K's Reading 2016

One of the ways I rang in the New Year was beginning a new book: Kate Elliott's Spirit Gate. Elliott is an author I've admired since reading her Spiritwalker Trilogy and enjoying essays like "Writing Women Characters as Human Beings," so I'm inclined to throw support her way. Also, Elliott's Black Wolves was among my Christmas gifts, and I understand it has some connections to the earlier Crossroads Trilogy, though familiarity with that trilogy isn't strictly necessary in order to understand the new book.

Sadly, Spirit Gate and I have not gotten off on the right foot. The first two chapters are written from the point of view of a female character to whom I took at once, a character whom I might reasonably believe to have an important role. She's a reeve, bonded with a giant eagle; she can take care of herself; she's older than most female protagonists are allowed to be... and, at the end of the extended opening sequence, she is unceremoniously shoved into the Fridge. Emphasis switches to her surviving boyfriend, and her importance is quickly reduced to a mere source of the surviving boyfriend's manpain.

That I might be able to tolerate if I liked Joss, the boyfriend, a little better. But alas, he is NOT a hero after my own heart like Kaladin Stormblessed or Marcus D'Ivoire or Parno Lionsmane. His "grief" for his lost "beloved" apparently manifests itself in a desire to ogle shapely women and talk as many of them as possible into his bed, which leads me to believe his feelings for that admirable woman could not have been very deep, and had she not been killed she would have ended up being just one more in a long, long line of sexual conquests. Making matters worse: in the fifty or so pages I've read from his point of view, all the female characters have been cold-hearted shrews, potential bed-mates, or both. Thankfully, the point of view is due to shift again in about ten pages, and I'll be in the head of a heroine again. I hope I'll like her. But I'm not looking forward to spending much more time with Joss.

Another of my current fantasy reads, Cold Iron, has a similar problem, an unlikable hero who, while he performs admirably as an army officer, treats almost everyone around him like crap, the only possible exception being his quippy right-hand dude. He supposedly loves his sister, but most of the time when he thinks about her, it's with jealousy and suspicion. When his mother dies, he feels nothing at all. I do find it interesting that as his storyline parallels that of his sister, naval commander and heir to the throne, he, not the sister, gets handed the romance subplot. However, even his love interest comes in for a bit of his self-concerned underhanded dealing. I think I'm supposed to find him sympathetic, since his father has favored his sister over him for a long time and has recently rejected him in total. Instead I find him a bit too cold, too unforgiving, especially toward the sister who has not wronged him at all. Nonetheless, I am enjoying this book for the most part. The sister, Suvi, is an engaging heroine. The battle scenes are surprisingly realistic, with death falling swiftly and randomly. I also like it that the protagonists of this book are "kainen," magical humanoids. Humans are actually the enemy. That's something we don't see too often.

And now, my short list of Books I Have Every Intention of Reading in 2016 (subject to change):

Wexler, The Price of Valor
Marillier, Tower of Thorns
Hambly, Bride of the Rat God
Kay, River of Stars or Under Heaven (possibly both)
West, The Uncrowned King (I need to catch up with the Empire)
Malan, The Path of the Sun (I need to catch up with Dhulyn and Parno)
Cameron, The Fell Sword
Forsyth, The Pool of Two Moons
Sanderson, The Alloy of Law
Shinn, Heart of Gold and Jeweled Fire
Cherryh, Foreigner and Chanur's Venture
Snyder, The Innamorati
Wurtz/Feist, Servant of the Empire
Johanssen, Queen of the Tearling
Izzo Hunter, The Midnight Queen
Tchaikovsky, Empire in Black and Gold

If all goes well and my ceiling doesn't fall in, in 2016 I should be celebrating the publication of a second novel.

1> I wasn't happy with how River of Stars treated its female characters. What I said in my review:

"While the back of the cover suggested this was both Daiyan and Shan’s stories, River of Stars really belongs to Daiyan. Shan is intelligent and educated, but she has little impact on the overall events of the novel. In the end, it felt like she had little role outside of being a love interest. She’s also pretty much the only female character. There’s a couple of other women who have one scene each, but none of these reappear or even interact with Shan. Shan never speaks to another named female character, and it’s justified in the narrative by saying that other women dislike Shan because they feel she acts outside the proper role of a woman. Still, Shan has to speak to another woman at some point. Servants? Her mother-in-law? Other court ladies? The “other women don’t like Shan” would be a lot more believable if we saw any of them actually have a conversation with her."

After I wrote my review of it, I found some of the top voted ones on Goodreads also complained about the book's treatment of female characters. The reviews of Under Heaven seem more favorable in that regard.

The Alloy of Law and The Price of Valor were a lot of fun. I've also got Queen of the Tearling and The Uncrowned King in my TBR and am hoping to get to them this year.

Congratulations on your novel!

Ooooh, I'll be really curious to hear what you make of River of Stars and Under Heaven whenever you get to them. ^_^ I haven't read any of the others before, though.

Congratulations on your second novel! May 2016 bring you loads of good news and many fantastic reads!

2, 3: Thanks!

Guy Gavriel Kay is one of those authors I like in spite of some of the issues I have with him, and one of those issues is the dearth of female friendship in ANY of the novels I've read by him.

The Fionavar Tapestry: As far as I can recall, the two present-day girls, Kimberly and Jennifer, are "friends" but we hardly ever see them interact. The main Fionavan woman, Jaelle, holds them both in contempt, and is never shown to be on friendly terms with any of the women from her own world. The closest we get to any substantial sympathetic interaction between female characters is between Kimberly and her mentor Ysanne (for whom Jaelle also has contempt), but Ysanne dies too soon.

Tigana: The two main women in the cast, Catriana and Dianora, never interact, and neither of them can be bothered to speak so much as one civil word to any of the women with whom they DO interact.

A Song for Arbonne: Arbonne is supposedly a female-friendly society, but the ranks of musicians are dominated solidly by men. Among them there are only two female "jongleurs" (minstrels), and guess what? They hate each other.

The Lions of Al-Rassan: This one is my favorite, but it suffers badly from "Not Like Other Girls" Syndrome, that all-pervasive annoyance that apparently afflicts River of Stars. Jehane the physician, whom I like a great deal, interacts almost exclusively with men. The only other woman with any substantial role is on the other side of the world, so no chance for friendship there. This woman is impressive in her own right, a wife and mother who manages to keep her husband's estate in order and safe from external threats while he's away. But both her children are boys, so we don't get mother/daughter interaction, and from what I can recall, she has no female friends or advisors. Bechdel Test fail.

I haven't read Sailing to Sarantium or Lord of Emperors yet, so I don't know if matters are any better in those books. Ysabel is too urban-fantasy to interest me, and based on reviews I've read, The Last Light of the Sun is extremely dude-dominant, with women only in walk-on parts (if that), so it'll probably be a good while before I read that one.

What draws me to River of Stars and Under Heaven is that, in the wake of Elizabeth Bear's Eternal Sky Trilogy, I've become interested in exploring more fantasy novels with non-European settings. Yet the ones I've read about most frequently on Goodreads are (according to reviews) a major Fail in the heroine department. Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds is reportedly brutal in its misogyny, with a subplot involving a henpecked husband chopping up his wife and sisters-in-law, and the book's heroes applauding his actions, because hey, they were fat and ugly and didn't know their place and so they had it coming. Jones's Desert of Souls introduces a "strong" heroine but never figures out what to do with her. Then we have Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings, in which women are kept in the background until far, far too late for it to matter. The Kay books, at least, let heroines play important roles and don't gloat over women being thrown into wood-chippers. So I decided to move them up the TBR ladder.

By the way, if anyone knows of any other good fantasy novels with both mythical/historical non-European settings and substantial, interesting roles for heroines, please shoot me the titles. I'm always looking for more.

4> I can think of a few titles.

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit is an adventuresome fantasy story starring a thirty year old bodyguard.

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale and Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott are both fairy tale retellings based on Mongolia and Japan respectively.

I know you've read Three Parts Dead but have you read any of the others in the Craft Sequence? The other books all have non-European settings (not sure if I'd count them as mythical/historical though). The only one without a female protagonist is Two Serpents Rise, which has plenty of women among the secondary characters.

The Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells is a second world fantasy book with a non-Western setting and a female lead.

City of Stairs takes place in a setting based on Russia, but the heroine comes from a setting based on India.

Huntress by Malinda Lo is a fantasy adventure story in a China based setting. The romance subplot is between two teenage girls, and the narration alternates between them.

Then there's a couple of others that I haven't read but have been hearing about:

Serpentine is about a snake-girl in a China based setting. I've heard this one has a focus on female friendship too.

I know Dragon Sword and Wind Child was originally written in Japanese and that it has a female lead. I don't know much else.

I also ran across this list of non-European fantasy by women a while back but haven't had a chance to go through them all yet.

5: Thanks! I will have to look into some of these. I've actually seen the anime of Moribito, and it is a wonderful story, and Balsa is an awesome character. Furthermore, it features another thing I like quite a bit (and don't see nearly often enough): a pivotal non-romantic relationship between a male and female character. It's nice when stories remind us that men and women, and boys and girls, can be important to each other in ways other than romance.

Full Fathom Five is way up there on my priority list. I would like to read some more Nnedi Okorafor as well. That list is a good guide, and includes some work I've read already, that I found very engaging: The Secrets of Jin-Shei and The Fox Woman. Fudoki is on my shelf, though I haven't read that one yet.

>4 kceccato: In the unlikely event of your finding a copy (see the end of my 2015 thread), the protagonists of Light across Time are one male, one female, who share the work equally. The "aliens" are matrilineal, with reproductive systems found only in the spotted hyena in RL, and the setting oscillates between London and southern Africa. The only chapter so far available of the sequel, War across Time, is set in Malawi.

#4 From what I remember, Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors won't be much better for female friendships, but I think they might be closer to The Lions of Al-Rassan than to the others.

>1 kceccato: I bought Empire in black and gold yesterday, curious to see how you like it!By the way, I seem to remember that Jaelle and at least Jennifer get along better later on?

I know of some books in non-Western settings with good roles for women, but it could very well be that I got some of the titles from you... It wasn't quite my thing, but God's war would fit. Ah, but that is not quite mythical/historical. How about White tiger and sequels?

9: The main reason I haven't latched on to the White Tiger books is that they're more real-world contemporary than I prefer. God's War had a dystopian science-fantasy setting, or at least that was my impression; while I can't say I "enjoyed" the book, I'm certainly glad I read it.

I will be very interested in how you get on with Spirit gate. I put it down after a few chapters for the very same reason that you are having issues - Joss is so utterly repellent as a character.

The Sarantium books contain several prominent female characters who are all interesting and have agency, but I don't recall that they get to interact with each other very much. Also, most if not all of them fall for the protagonist - male author wish fulfillment?!

I look forward to following your reading this year and hope that all goes well with the book publication.

It's not non-Western, but for a book that focuses on strong female characters who are friends, you might have a look at Kim Newman's The Secrets Of Drearcliff Grange School--it was weird and wonderful, and I'm hoping he writes more set at this ca. 1920s English girls' school where girls with rawther unusual abilities are sent. ;)

12: I've eyed that particular book with interest on my browses through Barnes & Noble. It seems very much like the sort of thing that would appeal to me.

11: Thanks for the heads-up. I have such a far-reaching TBR list that I'm ill inclined to finish a book if it hasn't grabbed me at some point within, say, the first 200 pages. If it doesn't work out, there's always Black Wolves.

Hello there! Happy New Year!

>4 kceccato: >5 pwaites: Seconding Moribito! I have a great deal of affection for those books- the second one has a lovely "confronting her past and the baggage her mentor left behind" arc that heroines are rarely afforded. I really, really wish that more of the series was available in English, but the second one makes a perfectly good stopping point- nothing is left unresolved, but there's plenty of space left for more adventures.

Also, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' The Shapeshifters (or, out of omnibus, a five-book series starting with Hawksong, but the omnibus is the more economical way to acquire them). While from the blurb, especially of the first book, you would think these are fairly typical "bad boy" YA romance, that's actually not completely the case- these are more along the lines of epic fantasy, stories of intrigue and magic spanning two generations that follows the resolution of a long, long war between two cultures of shapeshifters, and there are a lot of women around.

I would also recommend N.K. Jemisin, albeit with some hesitation- her worldbuilding is fantastically inventive and a joy to read, but her heroines tend toward Highlander Syndrome, and the heterosexual relationships she presents are usually uncomfortably unequal during the story- to be fair, this is because she tends to tell stories of heroines coming into their power, and things usually are fairly equal at the end.

Also in my TBR that might work: Francesca Forrest's Pen Pal (an epistolary novel which is all about the friendship between two girls!), Noriko Ogiwara's Dragon Sword and Wind Child, Sofia Samatar's A Stranger in Olondria, and Lori M. Lee's Gates of Thread and Stone.

Oh, ETA: I missed responding to your 2015 thread, but there are going to be more books in the world of Elizabeth Bear's Eternal Sky trilogy- a second trilogy called The Lotus Kingdoms is starting in 2017 (link). There are also two novellas in the same world, Bone and Jewel Creatures and Book of Iron, about a female necromancer, which I thought were pretty interesting.

Issue of the Day: De-volving as a Reader?

I have always enjoyed nineteenth-century British fiction in one form or another. I first read Jane Eyre when I was in the eighth grade, and was immediately taken with it; I found it fascinating to walk with this intense, imaginative, introverted heroine through a world I would never have the chance to visit in reality. In my late teens I discovered Charles Dickens, and while I was a college undergrad I was reading everything of his I could lay hands on. Then my graduate work pointed me toward George Eliot and Wilkie Collins and I acquired a liking for Jane Austen. I loved nineteenth-century fiction because I like windows to the past, and what more detailed, more vivid window could I find than reading the words of someone who lived in that time, someone for whom all that stuff was "contemporary"?

This past year I saw the most recent film version of Far From the Madding Crowd, starring Carey Mulligan, and I liked it quite a bit. When I found Hardy's novel on my shelf I decided, "Hey, I haven't read any nineteenth-century stuff in a while; I'll give this a shot." So I started to read it... and within the first fifty pages I wanted to stop. It wasn't the story, which I already knew could interest me. It was the laborious sentence structure and the endless descriptions of buildings and meadows and the stiff, stilted dialogue that kept me at arm's length from the characters. I forced myself not to put the book away, to read it through to the end, and today, just a few hours ago, I finally finished it. I had momentary flashes of being engaged by the story, as I had been by the movie, but on the whole it was the reading equivalent of Eating My Vegetables. I wondered more than once while I was reading it, and I wonder now, Have I lost my taste for nineteenth-century British fiction? Have I de-volved as a reader?

Even since I fell in love with the fantasy genre, I've tried to keep my hand in with other kinds of books. I try to keep one spot on my rotation open for something that isn't fantasy. Sometimes it's science fiction. Other times it's historical fiction, like Mistress in the Art of Death, which I finished last month and enjoyed. Other times it's an intriguing piece of nonfiction, like Mel Blanc's That's Not All, Folks! and Clever Maids, which turned out to be a major source for Kate Forsyth when she wrote The Wild Girl. Good writing is always a pleasure to read, although certain genres really aren't for me. But I'm still a little fearful that my failure to engage with Hardy's novel is a splash of cold water in the face, a sign I'm becoming less sophisticated. Or maybe it's just patience I find myself losing as I get older. I really don't need to know the details of the architecture or a church or a barn. Just get on with the story, darn it.

The trouble is that nineteenth-century fiction is really the only kind of "literary" fiction that interests me at all. Contemporary non-genre fiction, with its nihilistic bent, has very little appeal for me. Sometime in the near future I'm going to have to try it again, maybe something by Trollope or Collins that I haven't read yet. But for now I'm going to fill that empty spot with something science-fiction. After all, I'm about to start teaching an American Literature class, and that should give me abundant opportunity to Eat My Vegetables.

Thoughts on Current Reads:

My Spoiler-tagged Goodreads review of Cold Iron (though the Spoilers are very vague at best) is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1266670873?book_show_action=false

Spirit Gate is getting a little better, sort of. I have met the book's main female protagonist, and she's a sympathetic figure, a woman with a deep well of insight and imagination that she keeps hidden under a placid exterior. Other characters judge her as shallow and a little bit stupid, but we know better. I want to see how she progresses. But even as I've become interested in her, my problems with the book have actually increased. After enjoying Elliott's Spiritwalker Trilogy, I was so sure I'd like this series that I bought the sequels. I couldn't have guessed, based on Elliott's other work, how RAPEY this one would end up being.

George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire gets a lot of grief for being rapey, and the complaints are justified. However, one thing I will say in Martin's defense is that in his work, the male characters we are obviously meant to like and admire -- Eddard Stark, Jon Snow, Ser Davos -- do not participate in the physical degradation of women. For the most part (leaving Jamie Lannister out of the question for the time being), rape is something that bad guys do. (Of course there are a LOT of bad guys in that series). However, in the last passage I read from Spirit Gate, I was treated to a sequence in which a slave girl is pimped out to a regiment of men, because it would be good for the men's morale, and there are only two women, both very beautiful, traveling with the company and one of them is the female protagonist who's off-limits. Who does the pimping? The female protagonist's kinsman, who justifies his action by telling himself that since the slave girl is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed "demon get" who fills him with lust every time he even thinks about her, she must deserve whatever she gets. Is he a villain? No, this is a character we're supposed to like and even sympathize with. In the world of this novel, even "heroes" don't have the slightest clue how to treat a woman with anything resembling honor or respect. It's hard for me to read without feeling sick in my mouth.

