it is. I didn't like all the misunderstandings either. And there is the part where Vanyel shows up and considers killing Talia because she is such a danger. It seems a bit overdone to me.

I wish my commute was longer so I could be making more progress in The Serpent Sea audiobook! Maybe I will have time to sit and listen this weekend.

Rift has just shown up, and apparently didn't leave Ardan because of emotional entanglements. I have vague apprehension that this could turn into another gay male villain in this volume, and I am really, really, really hoping Wells doesn't go there after the rapey Fell Rulers that were obsessed with Moon last time.

17 Arrow's Flight, Mercedes Lackey ★★★★ (mount tbr)

I think this is, overall, a better-written book than Arrows of the Queen, taking a more reasoned look at the consequences of things like Talia's Empathic Gift and giving both the magic system and the society of Valdemar more depth.

However, there are a number of things that don't quite make sense, still some bizarre scenes (please cut it out with the Talia-can-sense-Rolan's-amorous-nighttime-adventures please, and what exactly was going on with the swimming scene??) and I still really don't care for Kris- nor am I interested in Dirk, and I got really tired of the number of infodumps extolling the virtues of Dirk. (Including the ability to kill in cold blood- which is, er, good if it's for the Kingdom, evidently- but I am hard-pressed to think of a situation where slitting somebody's throat from behind would be a viable solution in either government or foreign policy?)

It is, however, nice to see adult, reasonable handling of sexual relationships and romance- I was reminded of the way Tamora Pierce handled the love triangle in her Alanna series in some ways, where it's completely cool that the heroine has multiple love interests and chooses between them based on her feelings. (So long as this doesn't blow up into love triangle drama in the next volume!)

I greatly missed the cast of interesting characters in the last volume- Keren, Ylsa, Sherril, Elspeth, Selenay, and Jadus were far more interesting and well-developed than Dirk. I hope to see some familiar faces and new, interesting characters now that the next volume is back at the Collegium.

>125 zjakkelien: So that was supposed to be Vanyel? I assumed so since I had heard that Vanyel and his lover showed up as ghosts in the forest, but in this volume it was just "Vanyel's Curse" and creepy feelings of being watched and mysterious happenings.

>126 sandstone78: Yes, it was. I didn't remember that apparently it's not made clear in this book? But yes, if you read the last Vanyel book, you know him and his lover become sort of ghosts who protect this forest. (Oh, you said that...) Then in one of the later series (the storm books, I think), I believe there is remark in which it is made clear that it is Vanyel.

>127 zjakkelien: I haven't read the Last Herald-Mage trilogy yet, but might get around to it this year- it's been on my "I should get finally around to reading this" list for a long time now. I don't know terribly much about the series beyond the death and reincarnation of Vanyel's lover and that Vanyel dies at the end of the series and both of them eventually end up ghosts in the forest, though.

>128 sandstone78: Ah, I see. Well, I really liked the series, but then, I really like most of her Valdemar stuff, except some of her latest works. Having seen some of the flaws of the arrows books through your eyes, I'm sure the Last Herald-Mage books have them as well, but that doesn't change the enjoyment! Vanyel's aunt Sayvil is in these books as well, and she's pretty cool...

18 Ardent Forest, Nancy Jane Moore ★★★ (mount tbr, early reviewers)

I received an ebook copy of this book from Early Reviewers.

This novella is billed as a retelling of Shakespeare's As You Like it in post-Collapse Texas that has splintered into almost feudal societies each with their own ruler, and it is that, from what I gather, not being terribly familiar with the source material. But it is not only a retelling of As You Like It- there are changes and many other layers of reference here as well.

Rather than brothers, the exiled Governor and usurping Governor were married- we have ruling Governor Guy Gisborn and exiled Governor Robin La Capucha (yes, Robin the Hood). Rosa is Robin's daughter, and her companion is Guy's daughter Cecily. Rosa disguises herself as not Ganymede, but Gamelyn- which seems possibly a reference to The Tale of Gamelyn, which may have provided source material for Shakespeare via another story, Orlando, son of an enemy of Gisborn (and ally of La Capucha) is here Roland, and the person who goes with Rosa and Cecily into exile is not the fool Touchstone but The Sprite, who works- unhappily- for Gisborn.

Moore plays with gender in changes beyond Robin and Guy as well. Rosa and Cecily are step-sisters by their parents' marriage, but they later become lovers when Rosa realizes she does not love Roland but Cecily- I wasn't completely comfortable with this, given how they keep referring to each other as sisters. Roland has, in the meantime, overcome his crush on Rosa and fallen deeply in love with Gamelyn, the man Rosa has disguised herself as- for a similar treatment of a man falling in love with the man a woman has disguised herself as in a longer work with more room to explore the consequences, see Delia Sherman's Through a Brazen Mirror.)

The Sprite is a bisexual gender-fluid intersex person who is referred to as he or she alternately throughout the story and courts a woman as a man and a man as a woman offscreen- these identities are conflated to some degree, most cringeworthily when a shepherd comes looking for The Sprite, asking Rosa and Cecily the whereabouts of their "heshe."

(A heshe, we are told, is "something born both made and female"- the shepherd is familiar with the concept because heshes occur frequently among sheep since the Collapse. Rosa later thinks to herself: "Heshe. It was a good word. And it explained a lot.")

The stories of Rosa and Roland are intercut with whimsical interludes where a down-to-earth narrator speaks directly to the reader. These and the fable-like tone of the story remind me strongly of Eleanor Arnason's work, and I suspect readers who like Arnason may like this.

I found the ending pleasantly open, with an epilogue from the narrator that neatly caps it, though a couple of things felt unresolved such as The Sprite's fate in courtship. Overall, it was not without flaws, but there was enough here that I may pick up future works of Moore's as I come across them.

19 The Serpent Sea, Martha Wells ★★★★ (mount tbr, group read)

This book had fewer things I disliked than The Cloud Roads- no Fell with all of their troublesome and seemingly unexamined implications for one- but I'm not sure there was as much I really liked overall, so they averaged out to about the same.

Further thoughts- including UNMARKED SPOILERS- over in the Serpent Sea discussion thread here.

Current reads:

Arrow's Fall, Mercedes Lackey (mount tbr)

Dirk remains not particularly interesting to me. I don't really care about Dirk. Or Kris, for that matter. This whole not really a love triangle thing could be very easily solved if Kris just told Dirk that he doesn't like Talia that way, and by the way he suspects Dirk and Talia might be lifemates, and I don't understand why that is not happening.

I am extremely iffy that Talia's great solution to Destria probably feeling she's undesirable because she's going to be burned is throwing an equally burned man at her in the hopes that they will pair off. I can understand having him there for emotional support making it through the burn- maybe, but do they even like each other or know each other or have anything in common besides being badly burned? It feels too... tidy.

The Siren Depths, Martha Wells (group read)

I'm not too far into this one yet, maybe 10% or so. I like the glimpses of Court life, but, Emerald Twilight having come and gone in a suspicious manner and an augury having foretold Moon's leaving the Court, I suspect that's not to last. Also, I suspect the Fell will be back... Hmm. More thoughts in the group read thread when I have them.

Between Women, Sharon Marcus

A new non-fiction read (though I left off in the middle of Miss Leavitt's Stars and need to get back to it!)

I've finished only the introduction, but Marcus proposes to take a look at relationships between women- specifically friendship and marriage- in Victorian England, and consider these relationships not in opposition to or subverting the heterosexual norm but coexisting with and even supporting it because the Victorians did not divide the world into heterosexual/family and same-sex/subversive categories as is often done in modern times. It seems promising so far, though the introduction was a little long-winded in justifying why she is studying this.

>129 zjakkelien: I suspect my nitpicking is giving more of an impression that I don't like the Lackey books than is strictly true- I am enjoying them, and will probably revisit them in the future and carry on with the series. I think I will probably take a break after Arrow's Fall, though.

Current reads...

I'm about a third of the way through The Siren Depths, and it's shaping up to be the Raksura novel I wanted in every way so far. Not only do we finally see a same-sex sexual relationship that's not presented as "evil" or "twisted" Moon and Chime sleep together sometimes! And it's not a big deal in Raksuran society!, we are also getting a decidedly more nuanced look at the Fell, specifically the crossbreeds. Sequels that add nuance to their predecessors are my favorite type of sequels.

Arrow's Fall has gotten much better since Talia told Kris and Dirk both to go to hell. It was about time! And that is being resolved, mostly, as the story progresses, though Kris thinking to himself "Why was I acting like that?" only points out the idiot plot, it does not actually explain it. Maybe there is a different, plot-relevant explanation forthcoming.

Two things, though:

1. Shouldn't Selenay's Companion warn her about Orthallen? I mean, I get that the Companions are supposed to be all non-interference, but when things like the fate of the kingdom are at stake and they have magical abilities to detect evil people, I would kind of expect them not to let innocent people get hurt because they want people to figure things out for themselves? The only reason I can think of is "because then the novel wouldn't have a plot"- I might be willing to buy "Orthallen acts differently around Selenay" as a patch over this, but surely the Companions should talk to each other, the Monarch's companion doubly so?

2. Talia recognizes that her words to Elspeth were over the top, but for all that talk about ethics of her power, she is still cool with compelling an ambitious nobleman being ambitious by trying to become Elspeth's consort to see his absolute worst nightmare whenever he closes his eyes if he were to tell anyone that he tried to sleep with Elspeth. As we are told from multiple perspectives such as Kris', that's what nobles do, they backstab each other and are ambitious, and that's okay, that's just how nobles are- unless they make a play for the throne, evidently, in which case it's okay to condemn them to incurable mental torture at your convenience. Maybe this will actually have consequences for Talia later, though.

No further in Between Women or Lord of No Time, though, alas. I had hoped to track down a copy of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH for the group discussion too, but it seems unlikely at this point.

>131 sandstone78: When I saw your objections to The cloud roads I was hoping you'd feel better about The siren depths. I'm glad to see you do! I think the Fell are still considered to be bad (although they are at least shown to care about each other), but the half-breeds are not. I was also pleasantly surprised to see how subtly Wells introduced the physical relationship between Moon and some of the warriors.