I'm very tempted to lay this one aside. The trouble is that I've heard the sequels are actually more female-positive, with more and better heroines; my lamented warrior-woman actually comes back in another form. Yet if I want to read them and understand them at all, I have to trudge my way through the Rape-Land that is the first book. I haven't quite decided whether or not it's worth it. I will still, however, read Black Wolves and other books by Elliott.

Imagine my relief when I picked up The Price of Valor. Now there's a treat; after less than fifty pages I'm already into it. Django Wexler will be in my top ten favorite authors if he can keep this up.

Hi K - I hope you don't mind my chiming in. I know how you feel about having no patience with some older works of lit. Hardy in particular I think is a slog. Trollope, too, although he's better. Maybe try a really plot-driven book instead. You like Collins, so maybe you'll like Braddon? She was a hugely popular writer who is now largely forgotten except for Lady Audley's secret which is good, but not her best. I also turn to Dumas senior when I want something crazy, but not modern. I've read all of the d'Artagnan novels that start with The Three Musketeers, although the second I think is better. And The Count of Monte Cristo is such a hoot that I have to read it every few years.

Don't be too hard on yourself. I cheerfully admit that I loathe Hardy's work with the white-hot passion of a billion suns. It could just be the author, not the whole world of 19th c. lit.

Older movies, older books, were written in a time when their creator had time to gather in the viewer/reader's concentration and interest. There were far fewer distractions. I believe it is a scientific fact that people today have shorter attention spans, although I can't tell you the source for that. In spite of all our "time-saving devices," we have far less time to sit and ponder the world than our forebears did. This is partly our own fault. I think it is worth it to slow down and appreciate a classic movie or book. How sad to lose that skill.

On the other hand, there are certainly some of the oldies which make it hard to do that. Willa Cather is an author I would like to spend more time with.

I just read The Professor's House by Cather and it was enjoyable.

I too feel as though I have to force myself to read anything outside of the fantasy, SF and YA categories. My reading of pre-C20th books has plummeted over the last few years, and I read very little non-fiction too. I do feel as though I've become a rather lazy, shallow reader, wanting a plot to devour and compelling characters, rather than having to work through dense prose and long descriptions. That said, when I do read older works (such as the behemoth Cecilia which I tackled last year) I usually enjoy them; I just have a mental block about starting. I read a ton of Hardy when I was younger, and actually found his prose easy to digest, although his subject matter was so grim. I've no desire to reread him though. I second Bookmarque's recommendation of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and if you like Trollope you could try Mrs Oliphant (whose Chronicles of Carlingford I need to pick up again).

You are not encouraging me to give Spirit gate another try! Having read Kate Elliott's essays on women characters and their treatment in fantasy and SF I'd be inclined to trust her, but given your comments about SG I do wonder what she's up to.

18: I've always loved a lot of the old stuff. One thing I don't think I will ever have to worry about is losing my love for classic b&w film.
Cather was actually the last literary author whose work I read before tackling Far From the Madding Crowd; it was Shadows on the Rock, a lovely coming-of-age story about a girl in seventeenth-century Canada. I've read her O Pioneers and Song of the Lark and liked them a great deal. I could certainly enjoy more of her stuff.

16, 20: Lady Audley's Secret was one of those pleasant surprises I enjoyed during my graduate work. I would not be averse to trying out more of her work. Where Hardy is concerned, I had read Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge some years before and enjoyed them, though I found Return of the Native a bit of a slog.

I think Elliott is trying to make a feminist point with Spirit Gate, to show how socially-entrenched misogyny can compromise the integrity of even basically decent men. I can see that, but it doesn't make it any more fun to read about.

>15 kceccato: Personally I don't find it necessary to put qualifiers on what I like or don't like. I just do. That's the thing about taste. Why should you like something just because of the period it was written in? Why does reading one thing make you sophisticated, and reading another thing doesn't? I think it's much more important just to enjoy reading.

And unless I'd be doing it for some other reason than enjoyment, I really don't see the point of working through dense prose and long descriptions (>20 Sakerfalcon:). I can think of better things to do with my time! Reading a book I like, for instance...

22: I have absolutely no time for the snobs who sneer at genre fiction. My forays away from fantasy are more for my own benefit, because I feel that reading outside the genre on occasion will make me a better writer.

Terry Pratchett, whom I revere, once had this cold-water-in-the-face advice for those who wished to write fantasy: "Stop reading fantasy." Well, as much as I respect Mr. Pratchett, I can't do that. Not only do I need and want to know what other writers are doing in the genre, but those books (the best of them, anyway) soothe my soul. The best I can manage is to give myself the occasional taste of something else. The non-fantasy spot on my rotation is for books that challenge me in some way.

The science fiction read I've chosen to fill that spot is C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner. Cherryh is actually a challenge for me, not because her stories aren't interesting (they certainly are) but because her prose can be a bit dense at times. She's a good read, but not a quick read. So far, though, I'm intrigued by the book, and I look forward to learning more about the atevi and their culture.

I'm still trudging through Spirit Gate, but of all the books I'm currently reading, Wexler's The Price of Valor is giving me the most pure pleasure by far.

>23 kceccato: I'm interested to hear your thoughts on Foreigner when you finish it. It's also in my TBR pile for this year.

>23 kceccato: That advice is almost shocking! I suppose the idea is not to read fantasy so that you don't incorporate other's books into your own writing? But I wouldn't want to stop reading fantasy either!

25> I think he also meant to read widely to gain inspiration from history and other subjects.

>26 pwaites: Ok, that does make sense.

Question about series: Has anyone ever skipped Book 1 and gone straight to Book 2, and been able to get into Book 2 even if there's some initial struggle to fill the gaps?

I am still struggling mightily with Spirit Gate, and the further I read, the worse it seems to get. I believe I've only made it this far because I feel I owe Kate Elliott something, as much as I liked Jaran and loved The Spiritwalker Trilogy and admire the work she does on her blog. But this book is taxing. The only passages I've enjoyed, apart from the very beginning (and I am STILL angry about that) are those written from the only female POV, that of Mai, and those have thus far come few and far between. It's been quite some while since I've been in her head.

The trouble is I hate the male characters. All of them. Only Anji seems faintly tolerable, but he's not a point-of-view character, at least not yet. The male POV's thus far have been Shai the pimp for the nomadic regiment, Kesh the dealer in maiden-flesh who doesn't see a problem with purchasing his own freedom at the expense of two young girls (and also he travels with a driver, Tebedir, who, every time he speaks, makes me long for an anvil to drop from the sky and squash him flat), and Joss the womanizer. The passages in the novel that take place in "the Hundred," a relatively gender-egalitarian society (at least compared to the societies around it), should offer me the same kind of relief I experienced when I read The Broken Crown and the scene shifted from the toxic Dominion to the Empire. Unfortunately, when we move to the Hundred, we get the POV of Joss, a playboy who has about as much respect for women as Charlie Sheen. Not a single one of these men knows how to treat a woman with decency. Not one! While it's important to me to have a female character I like and admire, I also really enjoy having a male character I like and admire, and at page 309, I've yet to find one.

What would be wonderful, I can't help thinking, is another female POV character besides Mai. (Marit does not count! I'm still angry.) I do like Mai, although at this point she's less a female lead than a fairly minor supporting character, and she's had next to no opportunity to show agency. I get the feeling this is coming, but the rest of the novel is so dude-dominant that I'm impatient for it. There are three sets of characters at this point, but only in one of them do we get a female voice. If any of you have read this one to its end, please tell me -- does it get any better?

The thing is, while I'm tempted to throw Spirit Gate aside, I'm still interested in its sequels. I understand the last two volumes include both more and better female characters, and, I think, more female POVs. I wonder what would happen if I just skipped the rest of the first book and leaped ahead to the second, Shadow Gate, where I would be reunited with Marit. Would I be able to follow it? The only time I've ever skipped a book in a series is in Allison Croggon's Books of Pellinor. I read The Naming and The Riddle and liked them, but I found the third book, The Crow, off-putting and decided to shelve it and go straight to The Singing. I managed just fine, for thankfully I'd read a few Spoilers for The Crow (some of which moved me to lay it aside), and that book, with its different POV, was practically a stand-alone. I'm not quite as confident of my ability to fast-forward through Spirit Gate and go directly to Shadow Gate without finding myself utterly confused. Yet I hate the thought of not giving myself a chance to enjoy the other books simply because I couldn't stomach the first one.

In other news, on my Kindle I've read and finished Khanani's Sunbolt. I liked it better than Thorn, and I hope Khanani makes the second novella available soon. My Goodreads review is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1050926327?book_show_action=false

I suppose one advantage to my struggles with Spirit Gate is that it makes the other books I'm reading seem all the more enjoyable. Foreigner, so far, is quite the breeze in comparison, and The Price of Valor is a moist, yummy layer cake of goodness.

Has anyone ever skipped Book 1 and gone straight to Book 2, and been able to get into Book 2 even if there's some initial struggle to fill the gaps?

*raises hand* I have. Often because book 1 was just unavailable and I really wanted to read book 2. I've never struggled much with falling into the middle of a storyline. I find it works better with series that are intended to be stand-alone books from the beginning like any of the Discworld subseries or series that follow different protagonists in each book for obvious reasons. It's not my preferred way to read, but I'll happily skip over previous books if the one I'm faced with sounds enticing enough.

From what you've said of the books, it sounds like you'd be okay skipping ahead to a book you might like more, though. It sounds like you pick up up on gaps pretty quickly and you could always look up spoilers or a good plot summary before starting on the second book. That should fill in any remaining gaps. Everything else would end up falling under "Well, readers who read this X years ago are going to need a reminder", no? That's often my experience when I discover I do actually need additional information.

I'm sorry to hear you're not enjoying the book, but I can definitely understand why. That would frustrate me too. Yay for reading more enjoyable books as well!

Does Sunbolt offer up an explanation for its mishmash of names? Those keep putting me off whenever I read the description, but I enjoyed Thorn a lot and other than that the story sounds pretty intriguing.

29: There is some discussion of Hitomi being of a different race than the people around her. Her mother also has a Japanese name, though her father's name is Middle-Eastern.

>28 kceccato: In answer to your question about starting series at Book 2, sometimes yes - in fact, sometimes I've even started with Book 2 without even realising it was such. An example of that would be the Obernewtyn Chronicles. I was working in China and on a trip to Beijing visited a shop which sold books in English - I picked The Farseekers up and read it quite happily and thought I'd like to read more in the series. I happened across a copy of Obernewtyn in a shop some time later and it was only when reading it that I realised it came before the one I'd read.

#30 I'm glad! That puts it on my wishlist. Yay! ^_^ I've just seen so many authors mix and match names with little regard for whether they actually go together that I'm instantly wary when I see a description like that one. Sounds like there's a pattern to it in this book that's a little obscured by the origin of the names. ^_^

>28 kceccato: I've jumped into a series midstream, although admittedly not for a while - as a teen I lived abroad with very limited access to books in English, so I'd take whatever I could get. Whenever I've done it (The Black Cauldron and Darkspell leap to mind, and more recently the Harry Hole books), the books were self-contained stories within an over-arching framework so all I 'missed' was back story on how certain relationships came about rather than essential plot points. I'd echo Lynn in saying jump ahead - there's always Wikipedia or other online recaps if you can't figure out a detail, and it would be a shame to lose the will to continue if the later books are better.

Issue of the Day: An Ongoing Problem

Here's a blog post with a list of ten fantasy series that the poster describes as "gateways":

http://www.corynorahfifistars.com/2016/01/top-ten-epic-fantasy-series-beginners....

These series, the poster claims, will turn a new reader on to the fantasy genre, and this may well be an accurate claim. But when one looks over this list, it's impossible not to notice one big thing:

They're all written by men.
That might not be so much of an issue, were it not for another problem: they're all ABOUT men. Even if a few intriguing women feature in the cast, and even if they get a noticeable share of point-of-view sequences, on the whole these books tell men's stories. At least two of the authors represented on this list -- Robert Jordan and R. Scott Bakker -- have a marked reputation for depicting their female characters in cringe-inducing ways. Some of the series clearly belong here, IMO. I adore Sanderson's Stormlight Archive, and respect Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. But taken in total, this list strikes me as likely to leave a beginning fantasy reader with the impression that epic fantasy is very much "men's business."

How do we go about changing that impression?

I'm not about to say to beginning fantasy readers, "Don't read books by men." Considering that I'm enjoying my current read by Django Wexler much more than my current read by Kate Elliott, I'd be a short-sighted hypocrite if I did that. I can also think of a few male authors who deserve a place on a "gateway" list but are left out here; the great Terry Pratchett leaps to mind. But I have to question the impression left by lists like this, that epic fantasy series by men are the only ones worth reading, and the only suitable introduction to the genre. Why, for instance, is Martin's A Game of Thrones superior to West's The Broken Crown? Is it really better written, or is it just that more people have heard of it?

I'm honestly not sure of the answer. The problem is ongoing, and I expect any solution would have to be ongoing as well. I want more works by and about women listed as potential introductions to epic fantasy, not as "tokens" but as genuinely awesome works that every fantasy fan should read. I keep noticing that a lot of the most popular and/or highly regarded works by women aren't about women -- e.g. the Harry Potter series, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, The Goblin Emperor, Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies. What are some favorite epic fantasies with female leads that could keep company with the series on the blogger's list? Works by Juliet Mariller, Barbara Hambly, and Patricia McKillip come to mind, but again the problem is exposure -- too few people know about them.

On a more positive note, I want to share this blog of mine, since it includes some good thoughts on current reads:

http://nanmonroe.com/2016/01/21/whats-making-me-happy-january-2016/

>34 kceccato: It's just a BAD list.

As much as I love the Malazan book of the Fallen, sticking it in a list of "gateways" is plain dumb. Best way to have newcomers stop some hundreds pages in and not come back because you're thrown in the deep end, there's so much going on everywhere, it's brilliant but also sometime opaque and maybe frustrating if you aren't willing to make some working guesses or file stuff away for later.
ASoIaF might suffer from a similar problem but to a much lesser extent AND the media exposure will mean many people are just more motivated to stick with it or can discuss it a lot more readily if they feel the need to.

34, 35> I think a huge problem with the list in terms of being for beginners is that the author refuses to include trilogies (which also excludes LOTR...). It makes a lot more sense to give a beginner a finished trilogy than some of the stuff on that list. I bounced of Malazan hard, and I've been reading fantasy for a while. There's no way I'd give that to someone new to the genre.

For female authored epic fantasy that fits the rules of the list, the only two I've read any of are Janny Wurt's Curse of the Mistwraith and Sagara's Sun Sword. Unless Le Guin's Earthsea counts as epic? What about Lynn Flwelling's Nightrunner series?

For female authored epic fantasy that includes trilogies, there's Elizabeth Bear's Eternal Skies, N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms trilogy and her Fifth Season trilogy, Kameron Hurley's Mirror Empire, possibly some of Martha Wells's books (depending on your definition), all of Robin Hobbs's trilogies, or Glenda Larke's Isles of Glory (again, definition).

Defining exactly what epic fantasy constitutes is a whole different can of worms.

I'd say Kate Elliott's Crown of stars series should be on the list. I had some issues with it but they pale in comparison to those I had with the Wheel of Time and Song of Ice and Fire. Janny Wurts' Mistwraith and C. J. Cherryh's Fortress series are both excellent, although the male characters tend to take the lead, at least in the early books. J.V. Jones' series (as yet unfinished) that starts with A cavern of black ice is worthwhile too, and has several good female viewpoint characters. ANd yes, I absolutely agree that West should be on the list.

And I agree with @pwaites that omitting trilogies really narrows the field. If I was trying to introduce someone to the genre I'd be far more likely to give them either a standalone or a completed trilogy than the first book in a long series, where they might have to plough through several lengthy tomes for any kind of a payoff. Great if they do happen to engage with it, but not an easy sell if they don't.

38: Exactly right. Why would we want to overwhelm the neophytes?

Both Michelle West's epic fantasy series -- The Sun Sword and The House War -- would be a welcome addition to a list that suffers from way too much testosterone. I'd also advocate for Kate Forsyth's The Witches of Eileanan series, since I read the first volume last year and found myself quite impressed with the world and the creatures she created. And I'd vote for Sharon Shinn's solidly readable Twelve Houses series.

The one crippling idea that we need to get past is the notion that stories about men are inherently worthier -- more compelling, better-told -- than stories about women. The changes I'd like to see have already started to happen since the '90s, but they need to go further.

1) We need to see both more and better epic fantasy stories that show women as heroes. Grimdark may be all the rage, but I still enjoy reading about heroes, and I like some of those heroes to be women. And we need to show that female heroes can have a substantial place in epic fantasy, not just urban fantasy and YA.

2) We need to write female-centered epic fantasies that ALL readers can embrace, and are not just considered epic-fantasy "chick lit." These stories need to win a diverse audience. This should happen once we expand our ideas about the KINDS of stories that can be told about a female protagonist.

Once we see more progress in these areas, we'll see more satisfying recommendations lists.

Here is my Spoiler-tagged review of The Price of Valor, which I finished last night:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1498122152

In other news, I'm still forging through Spirit Gate. It's the longest of my January reads, so naturally I'm taking longest to get through it, but I still haven't put it aside, because despite my continued eye-rolling disgust for nearly all the men in the book, I keep running into things that make me curious. I've now encountered a second important female character, though thus far she's only been depicted through other characters' eyes and hasn't been granted a point of view of her own.