I really like the cross-breeds in The siren depths, and their growth as characters. I finished the book last night and while I felt it ended a bit suddenly overall it was extremely satisfying. Can't wait for the novellas later this year.

20 Arrow's Fall, Mercedes Lackey ★★★½ (mount tbr)

I think I'm just going to spoiler tag this whole thing- overall, though, I still did not find either Dirk or Kris terribly interesting, and I resented that they took up space that could have been filled with characters I found more interesting... also, all of the "Talia has to carefully consider the ethical use of her powers" sure went nowhere, didn't it?

I think this would have been a more interesting book for me if I had been invested in the triangle of Talia, Dirk, and Kris at all. As it was, neither Dirk nor Kris had much of a personality to me- Kris maybe a little, given he was such a major character last book- and I didn't really care for either of them. Kris thinking to himself "Hmm, I should have just talked to Dirk, I wonder why I didn't, well, it must be because I was focused on other things" after their big misunderstanding did not make me think "Oh, so that's why," it felt like Lackey was aware it pretty much made no sense and was trying to paper over it. Talia telling both Kris and Dirk to go to hell was the highlight of the whole misunderstanding plot for me.

I was nevertheless sad when Kris died, though. I kind of felt the other characters didn't mourn him as much as they should have if Kris and Dirk were basically halfway to lifebonded themselves as close as their relationship was supposed to be- the bit at the end was nice enough, I guess, though...

One thing that didn't make sense to me... Ancar's mages have a super barrier that blocks Heralds' Gifts, but Dirk and Elspeth were still able to pull Talia out- I guess it's a pure strength thing? Up until that point, it felt a lot more like Ancar's mages' magic was qualitatively different and completely blocked the Heralds' gifts from working... Since I think the next trilogies are about Elspeth having Real Deal Magic, maybe that's an explanation.

Ethics, though. Not only the compelling the slimy noble dude who tried to trap Elspeth into having him for her consort to experience his worst nightmare continuously in a loop he can't break out of if he told anyone what had happened, which I still think is overkill, but also Talia overwriting two presumably innocent servants' personalities and sending them into a potentially fatal situation in Talia and Kris' place. What?

I thought Talia's capture, torture, and the aftermath was handled in a sensitive way, and was pleased that it wasn't graphic for graphics' sake the way grimdark fantasy is these days. However, I was extremely dubious the conversation between Talia and Dirk near the end where Talia talks about how Dirk being in the relationship with manipulative Lady Whatever who slept with him to hurt him and Kris is worse than the repeated rape and brutal torture Talia went through, after being traumatized by Kris dying in front of her... What? Those things just do not seem comparable to me.

I'll be continuing on with Valdemar at some point, but it might be a little while.

21 The Siren Depths, Martha Wells ★★★★★ (group read)

I really liked this book, and the extra context it gives the character relationships in the other two has me eager to reread them in the future. I need to get my thoughts together and write it up in more detail over in the group read thread, but overall I was very pleased with it, and I'm looking forward to Stories of the Raksura Volume One in September!

Once again I've not had as much time to read or to post as I would have liked, but I do have a few more reading updates.

I picked up a collection of essays by Catherynne Valente, Indistinguishable from Magic. I'm a little over halfway through, and while a couple of the essays out of the dozens I've made it through so far have run a little long for my taste (the ones on e-publishing), I would definitely recommend it- the essays are sharp and thought-provoking.

Choose Life, The Story of Us, and A Wrinkle in the Heart: Thoughts on A Wrinkle in Time are the ones that have stood out the most- all are certainly worth the read.

Valente's essay prompted me to finally pick up A Wrinkle in Time for that reread I had been considering for some time. The book was an oft-reread childhood favorite of mine. I find that Valente has a number of valid points, some of them painful for me to consider in view of the attachment I have to this book, but my reading differs from hers sometimes significantly in some areas as well.

As a side note, others have talked about the unapologetic contempt the author of this recent Slate article bears for adults who read YA, but I was struck instead by the author's dismissal of children's books as trivial while acknowledging that "books like The Westing Game and Tuck Everlasting provided some of the most intense reading experiences of her life" when she was younger- it's bemusing to me that someone could understand that books shaped her worldview and not want to revisit them, to examine them and the impact they had on her, to look for new depths or reexamine the "simple" truths presented. Does she think that the only books that can shape one's worldview are ones written for adults, the only values one internalizes come from the insights one goes actively searching to find?

In other reads, I've picked up Still She Wished for Company by Margaret Irwin, which I picked up last year, intrigued by the title when I saw it come up when one of my LT connections added it. (Possibly @Sakerfalcon?) This is a historical novel written in 1924 that started off with a lengthy prologue following Jan, a young woman set in the "present day" of the time, then skipped backward to a different young woman, Juliana, in the 1770s. Strange happenings are clearly afoot- Juliana's brother, rumored to be a Satanist, has returned after a long time abroad and is showing great interest in Juliana's apparent ability to see spirits.

I've also just started Vandana Singh's science fiction novella Distances, part of Aqueduct Press' Conversation Pieces series. Singh's story was my favorite in The Other Half of the Sky which I read last year, so I'm looking forward to this one, about an alien woman who solves mathematical problems experientially by exploring a sort of biological virtual reality.

I'm also rereading The Pride of Chanur, this time listening to it in audio format. I really like Dina Pearlman's narration. It was a surprise to discover I may been mispronouncing Chanur all along- Pearlman pronounces it as not CHAN-urr, but sha-NOOR. I like Pyanfar a whole lot, and I wish my commute was longer so I could get more of the story in one go. I do have to agree with a review I saw recently that I just can't seem to track down at the moment that the Mahendosat have a bit of a Jar-Jar-Binks-style uncomfortable racial undertone about them, though.

I've checked out an audiobook copy of Dragonflight, narrated by Dick Hill, to put on in the background while working. This is likely a mistake, since I well know the suck fairy will have been at this one, but the Anne McCaffrey recommendations thread has me wanting to pick up a Pern book.

So far, F'lar is having trouble finding a Weyrwoman because they're all too fat (sorry, "plump") and/or dispirited. This book is a stellar example of Highlander Syndrome, building up its heroine by disparaging other women who can never measure up to her.

22 A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle ★★★★★ (reread)

I'm still writing this one up properly, but I will say in brief that neither the passage of time nor a greater critical awareness than I had when I was younger has diminished my fondness for this book, and in many ways it set my expectations for contemporary-set fantasy. (The centrality of families in L'Engle's work may be one of the reasons I find the overwhelming prevalence of only-child orphans in the urban fantasy I've picked up jarring.)

23 Indistinguishable From Magic, Catherynne Valente ★★★? (impulse buy)

I also finished Indistinguishable From Magic, but I keep going back and forth between three-and-a-half stars and four stars in my rating. It was definitely an interesting and worthwhile read, especially if you're interested in perceptive essays on science fiction and fantasy, but I'm not always a big fan of the way Valente goes about things- there's a bit too much evolutionary psychology "deep down inside we all X" and Campbellian/Jungian hero's journey/archetypes for my taste- I very much don't believe that everything in life boils down to stories about "coming of age" or "reaching sexual maturity," and Valente's essays often analyze things in those terms.

(The mutually-exclusive-sexes thing in particular gives me hives- if "coming of age" is sexual maturity is the only story worth telling, and that means "uniting with the other," woman with man, to become a whole person, that doesn't leave much room in the metaphysical underpinnings of the world for non-straight people, does it? I find myself neither hero by virtue of not being male nor heroine by virtue of not particularly desiring to unite with a dude... also, sorry asexual people, you're eternal children, like Peter Pan or something, doomed never to Come of Age.)

I'm leaning towards the three-and-a-half, but I really should pull out some of my more positive reactions in a later post so that the things that displeased me don't overshadow my enjoyment quite so much and judge again later.

I've been thinking about strong female characters again lately as The Lego Movie comes out on DVD/Blu-ray and I prepare to watch it again with people I know who haven't seen it; the treatment of Wyldstyle really bummed me out. (Yay, a female character who's ultra competent and interesting! Wait, the movie is about how you don't need to be ultra competent to be important? Aww...)

Describing the way important, interesting female characters fizzle out in stories is something that's been eluding me for ages, but this essay author pinpoints it: We’re losing all our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome.

Foz Meadows has an essay specifically about the way many strong female characters are strong but the deck is stacked against them so they are "out of their depth" and have to be rescued by a male character (usually their love interest) at the end too that strikes me as related; Trope Dissection: The Kickass Damsel.

137:
I've just been saved the time I might have unwisely spent watching "The LEGO Movie."

>137 sandstone78:

Thanks for the articles. I think I'd tattoo this on every writer's non-writing hand:

So maybe all the questions can boil down to this: Looking at a so-called Strong Female Character, would you—the writer, the director, the actor, the viewer—want to be her?

If he'd rather be dead than walk a yard in that woman's shoes, just spare us.

What's needed is more Wonder Women. Women who ARE the lead, number one, the centre and focus, the strongest, the most powerful, no apologies, no undermining, no upstaging.

It's terrifying that the phrase Congratulations, you have a Strong Female Character! Now what? cuts so close to the bone. Because yes, that does seem to be a real problem for a lot of writers who have managed to create one.

Mileage on Rita from Edge of Tomorrow seems to vary - this author obviously felt it didn't undermine her; others I've read were quite angry about the way in which she ticked all those male-validation boxes.

24 Still She Wished For Company, Margaret Irwin ★★★★ (mount tbr)

A haunting little book, a sort of supernatural time travel story that I have no doubt I'll be revisiting in the future. It feels much more recent than its 1924 publication date. I can't say much more than I mentioned above without spoiling it- the story is divided between Jan in the present-day of the story's writing and Juliana a little over a hundred years in the past.

It's a disappointment to me that I never came across a single mention of Irwin during a research project I did for class about early fantasy novels- most of the writing on that topic I came across seemed to focus on either myths and fairy tales, usually with a specific view to what influenced Tolkien, or the handful of classics reprinted in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series- mostly Dunsany, Eddison, Cabell, William Morris, Clark Ashton Smith and Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist- or the sword and sorcery/pulp side of things, Howard, Lovecraft, Haggard, Burroughs, Lieber, with maybe a mention in passing of C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry.