Foreigner is, on the whole, good news. I find it a little less stylistically dense, and thus easier to get through, than either The Pride of Chanur or the first two books of the Morgaine Cycle (though I do intend to return to both those series). I'm fascinated by Jago, the alien female bodyguard, one of those female-Other characters that nearly always gets my attention. She's clearly a supporting character in a male lead's story, but in this case, we pretty much HAVE to stay in the male lead (Bren)'s head in order for the plot to work. I can still smile at every scene in which she features.

Issue of the Day: Any Good Romance Out There?

Here are the movies being released on Valentine's Day Weekend 2016: "Deadpool," "Zoolander 2," and "How to Be Single."
These movies lead me to one unavoidable conclusion: romance on the big screen is dead. Absolutely dead. Really most sincerely dead. Dead, dead, dead. Any movie that looks like it just might revive it -- like, say, last year's "Trainwreck" -- turns out to be an anomaly. Where do you go for romance? Not to the movies. (This isn't to say that a good comic-book movie couldn't work as a "date movie" for a geeky pair. But "Deadpool," with its love-'em-and-lose-'em protagonist... somehow, I doubt it.)

Print fiction should be a better place to look. Yet when I look back over the books I've enjoyed over the past couple of years, I'm hard pressed to think of a single one in which the romance, specifically, stood out as enjoyable. Many of them have no romantic plot at all, or else the romance was my least favorite aspect. In terms of romance, my reading life has been nearly as lacking as my movie-going life. I can't help thinking how nice it would be to happen upon a romantic plot or subplot that would win my heart.

First I should clarify what I really want to see, since "romance" is such a broad term. I'd like to find a romance that is OPTIMISTIC -- that is, one in which the couple involved are both interesting and complex people who, over the course of their interaction, bring out the best in each other. Because their relationship makes them stronger, wiser, more empathetic people, we naturally root for them to end up together. What we often see instead are "romances" in which one character or the other is a vapid shadow or a dull nonentity (The Princess Bride), or else the two make each other so miserable that we'd rather see them break up than live happily-ever-after (The Price of Valor, although I believe this is how we're meant to see it), or else love turns one character or the other into a useless idiot incapable of a single thought that doesn't involve the relationship (the Twilight series).

Where are the healthy romances? Ones in which the lovers, because they're together, become MORE awesome rather than less? Ones that, if they were successfully transferred to film, would make excellent date movies?

A few romances in fantasy that I've especially liked include Daughter of the Forest, Wolfskin, Heart's Blood (when Marillier is "on" with romances, she's really on, though I've been disappointed with the romance aspects of some of her other novels), Troubled Waters, The Lions of Al-Rassan, Lackey's Fairy Godmother and some of her "Elemental Masters" novels (it's been a while, but I seem to remember that The Serpent's Shadow and Phoenix and Ashes had strong romance plots), Wells' Books of the Raksura, Teresa Edgerton's Goblin Moon, Jovah's Angel, and, strange though it might be, the romantic plots in Terry Pratchett's Night's Watch cycle, involving Sam and Sybil Vimes and Capt. Carrot and Angua. Pratchett can be surprisingly sweet when it comes to love.

I hate most genre romance with a passion, or romances that take over like kudzu the pages of books I purchased/obtained under other expectations (namely, science-fiction and fantasy, most of the time), but here are a couple with a romantic sub-plot or theme that I enjoyed :

• I loved Senlin ascends by Josiah Bancroft in that regard, though it might be said to be "one in which the lovers, because they're separated become MORE awesome rather than less".

• In Balanced on the Blade's Edge by Lindsay Buroker it's more than a subplot or theme, it belongs well and straight among light and fluffy paranormal romance, but the female protagonist is very much her own person, thank you very much, and both manage to mostly keep their wits about them.

>40 kceccato: oh my, this. Absolutely this. I've got to the point where I look back through my reviews and feel like a cynical curmudgeon because I'm always whinging about the romance; I even get excited about reading books because I hear they're romance-free. But I'm hugely sentimental and used to love a good romance. I can only deduct that 'good' is the crucial word and that a) I've got pickier as I've got older and b) there are some truly awful tropes out there.

>40 kceccato: >42 imyril: Agreed. Romance as a genre or as a subplot in another genre seems like it should be to my taste- character-driven stories about interesting people getting to know each other and figuring out how they fit together, with various struggles along the way but a happy ending a foregone conclusion, that sounds excellent (though I would also love parallel genres that were this but for friendship/found family/community/career/teacher-student/other types of relationships or activities instead of or in addition to romantic love).

But in so many romances, a. I can't see what is bringing these people together except for physical attraction (which okay, I've come to accept that this is a much bigger component of romance for most people than it is for me, but does it have to take center stage all the time?), and/or b. the relationship is frustratingly imbalanced and this is either idealized or not acknowledged at all.

(I'm thinking of especially of nearly every m/f romance sooo many m/f romances where the love interest is older, more powerful, more talented, more experienced, taller, more connected, wealthier, and so on than the heroine, usually significantly so, while the heroine is not even ordinary but especially young, sheltered, naive, alone, mistreated- possibly she's more powerful but if so there are caveats, she's untrained/it's involuntary and unpleasant/she can't control her power without training or his help/she never gets to use it on-screen or only powers up in the last 3% of the book or series/her power lets her read everyone's mind or compels everyone to do things or so on but is he is the one person in the world who is ~immune~ and therefore her only suitable mate etc).

As an aside, or possibly c., I'd also like to see more people who deliberately choose to be romantically involved, rather than being thrown together by fate or irresistible soulmate bonds. (To be fair, this is because soulmate bonds often have a stated or unstated in-universe "evolutionary" purpose of producing optimal offspring and this is an unpleasant idea to me for a number of reasons, and even the ones without that, like eg Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar, never seem to give me protagonists in f/f relationships- there may be minor characters or a background couple but protagonist status is strictly for m/f and m/m couples. Grumble.)

I recently finished The forever watch, and one of the things that struck me in that book is how mature the romance is. None of this Twilight stuff or contrived-arguments stuff that annoys me so much. They treat each other with respect. There are inequalities (in physical strength (his) and social status (hers)), but both are adults to begin with, both are experienced in their chosen fields, both contribute in different ways to the murder investigation they are conducting and as a result, none of the differences matter when it comes to respect or equality.

They do live in a harsh world, and the more they find out, the harsher it gets, so I'm not sure it it's your thing for that reason. The two protagonists meet when she is raped by another guy (this happens before the book starts), but even though he rescues her (well, too late, the deed was already done), this doesn't seem to cause an emotional imbalance. There are also some pregnancy issues that I don't want to give away, because it ties in with one to the main mysteries they are trying to solve.

Finally I have finished Spirit Gate. My Goodreads review is very heavy with Spoilers, but I post it nonetheless:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/552302748?book_show_action=false

I think I'll probably enjoy the sequels much more, but for now I'm going to catch up with the Witches of Eileanan in The Pool of Two Moons.

My dissatisfaction with Spirit Gate revolves entirely around the dislikability of the male characters -- ALL of them. Yes, I must have active and capable heroines, but I really want to like the male characters too, and if all of them (even the "heroes") treat women like garbage, I find it tough to take.

Who are some of the best male characters when it comes to treating the women around them with kindness and respect?
I'd say Marcus D'Ivoire from The Shadow Campaigns might qualify, despite his discomfort with the idea of women fighting; in The Price of Valor, in particular, we see him extend compassion and respect to a number of women in his orbit. Dennon Lark of Scriber may not start out this way, but he's definitely like this by the book's end. Parno Lionsmane of Violette Malan's Dhulyn and Parno series also qualifies, since he can view women around him as capable comrades as well as lovers; his partner Dhulyn is both. Who are some other male characters whose decent treatment of women stands out?

>45 kceccato: I've just finished Two serpents rise, set in the same world as Three parts dead and Caleb really stands out for his attitude to women - as in, when they are smarter, faster and more capable than him he is totally cool with it. He asks for help when he needs it, and doesn't feel ashamed or less of a man for doing so. He's not as interesting a character as Tara, Abelard or Cat from TPD but he is a good one.

I'm far behind on this reading blog and need to catch up.
My Goodreads review of Cherryh's Foreigner:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/629683072?book_show_action=false

My review of Tower of Thorns:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1184006882?book_show_action=false

Neither of these is Spoiler-laden. However, I could not express my dissatisfaction with a recent Kindle read, Wolves of the Northern Rift, adequately without including Spoilers:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1372399696?book_show_action=false

The latter has left a distinctly bad taste in my mouth when it comes to the "Bromance" genre, particularly where it's clear the writer is paying homage to Holmes and Watson. I can say without Spoilers that by far my least favorite aspect of Messenger's book was what I'm now calling the "Molly Hooper-ing" of the only significant female character. She was an ally anxious to help, but the Holmes and Watson knock-offs didn't really like or admire or appreciate her -- they only tolerated her. This is, I fear, the fate of many female characters in the Bromance genre: to be tolerated. The absolute WORST thing a female character can do, apparently, is fall in love with one half of a Bromance, because here are her likely fates:
1) she'll be killed off;
2) she'll be depicted as an unlikable shrew for "coming between" the Bros; or
3) whether she's sympathetic or not, she'll be so hated by the story's fans that the author will feel pressured to relegate her to the sidelines or write her out altogether.
Oh, and if half a Bromance happens to fall in love with a female character, she's also most likely to be 1) an unlikable shrew who doesn't return/deserve his love, or 2) killed off.

Even if they're not part of a doomed-to-fail romance, female characters in Bromance stories tend to be written as unwelcome distractions, annoyances, or out-and-out antagonists. What they can't be, except in cases above, is important to the bros, a valued friend and ally. The duo can't become a trio. The best they could become is a duo with a tolerated hanger-on, as we see in Wolves of the Northern Rift.

This impression of Bromance stories is why I can't quite bring myself to read Red Seas Under Red Skies, despite Scott Lynch's stunning defense of the awesome (but minor?) female pirate in the book's second half. (The fact that she doesn't show up till the second half also gives me pause.) I'm even hesitant to read The Alloy of Law now, since almost every Goodreads review I've read uses the term "bromance" in it somewhere. But if I were to read it, and found that the female lead was liked and valued and NOT Molly Hooper-ed, maybe I could feel better about bromances in general.

47> Marasi from The Alloy of Law is one of the major characters of the series. As of book three, she's still alive, sympathetic, and involved in the plot. In The Alloy of Law, it did look like she'd fall in love with Wax (the protagonist), but by the newest book, Bands of Mourning, she says it was only a crush and she got over it as she got to know him better. There's actually a lot about The Alloy of Law that gets changed or expanded upon by Shadows of Self and The Bands of Mourning. Two (spoilery!) examples:

1. The beginning of The Alloy of Law basically opens with a female character getting fridged. Only it later turns out that she didn't actually die in that scene. Note, she does still eventually die however.
2. In The Alloy of Law, Wax gets engaged to Marasi's cousin Steris for political and economic reasons. What with Marasi being the female viewpoint character and having a crush on Wax (plus Steris coming across as rather stiff), I was pretty sure that Steris would be shoved aside in some way so that Wax and Marasi could get together. That doesn't happen, and Steris gets a lot more focus and character development. By The Bands of Mourning, she's along for the adventure (with two other female characters as well).

Besides Marasi and Steris, there's another female character, MeLaan, who was introduced in the original trilogy but has more page time in Shadows of Self and The Bands of Mourning.

48: That's a relief.
How do Wax and Wayne regard Marasi -- as a valued friend, or as a hanger-on?

49> By Shadows of Self, she's a valued friend. I can't remember exactly what her relationship with Wax and Wayne was when she first met them in The Alloy of Law (it's been a few years since I've read it). I think she was a lawyer at that point and not a police officer? From what I do remember, she'd read some stories about Wax in the paper and was a bit star struck. I can't remember Wax's reaction to all this, but I think she had a sort of comradely relationship with Wayne.

50: Okay, that makes me want to keep the book on my Want-to-Read-This-Year list. I'm always on the look-out for good books that show men and women as friends.

Issue of the Day: Another disappointing list

Surfing Reddit, I found yet another one of those Best Fantasy lists, this one claiming to offer "The 30 Best Fantasy Series of All Time":

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/the-30-best-fantasy-book-series-of...

This is a better list on the whole than the one I shared a few posts ago. While that list did not name a single female-authored series among its "best," this one includes five such series, and even among the male-authored series I found one or two bright spots (Discworld!). Female characters also do just a little bit better, with Vin the Mistborn, Granny Weatherwax and her coven, Lyra Silvertongue (though I admit I couldn't finish The Golden Compass, losing patience with Pullman's detached and laborious writing style), and Lessa of Pern having a presence. Yet these characters' stories still form a regrettably small subset amidst a heavy majority of tales centering on male heroes, male anti-heroes, male Chosen Ones, etc. Four out of the five female-authored series listed feature male protagonists, and even the one exception, Anne McCaffrey, alternates between female and male leads in her series.

All of these works may be very good indeed, and deserving of their places on the list, but I can't help noticing how routinely the series that feature sympathetic central depictions of female characters and their doings -- Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters Trilogy, Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series and Spiritwalker Trilogy, Michelle West's Sun Sword and House War series, Kate Forsyth's Witches of Eileanan series and Rhiannon's Ride Trilogy, Jennifer Fallon's Demon Child Trilogy, Violette Malan's Dhulyn and Parno series, the Empire Trilogy co-written by Janny Wurts and Raymond Feist -- are left off lists like this, no matter how well-written they are. However rich and complex their world-building, however intriguing their storylines, somehow they can't manage to claim as much credit or praise as those series that focus on men and their deeds. Even Urban Fantasy, supposedly a female-dominated subgenre, is represented on this list solely by Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series -- by a man, about a man.

Only when someone decides to put out a list with a heading like "Best Fantasy for Women" do the women's stories get named. Just why is that? Can such stories really not stand toe-to-toe in quality with the likes of the Gentleman Bastards and the Kingkiller Chronicles? What makes men's stories "better"?

Were the list devoted to stand-alone fantasy novels and not series, would female authors and characters make more of a showing? The Golem and the Jinni has to be one of the most superbly written books I've enjoyed over the past five years, one of the very few in which the sheer beauty of the writing has taken my breath away.

Thoughts on Current Reads:

I just started M.R. Carey's The Girl With All the Gifts. I'd heard so many good things about this one, from so many people I trust, that I thought it would be ideal for the "challenge" spot on my rotation, the spot I reserve for stuff that isn't fantasy (science fiction, historical fiction, non-fiction, classics, etc.). I'm about sixty pages in. Though it's written in present tense, a stylistic tactic that usually gets on my nerves, I'm finding it very involving so far, and I know, I just know, it's going to break my heart in the long run. Melanie and Miss Justineau are both compelling characters. Heroines to root for? I'm not sure, but being in Melanie's head is an interesting experience. She's what I might call "darkly charming."

I've also started Hambly's Bride of the Rat God. That salacious title alone might be enough to put off readers who don't know Hambly as I do and have no idea what a strong, solid writer she is (despite her Star Wars novels, which I've heard are pretty terrible). I'm a little over a third of the way in, and I would recommend it with reservations. While urban fantasy is so not my tipple, historical fantasy like this one definitely is, and a silent-era Hollywood setting alone would have been enough to lure me. I like the introverted, observant protagonist, still suffering from deep wounds left by World War I. And if you're a dog lover, particularly a little-dog lover, you'll be charmed by the omnipresence of three adorable little Pekingese dogs. Yet those seeking a truthful and respectful portrait of non-Western cultures and mythologies probably won't be pleased by some of the depictions in this book. Of course I haven't finished it yet, but I'm getting a slight "Talons of Weng-Chaing" vibe. If you object to that 1978 Doctor Who episode, you may have problems with this work.

>53 kceccato: I'm so glad you're enjoying The Girl with all the Gifts - I wasn't sure how you'd get on with it, but I loved the relationship between Melanie and Miss J.

54: It's rare that a book outside my usual wheelhouse makes such swift inroads into my heart; usually those books have to grow on me by degrees. The difference lies in whether I find characters to whom I can latch on. Urban fantasy doesn't do it for me generally, but the character of Myfanwy Thomas charmed me from the very first chapter, so The Rook became a favorite read. Likewise, the character of Mori drew me into Among Others and held me there.

Horror/ thriller is even less my thing than Urban Fantasy. But the minute she told her little fairy tale about how a beautiful, amazing woman was about to be eaten by a monster but a little girl came to her rescue and afterwards the woman hugged the girl "to her mortal soul," Melanie had my heart. I look forward to seeing how she and Miss Justineau get on now that they have been thrown out of their not-very-comfortable "comfort zone".

Finished The Pool of Two Moons. These books have their flaws -- I can understand some readers' impatience with the Scots dialect -- but they make me smile. It's a pleasure to see a multi-volume epic fantasy series driven by female characters (so many female-led epic fantasies stop at three books), and the books are a brisker read than, say, West's The Broken Crown. (Though some of the characters do have to confront sexist notions, at least very little time is spent in societies so misogynistic as to be depressing.) I'm still missing the fourth and sixth volume. Need to track them down.

My concerns about the "Orientalist" aspects of Bride of the Rat God have been assuaged just a little. My first impression of the elderly Chinese gentleman, Shang Ko, was of a villain similar to Li H'sen Chang from Doctor Who, "The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Now I find he may actually be heroic. I'll just have to keep reading and see how it plays out. I like Norah, Christine, and Alec quite a bit, and those little dogs are adorable.

The empty rotation spot left by The Pool of Two Moons will be filled by Sorcerer to the Crown. After that, I'm going to catch up with the Red Knight with Miles Cameron's The Fell Sword.