No Margaret Irwin, no Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light, what other stories have been forgotten and how many of them by women? I can't help but recall Amal el-Mohtar's article about Travel Light, where she mentions

It breaks my heart that we are always rediscovering great women, excavating them from the relentless soil of homogenizing histories, seeing them forever as exceptions to a rule of sediment and placing them in museums, remarkable more for their gender than for their work.

It makes me think about how the history of women in science fiction I always read seems to start with Mary Shelley! the writer of the first science fiction novel! and then jumps to Ursula Le Guin, and the history of female science fiction fandom starts in the 60s with Star Trek slash fans (cause women are really just into it for the hot dudes), ignoring the numerous women who wrote letters to science fiction magazines, and how this is still happening today- I just read essays by Jacqueline Carey here from last April, and Kari Sperring here and this one Judith Tarr at the Book View Cafe blog just this month:

Our culture makes a cult of youth. Both genders. But males as they age manage to stay visible, and even manage to keep matinee-idol status–and if they’re writers, they become literary lions. Females simply drop off the radar.

“But!” the commenters on the blogs exclaim. “There are older women in media! Helen Mirren Meryl Streep Barbara Walters one or two others in regular rotation!” And for our genre, “Le Guin Willis Bujold one or two others in regular rotation!”

You see what they did there?

It’s called tokenism. The arbiters of importance choose one or two representatives of whatever group is making too much noise to be completely ignored–or maybe three or even four if they’re pushed hard enough. Whenever it’s pointed out that there is a gap in their coverage, they cite this very short list to prove that there is, in fact, no gap. “See? We do too include these people! Now we can all go home.”

@kceccato's call for epic fantasy with important female characters over in Fantasy Fans makes me wonder about how much these early books being overlooked has to do with their specifically having female protagonists, rather than eg Mirrlees who had a mostly male cast, and being of some perceived lesser "general appeal" because of it, with Moore being the "token exceptions so we can move on now" as Tarr mentions...

I'm not sure what we can do to fix this, except... If you read books by female authors, talk about them, recommend them, review them. (I need to format some of my musings from this thread into proper reviews myself.) If works by women in particular subgenre, or period of history in the genre, seem unusually rare, recognize that this effect may be in play, don't settle for the "well, maybe women just don't..." explanation, look harder, and you may find them after all.

July and August Group Reads: Jemisin's Dreamblood duology

And that leads neatly into my next topic- July is nearly upon us, and that means a new group read! The next Raksura book comes out in September, and I'd like to continue Group Reads of the Raksura then, which leaves two months, for either a duology or two standalones- I've decided to fill this with N.K. Jemisin's Dreamblood duology, consisting of The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun. How does that sound? Have too many of you already read these two? I was quite surprised to see so few people on LT owned them.

>138 kceccato: I do not think you would get along with it, no. You should probably also avoid Despicable Me 2, if you were inclined to watch it, which is a classic case of the more-competent-than-the-hero love interest who stumbles and needs to be saved by him, because he turns out to be more competent than her after all.

>139 LolaWalser: I agree for sure. I feel like there also needs to be a related clause for straight guy writers etc having plot-important, unambiguously awesome female characters on the side of good that wouldn't want to sleep with them or their transparently-self-insert schlubby every-dude character too.

>140 imyril: It does, and I think it's partly because of the viciously individualistic "hero's journey" thing that the SFF genre in particular just can't get away from, where saving the world comes down to the choices of one person who can't have help from anyone else, because true heroes don't need anyone else. When you have a hero's journey, and the hero that's journeying is a dude, the hero's journey pretty much relegates other characters to villain, ineffectual moral support, reward, dead mentor, or dead backstory motivation.

>141 sandstone78: I'd not really clocked until last year how skewed the gender ratio of authors I read was, and I'm actively trying to address that this year. I've been shocked how difficult it is to get hold of even well-known female authors' back catalogues - they drop out of print quickly, and become gold dust. As you say, all we can do is support them vocally and keep pushing interest levels.

On that note, Jemisin has been on my wishlist all year (The Killing Moon specifically, rather than The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms), so I'd love to join a group read in July and August and will happily finally acquire a copy :)

>141 sandstone78: I've never really heard of The killing moon, but it sounds interesting. I might join you!

I read the Dreamblood books earlier this year and given the size of my tbr pile I can't really justify a reread so soon, but will be following the discussion with interest and joining in where I can. It took me a couple of attempts to get into The killing moon but once I got past the the opening couple of chapters I was hooked, and the sequel is even better.

I've been behind on my SFF blog and article reading, so it was only this weekend I found out that Marion Zimmer Bradley's daughter, Moira Greyland, has spoken out, saying that Bradley abused her as a child. Doing further research, I learned that Bradley's husband Walter Breen was also a pedophile, and Bradley by her own admission enabled and covered for his abuse of children as well. Furthermore, Greyland says that Elizabeth Waters, current editor of the Sword and Sorceress series and manager of Bradley's literary trust, and evidently also Bradley's lover of many years, knew about the abuse by both parties and also did not do anything to stop it.

There is a summary of responses at The Guardian here.

I never read The Mists of Avalon- by the time I was specifically seeking out feminist works in the genre, I was aware enough of my own preferences to know that I would not get along with the strong gender-essentialism in that book. I read a handful of the Darkover books, starting with the ghostwritten Exile's Song trilogy and picking including one or two of the Renunciate books, and didn't get along with those either- I disliked Bradley's dry writing style, and (though I can't remember specifics- plot summaries aren't turning anything up) the seeming idea in the Renunciate books that women would only be sexually interested in other women if they'd been raped or abused. I always meant to read more Darkover, to revisit the series as part of an exploration of sprawling fantasy worlds like Pern, Valdemar, and Norton's Witch World.

The Bradley work I did strongly attach to was Lythande, a slim paperback collecting stories about the title character, Bradley's character in the Thieves' World universe. Lythande is a female wizard, part of an otherwise all-male near-immortal wizardly order who will fight against chaos at the end of the world, and like all wizards of that order, her power is bound up in a secret, which if revealed to any man will cost her her power and her life- Lythande's secret, of course, is that she is a woman.

Lythande was the first woman who disguised herself as a man I read about who didn't end up revealed as a woman and happily paired off with a man at the end of the book (who often knew she was a woman from the beginning, either because women are so fundamentally different from men that no woman could ever pass as a man or because he was attracted to her, and it isn't even a possibility worth mentioning he could be attracted to a man). Lythande wasn't even attracted to men- she was attracted to women! and she had fantastic sorcerous power and common sense and musical talent- and, of course, a certain contempt for "normal" women that I found appealing at the impressionable early teen age I encountered the book at, being too uncomfortable around girls to have female friends (what do I do when they start talking about "hot guys" to make conversation??) and interested in "male" pursuits like video games and computers.

I acknowledge the importance the Lythande stories had to me, and the volumes of Sword and Sorceress I've read which have launched the careers of many writers whose work I enjoy and the influence that Darkover has had on many writers whose work I enjoy, but the numerous works by Bradley in my TBR pile will now remain unread, including The Complete Lythande, which I received from Early Reviewers and had been very much looking forward to- I cannot in good conscience help to promote it knowing the people that would go to support, nor can I continue to recommend Waters' Changing Fate, which I had considered a hidden gem in the genre, or continue to hope that I will one day see my own work in print in a volume of Sword and Sorceress.

>142 imyril: It's very easy to end up with a very skewed reading list. Until participating in the A More Diverse Universe blog tour a couple of years ago, I didn't realize that I had been reading 100% white authors in the genre for several years- an uncomfortable realization. It was pointed out in that blog post that there are more books by white authors about characters of color published than there are by authors of color about characters of color- and, I would add, the white authors get praise for doing so, while authors of color get written off as "inaccessible" or not of general interest. The same is true for men writing Strong Female Characters, or straight authors writing gay characters, or any other number of categories.

It's true as well how fast even award-winning books by women sink out of print- even major award-winners like The Left Hand of Darkness, Cyteen, and The Snow Queen are unavailable in ebook in the US. The Vinge isn't even available in print either!

I'm very interested to try the Dreamblood duology as well. I read Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy last year and found her to be a compelling writer with some very interesting ideas, but I did not like the god/mortal woman romances at all- they were disappointingly typical in their gender dynamics. I've been told that at least the first Dreamblood book doesn't have a romantic subplot so I'm hoping that it has more of what I liked and less of what I didn't than the Inheritance trilogy.

>143 zjakkelien: I'd be interested to hear your thoughts if you pick it up!

>144 Sakerfalcon: Thanks for the warning that it's a slow start, looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

It's July already!

I mean to round up a summary for the year to date, but for now, a couple of reading updates...

Dragonflight: My audio reread of Dragonflight continues. I'm surprised how little I remember of this book.

Lessa is sort of a terrible person, willing to destroy her own Hold rather than let Fax have it, her schemes to claim it coming at the cost of the people she would be ruling- and others, like the competent and benevolent warden that Fax assigned, whose death she arranged in the past.

I feel that the narrative is aware of some of this awfulness, especially in Lessa's moment of empathy with Gemma, where she realizes Gemma is not complicit but rather hates Fax as much or more than Lessa, and has most probably suffered more than Lessa herself, but I'm not sure how far this goes, and how much I'm meant to sympathize with poor Lessa and admire her resourcefulness while ignoring the damage she does to other people who aren't of noble blood so they don't count- there's a lot here that's unquestioned about the inherent awesomeness of Dragonrider blood in the Ruathan line, and people of noble blood just being inherently prettier and so on than others.

I didn't remember the psychic powers either- Lessa compelling F'lar to fight for her through implanted suggestion. I'm not sure how far this goes, either- at some points, it seems like Lessa is causing Ruatha to fail because she has mysterious powers that cause greenery to grow and so on, and at others it's just her throwing a spanner in the works, such as arranging the meal to be awful for Fax's visit by making sure the bread won't cook right, turning up the temperature on the roast, and so on.

I didn't remember Ramoth possibly fatally wounding other girls on the hatching grounds either- that lends a touch of horror to the scene where Lessa Impresses Ramoth, and is overcome with sympathy and wanting to protect the dragon to the extent she wonders how she feels that knowing what Ramoth's just done, and she subsequently justifies it to herself as a clumsy accident on Ramoth's part. It's as if the dragon-dragonrider bond is there to prevent rational humans from killing the dangerous dragons, who are needed to fight Thread- much less unambiguously good than Lackey's Companions, and I'm curious to see if this thread continues.

F'lar hasn't left much of an impression on me one way or the other yet, nor has his brother F'nor.

Shadow Magic: Another reread in audio. I'm disappointed to say this seems in many ways to be a more generic and weaker novel to me now than when I first read it, when I had less to compare it to- it's a fairly typical stop the enemy from reawakening evil by destroying or sealing a talisman type deal.

Alethia is the epitome of the dread Mary Sue that all of those quizzes test for, I think- the beautiful daughter of an important lord who wears appropriately pretty feminine clothing, but is talented in un-girl-like pursuits like knife-throwing which her brother taught her (but she can actually beat him at it- and her eventual love interest too!) and interested in un-girl-like pursuits like politics, mouthy toward people who kidnap her with not much of any repercussion, possessed of a secret lineage that opens the door for her to be friends with the non-human races that typically shun and dislike humans, which also grants her magic powers, and generally destined for greatness.

However, Alethia is also a genuinely nice person, and she's surrounded by others instead of set apart- her brother and parents, aforementioned love interest, friends she makes among the non-human races. The narrative doesn't bend to make people react to her as if she's a great person when she's actually not, and the other characters aren't unduly obsessed with her. She isn't contemptuous and hateful toward other women, and (so far, and so far as I remember) she isn't undermined by her love interest who turns out to be more awesome, or a random emotional breakdown to make her more "relatable." That all makes this an enjoyable read for me.

The Pride of Chanur: The third audio reread I have going on now. I don't know why I didn't like this series better when I first read it in my period of going through as much of Cherryh's backlist as I could get my hands on years go- I'm captivated this time, and Cherryh's immersive, introspection-heavy third-person narration seems perfectly suited to the audio format, and the narrator, Dina Pearlman, does well with Cherryh's invented names for things.

I remember the Knnn have an unexpectedly large role at the end, and it's interesting just how much that's foreshadowed- to some extent, knowing, it seems like a huge blind spot on the part of the characters, though not necessarily an unbelievable one given how the methane-breathers are supposed to be so alien and incomprehensible.

I am enamored of Pyanfar Chanur, the unquestionably competent, honorable captain of the Pride of Chanur. I'd be hard-pressed to decide between her and Duane's Ael from My Enemy, My Ally as my favorite female protagonist so far this year. Luckily, I don't have to choose, and both are from five-book series!

The Killing Moon: My sole text read at this point, for the group read. I've made it through what seems to be the first section of this one, a little over 40%, and I'm just not liking it as much as I want to. The characters are headed for a change of scenery, though, so maybe that will shake things up- perhaps this is the turning point @Sakerfalcon mentioned?

I am finding it a compelling and quick read, it's just that I'm still not terribly attached to any of the characters yet, the villain seems especially by the numbers (show him killing off faceless people, give him a belief that's more in line with modern sensibilities than his setting to make him more ambiguous, but then have him kill off a named character to make sure we remember he's evil...), and the world still feels very world-built, rather than like a society that could actually exist- I'm finding it hard to suspend my disbelief that the Gatherers could ever have existed without the corruption that seems a problem in the present day. Maybe that's the point, though.

I think Jemisin's writing was stronger in The Inheritance Trilogy, maybe because it was written later but also I think because she's better at first-person narratives than third-person- a lot of the characterization in the Inheritance trilogy came from the narrative voice and the narrators' descriptions of the other characters. This shows a little in the first-person interludes of The Killing Moon too.

Other curiosities...

- I've been listening to a lot of the Odyssey Podcasts, fifteen to twenty minute excerpts from writers' lectures to the Odyssey writers' workshop over the years. There are many authors who I've read and enjoyed or have heard good things about among the lecturers- Melissa Scott, Patricia Bray, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Patricia McKillip, Elizabeth Bear, Elizabeth Hand, Ellen Kushner,Delia Sherman, and others. It's interesting to have voices to go along with the names.

- Gender-Swapping Characters: Does That Work?- an article by Jennifer Crusie, a popular contemporary romance novelist who I've heard very good things about. I tend to gender-swap male love interests into female ones while reading, or male protagonists to female ones, often without really thinking about it, but this is a discussion of gender-swapping both parties to change the dynamics of heterosexual romance.

The discussion touches on historical constraints on women that make gender-swapping in works supposedly set in a historical period on earth more complicated, but also gender expression (is it possible to swap powers and keep the woman feminine and the man masculine?), who's telling the stories (men, mostly), and heterosexual relationship power dynamics as well (gosh, I have a loathing for the word "emasculated"). The comments are worth reading as well.

Regarding power dynamics, there seems to be (at least from a marketing perspective, it's noted, though evidently for a part of the readership as well- though alas, not one really represented in the discussion) some reluctance to have heroines more powerful than their love interest if heroines are self-insert characters, because the selves doing the inserting are socialized to want more powerful and protective men, but is that just because of internalized tropes that need to be let go, and a lack of precedent, and there's discussion of complementary strengths in different areas for more egalitarian relationships instead of the heroine being better than the hero in the same field, or one of them being a "normal" human... Food for thought.

(Also, wait, Gabrielle was Xena's love interest? Huh. Now I want to go re-watch Xena and see about that... my mom and I used to watch both Hercules and Xena when I was younger, and I don't recall picking up on that at all...)

I love the Pern series, but I've always been rather appalled by Lessa's singleminded ruthlessness. I like the story, but I don't like her as a character.

>146 sandstone78:

On the topic of couples with stereotypical balance of power (man stronger, woman weaker), I just want to mention a 14th century Italian fairy tale I read today (although I knew other versions before), The story of Lionbruno. Lionbruno is an ordinary mortal sacrificed as a boy by his poor father, but saved by a magical eagle-woman and taken to her realm. He is only seven, so she transforms herself into a ten year old and they spend the next eight years as friends; when she turns eighteen, she asks him to marry her. She is beautiful, wise, rich and magically powerful--incomparably "stronger" than her ordinary husband. (And older!)

When he wishes to visit his family, she gives him magical tools and warnings about returning on time etc., of course there are complications and he fails to observe the rules and then must fight obstacles to get back to her because she deprived him of magical help when he betrayed her trust, but in the end he succeeds in reaching her again and they reconcile happily (in bed, as this version of the tale specifies with charming nonchalance).

I never watched Xena but even I knew Xena and Gabrielle belonged together!

I've started a LT list for future group read books. Comment here and/or on the list for what sounds interesting.

I'm curious... Those who may consider participating in a group read, is it a dealbreaker for a group read for you if:

The book is only available in print?

The book is only available in ebook or used print copy?

The ebook is above a certain price (eg US$10)?

The book is too long- how long is too long to read in a month?

There are several books that are technically an omnibus of a duology on the list- Biting the Sun, Crown Duel, Moon-Flash- but are only about the length of a single book- should these be split into two months, or is it okay to read both halves in a single month?

The book is not directly related to but shares a world with other books (eg Balance of Trade or Stranger at the Wedding) that the group read does not read?

The series is unfinished with no estimated date on the next book (eg The Steerswoman series)?

Would you be open to reading an anthology or collection, or a book of essays on topics related to the genre (eg Invisible, Rhetorics of Fantasy, Indistinguishable From Magic, Speculative Fiction 2013)?

>147 SylviaC: Yes, I'm curious to see how much of that sticks around as the story progresses... whether she's changed to be a more standard "relatable" female character, or retains the ruthlessness.

>148 LolaWalser: What an interesting fairy tale!Thanks for sharing- I found a version available with full text at Sur La Lune, though it seems much more recent and possibly a bit different than the one you linked. I see some specific similarities between Beauty and the Beast in the visiting the family and returning on time- I wonder if it was an influence there?

149> I'd be willing to join in a group read of any book that has an ebook version available for less than ten dollars.

Several group read books end up on my TBR list, but it usually takes me a while to get copies.

I'd be unwilling to read something not available in ebook or audiobook.

I'd be unlikely to join in a read of a series that isn't the first book of a series. I'm obsessive about reading in order. Although if it is a series i love I'd consider a re-read.

I dislike short stories. I always feel cheated....

I HATE romance masquerading as fantasy (or, more rarely as sci fi).

>149 sandstone78: I'd prefer it if the book was available as ebook. If it was only available in print, and I don't already have it, I might try to get it, but I imagine it might be difficult (books not available as ebook are more likely to be somewhat obscure). I probably wouldn't read short stories, and other than that, it would all depend on how attractive I find the chosen book...

I'm happy to read print (new or used) or ebook, and $10 sounds like a sensible threshold as it handily excludes hardbacks (which would be a no-no for me these days).

I've got no problem reading a book that isn't stand-alone (whether it shares a world with other stand-alone novels or is the first in a series, regardless of whether that series is currently complete), but like @majkia would be unwilling to join a series mid-way through - I too am obsessive about reading in order, which can bite me when I'm told 'don't worry, they get better later on' - I don't have that sort of patience if they're not good enough from the outset :)

I'm less interested in short stories, anthologies, essays and non-fiction, but could be tempted by something particularly interesting / juicy in the genre realm and do find that group reads with people whose insights I find interesting (hallo this group of people!) motivate me to read outside my comfort zone, which is one of the reasons I enjoy them.

I don't think I have any particular concerns about length.

...having had a quick look at the list, I'm going to have to take a proper look as I don't know all of the books, but most of them are by authors I've been intending to read and hadn't necessarily figured out where to start / where to go next. Marvellous.

Some great books on that list, @sandstone78, many of which I already own. I would be more likely to join a group read of a title that I either own, or can get from the library, or which appeals to me strongly enough to acquire it (and I'm just as happy to buy a print, or OOP, copy as an ebook). The duologies you use as examples I think could be read as single books, given that both parts together are still shorter than many individual novels! But I'm happy to read longer books anyway. I'd also like to read more short stories and essays should others wish to.