Thoughts on a new read:

So, I'm a little more than fifty pages into Sorcerer to the Crown, a book about which I've heard little but praise from all corners. The phrase "cautiously optimistic" would describe my own reaction so far.

I didn't like the first thirty pages. At all. All I could think, as I read about this 19th-century alternate England, was, "Oh, God, here we go again with the gender thing. Again and again and again and again. Honestly, hasn't this nail been hammered enough?!" My feelings about the constant reiteration of the Gender-as-Obstacle trope can be summed up in this blog post of mine from a couple of months ago:

http://nanmonroe.com/2016/01/05/things-id-like-to-see-more-of-in-fantasy-fiction...

One of the worst aspects of the Gender-as-Obstacle trope, for me, is that it makes me dislike the male characters. I know I'm supposed to like and admire Zacharias Wythe, Sorcerer Royal, and to sympathize with the grief he gets due to his race, but since he shares his society's condescending contempt for women in general and outrage that any woman would dare to use magic, I can't quite take him to my heart -- at least not yet. I have hopes he'll go through the same kind of education that Marcus D'Ivoire has experienced in Django Wexler's Shadow Campaigns series. But right now he's still all, "Witches! Eww!" So I can't really like him, and for the first thirty-plus pages, he's the only character whose perspective we see. In the society of which he is a part, basically decent men might have a certain affection for their wives, sisters, daughters, etc. -- but missing from that affection is anything that resembles respect. For example, Lady Wythe, Zacharias' foster mother, may have his loyalty, but in the end she's just a silly woman who must be kept in the dark "for her own good" about any and all serious matters.

Another potential issue: "Sexism-made-me-evil" villainesses don't go down well with me, since if a woman aspires to power but uses it only to destroy, we might get the idea that the menfolk may actually be RIGHT to keep such power out of women's hands. In these early pages, we get a glimpse of such a villainess, and the men's disgust with her. Also present in this scene: a silent, pregnant wife who represents what women are SUPPOSED to be in this world -- passive and helpless, with nary an idea or opinion that could possibly matter. I'm not sure where Zen Cho means to go with this, but I know one thing: if this villainess is taken down, in the end, by a male hero, I will hurl the book across the room. No kidding.
One thing I will say: at least this society's misogyny isn't quite as violent and brutal as what we find in, say, the Dominion in West's The Broken Crown or most of the territories in Elliott's Spirit Gate.

But just when I started to think, "I really don't know what people see in this," I learned. For at around forty pages, the female lead, Prunella, makes her first appearance, and at last I meet with a character whom I can like and admire, and whose journey I will want to follow through the end. I don't even know her very well, but even at first impression I can guess that, through her, society's noxious sexism will NOT go without a challenge. Prunella keeps the book out of the sell-back pile and in my hands. I do wish that as interesting and unusual a character as Prunella had a more unusual battle to fight and obstacle to overcome, as opposed to the depressingly oft-repeated "You can't do X because you're a woman" thing. But I want to see what she'll get up to, and how she will manage to carve some sort of place for herself where she might be respected as well as "loved" (which I put in quotes because I really don't believe genuine love can exist where respect is absent).

So I'll have to see where the story goes. I already admire Cho's detailed evocation of a Napoleonic-era England -- with a difference.

>57 kceccato: A spoiler for Sorcerer to the Crown if you would like one- Mak Genggang and Prunella strike up a friendship, much to Zacharias' dismay, and Mak Genggang ends up more of an antiheroine than anything (though there is another villainess later on who is more straightforwardly evil). Things don't work out as you might expect with the silent, pregnant wife either.

>53 kceccato: If you haven't read any of Barbara Hambly's older fantasy, I really enjoyed them. They are a little dated now, maybe, but still good stuff.

58: I just need to let myself trust Cho and go with it. The most interesting books tend to be the ones that do NOT confirm the first impressions.

59: Hambly I've read so far: Stranger at the Wedding, The Ladies of Mandrigyn, The Witches of Wenshar, The Dark Hand of Magic. I've enjoyed all these books to varying degrees. Even when I enjoy one work less than the rest, I am always impressed with the strength of Hambly's writing.

My next with Hambly will probably be the series starting with Time of the Dark, and after that, Dragonsbane.

>657 I'm following your reading of Sorcerer to the crown with interest. So many people have recommended it to me, but one or two who I trust haven't thought very highly of it, so your opinion could be the decider for me!

So glad you're enjoying The girl with all the gifts. I found it both exciting and moving.

61: I will say that, based on the admittedly little I've seen so far, Prunella is a much better hook to hold me into this landscape than, say, Mai in Spirit Gate, especially since I have the impression Prunella will be a much more important and omnipresent character than Mai ended up being. Now that she's arrived on the scene, I don't imagine we'll be getting huge hunks of narrative in which female characters are absent. The book is well-written (although the very 19th-century style can take some getting used to; if you were okay with Beckett's The Magicians and Mrs. Quent, you'll probably be okay with this), and I don't want to discourage anyone from giving it a shot.

Of course, if events transpire later to change my mind, I'll post to that effect.

>60 kceccato: I am a big giant fan of the Time of the Dark series.

>61 Sakerfalcon: I'm in a similar situation to you with regards to Sorcerer to the Crown. I've seen it recommended so often and seen it spoken of so highly, but the readers whose opinions and recommendations I trust the most were a bit 'meh' on it, so I haven't dared read it yet and I'm trying to gather as much information as I can so I'll have a better idea of what to expect. ^_^

Having gone a little further into Sorcerer to the Crown, I'm finding it has interesting parallels to Novik's Uprooted. The styles of the books are quite different, pseudo-Regency vs. folkloric lyricism. I wouldn't go so far as to say, "If you liked one, you'll like the other." But they have one crucial positive trait in common: both go into very pleasing detail about the way magic works in their perspective worlds.

Both have heroines that are more magical than the world around them really wants them to be, but beyond that, the differences are telling. In Uprooted's favor is a world in which, while gender roles definitely exist, they are less constraining; I never got the impression there, as I have with Sorcerer to the Crown, that being born a woman is just about the worst thing that could happen to you. In Sorcerer to the Crown's favor is the absence of that condescending-to-downright-brutal "Dragon" character who has put more than one reader off Uprooted. In Sorcerer to the Crown, I can see the romance coming, but it promises to be a mating of equals. Zacharias, though he has the flaws with which society has burdened him, has thus far shown Prunella kindness, so this won't be another instance of "nice girl falls in love with guy who treats her like crap."

Agnieszka of Uprooted is clumsy and uncertain, but she grows in ability and rises to heroism thanks largely to the emotional bonds she forms with those around her, particularly her best friend Kasia. She's fighting to save loved ones. Prunella, by contrast, is out for herself alone. She has no real ties. Her "friendships," if you can call them that, are at this point of only the most superficial kind, with little emotional impact or risk. There's no one she would fight for -- again, except herself. This may be the reason words like "unscrupulous" and "amoral" -- more appropriate for villainesses than for heroines -- keep coming up in descriptions of her. In Prunella's favor: she has tons more confidence and humor than Agnieszka has. Cho tells us she doesn't have much in the way of intellect or imagination (but are we really to believe the third person narrator's assessment), yet she's so much fun to read about because she's always thinking on her feet. I do have hope that her ties with other characters will deepen by the end, with more risk involved.

Female friendships are on my brain right now because, having finished one Kindle read (The Jack of Souls, an indie book which for some reason LT doesn't want to recognize), I started on another one, a YA-historical guilty pleasure, Shana Abe's The Sweetest Dark. I'm about 20% into it. It does have a couple of virtues: a lyrical style and a heroine with an artistic bent, which I always appreciate. Yet right out of the gate, it has hit me with a round of tropes that try my patience:
1) "Huge Guy, Tiny Girl," yet again, not once but twice;
2) Love triangle ahoy!;
3) Insta-love -- we get that twice as well;
4) "Not Like Other Girls."
The first one I could put up with, for despite my irritation with that trope due to its sheer omnipresence, I've enjoyed my share of books that featured it. The next two are more serious, harder to overlook. But that fourth one is almost a dealbreaker for me. I'm tempted to DNF because of it -- because I am so blasted TIRED of YA fantasy novels that center on a female protagonist, that paint every single female character aside from that protagonist as a despicable harpy. Every. Single. One. An Exceptional Girl can't trust any other girl. She can only trust her adoring flock of menfolk. Why do so many writers, particularly writers of YA whose audience is vulnerable to mixed messages, insist on reiterating this same dreary trope? The titles on this list stand out all the more strongly because of it:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/45544.Best_sci_fi_fantasy_books_about_female...

I hope that in time I'll see the day when stories featuring female characters who actually get along won't seem quite so unusual (again, particularly in YA), and when "womances" will be as popular as "bromances" like Wax and Wayne, Royce and Hadrian, Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser, Gotrek and Felix, Egil and Nix, Fitz and the Fool, Locke and Jean, etc., etc. But this is in writers' hands. We need to be aware of what we're doing. Of course we must tell the story that is in our hearts and minds. As a writer, I know this. But it wouldn't hurt us to realize what tropes we're including, consciously or unconsciously, and consider what we're really saying to our audience.

65> I think the Fool's gender fluid? I've heard that the Fool is the same character as Amber from Ship of Magic anyway.

Most books I can think of with female leads, the most important relationship tends to be the romance. The few I can think of that are focused more on female friendship are ones that I know you've already read - Monstrous Regiment, The Steerwoman, Terry Pratchett's witches books, Dealing with Dragons... There's Full Fathom Five, which I don't know if you've gotten to in the Craft Sequence yet.

66: Full Fathom Five is on my to-read-this-year list.

My Spoiler-tagged review of Bride of the Rat God:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1101858903?book_show_action=false

Hambly continues to confirm her status as a favorite of mine. The Darwath Trilogy has moved several notches up the TBR ladder now.

Good review. BOTRG is one of my favourite comfort reads. And you're right about the dogs - I am NOT a small dog person (or much of a dog person at all, really), but every time I read this book I want a pekingese. Fortunately, common sense always intervenes.

>65 kceccato: I put Sorcerer to the Crown down a couple of times before I sat down and read the whole thing - because I never got as far as Prunella. Once I did, I found it irresistible. I'm putting off re-reading it, as I know a sequel is in the works, but I'm very much looking forward to revisiting it. There's an exuberant irreverence to it that I adore.

>70 imyril: I think that's part of the problem I had with it--the disconnect in tone between the opening chapters, which are pretty dark and humorless--then suddenly it gets sort of silly tongue-in-cheeky when Prunella arrives. The two felt too far apart and just didn't sit right together, in my mind.

70, 71:
I'm a little over halfway through the book now, and it just keeps getting better. I've just read of Zacharias' first trip into Fairyland, and Cho's descriptions of the landscape and the entities remind me of the work of George Melies.

I do think the disconnect between the stilted early chapters and what comes afterward is a little sharp. I've mentioned before, but it bears repeating, that while I was reading the early chapters I wondered why and how on earth this book got to be so widely praised. I got the impression that Cho herself wasn't having much fun writing it, until Prunella appeared at last.
This review I found on Fantasy Cafe captures my feelings at this point:
http://www.fantasybookcafe.com/2015/11/mini-review-of-sorcerer-to-the-crown-by-z...
I too find this work engaging and enjoyable, but it doesn't quite get to my heart's core. Maybe it isn't meant to. But I wonder if part of my problem is that I can't warm up to any of the characters EXCEPT Zacharias and Prunella. A strong supporting cast can lift a work to the skies (e.g. Syl and the Bridge Four men in Sanderson's The Way of Kings, Sheera and her corps of women in Hambly's The Ladies of Mandrigyn). But its absence can be quite an obstacle for even the most compelling leads to overcome. Among the supporting players in Sorcerer to the Crown, Mak Genggang stands the biggest chance of growing on me, but I haven't much use for any male character who is not named Zacharias. Sir Stephen Wythe, in particular, I actively dislike, and I dislike him all the more because I think we're supposed to like him. It isn't so much his judgmental and ignorant contempt for Prunella that rubs me the wrong way (though that's bad enough). It's that his quips about women in general convince me that he can't possibly have ever had any real feeling for his wife, who's busy mourning his loss. Doubtless he married her out of the need to procure a social ornament, not out of any affection or regard. But then, Lady Wythe herself is a bit of a problem, because at this point she's little more than a sympathetic shadow whom Zacharias sorta kinda cares about. I have no idea who she is as a person. I think some of my issues with the story might be solved if the text would let me get to know her.

My Goodreads review of The Girl With All the Gifts, tagged for minor Spoilers:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1575807825?book_show_action=false

I'm also within striking distance of the end of Sorcerer to the Crown, so I should have a review posted within the week. I will say that I've seen a bit more development in the supporting cast since I last posted. I still heartily dislike Sir Stephen (no man who truly loves/loved his wife refers to her as a "female"), but I reaaallly hope we see a lot more of Georgiana Without Ruth in the next books in the series.

I think that was my 4th (or was it 5th) book bullet taken for The Rook. LOL

Not to drag you back three months but I understand the Hardy thing. I detested Jude the Obscure, but I did love Casterbridge and Madding Crowd. I firmly believe timing is everything with books like these. If you're feeling stressed and/or restless you just have to fight harder to stay in that world. And sometimes you just don't feel like fighting. Henry James is another one who can seem like he's being deliberately obtuse. (But I adored The Portrait of a Lady.)

Here's my review of Sorcerer to the Crown. I managed to write this one without Spoilers:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1266664225?book_show_action=false

Though I may have enjoyed this one overall, I'm still a little over the Gender-as-Obstacle trope and would welcome a break from it. Unfortunately, there seems to be no avoiding it. The science fiction novel I picked up after The Girl With All the Gifts turned out to be Sharon Shinn's Heart of Gold, and whaddya know? A matriarchal society vs. a patriarchal society, and apparently the patriarchy gets cut quite a bit more slack. There are also two books on my To-Read list that I've heard praised from a number of quarters, including here: The Midnight Queen and All Men of Genius. I'm still eager to read them, but since they tread much the same ground as Sorcerer to the Crown in terms of presenting gender as the most significant stumbling block between a smart heroine and her dreams, I may put them off for a little while.

Here's my review of my Kindle Read, The Sweetest Dark. Sadly, I had to resort to Spoilers because I went off on a red-faced rant about this one:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1050974386?book_show_action=false

Eventually I'll be okay with a well-written gender-as-obstacle fantasy story. But I will NEVER be okay with the "Not Like Other Girls" trope and would happily never read such a book again. My choice for my follow-up Kindle Read is Full Fathom Five, which reportedly shows women who like and even love each other. Because I need an antidote.

>76 sandstone78: Re: Sorcerer to the Crown, I find myself very curious what's going to happen next given Prunella's position at the end of the novel.

Been very busy of late, what with getting a new quarter off the ground and reading/recommending corrections for the proof of the novel that, I swear, IS coming out soon (everyone had best believe I will sound my joy from the hilltop when that day comes).

I've had some reading disappointments lately -- nothing on the pluck-my-eyes-out level of terrible, just books that weren't quite as good as they could or should have been.
My review of Lackey's Blood Red is very short and Spoiler free:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/965183647?book_show_action=false
My other recent Lackey experience has been the audiobook version of The Wizard of London, which I had remembered (perhaps falsely, I realize now) as my favorite in the Elemental Masters series. (I now believe that title rightfully belongs to Phoenix and Ashes.) There's still much that I like about it, its chief selling point being its focus on a friendship between two young girls as opposed to the usual romance. The adult heroine is already happily married, so the the courtship/blossoming romance plot is out of the way already, and she and her husband do make a very charming romantic couple. But I'd forgotten the "sexism-made-me-evil" villainess, a monster with not the slightest spark of anything even faintly redeeming. I don't mind the thoroughness of the evil so much as its link to the rebellion against gender constraints. Can one mount a challenge to the Victorian male power structure without becoming 100% full range evil? Not in this book, apparently. All challenge to that power structure dies with the villainess. The female characters on the side of Good (the young girls and their adult mentor/protector) are quite content to leave Things As They Are. I wonder if I found that quite as disappointing when I read the print book some years ago as I did when I finished the audiobook.

Here's my review of Heart of Gold. This one has some vague Spoilers, and this one's a bit longer; I couldn't keep off my soapbox about this one:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/551825508?book_show_action=false

Current reads include Miles Cameron's The Fell Sword and Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo, very different and thus far very enjoyable. My current Kindle read is Full Fathom Five. I like it very much so far, though I haven't been reading it very fast. Sometimes it takes me a while to get through a Kindle read. Not sure why.

77> I'm glad you're liking Full Fathom Five! I think I liked it better than Three Parts Dead actually. That scene at the beginning when Kai's diving into the pool with all the idols is really beautiful. The book in general just feels really cinematographic. Plus, I like that the two main POV characters are both female. That's pretty rare.

78: I chose Full Fathom Five specifically as an antidote to The Sweetest Dark, when that book's depiction of girls/women as each other's natural enemies disgusted me. So far, all the really meaningful interactions in Gladstone's work have been between women. Granted, plenty of male authors can give us awesome female characters -- but how many of them bother to give us awesome female friendships?

That Gladstone can write about women as friends, but Shana Abe either can't or won't... I'm not sure what to make of that.

79> What's also fun about Full Fathom Five is that it brings in two female characters from earlier books, Teo from Two Serpents Rise and Cat from Three Parts Dead. I read the series out of order, but I remembered Teo when I got around to reading Two Serpents Rise.

80: Two Serpents Rise will probably remain unread by me. The "film noir" aspects of the story, complete with femme fatale -- one of my least favorite character types -- don't do it for me. However, I'm eager to read the next volume in the series to see Kevarian (an antagonist in FFF) as a sympathetic figure.

>81 kceccato: From what I've read of your preferences in reading material, I'd definitely recommend staying away from Two Serpents Rise. It has more issues than the ones you mentioned. Notably the way the story ends on one of the characters trying to sacrifice Teo. That obviously didn't succeed, but the way it was handled left a really sour taste in my mouth, especially when combined with Mal's narrative.

I hope you'll enjoy the next volume as much as you've been enjoying FFF! ^_^

81> Wasn't Kevarian already sympathetic in Three Parts Dead? I thought she was Tara's mentor.

As for Two Serpents Rise, Mal (who I'm guessing is the character you're referring too) is the love interest but I'd say Teo is the most important female character. At the end of the book, when Mal turns out to be working for the antagonist, Teo is the one who teams up with Caleb to save the day. I'd also consider Mal more as a deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl than as a femme fatale. That said, I still think it was the weakest book in the series so far.

The fourth book, Last First Snow is set in the same city as Two Serpents Rise but sixty years before. It's not as female driven as Full Fathom Five. Kevarian is one of the main POV characters, but her main role is to try and mediate the conflict between two male characters.

82> On your spoiler, yeah, I know what you mean about that scene with Teo. I can move past it since it was condemned by the narrative itself, but I still quirk my eyebrow at the reasoning behind it in the first place.

83: Kevarian was Tara's mentor in Three Parts Dead. She was more sympathetic there, certainly, than she is in Full Fathom Five, but we didn't get to know her very well -- until the very end. Her putting the misogynistic villain in his place was very sweet to see.

A shame to hear her role is so limited in Last First Snow, but hey, in the brand-spanking-new work we get Tara back! Yay!

One thing I appreciate about this series is that despite the misogynistic villain in the first book, gender is not painted as a major obstacle for the female characters. Men and women play, and are accepted in, a variety of roles. It's a small thing, but I like that Kai is a "priest" and not a "priestess." I love gender-neutral terminology.

It's been a while. My review of Redemption in Indigo can be found here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/976727260?book_show_action=false

Karen Lord strikes me as a very gifted wordsmith, and I'll be checking out more of her work. This has the virtue of being one of the few heroine-redeems-villain stories that I thought worked quite well, largely because while the villain may be redeemed by the kindness and compassion and quiet strength he observes in the heroine, he does NOT fall in love with her, nor does she desire him. No "girls want bad boys" nonsense here!

Here also is my review of Heart of Gold, probably my least favorite of the Sharon Shinn novels I've read thus far. This one is Spoiler-tagged. I couldn't avoid them.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/551825508?book_show_action=false

I have some big news: my novel "Nightmare Lullaby" was just released on Kindle!

I have to admit that my reading life has progressed very slowly of late. I have a teaching schedule this quarter that's keeping me tired, and I haven't had quite as much time to dive into my books. I've stalled out on Full Fathom Five, not because it isn't a great book, and not because I'm not enjoying it, but because I tend to reach for my print books more often than for my Kindle. However, I'm close to halfway through with it and I absolutely intend to finish it. Of all my current reads, it has the most unique setting and style.

Miles Cameron's The Fell Sword, by contrast, is a big sprawling epic fantasy. Since I love that sort of thing, I'm enjoying it, though I have to admit I liked the previous novel, The Red Knight, a good bit better. I was more interested in the plight of the nuns of Lissen Carak than I am in the fate of the Empire of Morea. One of my favorite characters in the previous book was the mage-nun Amicia, and while she puts in an appearance or two in the new book, her role is much smaller. Her "replacement" as the titular Red Knight's love interest, the Morean Princess Irene, doesn't do it for me at all, and I actually pulled down the third book, The Dread Wyrm, and glanced over the last few pages just to be sure he won't end up with her. He doesn't. Also, while in the last book, the multitudinous plotlines and POV characters all seemed tied to a single overarching conflict, in this one they're all over the place, barely connected at all. I'm still eager to read the final volume, but this one might get three stars instead of four.

I've started a new science fiction book, C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore. I'd heard very good things about Friedman's writing and decided it was time to give her a try. So far I find her writing style compelling, though at just over a hundred pages in I haven't yet connected to any of the characters.

Another new author/work I'm giving a try is Jo Graham's Black Ships; it's high time I dipped into a Greco-Roman mythological setting. At this point I can best describe Graham's style as solid and serviceable. It gets the job done, and I'm intrigued by the story so far, but at no point have I shivered at a passage of prose and thought to myself, "God, I wish I'd written that." Still, my impression is that Graham knows how to tell a good story, and I'll give her other book, Hand of Isis, a look in the fullness of time.

>86 kceccato: I like CS Friedman. She writes some great dark fantasy. I have not read This Alien Shore so I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts about it.

I'm a little further into This Alien Shore now, and to be honest, I'm thinking of abandoning it.

It's very well-written. I have nothing but admiration for Friedman's skill with words. The trouble is that I just don't CARE the way I'm supposed to. None of the characters have my attention. The absence of a worthy heroine is close to a deal-breaker with me. One of the Goodreads reviewers referred to the female lead in this novel as a "dishrag," and my impressions thus far are that this is a pretty accurate descriptor -- very reactive rather than proactive, very much at the mercy of Fate and with neither the plan nor the skills to seize control of her situation. There are other, more assertive and intelligent female characters, but the fact that they are evil to the core does not help matters AT ALL.

Black Ships isn't wearing well upon acquaintance, either. At first I found the style solid and workmanlike. Now I'm starting to find it empty and dry. Of the books I'm currently reading, only Full Fathom Five and The Fell Sword (despite its aforementioned flaws) are really making me happy.

I'm ready to fall in love with a new book, much the way I fell in love with Uprooted last year (and I'm immensely happy about that novel's success at the Nebula Awards) and The Girl With All the Gifts this year.

Updates:
I'm finally nearing the end of Full Fathom Five, and feel ashamed of having taken so long to read it since it's really quite a wonderful book. I should be posting a Goodreads review sometime during the week.

In place of This Alien Shore, I'm now reading Connie Willis's Doomsday Book. I'm just over 100 pages in. The good news is that this heroine, Kivrin, is unlikely to be a "dishrag" even though at this moment she's frail with illness. A journey back in time to the plague-ridden Middle Ages is her idea, after all, and that takes curiosity and courage, two traits I admire. The bad news is that while Kivrin's story is thus far slow to get started, we're also getting the story of her colleagues and mentors back home in "the future," and I'm not NEARLY as interested in those characters or their situation, so I find myself speed-reading through them in order to get to the good parts. Thus far, the "future" scenes have outnumbered the medieval scenes, but I expect that balance to shift as Kivrin dives deeper into the latter time.

I'm listening to Marillier's Daughter of the Forest on MP3 audiobook, and it has not taken me long to remember why I so loved that book. It's a gorgeous piece of writing.

I'm adjusting my To-Read projections to reflect some recent acquisitions:
Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky. New Kay is always worth a look, and what I've read in teasers and reviews about one of the female mains, Danica, suggests she's someone I'd like quite a bit. I may start this when I finish The Fell Sword.

Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass. This may get in line behind Children of Earth and Sky.

Fran Wilde, Updraft. I read somewhere (I think maybe Tor.com) that this is a novel sure to please fans of Hayao Miyazaki. Since I'm a Miyazaki fan, sign me up. I'm hoping for just a touch of Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. This one will likely take the place of Graham's Black Ships once I'm done with it. (I do plan to continue with this one, despite my disappointment in its rather dry, distant style.)

Kim Newman, The Drearcliff Grange School. This just looks so darn cool. May follow Updraft.

And here's my Full Fathom Five review. I worked hard to make it non-Spoilery.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1000803438

>90 kceccato: In that case, I will read it! I've sort-of started it, but I'm not sure I was in the right mood for it, and then I had to pick a book from before 2000 for a book club challenge, so I started Luck in the shadows. But I had the feeling Full fathom five is just as nice as Three parts dead.

>89 kceccato: Drearcliff Grange School is wonderful. I sincerely hope he'll write more of them.

Some good reading news:
I decided to quit Black Ships when my day to read it came up, and I picked it up and opened it, and I realized I wasn't the least bit curious about what would happen next -- and Updraft was right there, begging to be read. So I laid Graham's work aside and got to work on Updraft.

It's a hundred times more to my taste. It has a vigor about it that Black Ships, with its dry utilitarian style, lacked (at least for me). I'm 97 pages in, and I'm diving bit by bit into the world Wilde has built, gathering the vital details as I move through it alongside the protagonist, Kirit. I love that this is a world in which "gender is no object" (thanks, TV Tropes); women are present at every level of society, and at no point is Kirit made to feel that being a girl is an obstacle to be overcome. (For her, the main obstacle is social standing.) I also love that Kirit's living mother is a presence in her life, a focal point for her aspirations. Honestly, how often do we really see that? In 97 pages it has succeeded where Black Ships, with twice that number of pages, failed: It has made me care. I should make it through this one pretty quickly, and then The Drearcliff Grange School will be up. (92: Kim Newman is a guy? I would never have guessed that. He may join Max Gladstone, Daniel O'Malley, M. R. Carey, and Django Wexler on my list of male author heroes.)

My Goodreads review of The Fell Sword:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1414640580?book_show_action=false

I'm not quite fifty pages into its replacement, Children of Earth and Sky, so I can't say too much about it yet. So far I've only met three of the book's major characters. But Kay is a master of historical detail, and the characters I've met so far should keep me in for the duration.

Doomsday Book finally seems to have decided that the story of time-traveler Kivrin in the Middle Ages is more interesting than the story of her anxious buddies back home. I look forward to seeing where the former story goes, but the latter gets on my nerves a bit. If I skim the latter, I may enjoy the former all the more. Skimming feels a bit like cheating, but I can't help tuning out and flipping pages every time "Mrs. Gaddson" shows up, and then re-engaging when she's finally off the page. (In Willis' world, sympathetic women are petite and delicate; larger women are, without exception, bullying battle-axes who exist to terrify menfolk.) I still have a ways to go with this one, but I think I may try some urban fantasy next in this slot. Maybe Nina Kiriki Hoffman?

>93 kceccato: I have the audio version of Doomsday Book, but now I'm half afraid to even start it. Lots of mixed comments on it in here lately.

94: Don't let me be the cause of your hesitation. The book does have its strong points.

>95 kceccato: But you aren't the only person to voice some negativity recently.

>93 kceccato: I wouldn't categorize Willis's female characters that way--it doesn't carry over to her other work.

97: True, I don't remember that kind of characterization in To Say Nothing of the Dog.

Yet the "Mrs. Gaddson" caricature (and the head nurse, who has the same body type and is depicted as having the exact same personality as well) is so unpleasantly broad, and so beneath an otherwise sharp and gifted writer like Willis, that it all but ruins the "modern day" chapters for me. I have no similar issues with the Kivrin chapters. Those sequences make Doomsday Book worth reading.

A couple of updates:

Am now almost 200 pages into Children of Earth and Sky. It has passed the Bechdel Test, and it looks like I may be seeing the first female friendship I can remember in a Guy Gavriel Kay book. I just hope it doesn't get smashed to pieces later on by one or more of the usual suspects (jealousy over a guy, betrayal, etc.). I don't Spoiler-tag because I have no idea what's going to happen.

On the same issue, I have a nitpick about Updraft. I still appreciate the gender-egalitarian society and the presence of both a mother and a mother figure, yet I can't help being a little disappointed that the female lead, Kirit, has no female friends her own age. Granted, a couple of minor characters save the book from being quite the "boys rule, girls drool" fiasco that was The Sweetest Dark; girls aren't quite uniformly repellent, as they were in Abe's book. But the book does play the Mean Girl card, not once but twice. The only girls that have gotten any significant page time or development -- Sidra, Sellis -- are Kirit's foes. Kirit's best friend is a guy, which isn't a bad thing, but so far the only peers who have shown her any friendship or support are also guys, which is kind of a bad thing. Also, Kirit has now been shifted into a setting in which her mother and her mother figure can play no role, and in which all her supportive mentors are men. I'm still enjoying the book, but not quite as much as I was before.

In terms of showing female characters helping each other out, Doomsday Book does succeed, at least in the chapters from Kivrin's POV. (I'm still focusing on those chapters and trying to ignore the "present day" chapters.) The bond Kivrin is forming with the "contemp" child Agnes is touching and at times amusing.

I went on an excursion to one of my favorite used bookstores yesterday and happened upon a good copy of Agent of Change. I've been told that's where I should start for the Liaden Universe, so this goes on my To Read This Year list.

I have to share the following blog by Rachel Dunne, which I found on "The Mary Sue." It falls under the heading of "Blogs I Wish I'd Written," so perfectly does it express my own longing for more second-world fantasy tales in which "gender is no object":

http://www.themarysue.com/feminism-by-thoughtful-omission/

>100 kceccato: Thanks for the link, that is a great post. I've just finished reading Fire logic which certainly qualifies as a non-gender-based society. It's so refreshing to read a book like that.

101: Fire Logic has been on my shelf for a while. I darn well need to get around to reading it.

My Goodreads review of Updraft. It's Spoiler-tagged.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1254221496?book_show_action=false

Warning: not everyone may like it as I do. I notice its overall Goodreads rating is a bit low. Obviously, different elements are resonating with different readers.

Now for The Drearcliff Grange School. At this point I plan to follow that one up with Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, both to compare to Newman's book and to be ready for the upcoming film release. After that may come my first foray into Joe Abercrombie, Half the World.

103> My main criticism of Updraft was that the plot felt a bit "been there, seen that" to anyone who's read YA dystopia. It basically has the sort of formula (teen takes on government) that's in a whole bunch of books right now, but without the romance elements and in a much more inventive setting. Those elements still didn't completely save it from feeling familiar.

104: Odd, it didn't really land on me like that at all, though now that you point it out I can see it clearly. It did feel a little familiar to me, but not in the same way. When I think YA dystopia (and I admit I haven't read much of it except The Hunger Games trilogy; stuff like Divergent, Matched, The Selection, et. al. never really called to me), I think science fiction, and I found Updraft to be straight up fantasy. I saw Kirit as a successor to Miyazaki's Nausicaa rather than Katniss, Tris, etc. Nausicaa isn't really taking on the government; heck, for all intents and purposes she IS her government, an heir to power. What she does instead is challenge the fallacies her society has taken for truth. She seeks to overturn entrenched ways of thinking. Kirit does this as well, though in her case it is indeed merged with taking on the government. I suppose she's a sort of hybrid between Nausicaa and Katniss.

105> I've read Divergent, Matched, and The Selection. I wouldn't recommend any of them. Ditto Legend, The Maze Runner, Delirium.

It's less the setting and more the common tropes and plot structures. Not that Updraft was nearly as bad as any of the books I list above. It's just that aside from having a different setting and lacking romance, it's made up of the same beats. For instance, the towers sort of fill the same "grouping" function as districts (Hunger Games), fractions (Divergent), or castes (The Selection). Also the trial in the beginning. Trials and tests are a huge YA dystopian trope. See practically the whole Maze Runner series (actually don't bother, it was terrible).

There's usually a confluence of "government" and "entrenched way of thinking" in YA dystopia. I.e. Divergent with it's stupid personality based fractions (and the oh so special protagonist who has multiple personality traits, wow). The secret the government in Updraft was hiding reminded me of Legend's plot in particular.

106: I wouldn't go anywhere near The Maze Runner series. I've never been able to escape the impression that at its heart it's a battle of the sexes, with girls as the villains. No, thank you. I understand the concern about the lack of good (or at least popular) YA speculative fiction with male protagonists, but there must be better ways to solve the problem.
Evidently no one bothers to remember that THE most popular and highly regarded YA fantasy series of the past two decades has a male protagonist...

I can see why Updraft would have a bit of a been-there-done-that feel. Still loved it, though.

107> I liked it a lot too, but I can see where the people who didn't love it are coming from. I'm hoping the plot structure of the sequel is a bit more innovative.

108: I've glanced at the blurb for Book 2 on Goodreads, and it focuses on Nat. I hope we'll still get to see a girl or two being awesome, though. Also hoping for more innovative plot structure.

I've finally "finished" Doomsday Book. I put "finished" in quotes for the same reason I didn't write a proper Goodreads review (though I gave it three stars): I didn't read the whole thing. I skipped over the modern-day passages, and once I realized I had read the last of the Middle-Ages chapters, I put the book aside. Would I recommend it? Well, maybe.

It is well-written. Willis's style is quite readable. And the Middle-Ages chapters are quite moving. We get to know a set of characters who seem real to us, so that when they inevitably die, one by one, we feel their loss. The loss of little Agnes is especially devastating, since of all the characters heroine Kivrin meets in the Middle Ages, she's the one who leaves the biggest imprint on Kivrin's heart. Kivrin herself is an admirable figure. Whether she's exactly heroic is up for debate, since she is essentially passive, and in fact her passivity is part of the point. She's caught in a situation in which no one, but no one, can save the say. Yet some say that the essence of heroism isn't so much saving the day as knowing you're licked but trying anyway. I'd say this latter description of heroism fits Kivrin. Thankfully Willis doesn't burden her with a love plot. Such a thing would be altogether out of place. (Willis can actually write romantic plots pretty well when the situation calls for it, as in To Say Nothing of the Dog.)