I've gone through the list at this point. There's a lot on there that seems pretty interesting, and I like the idea of looking for less well known books. I've got a few nominations:

- Thorn by Instisar Khanani is an indy retelling of "The Goose Girl" fairy tale (34 members on LibraryThing)
- Fool's War by Sarah Zettel deals with rogue AIs - I really liked the way it incorporated different cultures (318 members)
- The Disappeared by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a science fiction mystery dealing with alien justice systems. I really liked it and would be willing to reread it. (377 members)
- Killer of Enemies by Joseph Bruchac is "a post-Apocalyptic YA novel with a steampunk twist, based on an Apache legend." It's on my TBR list. (34 members)
- God's War by Kameron Hurley is a science fiction on my TBR pile. It's about a planet raveged by centuries of holy wars and a heroine who's given a chance to possibly end it. (409 members)
- Orleans by Sherri L. Smith is one of the spate of YA dystopians, but it takes place in New Orleans, has a non-white protagonist, and NO ROMANCE (the rarity of this alone would make me pick it up). (160 members)
- The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson is a book I put on my TBR pile after seeing it on kceccato's reading journal. (237 members)
- Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian is what I'm currently reading and loving. It's a beautifully written, female centric, epic fantasy. (89 members)
- London Falling by Paul Cornell is a wonderful police procedural urban fantasy. I picked it up after seeing it recommended by others in The Green Dragon, so there's probably already a pool of people for a group read. (274 members)

Thanks for the responses everybody! I'm a little surprised to see that such a majority of you prefer ebooks- that's cool, though, since there are a lot of overlooked authors bringing out their out-of-print-in-print backlist in ebooks.

I do have one more question that I seem to have forgotten to ask- I've been posting the thread a couple of days before the beginning of the month the group read is for, would everyone prefer if I posted it sooner? I would like to avoid the situation where some people finish the book before others even start, but I'd like to give people some time to acquire the book too.

I have quite a few reading updates to write up- my thoughts on The Killing Moon are over in the group read thread, but I've also picked Octavia E. Butler's Patternmaster series back up. I read Clay's Ark in less than a day, and discovered one of the two stories in Unexpected Stories was a novella prequel to Survivor, so I read those and then picked up Survivor. I also fit in Heidi C. Vlach's Ravel for something different- a nice, cozy little story in the same no-humans setting as Render which I had from early reviewers last year. (I just noticed the other book in that setting, Remedy, is free, so I picked that up too!)

I'm currently still in the midst of Survivor, and I've picked up Melissa Scott's The Kindly Ones too.

>155 pwaites: Thanks for the list! I'm still sorting through them, but have added some to the list. Thorn and God's War are definite possibilities, and maybe Fool's War as well- I thought it was fantastic but I think it's still too recently read for me. Also that major character death was so cruel- right in the fridge! I've put others of Zettel's SF in the list though, and probably will eventually add Fool's War too- it would be so fun to discuss.

I'll have to try a sample of the Nazarian- I picked up Lords of Rainbow once and was immediately put off by a description of a swordswoman who had a "sword hanging at her waist, phallic" or something of the kind. I do not get along well with stories that have that kind of Freudian "everything can be reduced to sexual symbolism" underpinnings... Maybe Cobweb Bride is different though.

Does The Disappeared have a conclusive ending, or is there one a couple of books in? It seems to be quite a long-running series- I'm open to doing several books of something, but I'd probably like to keep it to no more than three or four, five at the outside most.

The Color of Distance and sequel are definitely books I've had my eye on, but alas at least in the US it's not available in print or in ebook, so I don't think it would make a good group read book. (I will keep my eye on them in case ebooks do appear, though...)

There are many such books that fall into the same category: Tara K. Harper's Lightwing, Nina Kiriki Hoffman's books (though hm, A Fistful of Sky and sequel seem both available in ebook), Patricia McKillip's Cygnet duology... Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun, though I put that on the list anyways as it's one of my very favorites. (It is at least half-available in ebook outside the US- SF Gateway released Don't Bite the Sun as an ebook, but no sign of Drinking Sapphire Wine...)

The others on your list are mostly new to me- I will say that stories set on Earth (whether in the present day, alternate present day, historical, alternate historical, or near-future- I can sometimes do far-future) are generally a hard sell for me, as my interest just doesn't tend to go there, but I'll look into them.

Needless to say, everyone is welcome to toss suggestions out there too- I'm slowly adding comments onto the list to describe why I've put them there, as I get time.

156> I don't remember anything of that sort in Cobweb Bride! I haven't read Lords of Rainbow yet - thanks for the warning. I'll look through some reviews to see if it's a major element.

The Disappeared does have a conclusive ending. It's a detective series, so each book is a different case.

I forgot to mention Three Parts Dead (259 members) and Full Fathom Five (15 members) which I've read since then. They are completely separate stories that take place within the same fantasy world. The author's really good about writing a diverse cast and numerous, capable female characters.

Oh, yes, I forgot to ask- who else is watching Sailor Moon Crystal? :)

I'm finding it interesting that the senshi are getting introduced so quickly! I'm rewatching the original series- my sister's first time seeing it- and it took about eight episodes for Ami to show up. It seems that Crystal is taking its pacing cues more from the manga. In some ways, I liked the 90s introduction of Mercury better, where there was some doubt whether or not she was on the side of good, but having her and Usagi hit it off from the start is a different and interesting character decision. (The amount of blushing going on between the two of them is really going to be a field day for slash fan-fiction writers...)

Also, I find Mamoru just wearing a tuxedo around everywhere in Crystal incredibly amusing. (Mamoru in general is pretty amusing, though- the 90s episode where Rei shows up, where he shows up driving a bus yoked to two other buses through a dimensional portal is classic.)

The characters look younger in Crystal too- especially Jadeite and Mamoru. I think Mamoru is closer in age to Usagi in this version, like he was in the manga. I am really disappointed with the low quality of the animation, though- facial features and proportions go wonky all the time. It shows even more in contrast to the solid, expressive animation of the original 90s show. Luna's mouth animation is especially irritating to me for some reason- I try to ignore it but it keeps sticking out at me...

I'm not really bothered by the transformation sequence being CG, but I am bothered by the tunnel view on her hands and boots coming onto her walking feet- where is she walking...? I agree with the consensus that Mercury's transformation is a little better, though. It seems to stick very close to her 90s transformation...

I'm curious to see what they do with Rei, since her personality was quite different between the manga and the anime.

The Cardcaptor Sakura anime series is getting a re-release too! I'm excited, because I had the first couple of DVDs but the series went out of print and way out of my price range before I could get any further... These sets are pretty pricy too, though, sigh. They also don't seem available anywhere other than NIS' site at the moment...

>157 pwaites: I went to get a sample of Cobweb Bride and noticed the ebook was free at Kobo, so I went ahead and added it to my library! You made me wonder about Lords of Rainbow, though, so I went to see if it was the right book I'd been thinking of- it was, unfortunately, this is the first line:

Ranhéas Ylir was alone in the wilderness, and she bristled with steel. There were twelve daggers hidden in impossible places about her body. At her waist was a sheathed thirteenth one intended to be seen. And at her left side, phallic, hung a prominent sword.

If I like Cobweb Bride, I might be able to make it past that line, but it was a no-go when I considered checking the book out of the library. I also had mixed feelings about Nazarian's essay for Fantasy Book Cafe's Women in Sci Fi month, which focused on her lead character from the book- I agreed or empathized with most of it but I was really turned off by this:

And yes, I wrote her in answer to all the cocky, “feisty,” selfish idiot females masquerading as warrior women, so often found in entertainment, and who annoy the crap out of me.

I can understand Nazarian's frustration, but... "Idiot females"? A very irksome choice of words.

I may be taking particular exception because I would probably have much rather have read about her unlamentedly trunked character Elzarán that she describes than her replacement character, the quiet, self-effacing Ranhéas... I want more unapologetically awesome swashbuckling female characters.

Gladstone is actually heading the list right now in interest- Three Parts Dead has been in my TBR pile for a little while, and I'm very curious about it and sequels. I don't think I've heard a bad thing about them yet, except that possibly the second book doesn't quite live up to the first. I've noticed many people seem to be reading Three Parts Dead right now, though, so by the time I'd get a free month for a group read- next month is The Shadowed Sun, and after that is likely Stories of the Raksura Volume One if there's still interest- I have a feeling that October would be too soon for a reread for most people but too distant to have it still fresh in everyone's mind for discussion.

Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun, though I put that on the list anyways as it's one of my very favorites.

Most interesting! I finished just the other day Drinking sapphire wine, but I had little good to say about it. (First part of criticism in this thread...) As Biting the sun precedes it, I'm curious about it being your favourite. Is it very different from Sapphire Wine or what? Somehow I can't picture Lee changing gears that much.

158> Oh, no. Thanks for posting that.

I remembered the article too and having mostly the same sentiment that you described - agreeing for most of it, but being bothered by certain pieces. I think my reaction was more along the lines of "wait a minute - where are all these women? I certainly haven't seen many. If there is a problem with the typical warrior woman character, it's that she's made to always be weaker than the male lead. All the problems I normally see relate to romance (falling apart as soon as a potential love interest walks in) or towards her attitude to other women (she's not like those other girls).

For the things she named, I don't see a problem with "cocky." Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica for instance pulled it off very well. "Feisty" can be a problem, but mainly when it's a stock trait or being used to belittle the character. "Selfish" and "idiot" are obviously problems, but I haven't "so often found" them.

I am getting the feeling that she wants warrior women that she regards as "feminine", which she has her own firm ideas on.

On the topic of Gladstone, I'd heard that about the second book too, which was part of the reason that I skipped it. The other was that I really loved the female protagonist in Three Parts Dead, so much so, that I wasn't as interested in picking up a book following a completely new male lead with all different characters. I skipped to the third instead which had two female protagonists. Since I loved it so much and since there was an awesome female character who's also in book two, I'll be heading back to read the second one.

>159 LolaWalser: on the basis that there are so many of us who appear to be keen to read Three Parts Dead, even if a simultaneous Group Read appears problematic on timing, we could still start up a discussion thread. The series sounds like it's going to provoke some great chat!