Were the book solely about Kivrin, as I wanted it to be, I could have given it at least four stars. But no. We have to put up with the modern-day story, Dunworthy's story. This novel is not meant to be a comedy. The sorts of caricatured individuals that pop up at times in To Say Nothing of the Dog would, one would think, be out of place here. But here they are, and they ruin these portions of the book. First we have Mrs. Gaddson, a version of Hyacinth Bucket. If she featured in only a couple or three scenes, I'd be okay with her (barely), but confound it, this woman turns up constantly! Making matters worse is that she's only one of a horde of one-dimensional nightmarish female characters who give poor hapless Dunworthy hell. (Just how many male jerks feature in Dunworthy's story? One, I think.) Head nurses and American bell-ringers, all straight out of an episode of "Are You Being Served?", give these segments an aura of bad comedy even when characters start dying! But I haven't even mentioned the worst part. Mrs. Gaddson is at least a caricature we're clearly meant to dislike. A far worse horror is Colin, a precocious never-stops-talking tween genius-boy who makes Adric and Wesley Crusher seem like charm school graduates. Willis intends us to find him endearing. I didn't. Maybe if he'd been a girl... Nope. Still wouldn't have liked him.

As far as I was able to tell, there was only one genuinely sympathetic female presence, a character and not a caricature, in the Dunworthy chapters -- a female doctor in her sixties, a quietly competent individual, a point of sanity amidst the madness. An important character, I thought. Then lo, she dies. Worse, no one takes so much as a single second to mourn her or even to regret her absence. Guess she wasn't that important after all. Only Dunworthy and Colin are left standing, so, modern-day chapters? No heroine for you!

I'm left with a question as to whether I liked the Kivrin chapters more than I hated the Dunworthy chapters. I still haven't decided. I would say that if you don't mind emotional devastation -- or if emotional devastation is the very thing you're seeking -- the book is well worth reading for the Kivrin chapters, and others may find the Dunworthy chapters more palatable than I did.

Here's my review of Children of Earth and Sky. I think I managed to get away without Spoiler-tags.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1407406181?book_show_action=false

After finishing Doomsday Book for the "non-fantasy" slot in my rotation, I decided to go with historical fiction. I've had Ahab's Wife on my shelf forever and a day and chose to pick it up at last. So far, it's a gorgeous piece of writing, and the voice of the heroine, Una, is evocative and imaginative. However, this is a lengthy book and it reads a little slow, so it may take me a while to finish.

I like what Kim Newman is doing with Secrets of the Drearcliff Grange School. I could wish the "bad girls" weren't quite such one-dimensional bullies, but then, such repugnant characters exist in real life, so I shouldn't be surprised to find them in fiction. The central villain, however, is a surprising figure and I'm still not quite sure what she's up to. I like Amy, the protagonist, quite a bit, but I like her best friend Frecks even better and hope, hope, hope she's not going to cross all the way over to the Dark Side.

My Goodreads review of The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, without Spoilers:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1465917160?book_show_action=false

I've read the first thirty or so pages of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and I'm not sold on it yet. The writing is solid, but the cover art and the trailers for the film led me to believe that this one, like Drearcliff Grange, would have a period setting, around the '30s or '40s. So I confess to disappointment to find it has a contemporary setting. I should have done more investigating; then I wouldn't have been regrettably surprised. Also, I have the impression it's going to be another fifty pages before any female characters show up. I'll keep going, for now.

I've also started Violette Malan's Path of the Sun. The only problem I have with it so far is that it's the last of Malan's "Dhulyn and Parno" series, and I would have liked to read more books about them.

Issue of the Day: Adventures in Audiobooks, or, Revisiting Sevenwaters

For much of 2016, I've been relishing audiobooks. Let's see, at this point I've listened to The Way of Kings, The Wizard of London, Elantris, The Golem and the Jinni, and Daughter of the Forest, and I'm now just in the first few chapters of Child of the Prophecy. Why so few? My audiobook listening is largely confined to my car, where it helps make my lengthy commutes through a traffic-filled city much more bearable. Also, at this point in my audiobooking adventures, I have yet to try listening to something that I have NOT read previously in print. Audiobooking is a wonderful way to re-read a favorite book, when in your traditional reading life your hands are full with new works.

I could barely contain my joy when I discovered Juliet Marillier's original Sevenwaters Trilogy was coming out in audiobook. These three books, along with Wolfskin, made Marillier my favorite fantasy writer when I discovered them a little more than a decade ago, and I was keen to revisit them. As I listened to Daughter of the Forest, I remembered all too well why I loved the book so much the first time. But it had been a long time since I'd read it, and I'd allowed certain things to slip my mind. Also, I'm not quite the same reader I was ten-plus years ago. Different elements land on me, while other elements that I might once have tolerated or overlooked have become more off-putting to me now. This first Sevenwaters book is still a beautiful piece of writing, and still has a place in my heart. Yet I felt moved to revise my Goodreads star rating and compose the following review (Spoilers present):
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/548613240?book_show_action=false

It left me wanting more, but when it came time to order the next audiobook, I decided to skip Son of the Shadows and come back to it at some future date, since listening to the first book reminded me of just how much I hated the horrible treatment that Niamh, Sorcha's non-protagonist elder daughter, endures at the hands of her male relatives. After listening to Sorcha get pushed around by her brothers, I concluded I didn't need that right now. I ordered Child of the Prophecy instead. In the years since I'd first read these books, I had gotten the idea that this third book was my least favorite in the trilogy. Now I find I've completely reversed my position, and I'm enjoying this audiobook much more than Daughter of the Forest. A large part of the difference lies with the narrators. Terry Donnelly, narrator of the first book, slipped into "whine mode" a little too often, which alienated me from Sorcha at times; also, the voices she used for male characters didn't work for me. Yet at least at this point in the narrative, Heather O'Neill, narrator of the third book, doesn't use "whine mode," even when her character is in distress. She tends to sound more defiant than helpless. As a result, I find myself more interested in Fainne, the p.o.v. character. Sorcha is a straightforwardly good heroine without many noticeable flaws other than being waaaay too slow to stand up to her brothers. Fainne is far less predictable, more complex, a girl who could easily have become a villain but in the end chooses to be a hero instead. (As a bonus, O'Neill's voices for the male characters don't grate on my nerves.)

Brief reviews of the others I've listened to:
The Way of Kings: wonderful, as long as the p.o.v. is male and Michael Kramer is doing the reading. Kate Reading is all right, but I don't love her voice the way I do Kramer's.

The Wizard of London: decent, but at times the narrator sounded a little too "precious" since the narrative centers on child characters. The book doesn't quite hold up. I still appreciated the friendship between the two girls, but the "sexism-made-me-evil" child-murdering villainess bothered me more this time around, and the fact that the patriarchal rules that made her evil to begin with remain firmly entrenched at the book's end bothered me most of all.

Elantris: loved it, once I got past thinking the narrator sounded a lot like the guy who does the "Honest Trailers."

The Golem and the Jinni: loved it! What a wonderful piece of writing this is, and the narrator ideally chosen.

At some point, I'll need to rise to the challenge of listening to an audiobook of a work I have not read before. Kate Forsyth's The Beast's Garden, the third in her historical-fiction fairytale series, is in my audio collection, because it became available in that form more quickly than in print. This will probably be the first "new" audiobook to which I'll listen.

In other news:
I'm over a hundred pages into Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and so far I've seen neither hide nor hair of a female character other than the male narrator's woefully caricatured mother. (His father, at least, is allowed to be a real person, though not always sympathetic.) Plus, the narrator seems a little too entitled for my tastes. But a good friend of mine recommended this book to me, so I'm sticking with it. She knows I have no patience with sausagefests and would not have suggested I read it if it remained this. Plus, the movie trailer makes it clear there are indeed girls in this book, eventually.

Ahab's Wife: I still love the writing, and the first-person voice of the title character is highly imaginative, curious, and thoughtful, making her a character I like spending time with. But the narrative meanders a little, and I've wondered whether the book really has to be as long as it is. I will probably award it four stars -- five for style and characterization, one star off for plotting.

Path of the Sun: nothing new to report here. I'm going to regret seeing the last of Dhulyn and Parno.

Still, I have ample consolation. I've acquired a number of new books lately. The Copper Promise, which I found to my delighted surprise at my favorite book dealer at LibertyCon, is the one I'm most excited about, since it's gotten a lot of good buzz. I also picked up Todd Lockwood's The Summer Dragon, and found Helen Lowe's entire The Heir of Night trilogy. Funny how every year I start with a list of books I intend to read, yet I never can stick to it. New things come in to displace the ones on the original list. This month Django Wexler's new one, The Guns of Empire, comes out! I will have to start that as soon as I can lay hold of it.

>113 kceccato: Quick note, The Heir of Night series is actually going to be a quartet, I believe, but book 4 is still being written so it doesn't have a date yet. I own 1-3 but haven't read them yet so I'm not sure how conclusive the ending is...

114: Thanks for the heads-up! I'll be on the lookout for that.

So The Path of the Sun has come to its conclusion. It's the last Dhulyn and Parno book, and it's also my least favorite in the series, though it still earned two stars for me. My dissatisfaction only emerged in the last couple of pages, so be warned: this review contains Spoilers.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/607092969

If only Malan would resurrect these Mercenary Brothers. I'm sure there are plenty of stories about them still to be told.

DragonCon is only a couple of weeks away. This should be a good year for me, as now I have TWO novels to talk up, and as a bonus, the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company is performing a new script of mine that Friday night. But among my biggest sources of excitement? Brandon Sanderson is coming! As a result, The Alloy of Law has popped to the top of the TBR ladder and will take Dhulyn & Parno's place. Jim Butcher is also coming; I'm a little less excited because I still haven't read any of his work, but I may give The Aeronaut's Windlass a look-see once I've finished Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which is proving to be a fast read (and there are female characters in it now).

Started The Alloy of Law last night and am reminded all too keenly of how bitterly Warbreaker disappointed me. Are we going to get along, new book? I want to like you, but stuffing the Action Girl in the refrigerator within the first twenty pages isn't starting off on the right foot with me. I'm starting to get the impression that Vin notwithstanding, Sanderson doesn't really care much for Action Girls -- considering no character in Warbreaker fits that description, and Sarene from Elantris (though I love her) doesn't kick any butt, and we find Action Girls only on the side of Evil in The Stormlight Archive.

I will still await the next Stormlight Archive with bated breath, but if I don't find a heroine to love within the next fifty pages, The Alloy of Law and I may be through. A bit harsh, maybe, but I strongly hated that Prologue.

Another update:

I've now started The Aeronaut's Windlass. Like The Alloy of Law, this one's going to have to do some work to win me over.

I feel a little better about The Alloy of Law since I went to Goodreads and explored some reviews of its immediate sequel, Shadows of Self. Those pretty much ensure that I will finish the first book, if only so I can read and understand the sequel(s). But I'm still P.O'd about that Prologue. Honestly, I can't be the only one. Even though I came to see other virtues in the book, I never did quite forgive Elliott's Spirit Gate for killing off its action heroine and switching to her jerkish womanizing ex-boyfriend as a main character.

Now, The Aeronaut's Windlass has made a similar not-entirely-good first impression on me, and I admit my own prejudices may be working against me here. Nothing so far has really enraged me the way The Alloy of Law's Prologue did, but I've been leery of Butcher ever since I heard that he actually admires John Norman's Gor series. I don't see how any fan of those books can entirely escape the taint of sexism, and I can detect that taint in the other books of his that I've read, the first four of the Codex Alera series. I've noticed that all his irredeemably evil villains -- ALL of them -- seem to be female. Male baddies may be part of the picture, but they're depicted as a little bit complicated and redemption may be within their reach. Women like Invidia, the Tribune Medica (forget her name), Phrygiar Navaris, and the Vord Queen... well, only a blade to the throat or an arrow between the eyes will solve their problem. If one of the "good" female characters like Kitai, Isana, or Amara were placed in position to take one or more of the evil women down, I'd find it a bit more tolerable. But no. These evil women are bound to meet their defeat at the hands of men, that "Righteous Male vs. Evil Female" thing that I find so off-putting. I haven't managed to bring myself back to this series ever since Captain's Fury, and that climactic sword fight between the oh-so-heroic Tavi and the oh-so-evil Navaris. I haven't been able to wash that bad taste from my mouth.

Not all females are villains, but all villains are female, and from what I've read the same holds true in The Aeronaut's Windlass. (Couldn't at least ONE of the dastardly monsters be a guy?) I can only hope that this time, at least one of the heroines will play a central role in a female villain's defeat. Don't know about this; haven't read any Spoilers in this regard. My problem so far (a little over sixty pages in) is that both the female POV characters have disappointingly little in the way of competence. I do have some initial affection for the big, shy Bridget, but Gwen strikes me as the kind of "all mouth, no skill" faux-action-girl that annoys me no end. The narrative makes it clear that neither of these women knows what to do with a sword. Couldn't one of them have been endowed with some halfway decent fighting skills? I miss Dhulyn Wolfshead.

Still, I have no plans to lay either of these aside. I'll be in for the long haul. If only Shadows of Self would finally come out in paperback...

And at last, my Goodreads review of Ahab's Wife (and this one's Spoiler-free):

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/631138351

Top-notch historical fiction, as long as you don't mind lots and lots of description and introspective ruminations -- all very well-written, but they can bog down an unwary reader.

Well, I have good news. The Alloy of Law has officially won me over. I'm still not happy with Sanderson's decision to invoke one of the least feminist tropes in existence at the story's beginning, but at this point (about 170 pages in) I have reached full engagement with the characters, and my greatest dissatisfaction lies in the publisher's inexplicable unwillingness to release Shadows of Self as a trade paperback.

Waxillium is an honorable though not especially colorful character. He's sympathetic and interesting partly because he has a character with a more vivid personality (Wayne) by his side. For me, a book lives or dies on the strength of its heroine, and I have come to like Marasi, as she's shown herself to be whip-smart and even unexpectedly capable in crisis situations. My favorite part: both men like her. All too often in stories that feature a "bromance," when a woman is introduced to a bromantic pair, one will be taken with her, and the other will be jealous, or at least suspicious, of her. What a delight to find that does not happen here! So I can sit back and enjoy both the heroine and the bromance.

I'm also getting a better, more optimistic feel for The Aeronaut's Windlass. The introduction of Folly made a big difference. I look forward to seeing just what this wonderfully weird girl brings to the table.

I had a bit of a reading hiccup when I picked up Robert J. Sawyer's Rollback to follow Ahab's Wife in my "challenge" spot. My husband had recommended the book to me; Sawyer is his favorite science fiction writer, and I did enjoy the YA "W.W.W." trilogy (although I found the third volume disappointing). But the back of the book had led me to believe that an elderly female scientist was the book's protagonist, and this is what my husband remembered when he recommended to me. But as I started it and flipped through it (a bad habit of mine, I know), I came to realize she wasn't the main character at all, and we would spend very little time in her head. The book is really about her husband. That by itself would not have moved me to set it aside, since the book would have been in my "challenge" spot, and "books with male protagonists/ predominantly male casts" would fit right into that spot (I mean to read The Goblin Emperor in that spot before the year is out, especially after hearing an interview with Katherine Addison on the "Speculate" podcast). But I did put the book aside, deciding it wasn't really what I wanted, when I got a whiff of the adultery subplot. A male protagonist I could be okay with and even enjoy. But a male protagonist who cheats on the wife he supposedly "loves" after an operation has made him young but left her an old woman? No, thanks. I at least want to like and respect the male protags I read about.

So I've moved to a different sort of challenge, Urban Fantasy -- Hoffman's Spirits That Walk in Shadow. So far, so good.

Here's my Goodreads review of The Alloy of Law (with a Spoiler warning):

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/704614232?book_show_action=false

As is evident, I came around to really enjoying this one, so much so that I decided not to bother waiting around for the second book to come out in paperback. The hardback is on my shelf now, and will be read by me soon. I was surprised by how much I ended up liking Marasi, especially since the things that made me unsure about her at first contributed to my liking by the end. Sure, I have a weakness for the overtly kick-ass heroine who flaunts convention by wearing trousers and striding into danger unflinching and armed to the teeth. Yet in Marasi we have a "girly girl" who likes wearing dresses and appreciates the conveniences of living in the city and is embarrassed by her interest in law enforcement, yet is also whip-smart and incredibly courageous and resourceful in moments of crisis. I love awesome tomboys, but a few more awesome girly-girls like Marasi would also be welcome.

I finished The Alloy of Law during DragonCon (where I also had the privilege of hearing Brandon Sanderson give a Q&A and a reading of a couple of excerpts from his upcoming third Stormlight Archive book), and when I returned home picked up Todd Lockwood's The Summer Dragon. So far, it's a winner, one I'm finding hard to put down. A well-written dragon story is always a pleasure, particularly if a tough, determined female protagonist, one who forges ahead in the face of heartbreak, is also featured. If no unforeseen disaster befalls, the book should win Lockwood a place on my Authors to Watch list.

I'm a bit less thrilled with Spirits That Walk in Shadow. The situation is intriguing, and I do like the female friends at the center of the story, Jaimie and Kim. As long as those two were the focus, I was able to ignore my usual Urban Fantasy cooties enough to enjoy it. Then the boys showed up, and I haven't enjoyed it quite as much since then, especially as it's apparent they aren't going to go away. I was hoping for a novel with a focus securely on the evolving friendship between two female roommates, but with the boys always around, there's no chance for that friendship to develop as deeply as I was hoping it would. It even makes the situation more shallow, less intense, although a few powerful moments still emerge here and there. Hoffman's descriptions are vivid and often lyrical; I like the narrative voice she uses for both POV characters. But whenever the characters start talking, I'm reminded of why I don't care much for Urban Fantasy.

Then there's The Aeronaut's Windlass, and my continued ambivalence.
The adventure is compelling, and in isolation I appreciate a number of the characters. Bridget is, at the moment, my unquestioned favorite. But there's a reason for this. At this point in the novel (around 300 pages in), she's the only female character about whom I'm getting anything like a "You go, girl!" vibe, the only one whose eventual discovery of her own badassery promises to provide a cathartic triumph, some glimmering of feminism. I appreciate Folly's unique weirdness, and it's always fun when she's on the page, but she's pretty clearly and securely a sidekick. (Perhaps in the course of the series she'll evolve into more of a heroine in her own right.) As for Gwen, she still strikes me as someone straight out of the Robert Jordan "Irritating-Shrew-Who-Needs-a-Spanking" playbook, someone we're supposed to want to see humbled and put in her place rather than triumphant and badass. And it's likely, of course, that her humbling will come at the hands of men.

But the worst of it is the absence of female aeronauts. The fact that women can be in the Guard without anyone batting an eye suggests that Butcher may have been aiming for a "Gender Is No Object" society. But if that's so, why is there not a single woman among Captain Grimm's crew? If there were even one, then the whole business with the evil Captain Ransom, the "femme fatale ex" (never a female-friendly trope in the best of circumstances), would be a little more palatable. But as it is, we get Evil Captain Ransom vs. The Righteous Dudes -- a female villain's downfall at the hands of heroic men, yet again. (That's not a Spoiler because I haven't yet read that far, but darn it, it just seems so inevitable. If I had even half a hope that Bridget might be the one to take her down, I could read Captain Ransom's scenes without cringing.)

I appreciate the Bechdel Test and always love to read novels that pass it, but I find it interesting that The Alloy of Law, which does not pass the Test (because Marasi never converses at length with either Steris or Ranette), strikes me as a more satisfyingly feminist work (so far) than The Aeronaut's Windlass, which does pass the Test. Go figure. Still, this is only the first volume in the series, and I'm enjoying it enough to be curious about where it all will lead.

>121 kceccato: The Summer Dragon is now on my wish list.

I'm glad you ended up liking The alloy of law. I preferred it to Mistborn because I liked both Marasi and Steris (who I think has the potential to become really interesting) and found the setting more unique.

#123: The Smurfette Principle hurts the original Mistborn trilogy. Sanderson himself has said he feels that part was a mistake, and he would try to include at least one or two more women if he were writing it now. In The Alloy of Law and its sequels, he corrected that problem.

Read some more on The Aeronaut's Windlass yesterday. It has to be one of the darned mood-swingiest books I've ever read. One minute I'm thinking, "Why are you doing this to me?" and the next I'm thinking, "DARN, that's cool!" Either way, I have reached the point where it's hard to put the book down. This one and The Summer Dragon will likely get four stars.

As for Spirits That Walk in Shadow, that one does fall into the "it's not you, it's me" department.

I found this blog on my Twitterfeed a couple of days ago. I have to share it, because the sentiments are so close to my own that I can only wish I'd written it myself. Foz Meadows, too, has noticed the limits too many creators and fans have placed on the KINDS of stories that should center around female protagonists.
https://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/how-to-suppress-female-characters/

Here it is at last: My Spoiler-tagged Goodreads review of The Aeronaut's Windlass.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1321676229

Butcher, I will admit, is a very entertaining writer. But I'm not sold on his ability to create a heroine who is unreservedly awesome. My mind isn't closed. I will be on the lookout for the next book in this series.

My Goodreads review of The Summer Dragon, tagged with very minor Spoilers:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1629091116?book_show_action=false

This book has all the epic earmarks (dragons, monstrous foes, religious conflict), but the story has a more intimate feeling than epics often have, because it's told in first person. Kudos to Lockwood for his sympathetic and heroic portrayal of a teenage girl who is driven by ideals and a sense of honor and duty, not romantic love.

Since my last post I've started some new reads. I chose Trudi Canavan's Priestess of the White partly because one of the projects I'm working on has a priestess as a significant character, and I wanted to read about a character like that depicted sympathetically. (Priestesses usually turn out to be evil.) So far, Auraya, while certainly sympathetic, doesn't have quite as vivid a personality as Sonea from The Black Magician Trilogy, but I'm still enjoying it. This one doesn't suffer from the Smurfette-itis of the other trilogy, it has already passed the Bechdel Test, and I'm intrigued by the world built here, which includes a race of winged humanoids.

After finishing The Summer Dragon and liking it very much, I wanted a book almost certain not to let me down, so I've started Wexler's The Guns of Empire. After the bitterly unsympathetic portrayal of women in positions of authority in The Aeronaut's Windlass, I love seeing Raesinia and Winter, who is now a General, exercising their power. They may make mistakes -- I'm only up to p. 40 -- but at least I have no doubt that at the end of the day, we readers are meant to like and admire them. Yay, sympathetic women in charge!

>126 kceccato: I ended up loathing the Priestess of the white trilogy for various reasons. I will be interested in your opinion.

127: Hmm... that's interesting. I'll have an eye on that. What are some better books that feature a sympathetic priestess character? I'd like to seek them out.

I noted on your thread that you liked The Waterborne Blade. I just purchased that from Amazon and it's pretty high on my TBR ladder.

Just started The Goblin Emperor, but am not decided whether I should continue because I just read a very dismaying Goodreads review:

"every female character is either a villain, a mother figure who dies, or helpless."

Please, friends who have read the book, assure me this is not true. I know that women play only supporting roles in this story -- I'm prepared for that -- but the first three named women (the steward, the previous Emperor's widow, the evil cousin's wife) I've met are all distinctly unsympathetic, either shrewish or duplicitous. Will I meet at least one more likable woman soon? Pretty please?

>129 kceccato: Yes, and I loved that book.

130: Whew! Because I was liking the book (50 pages in) before I read that distressing review. Do I have to wait too many pages before she makes an appearance?

129> I don't know how many pages it takes for them to turn up, but there are likable female characters in The Goblin Emperor.

132: Are any of Maia's female relatives less repellent than they seem at first sight? There sure are a lot of unlikable shrews in this first part of the book -- the steward (the only woman with any responsibility), the stepmother, the half-sisters. The evil cousin's wife isn't exactly an unlikable shrew, but she's pretty clearly a femme fatale. At this point the only halfway sympathetic and trustworthy characters surrounding Maia have been men (Csevet, Cala, Beleshar), which is why I found it regrettably easy to believe that reviewer. Plus, I already learned that the main villain is indeed a woman, one of the half-sisters.

Still reading Priestess of the White and wondering when the proverbial other shoe is going to drop to make me hate it. So far I'm still enjoying it. I particularly appreciate the portrayal of Speaker Sirri of the Siyee, one of those reasonable female authority figures I'm keen to see more of. The only character I dislike, that I know I may not be MEANT to dislike, is the "Stepford mother" of the male lead's apprentice, and she's not in the book quite enough to ruin it. Of the books in my current rotation, however, The Guns of Empire still has the bulk of my affection. Few series I've read in recent years have given me more of what I read fantasy for.

I'm on the lookout for some new authors to try in the coming year. I'm looking for, specifically: 1) second-world (epic or historical) fantasy, and 2) active heroes, both female and male (and I use the word "heroes" quite purposely -- no grimdark). Even if I end up a little disappointed, new authors are worth trying. Does anyone know of author(s) just coming on the scene, that I should give a look?

>133 kceccato:: I wouldn't say the half-sister is the main villain at all! She's ONE of the villains, involved in ONE of the plots, but by no means the "main" villain. In fact, I would say there are by far more men involved in and driving those plots than women. As for sympathetic women, I can think of three to five off the top of my head, depending on how you view them. I also very much disagree on the cousin's wife being a femme fatale; she's loyal to her husband and tries to intervene on his behalf at times, but she's not manipulative or dishonest in any way.

134: That's very good to know. By the end I will have seen for myself, since I do want to see where this story goes. I suppose my greatest disappointment so far is in the character of the steward, since she's the only female character in Maia's retinue at this point and the only one with whom he would interact closely on a regular basis. I regret that Addison felt the need to make her a bitch on wheels instead of a flawed but redeemable figure who might evolve into an ally.

That got me off on the wrong foot, but this wouldn't be the first time I ended up loving a book about which I initially had my doubts; that happened with The Alloy of Law, after all.

>135 kceccato:: I hope you'll come out liking TGE, too. :)

133> I remember at least one of his half sisters being sympathetic. The one who he's supposed to marry off? Have you gotten to her yet?

For the book recommendation request:

- I think it's already on your radar, but Accident of Stars. It's the first in a new portal fantasy series, and one of the things I noted about it when I read it was that it wasn't grimdark. The four POV characters are all female, but there's male characters among the supporting cast on the protagonist's side.
- The Queen of Blood is another start to a new second world fantasy series. The POV chapters mostly alternate between a male protagonist and female protagonist, although there's a few other POV characters if I remember right. The female protagonist is active and integral to the story, and she has friendships with other female characters.
- The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is a novella that was released in August about a middle aged woman on a quest through a dream world.
- The Deathsniffer's Assistant is a fantasy mystery set in a world that seems to be inspired by the Victorian period. The protagonist is male, but there's a notable number of sympathetic female supporting characters, including an eccentric detective. The first book in the series was released last year, and the second book came out this summer.
- The Mountain of Kept Memory is a new stand alone fantasy novel that will be released sometime in November. I got an ARC and liked it quite a bit. There's two protagonists, a brother and a sister, and the POVs alternate between them.
- Have you read City of Stairs? It has a number of good characters both male and female, and the sequel, City of Blades, is also worth reading.

Been patiently waiting for the price of Lois McMaster Bujold's Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen to come down,and have finally bought it :0) Neither my library system nor the bookshops ever have Bujold or C J Cherryh books so I have to buy them online. But with only £40 book tokens from Xmas presents available for book buying per year I have to be very careful what I buy,and be very patient! Makes it all the sweeter when I finally get the books.Still keeping aside the cash for Jim Butcher's next Harry Dresden book,whenever he finally finishes and publishes Peace Talks....sigh....
I was delighted to get Jeff Vandermeer's Nebula winning Annihilation the other day for a mere 99p through BookBub. I am reading through the Nebulas (33/52 read) so this was great. Reserving it at the library would have been 75p anyway,so this was worthwhile.
For the most part,since I read a lot of old SF, I am delighted to use the Open Library,where I can borrow masses of vintage Sf free of charge. Best discovery I have this year ,I have been able to read dozens of otherwise unavailable or expensive old books. Awesome!
Thanks to Open Library I have not had to resort to stealing old SF classics ;0)

137, 138: Thanks!

I haven't read City of Stairs yet, though both it and City of Blades have already made it to my home shelves.

The Deathsniffer's Assistant sounds like the kind of book I would like to read a little more of next year. I prefer female protagonists, but I want to branch out, particularly since I see, year after year, male protagonists dominating in new Epic/Historical Fantasy releases (my favorite genre) and female protagonists dominating in new Urban Fantasy releases (NOT my favorite). I still have plenty of second-world fantasy books with female leads on my shelf, but I fear I may be missing something, especially in the area of highly regarded new/recent releases. Here's what I want to try more of in the coming year:

"Books with male protagonists, in which women still get to be heroic and awesome." That is, the main POV character may be a man, but female characters still get to make substantial contributions on the side of (at least relative) Good.

A good example might be Martha Wells' Books of the Raksura series. In these books, Moon is very clearly the protagonist, but Jade still matters. She contributes. Her choices make a difference. Granted, at times when I was reading the trilogy, I felt impatient when she was off-stage for too long, but I always knew she would come back in an awesome way. (I still need to read the new Raksura novel.) I like to see how books with a central hero can still include a heroine worthy of the name. What I do NOT want are books in which the female leads are "damselled," having their agency and capability siphoned off or taken away altogether, just so the male leads can be THE heroes, the only difference-makers. (Tor.com recently posed an examination of Disney's "Atlantis: The Lost Empire," in which one of the chief complaints was the treatment of the heroine at the story's climax. As I read the description of it, all I could think was, "Thank God I never bothered to watch this one.")

A few books that I already know wouldn't qualify, despite being well thought of: The Lies of Locke Lamora (women's roles are too small/antagonistic); The Grace of Kings (women don't get much of anything to do until the last... fifth? of the book); The Name of the Wind (the hero's love interest is universally loathed by the readership, and other women aren't really in it enough to matter). Open to other suggestions, though.

I've read further into The Goblin Emperor (at 99 ps.) and am now fully invested in Maia and his situation. Still don't like any of the women, though. They're all rude jerks to Maia, and since Maia is our focal point and the object of our sympathy and rooting interest, it's hard to think well of characters who treat him badly. (I've gotten to the one he's supposed to marry off. She's rude to him, too.) Granted, plenty of male characters treat him badly as well (his cousin Setheris being the absolute worst), but at least he has three significant male friends/supporters in Csevet, Cala, and Beleshar. We haven't seen ANY of the women show him kindness (and dear departed Chenelo does not count). Whether this will change remains to be seen, but for now I'll just read on and try to ignore my dislike of them, and maybe figure out a way to imagine Cala into a female...

139> I'd think you'd like City of Stairs, City of Blades, and The Deathsniffer's Assistant. Only the last one has a male protagonist though.

I love The Lies of Locke Lamora, but I wouldn't recommend it to you. I read maybe a fourth of The Grace of Kings but got annoyed with the scarcity of women and ended up quitting. I haven't read The Name of the Wind since middle school... and given that I had some problems with the female characters at that time, I'd probably have even more to say now. Basically, I think you're right in steering clear of those.

As for fantasy novels that fall under what you're looking for, most of the obvious ones I know you've already read. Scriber and the new Mistborn series for instance. The Curse of Chalion maybe? Although I can't remember specifically how much plot impact the female characters decisions had, just that there were at least two who were important and sympathetic.

As for The Goblin Emperor, his sister's being chilly because she's upset that he's going to marry her off. They eventually have a better relationship. There's also a female bodyguard who comes in at some point.

140: I certainly have no intention of abandoning female leads. I just thought I should add an occasional male lead into the mix, and The Deathsniffer's Assistant seems like it would be a good fit.

The Curse of Chalion and Scriber are perfect examples of the kind of thing I'm looking for. Some of Bujold's books about Miles Vorkosigan could fit as well; I'm most interested in the ones in which Sgt. Taura features prominently, though I'm keen to get to know Ekaterin too.

Put on a burst of speed and finished The Guns of Empire, the last hundred pages being awfully unputdownable. My Spoiler-free Goodreads review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1407405373

Next up in this spot on my rotation: Shadows of Self.

142> I'm glad you liked The Guns of Empire! I was really hoping Bobby would make it through. And what about all the other characters in the last book? I think there'll probably be some more character deaths coming up... And that ending! If Janus is under the control of the demon, everything feels truly doomed.

I'm very excited to see your thoughts on Shadows of Self!

>142 kceccato: Can I request a spoiler on The Guns of Empire? Was it one of the lesbian characters who died? I've held off starting the series until it finishes and I know for sure they survive because I expect that to happen...

144: Winter, the main lesbian character, survives. She's one of two main protagonists. Her first love interest turns out to be a bit of a nutjob, but in The Guns of Empire she starts a new relationship that seems to be stabler and happier. So far, neither of the lovers has died.

My review of Priestess of the White:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/558178835

The book hits all my most crucial feminist spots -- lots of women, female friendships, sympathetically depicted female authority -- and yet I'm loath to move on to the sequels after #127's warning. It's a bit like wishing Gilmore Girls had ended with Season 4 and spared us its slow deterioration.

Shadows of Self didn't take very long to grab me; I'm eager to see just how Marasi gets on in her new role as constable. Once again, however, the prologue bothered me, though not quite as much as the prologue in The Alloy of Law. Why would Sanderson go to so much trouble to make me like Lessie? What on earth would be the point in getting attached to a character whom we already know has no future?

Just started Leigh Barduro's Six of Crows. Too soon for me to form an opinion re: plot or character, but I like the second-world version of Holland; I don't recall seeing that too often.

On p. 195 of The Goblin Emperor. I am intrigued by Maia and his situation, but the lack of any decent female characters continues to try my patience. So far, the women have two modes: icy unpleasantness or quivering timidity. I see no raw material in any of them from which a character worthy of the word "heroine" might be built. I reached the point at which Maia gives Vedero permission to study the stars rather than forcing her to marry -- a fine gesture on Maia's part, but that shrew Vedero doesn't deserve it! While everyone else is giving him hell for his decision, would it really have been too much to ask that she extend the tiniest expression of gratitude? Why WOULDN'T she send a note? This coldness undermines any sympathy I might have for her. I am resolved to finish the book, but my dissatisfaction with the women is bound to make it into my eventual review, even if it ends up with four stars.

>146 kceccato: Your review of Priestess of the white is very good and I agree that, based on what I've read by Canavan, that relationships are her weak point. That was one of the reasons I disliked the series in the end - but others might be more sympathetic to the romance in which Auraya ends up. Another issue I had with the series was that there is a big twist which was supposed to be a surprise but I had guessed it way before the reveal. It felt really obvious to me. However, I know that this is a popular series and I'll be interested to see if you enjoy it more than I did. I wasn't keen on most of the characters which didn't help my reading experience.

147: Thanks! I do mean to finish the series in time, though interspersed with other books in my TBR. I have the second volume already but still need to find the third.