(while I'm chomping to read it, I'm chomping to read at least a dozen books right now, so equally - October doesn't sound far away ;)

I'd join a discussion of Three parts dead and I think imyril's idea of opening a thread for a non-structured read sounds good.

>162 Sakerfalcon: Agreed. I might have to re-read to get the details again, but I'll be able to join in any case.

I finished my re-read/listen of Shadow Magic on my commute this morning, still mulling over my rating. The romance in this one still doesn't quite work for me- I noticed more places where Wrede was trying to build it up, but the characters still spend so little time together and interacting that I'm not sure I buy the supposed strength of their attachment.

Back to Dragonflight on the audio front. I've been informed that Lessa's predecessor was incompetent, lazy, and obese, just in case I had any doubt left that she was a terrible person, and Lessa's just about to talk to the headwoman of the lower caves, who she greatly respects, but just in case I was worried there might be female friendship forthcoming the narrative has helpfully informed me that Lessa has "a feeling" that she's never going to be close to or intimate with any of the other women in the Weyr. Oh well.

>160 pwaites: "Where can I get these books??" is always my reaction too when people talk about female characters who are too competent Mary-Sues, or too "masculine" without the "human, vulnerability" shown through romantic love, or that there are too many lesbian characters (no, I probably won't ever get over Lackey's introduction to Oathbound, scowl). I've been sadly forced to conclude that they don't exist.

The article felt a little bit like "not like those other girls," but "not like those other authors" instead, which I was surprised about since Nazarian's press Norilana had put out several volumes of Sword and Sorceress.

I suspect you're right with the particular version of femininity, maybe- Nazarian's work seems to deal a lot with myth and archetype, which often have a very particular version of femininity centered around the maiden, matron, and crone...

"I'm tired of seeing female characters so masculine they don't count as women" and "my strong female character is superior to those simpering feminine women" are just two sides of the same misogynistic coin- a work that builds up one type of woman and one true type of femininity by tearing down another is not feminist to me. Perhaps there should be a Bechdel test variant for diversity of representations of femininity- do a "traditionally feminine" woman and a "traditionally masculine" woman exist in the story and interact without one type of femininity being shown as obviously superior? Or, ETA: Perhaps more broadly, to resist falling into polar stereotypes myself, just two women with very different gender expression interacting without either being marked as clearly superior.

> 161-163 I don't think I've been in the mood for Three Parts Dead myself lately based on the bit I've read so far, but I am looking forward to it and I'd be curious to read the different impressions in a discussion thread.

>159 LolaWalser: I've saved the longest for last- I am thinking on this, and may write more later, but overall the too long didn't read version is that I can't dispute that these books aren't flawed and dated in many ways, but I find them interestingly predictive, I like Lee's prose and description a lot, and I read it at such a time when I needed several of the themes and concepts the books had within them.

I do think coming to Drinking Sapphire Wine without Don't Bite the Sun would significantly change things. (One big change would be that the narrator would default to female to you from the beginning, being that they are female throughout practically the entirety of the first book, if not the whole book. I want to say that having more background on the other female characters would give them a little more nuance as well, but I suspect that's more wishful thinking and a nostalgic blind spot in that area where I never focused much on the minor characters when reading than anything.)

The first book is about the narrator trying to find meaning in the society, and if you've started the second book you know how well that works out- the narrator is somewhat nihilistic and self-destructive and still trapped in the society at the beginning. The first volume ends with the assumption that the narrator will just have to deal and live a miserable life, but the second, which I always thought could be skipped completely when I was a teenager reading this, provides closure- because the narrator doesn't fit in the dome society, they make a place outside it.

I'm not going to deny your criticisms of the gender essentialism and the iffy treatment of female characters, though, I do think those are valid and I'll take a look at especially the female characters more the next time I read. I do think, overall, too, that Drinking Sapphire Wine is definitely the weaker half of the story. I was also strongly disappointed that the worst of worst insults was so gendered upon recent re-reading- I had never noticed the definition page before that reading, and it really doesn't even make any sense in the context of the society. I've always been bothered by the ending of Sapphire Wine with its "yay, natural pregnancy, boo technology," the robot conspiracy never really hung together, and the romance such as it was didn't seem to have enough build-up to make it believable to me.

I will say that to me this is more a book about gender expression than identity- and I think looked at that way, just for the idea that gender is a spectrum and some people are more masculine and some people are more feminine-leaning, it was an important book to me.

You mention The Left Hand of Darkness, which was written a few years earlier than these I believe, and I have to say that this book works a bit better for me on gender than Le Guin's "if everyone was both male and female at different times, nobody would be particularly feminine or masculine" in that story- I do think that a variation of gender expression is normal for humanity. After reading Whipping Girl earlier this year, though, I think I have a better appreciation of how important physical gender identity rooted in the body is, though, and I think that the easy changing of bodies would work less well to me now.

But allow me to set aside the physical reality of lived experience that Lee must have had in mind in when she wrote these in the mid-1970s, and place the books in the context I came to them, in the late 1990s and early 2000s- alongside Melissa Scott's Trouble and Her Friends and Burning Bright, Joan Vinge's The Snow Queen and Catspaw, William Gibson's Idoru and Neuromancer, Steven Harper's Silent Empire and Catherine Asaro's Primary Inversion...

Biting the Sun becomes another book about the internet everyone was sure was just around the corner, the immersive virtual world where everyone's an avatar and physical reality is irrelevant- your representation is not what you're born with, but what you actively choose, and you can choose almost anything. All of the characters are in the Matrix, and the end, therefore, is about disconnecting- I didn't learn until much later that these books weren't published at the time I came across them

It seemed fantastically resonant to me as an adolescent on forums and in chat rooms, trying to design and explore my virtual persona- I could pass as male if I wanted to, but did I want to? which image should I choose for my avatar?- as I mentioned above, this was my first time encountering the idea of gender as a spectrum, pointing out that a single person could have both feminine and masculine traits, instead of men being in one group and women another (despite its essentialist ideas of what femininity and masculinity are, which do glare at me now, and the general heteronormativity in the relationships- which I think is explicitly stated in places).

Even more so, I strongly empathized with the protagonist's discontents- I wasn't interested in sex, or drugs, or partying like I was supposed to be, and like most of the people I knew were. Not only was it about teenage discontent and alienation, it was about my teenage discontent and alienation, about the only thing I had that didn't assume teenagers were hormonal and sex-crazed (heterosexually, of course), where the protagonist just wasn't really interested in relationships without that having to be justified by something like religious beliefs.

But of course, back to the predictive aspects that fascinate me, I re-read this a couple of years ago, and in the meantime we never got virtual reality, Facebook happened, and the internet had changed to being a place of real names, an extension of the real world rather than another world- the way that the narrator and their friends interact presages social interactions over social media in a fascinating way, and in fact models that much better than how actual people who are friends in real life act. Google+ even lets you sort your friends into Circles, which you can, presumably cut people out of- and the Jang marriage customs seem written with young adults using Facebook's "relationship status" in mind, more than actual teenage relationships- these things, in a pair of books written nearly a decade before Facebook's Zuckerberg was born!

These books work for me very well as a reader as well- Lee's prose hits me just right, and I was amazed when I first read a review saying that the protagonist was never named- I'd read the book cover to cover several times without even noticing.

Thanks for the very interesting, exhaustive reply. I will keep on the lookout for the first book, because I'd like to see whether I can make more sense of the posited mechanism of... attachment, shall we say. But it does seem to me that Lee doesn't have the same kind or depth of interest in thought experiments about gender that, say, Le Guin showed (I have almost no one else to compare...) I don't remember the details of Left hand of darkness, but even your summary makes Le Guin's concept more appealing to me--although maybe we are not understanding it the same way. I need to read that again.

I will say that to me this is more a book about gender expression than identity- and I think looked at that way, just for the idea that gender is a spectrum and some people are more masculine and some people are more feminine-leaning, it was an important book to me.

I can understand this--I think it would have had the same effect on me if I'd read it in my teens. But it's really classical Freudianism (itself based on ancient myth), and the way Lee treats it, or rather fails to treat it, is what is ultimately problematic to me: while supposedly these people are a "spectrum" "inside" themselves, their outward "gender-behaviour" is still expressed in discrete, binary, strictly delimited terms: men and women, all heterosexual.

That's what I don't understand within that setup and the specific plot point (Hatta's "unchanging" love for the narrator).

What do you think, for instance, of narrator's feelings towards Danor, when Danor arrives with her older lover, Kam? Not only does the narrator, now female, not feel any desire for Danor, but she is immediately attracted to Kam! Or, if you remember male-Mirri being turned on by narrator's duel with Zirk, and, in narrator's interpretation, my underlines: "'What a fight!' said Mirri, squeezing my arm, and I could see his male eyes already looking forward to the next female session he planned with me." It just sounds weird, illogical to me, to desire someone, but hey, wait a sec, need an essentially different body to actually have sex with them. I mean, the desire, if it's there, it's there, so any psychological break between the feeling of it and aiming to indulge in it must be the result of some external imposition and convention. To me it seemed that Lee purposely isn't allowing her characters homosexual behaviour, when the setup practically entails it.

I agree about the prose, and I was entertained, even amused, in many places.

>165 LolaWalser: I would agree that gender isn't the point of the Lee the way it is of the Le Guin- I think Lee's novels are a pulpy adventure story with bright colors and philosophical pretensions about the place of humanity in a robot-run world, while Le Guin's novel is a deliberate thought experiment with a degree of philosophical depth and a more immersive world. (I would be curious, if you do re-read, what you think of the way that Le Guin handles Ai falling in love with Estraven, and things like the gendered pronouns and the practical absence of women from the book that that pronoun choice exacerbates- there's an anniversary edition of the book which has an appendix recasting the pronouns as she and with a created pronoun.)

I had thought, regarding your long spoiler, that there was something in the text that made the heteronormativity explicit- I believe that section was what I was thinking of, but there might be something similar in Don't Bite the Sun. It passed right by me unexamined when I was younger but it bothered me on re-reading for the same reasons you mention- another disconnect.

By what we see regarding character behavior, how characters act when they're in male bodies and how they act in female bodies, I think you're spot on, but I would argue that in the dialogue there is more of a spectrum in how gender is discussed- our narrator is not female but "fairly well balanced, but predominantly female" or something along that phrasing, and another character is described as "eighty percent male" or something like that- recognizing that even he is twenty percent "female" or feminine.

That explicit acknowledgement is what stuck with me, despite the narrative being somewhat at odds with it and having limited, circumscribed ideas of gender- I'm not positive what you mean by Freudian though, in any case- I'm much less familiar with Freud's concept of gender than I am with Jung and his "anima and animus" gendered model of the unconscious mind and his "universal unconsciousness" archetypes and the like.

It's another problem, though, that if we presume for the narrator any kind of genderqueer or genderfluid identity, that they were so unbothered by losing the ability to easily switch between bodies- there's a very strong undercurrent of mind-body dualism, where the body is meaningless and irrelevant, literally a disposable commodity- not quite so extreme as some cyberpunk's contempt for the body as "meat," but still in that area.

I think it's a possible "in-unverse" explanation to consider that the created bodies are biologically heterosexual in some way, arranged by the robots because ~conspiracy~, and Mirri there was desiring the narrator imagining himself as a woman, but I don't think there's really anything to support that in the text other than the general robots like to control humans to make things tidy, evil robots are evil, etc- though we do know they manipulate other biological processes.

For another thing, if manipulation was the case I would have thought it would have been a point near the end of Sapphire Wine, when other "natural biological things" like pregnancy were being rediscovered- though, really, that whole plot point brings a whole host of questions about the created bodies, actually- I'm curious whether the text has any difference between the replaceable bodies in the city and the permanent body the narrator ends up in, or if it was all put down to "drugs in the food etc" causing birth control and the like.

But an "in-universe" continuity shim would be, in all honesty, a cop-out.

It's tempting, knowing that Lee has written stories with lesbian protagonists (eg see her story in Heiresses of Russ 2011) to go with the "times were different" or "oh, conservative editors/publishers" explanations, but this book was roughly contemporary with The Female Man and Motherlines so that hardly seems to hold water- I would be curious to know how much was authorial and how much editorial, though.

>149 sandstone78: I don't read ebooks. I'm trying to catch up with some of what I've missed in the last few years (I hope the best of it, of course), so I might join in on almost anything that I can find used or at the library.

>166 sandstone78: LeGuin said later that she felt she had erred by letting her grammatical primness insist that she use "he" because it's the generic pronoun in English. She thought she had seen Estraven as potentially female, especially when Estraven went into kemmer as they crossed the ice, but had failed to portray it successfully to the reader. My take, almost forty years ago, was that what she was attempting to do was so striking that its failure to succeed completely almost didn't matter. There might have been other writers focusing their SF partially on the social sciences, but she was the one who, in my experience, made it really work.

>166 sandstone78:

Interesting that about Le Guin's book with alternative pronouns. Hmm, I'll have to decide whether to look for that for a re-read... I have very faint memories of the twist you mention--by the end I think, as they were travelling together for a longish time, when Ai is sort of "induced" into femininity by closeness and sympathy for Estraven. I think LHoD had a similar effect on me as Lee's book on you, I was too thrilled--and really, at the time far too uninformed and "new" to thinking about gender--to notice faults.

What I mean by Freudianism is talking about female and male "elements" present in every person in some ratio, variable by individual, but never in practice present in "pure" form (100% masculine or feminine). I say "elements" because some later Freudians, embarrassed by criticism, preferred it to the less ambiguous "traits"--but this still implies an essentialist scheme in which something is pre-attached to femininity and masculinity, as defining these terms.

To me this pre-judgement, this assignment of traits to "ideal" male and female is rank and toxic nonsense--a theoretical prejudice with devastating practical consequences. Nobody ever remembers that the ideal doesn't exist and that everyone is supposed to be a "mix"--what they do remember is that women are weak, dumb, weepy, nagging etc., every possible negative there is, and that the presence of "femininity" in men makes them queer, perverse, sick, weak etc. In contrast, the presence of "masculine" "elements" in women is typically praiseworthy--such women have good heads and stout hearts, are good pals, don't talk too much etc. This disparity in how the "elements" are seen to affect individuals--it is far better for women to have some "man" in their constitutions than vice versa--is proof enough to me of the cultural bias and misogynistic aim of these schemes.

But, metaphor and arbitrary convention aside. The worst is simply that this is not science, there is no evidence whatsoever of the existence of something we could point to and say--there, that's "femininity" and you have 34.16% of it! It's language and concepts invented for political propaganda, used to demean and oppress.

Uhhh... I forgot where I was going with this. :) And took way too much space in your thread again!

>166 sandstone78: Motherlines, and by extension Walk to the end of the world sound interesting. Besides the themes, are they good reading? I sometimes have some difficulty relating to the characters in older SF and fantasy.

I've picked Farah Mendelsohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy back up after drifting away from my last attempt. This one is really interesting, and while not exactly the aim of the text, its discussion of different ways fantasy works has provided a lot of food for thought about how the narrative necessities- eg explaining a created world- drive the tropes of the genre- so many young, naive, sheltered, portal-crossing, or amnesiac protagonists coming to the world as if for the first time so the reader can learn about the world with them. I've become convinced in particular that this storytelling necessity explains why fantasy is so attached to coming of age stories as much as any mythic, archetypal Hero's Journey. The same goes for mysterious stranger and/or monsters come to town stories, and the travelogue... all of these things provide very convenient ways to justify delivering exposition.

I also went to a local used video game store and, instead of acquiring one of the PS2 RPGs I had my eye on, I walked away with a used Kindle Touch Wi-Fi for the reasonable price of $30. The text to speech feature is very interesting, and the reason I was looking into this model- none of the newer and current e-ink Kindles seem to have audio support. I listened to part of Rhetorics of Fantasy driving in to work on my commute this morning- it's no human narrator, surely, but it will be nice for books that are vanishingly unlikely to get an audiobook adaptation.

This makes, amazingly, my fourth e-reading device acquired since February of 2013 somehow. My first was the 5-inch Kobo Mini I decided to try when it was on sale at my local Best Buy, the second a Nook HD Android tablet I got as a gift, the third a Nook Glowlight (old model, not the current one) I got when my local B&N was clearing them out, and now this Kindle.

All of them have their pluses and minuses:

Kobo Mini
+ Great size, fits in my hand and my purse better than the other models- I can page forward or back one-handed on the touch screen
+ Kobo is always having coupons and promotions, which work on most non-big-publisher titles- I have acquired a huge to be read ebook list after one period with an unlimited use 90% off coupon and another for an unlimited use 75% off coupon last fall and this spring respectively
+ A recent update gave the Kobo integration with "Pocket," which syncs articles or webpages for later reading- this is fantastic with the huge amount of short fiction available online for free, but I haven't had time to really dig into it yet
+ Lots of options to customize how the text of a book looks- sliders with 10+ degrees of variation for margins, line spacing, and font size, and a number of different fonts
+ Neat book statistics for books bought through Kobo, like a bar chart of chapter lengths- unfortunately, not available for side-loaded EPUBs
+ Almost complete separation of the store from the reading experience- I get a notification on the front screen when I have new recommendations, but there is nothing pushy like special offers or deal banners
+ Adorable smiling e-reader face when starting up or sleeping (removed from some Kobo devices but later put back)
- A lot of authors- especially self-publishers and small presses- don't put their books on Kobo, though, which is really disappointing- I had to buy from Amazon or elsewhere and convert to EPUB, that's another reason I picked up the Kindle since it was a reasonable price. Even some larger publishers don't seem to get their books properly on Kobo- I was looking at Glenda Larke's Last Stormlord series and the first book isn't available on Kobo, but it is is on Amazon and B&N- and that's a Hachette book, not a micropress.
- The customization options are really nice, but they don't carry across from book to book- and disparity in publisher default settings means that the sliders don't necessarily behave the same way from book to book either
- The firmware seems a bit iffy- the device has frozen on me several times, requiring various things from holding the power button for it to reset, plugging it into a computer for it to reset, and snapping off the back casing of the device to push a reset button

Nook HD Tablet
+ Apps are fun, and I can read my books from Kobo, Amazon, and the handful I have from B&N on one device
+ Audiobooks as well
- Apps are distracting, and I never seem to just sit and read in a big block with this- I am always switching to check my e-mail, or look something up on the internet, or play a game, or...
- B&N ebooks are expensive, and have proprietary B&N DRM that means I can't put them on my Kobo
- Uncertain how much this is the Nook's fault, but some combination of its e-mail app and the server for my e-mail having a bad implementation of the POP mail protocol lead to years' worth of mail being deleted from my e-mail inbox- it was very convenient checking mail on my tablet, but wow, no way am I setting it back up after that happened

Nook Glowlight
+ The light is nice
+ The physical page turn buttons are unexpectedly nice too
- The display of the text on this one seems... grainy or blurry to me in a way that the Kobo (and now the Kindle) aren't
- See above about B&N ebooks- anything I want I can either get at Kobo or get from Amazon for probably several dollars cheaper than B&N, and I can transfer EPUBs from Kobo onto the Nook without a problem- just not in reverse

Kindle Touch
+ Text to speech is nifty, and having the ability to listen to Audible books is nice as well
+ Being able to e-mail books bought elsewhere to the "cloud" for reading on my Kindle device (or the apps on the Nook tablet and my phone) is really nice, and they sync across devices as well which books sideloaded onto the Kobo and the Nook won't do
+ Definitely the best selection of ebooks available
+ It's quite easy to check out books from my local libraries' Overdrive with the Kindle- I just check out a book on their Overdrive site, select to download for Kindle, and log with my Amazon credentials and Amazon will put it in my library across all devices. The only issue is that expired books don't seem to go away...
- "Special offers," that I could pay a wad to disable, that evidently don't fully go away after paying- ech.
- The store is very obtrusive- I am constantly reminded that this is as much a "giving Amazon my money for books" device as it is a reading device
- Proprietary format of Kindle books means that I can't put DRMed books on any of my other eink devices, unless I want to (illegally) break the DRM to convert them

All of them complement each other nicely. The Glowlight has probably seen the least use because I haven't bought many books from B&N and sideloaded books won't sync with any other devices. The Nook HD and the Mini probably are next- with the Mini being best for reading overall to me. The Kindle seems quite promising, though, I'm looking forward to using it more.

I wish Kobo readers were more available in the US, though- the sorely-missed Borders bookstore chain carried them, and so did electronics store Best Buy, but Best Buy seems to have cut back to Kindles only around me at least. Some independent bookstores around me sell them, but always at full retail price, never running them on sale or anything, and none around me have gotten the latest "Aura" models.

A few links and things...

80s Computer Hacking: A Supercut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUGQHdYUIEo It's amusing to see the gap between what people think computers are like, and what hackers and by extension anyone who works with computers actually do- all of the gibberish and nonsense characters on the screen is very telling. I am disappointed to say that many portrayals of computing in film and TV, three decades later when computers, are hardly more sensical or accurate.

I picked up a hardcover copy of Eleanor Arnason's Ring of Swords last weekend, and today I found a post on Arnason's blog that says a sequel to Ring is in progress, as well as a Hwarhath collection and some ebooks from her backlist! I'm really excited about the Hwarhath collection, since several of them were published only in magazines and are kind of hard to track down.

Melissa Scott's Trouble and Her Friends is due back out from Lethe Press on August 9th- I'm hoping there is an accompanying ebook edition. An older trade paperback printing is available as a "bargain book" on Amazon US- this was my first Scott book, a near-future-that-never-happened cyberpunk story with Scott's usual interesting worldbuilding. The presence of cybernetic implants but no wireless internet dates this one, though.

Lynn O'Connacht is hosting a reading month for Angry Robot's Strange Chemistry YA and Exhibit A imprints to support authors affected by Angry Robot's abrupt shuttering of the imprints, which orphaned books- including ones with scheduled publication dates where review copies had already been sent out.

Aarti Chapati is running A More Diverse Universe again this year to bring attention to the works of authors of color- check out her blog for some recommendation lists and review posts from past years.

>167 Jim53: I'll make sure to note if anything I pick isn't available new in print- I think most of the books I have on the list at this point have been published at some point in the past in print but I'll make sure to note that too if titles are ebook only.

I've read much the same thing by Le Guin- there's a particular essay, "Is Gender Necessary? (Redux)" that I came across where she talks about her assumptions and things she would change, and a couple of other things in that anniversary edition I mentioned to @LolaWalser.

>168 LolaWalser: The Le Guin is not a rewrite of the entire text, just two chapters recast in the appendices. The ISBN for the anniversary edition that has these chapters is 0802713025- unfortunately, I don't believe any other publications contain them, the current US editions definitely don't. I had it out from a library last year which doesn't seem to have it any more, boo- I keep hoping for it to turn up in one of my local used bookstores...

I see what you mean, and I would agree with what you've said. I think that the Lee book did have the same affect on me as the Le Guin did for you and @Jim53 and many others- I wish I had come across it when I was younger, and am rather surprised it never came up when I was trawling around for books in the subgenre called "anthropological science fiction" (eg Cherryh, Mary Gentle's Orthe duology, and so on- there's an interesting post on these books by Jo Walton at Tor.)

Take up as much space as you want, I enjoy reading your posts. :)

>169 zjakkelien: I've not gotten around to reading Motherlines, but I read Walk to the End of the World a couple of years ago- my review is posted on LT actually. (I should get around to doing more full reviews.)

It's pulpy, somewhat over the top in its dystopian aspects, very rapey as one would expect from anti-woman dystopia, and somewhat dated in its consideration of gender roles (same-sex relationships are the norm, but the treatment of relationships between men seems almost homophobic in parts, the only important female character, Alldera, seems mostly just contemptuous of other women, and there at first seems to be the disappointingly present undercurrent of men and women belong together because Alldera and Bek understand each other better than any of them have ever been understood by a same-sex lover- but this is subverted somewhat in that Bek rapes Alldera, and it's recognized that they cannot have a functional relationship, and they don't- and Alldera ends up falling in love with a woman in the sequels after all, I believe.

It has haunting parts, however, and some striking imagery. Motherlines is, I think, equally famous for having no male characters (possibly at all, maybe not just important ones) and equally infamous for its society composed entirely of women that reproduce by inseminating themselves with modified horse semen.

I found Walk to the End of the World compelling and interesting, and it is interesting as a character study for what men are like in Charnas' incredibly screwed up world, but if older SF doesn't always work for you you might want to read a sample first.

>170 sandstone78: Thanks Sandstone! It does sound interesting, I'll check out a sample, and if that's ok, I might get a copy.

>171 zjakkelien: I'd be curious to know what you think about it!

>170 sandstone78:

Aw, too kind. I picked up a bunch of sf in a sale recently, including 6-7 books by Cherryh (I have previously abandoned Cyteen and Downbelow Station, though--nothing alarmingly negative, just didn't grab me), and I enjoyed Jo Walton's Farthing (alternative history, not science fiction) so I wouldn't mind picking something else by her.

(Oh, and (I blush as I type) I AM still on board with Burning Bright--as soon as I find it! The worst happened--I mislaid a book someone lent me in the book-jungle I live in!)

>172 sandstone78: If I get it, I'll let you know!

The thread is getting a little long, so I'm going to roll it over.

>173 LolaWalser: I hope you like the Cherryh! I'm curious which titles you picked up. I read as much of her stuff as I could find when I was younger, and am gradually revisiting it now. She has certain gender tropes you'll notice if you read enough of her work- lots of anxious, tortured men with varying degrees of emotional brokenness and authoritative, competent women. As a forewarning, the Alliance/Union books (see the series listing pages from Downbelow Station or Cyteen) can get quite rapey (often- possibly even usually- men being raped by women, but not always- see tortured, emotionally broken men above), but this isn't endemic to her work (eg the Foreigner series doesn't have any rape that I can recall, though it does have frustratingly unexamined gender roles- though this seems to be getting more attention in the recent books).

For what it's worth, I never made it through Downbelow Station or Cyteen at the time either. I'm not big on what fantasy of hers I've read either- The Paladin has a large age difference teacher/student romance which is never a trope that works for me, and I just couldn't get into The Dreaming Tree or The Morgaine Cycle. (I have plans to go back to Morgaine though!) I'm enjoying Pride of Chanur and the Foreigner series and have fond memories of Cuckoo's Egg and Hunter of Worlds, though.

(Oh, no, misplacing books is the worst! I hope it turns up soon!)

I'm heading over to the new thread, but ohhh, I hated Cyteen.

>176 pwaites: Hmm, I don't remember much about it- I can't even recall how far I made it. I know azi, and tape, but I'm not sure what I remember comes from there and what comes from Forty Thousand in Gehenna or Port Eternity or the parts of Downbelow Station I read. I got the audiobook from an Audible sale a while back for $5, so I'll see at some point how far I can get in to the 36 hour runtime... I'm surprised it's not available in ebook, but then many of the big classics by female science fiction writers don't seem to be- Vinge's The Snow Queen isn't, and neither is Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (at least in the US), and McIntyre's Dreamsnake is available at Book View Cafe but not at any of the major retailers...

Thinking about it, Port Eternity is a weird book. Azi programmed as Arthurian characters on a spaceship. I wonder how it compares to Elizabeth Bear's Dust, which is in my TBR, and has I think genetically engineered Arthurian characters or something along those lines...

Yes, azi and tapes. That's Cyteen. I ended up writing a rather long review about why I disliked it so much (in retrospect, I can't believe that I finished it), but here's part:

"The characters. Yes, they’re well written, I’ll admit. They’re just not likable. And they don’t do anything. Let’s start with Ari, shall we? She’s the head of this powerful genetics company and her coalition rules the government. She also drugs and rapes a seventeen year old boy with the help of her creepy friends/slaves and films the entire thing. That pretty much destroys any chance she has of being likable. But – plot twist. She dies and they create a clone of her. Ahh, I think, this will be a story about the clone growing up to be a better person. Nope, when the book ends she’s shaping up to be the first Ari.

The other notable viewpoint character is Justin, the boy who is victimized by Ari. He’s probably the most likable character. He’s also the only character who actually attempts to do something (besides the unknown character who killed first Ari. Seriously, we never find out who did it). However, that was before he was abused by Ari. Then he’s traumatized and passive for the rest of the book.

Besides those two, there’s a whole host of characters who are only so much names and have virtually no significance, yet keep getting brought back up over and over again."

I just hated spending six hundred pages with these people.

I hope it's okay to answer here instead of the new thread... or I can copy it there.

>175 sandstone78:

I'm curious which titles you picked up.

Cuckoo's egg, Serpent's reach and four books that form a series it seems, begining with Gate of Ivrel.

It was a mad "four books for a dollar" deal and I think I bought... at least seventy sf titles--mostly old, "classic" sf, from what I could tell.

Ack, not rape again. I finished recently one of Pamela Sargent's anthologies, "Women of wonder", and a story in it by Chelsea Yarbro made me yearn for mental bleach. The older I get, the less can I tolerate it.

>176 pwaites:

With Downbelow Station I think I got in more than a hundred pages but the goings-on were so mundane and the people so grey nothing was hooking me. It all seemed "real" but so plodding and slow...

Cyteen I quit a few pages in and barely remember what they were about, but I know why I quit, and it's probably part of a larger problem I seem to have with that type of sf (I quit Consider Phlebas for a similar reason, though not uniquely because of it)--whenever I'm faced with "realistic" intrigue in a sci-fi setting my interest wanes. Because "realistic" intrigue relies on people as we know them, and it doesn't matter if you give them scales and six eyes and external stomachs. And if that's the case, I'd rather be reading history, Renaissance diplomacy or the Great Game in Asia--no scaly aliens from planet Ghyfrwyrw are ever going to top stuff that actually happened.

Apparently I have completely different notions about "out of this world" than do these space-opera types.

In Cyteen, as far as I recall (about half an inch far), the whole incipient set-up with a genetic company and corporations and conflict of interest etc. bored me straight off.

(Banks was a somewhat different case, I got about one fourth in and the Culture interested me, but the whole seemed so subpar compared to his other, literary output I was chronically disappointed. But there too I suffered from the "too much of the usual"--espionage, damn diplomacy again, damn planetary wars again...)