Canavan does better, I think, with relationships that are NOT romantic. I was more interested, for instance, in Sonea's bond with her father figure/mentor than in her connection with her eventual love interest in The Black Magician Trilogy. I have to give Canavan credit for making an m/m romance an important part of this series, but even that romance felt perfunctory at times.

Issue of the Day: Looking to the Year Ahead

Every year I center some attention on two Goodreads lists: the "Can't Wait Sci-fi/Fantasy of (year)," which they create, and the "Upcoming (year) Fantasy/Sci-fi Novels With Female Leads or Co-Leads," which I create. The former list always makes its first appearance in the fall. Since it's only the end of October, the list is obviously shorter than it will eventually be. Yet the latter list, my list, is MUCH shorter than it has been the two previous years. Here are both:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/100366.Can_t_Wait_Sci_Fi_Fantasy_of_2017#295...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/105112.Upcoming_2017_sci_fi_fantasy_novels_w...

My list, I admit, is flawed. Its main problem: unless I put a book on my "To-Read" list, I can't include it on any of the lists I make.

That means that a number of books with female leads or co-leads don't make it onto the list unless somebody else votes for them. Anne Bishop's "Meg Corbyn" series, for example, is waaaaaay down near the bottom of my priority list, due mostly to my lack of enthusiasm for urban fantasy, but Bishop does have a new one coming out this year, obviously with a female lead. V.E. Schwab's "Shades of Magic" series also has a new entry, probably with the same female lead as before, but reviews made me skeptical of the series and the way women in general are treated in it, so I left it off my To-Read list. Other books with synopses/teasers that promise female leads, I couldn't add to my To-Read pile because they're written by authors of whom I'm a little suspicious, their previous books not having been too kind to female characters (e.g. Brian Staveley, Mark Lawrence, Brian McClelland). Then there's the problem of too little information. Max Gladstone's new book probably qualifies since, hey, it's Max Gladstone, but the entry includes no description or synopsis, so I leave it off.

All the same, I can't help feeling disappointed that my list isn't longer. Heck, I know 2017 will be a good reading year because 1) it's not as if I don't have a massive back-log of unread books, and 2) Sanderson's "Oathbringer" is scheduled to come out, which makes everything better. But I wish there were more brand-new books I could look forward to. Of particular regret: Robert Jackson Bennett's "Divine Cities" series switches to a male lead for its third book and the description cries out in bold letters, DON'T GET TOO ATTACHED TO THE HEROINE OF BOOK 1!, and even Tamora Pierce's promised new book has a male lead! 2017 fantasy seems a dude's world, indeed.

Now I need to talk about Bennett's "Divine Cities," which everyone I trust has recommended to me:

If the description for "City of Miracles" is not a major-league fake-out -- which it could very well be, since it strikes me as improbable that Bennett would deliberately anger his readers with such a blatant Spoiler -- should I bother reading the first two books at all?

One of the problems with being a Spoiler junkie is that I have a hard time letting myself engage with a protagonist that I know in advance will either die or undergo a Face-Heel Turn. The Face-Heel Turn is absolutely a deal-breaker. Some of my friends here have recommended Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series to me, but I won't touch it because I know the sole female detective in the book turns evil in Vol. 4. The death issue is a little more complicated, as it depends on exactly when and how the character will die. If the character dies heroically, on her feet and fighting, at the END of the book, then hey, maybe I'll let myself come to love and admire her and mourn her passing. But if she is murdered -- that is, as a victim rather than a hero -- or dies as the result of a freak accident, then I'm far less inclined to make an investment in her, and if it turns out she's the only significant female presence in the book(s), so that in the end it's left exclusively to male characters to save the day, the deal is broken.

How do you guys feel about reading the stories of characters you know in advance are doomed? Is it better to be surprised by Ned Stark's death, or to see it coming?

149> I'll add some of my qualifying TBR list books to your list. I do notice that you have The Obelisk Gate on the list. That one came out this year, it's the third in the series that will come out in 2017.

Also, it's possible to add books that you haven't marked as "To Read" to a Goodreads list. When you click on "Add books to this list" you saying "Add books from: My Books or a Search." The default is "My Books" but if you click on "Search," a search bar letting you search all of Goodreads will pop up.

As for the Divine Cities series, I would say go ahead and read the prior two books. They're largely unrelated stories set in the same world, so it's not like there's a continuing arc that Shara's been cut out of. Or if you don't want to read City of Stairs, you could always read City of Blades instead. Shara's not the protagonist of that one and doesn't appear as much more than a cameo.

150: Thank you! That info will improve my efforts at list creation and voting.

The Obelisk Gate ended up on my list because it was on the "Can't Wait... 2017" list, but I noticed something was odd when I saw quite a few reviews. I will remove it.

Thanks for the heads-up on the Bennett books as well. I do still want to read them. I hope the third book will have a prominent heroine somewhere in its pages, even if the protagonist is male.

So, I've finished my latest Kindle read, Mistress of Masks. A pretty good read as my Kindle reads go, but nothing really to lift it above the category "pleasant time-filler." I did like the heroine, who had a fascinating power. But I needn't bother posting my Goodreads review here because I think it's only a couple of sentences long. The problem may be that I don't engage as easily when I'm reading my Kindle as I do when I have a print book in my hand. It takes me longer to finish Kindle reads, because I go at them in spurts. Sometimes I even have to remind myself to read them. Granted, I have read some excellent books on my Kindle -- Scriber comes to mind -- but a Kindle read has to be well above the ordinary in order to absorb me.

The Goblin Emperor update: I'm now on p. 258. I've recently been introduced to Ceredin, Maia's betrothed. And guess what? She's a jerk, too. This loathe-at-first-sight I've been feeling each time Addison presents me with another coldly unsympathetic female character is getting very tiresome. The duplicity of Min Venchin the opera singer has also been uncovered; she too is loathsome, and her sister the clockmaker apprentice, whom I wish I could like, is tainted by association with her, since she's willing to exploit the singer's charms to further her own ends. Gah! I'm afraid that by the time a woman with a glancing acquaintance with kindness and honor finally shows up (say, that bodyguard of whom I've been told), it will be too little, too late to wash the bad taste from my mouth. I am bound to finish the darn thing, and it will earn at least three stars from me because of the world-building and the protagonist. But I can't quite overlook the way Addison's apparently low opinion of her own gender makes it onto the page. I only wish I could love this book the way all of you do. I'm the odd woman out.
(To be fair, there is finally one woman -- exactly one -- who hasn't treated Maia like crap: his elderly stepmother, Arbelan, who at least is able to empathize with Maia because she also knows what it's like to be treated like crap by the late emperor. Unfortunately, her role is so small that it's not enough to offset the unpleasant shrewishness of the other women.)

But if The Goblin Emperor is an arid, choking wasteland when it comes to halfway sympathetic female characters, Shadows of Self is a cool drink of water. I love the women in this book. It would have been so easy for Sanderson to write Steris as a standard-issue Helpless Bland Love Interest, and it pleases me no end that he doesn't do that. Steris is an interesting character with room to grow, and I look forward to seeing how she develops. Marasi is her usual earnest and likable self. Plus I'm about to be introduced to MeLaan. I can't wait! This time around, the Big Bad is female, but the women on the side of Good are so engaging that the clearly impending showdown between Righteous Male and Evil Female doesn't even bother me.

Making some headway into Six of Crows. Now the plot has kicked in. I quite like the second-world urban world-building in this book, and the characters, male and female, are intriguing. I suspect Nina will end up being my favorite, since I have a soft spot for big, physically strong heroines.

>152 kceccato: I can see your point on The goblin emperor. In all fairness, most of the other people are not very nice to Maya either. Fortunately, Ceredin improves once she gets to know Maya. Min Vechin is indeed loathsome, but she does apologize to Maya in the end. I can't remember if it was good enough to offset the way she used him, though.
It's true that Addison could have leveled things out more, but there is almost no-one who is unreservedly kind to Maya, at least not at first. The best ones I can remember are the secretary and at some point, one of the guys in parlament. IN the end, though, Ceredin is fully on Maya's side, even threatening to fight for him (and it is clearly indicated that she would kick ass if she would) It's a pity she doesn't get a larger role. Also the housekeeper (you mentioned her before). At least she doesn't have much of a role at all.

153: Sympathetic male characters in The Goblin Emperor: Thara Celehar (the Witness for the Dead), Csevet, Cala, Beleshar (though he's a little stiff), the Chancellor's son whose name I forget (interesting that he has inherited none of his father's rotten-ness), and Maia's nephew Idra. That's quite a few, compared with the dearth of women who are in any way sympathetic to our very sympathetic protagonist.

I really wanted that clockmaker's apprentice to be somebody I could like, since she's the first named professional female character of whom we've gotten a glimpse, apart from the repellent steward. Alas, not even she is endowed with a shred of honor or decency, or even allowed to be very good at what she does (as the chapter makes it clear that the bridge is actually the brainchild of her male colleague). And Vedero, whom I also wanted to like, lost me when she pointedly withheld any acknowledgment of his acceding to her desires, even though she had to know it would cost him. I really would LIKE these women if Addison would only let me. But she won't. Again, I don't think Addison/Monette thinks very highly of her own gender... or maybe that's a bit harsh. I think female characters just don't interest her very much. She has never, as far as I'm aware, written a single book with a female protagonist or even a female co-lead. I get the impression she includes women in her stories only when she feels she has to.

This does NOT, I hasten to say, make her a bad writer. She is very, very good at what she does, and like every writer, she has a perfect right to write about those characters and situations that DO interest her. The Goblin Emperor is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a bad book. It's only that the lack of halfway likable female characters limits its appeal for me as a reader. Even the best books aren't going to be loved by everyone.

I feel the need to talk about things I love.

Shadows of Self: My love for this book continues to grow. MeLaan is now my favorite character, just because she is absolutely no-holds-barred awesome. I understand why a character like her can't really be a protagonist, why she must be confined to supporting-role status. All the same, I relish every page on which she appears.

In the last fifty pages or so, Marasi hasn't done much, but I have faith that her moments to shine are forthcoming.

Six of Crows: At this point I have a good handle on the major players -- their skills, their goals, their personalities. While I can definitely see the burgeoning romance plots, my favorite relationships are the friendships, specifically Inej's friendships with Nina and Jesper. Two girls interacting as friends + a girl and a boy interacting as friends without a hint of sexual tension = a happy me. I like Inej quite a bit, and Jesper is fun, but Nina is, as I expected, my favorite.

It does continue to rankle that fantasy books featuring central bromances still far, far outnumber fantasy books in which women get to be in on the friendship action, as if female characters' most important relationships must always have a sexual component while male characters' most important relationships need not. The one thing I wish Shadows of Self would give me is a female friendship, especially considering how central the Wax/Wayne dynamic is. Marasi could use a female bestie, don't you think? She and Steris barely speak; despite Marasi being a part of the rescue party in The Alloy of Law, there doesn't seem to be much love lost between the two half-sisters. Ranette in the last book wasn't very nice to Marasi; no friendship there. I appreciate the non-sexual female/male friendship between Marasi and Wayne, and the book does pass the Bechdel Test thanks to some tertiary female characters at the constabulary where Marasi works. But I do regret the lack of female bonding.

The Goblin Emperor: Kiru Athmazu, the female bodyguard, has finally shown up, the first living female character I've seen who does NOT start out hateful in some way. Granted, her role looks to be very small indeed, but at least she's there, and that's something. I notice that at this point, the only women sympathetic to Maia (Kiru, Arbelan) are both significantly older than he -- meant to be substitutes, perhaps, for the mother he lost, and too mature to be tainted too heavily by the racism so deeply ingrained in that world. Wisdom and empathy grow with maturity. That's realistic.

Here, at last, is my final word on The Goblin Emperor. I've Spoiler-tagged the review but have not given away any major plot details. I hope I've managed to be somewhat fair.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1785440234

I think my next book in this slot may be a new sci-fi work, Behind the Throne. In this one, it's a female character who is suddenly burdened with the responsibility of rule, and I've heard some good things about it.

Still enjoying Shadows of Self (almost finished) and Six of Crows.

My Goodreads review of Shadows of Self. It's not very detailed, but this time I wanted to avoid Spoiler tags:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1267976322?book_show_action=false&from...

I've heard this series called "The second Mistborn Trilogy," but I've also heard there are supposed to be... five books? (Hopeful) Bands of Mourning is very high in priority on my Christmas wish list.
I will confess that in the end, I enjoyed Shadows of Self slightly less than The Alloy of Law. I still loved it a lot, but Marasi actually had less important to do this time around, despite her presence on the book's cover. (At least I THINK that's supposed to be Marasi.) I did relish seeing her in her cop role, but hopefully she'll grow further into that role in the next book. I also hope we'll get more insight into Wayne, as I like how he's moving, in slow careful steps, beyond the "comic relief" role. He's still funny, but he gets to be a little bit more. However... when I was reading The Alloy of Law, I felt like I was reading about three heroes. In Shadows of Self, it's clear that Wax is THE Hero, at least of this story, while Wayne and Marasi (and MeLaan, whom I did love the heck out of) are Hero Support. I'd like to see The Bands of Mourning get back to a more equitable division of heroic labor.

And darn, that ending. Emotionally powerful. I'll be interested to see how Sanderson builds on that very final scene. I confess, however, to a smidge of disappointment to find that a character I liked -- albeit posthumously -- turned out to be Evil All Along. If we didn't get a good female Other to counterbalance the evil one, this would have bothered me more than a smidge.

My non-Spoiler review of Six of Crows:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1202566610

New books in my rotation: Maresca's A Murder of Mages and Reichert's Beyond Ragnarok.
Behind the Throne, which I put into my "Challenge" spot after The Goblin Emperor, isn't exactly much of a challenge, being less hard science fiction than breezy and action-packed space opera. But Lordy, is it fun.

>156 kceccato: I'm sorry to hear you didn't love The Goblin Emperor. I've had that one on my kindle for a while. I bought it because it's got a very high rating here on LT. I still plan to get to it eventually, but maybe I'll wait a little longer.

159: Don't postpone it on my word alone. All my friends here loved it. Responses to books, even very good books, can vary widely, and I'm outnumbered. You may like it very much.

>160 kceccato: Okay. It's not even in the next five books anyway. Maybe one of the next 20... I actually don't plan too far ahead. I just have this vague sense I should be reading the things on my kindle.

>157 kceccato: Re: The bands of mourning : Steris finally gets to be awesome, in her own way. I am so happy!

Hope you are still enjoying Behind the throne. It is a fun read.

Behind the Throne is fun. I'm halfway through the sequel, After the Crown which comes out next week and it's just as good!

162: Behind the Throne makes a very interesting contrast to The Goblin Emperor. Both concern an heir thrust into the halls of power completely unprepared and surrounded by characters who may or may not be trustworthy. But Addison's prose is more dense and challenging. Wagers' novel, by contrast, is a breezy read. A reader won't find anything especially deep or thought-provoking here (although it's a more nuanced depiction of a matriarchy than we usually see); it's just FUN -- a gripping page-turner. Comparisons to "Star Wars" are apt.

I have one little quibble, though: I wish Hail had a female friend, or at least one female BodyGuard whom she could actually trust. I'm on p. 255 now, and I'm trying not to be bothered by the fact that all the decent and trustworthy guards -- all of them -- are men. Emmory says he chooses them based on character rather than gender, but apparently the only ones he can find who have the right kind of character are men. The only female guard is the obviously bad-news Nal, whom Emmory did NOT appoint. So, does that mean that by his standards, not one single female Tracker is worthy of the trust of this position? When we were first introduced to Alba, the chamberlain, I had hoped she might grow into the role of friend, but so far she hasn't been especially impressive. Stasia, the lady's maid, is no Anna (Downton Abbey), but instead a mindless little automaton whose skill set consists of helping Hail into and out of one outlandish outfit after another; it's hard for me to imagine her and Hail ever having any substantive conversation. Admiral Hassan and Matriarch Desai are impressive figures whom I like, but at this point they haven't had much to do, and neither shows much promise as a confidante for Hail. She gets along with them, but getting along isn't quite the same as friendship.

All the same, I'll be excited to read the sequel.

164> I think I have Behind the Throne on my ereader, and it's steadily moving up the list of books to read next.

162: Oh, and if my loved ones really love me back, Bands of Mourning will be mine on Christmas Day.

>164 kceccato: Your one quibble was mine too. I really, really wanted her to have a female friend, or at least close advisor. We do find out a bit later that a few of her bodyguards are female, and one of them stands out in a dramatic event at the climax but I too would like to see more in the sequel.

I finished Bands of mourning and really enjoyed it, a bit more so than Shadows of self. Although Wax is clearly the protagonist I felt that this adventure was more of a team effort.

164> I agree with your comments on the bodyguards. I know that there are a couple asides from Ven who are also female, but they are so insignificant that I could never remember their names. I did like the Admiral character though.

My Goodreads review of A Murder of Mages. Warning: Spoilers.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1331916448

For those who don't want to risk the Spoilers, I found a lot to like in this book (male and female leads as partners and friends rather than love interests; both leads competent in their own ways), but I was bothered by the depiction of female mages as uniformly unsympathetic, while male mages can possibly be heroic (and in at least two cases, are). This troubles me to the degree that simply remembering recent reads that featured awesome female mages (e.g. Sorcerer to the Crown, Six of Crows) isn't quite enough to expel the sour taste from my mouth. I need to replace A Murder of Mages with a new novel that paints a female mage in a positive light.

A few I'm considering:
Lirael
A College of Magics
The Midnight Queen
The Barbed Coil
The Wind-Witch (hoping the "witch" in the title is not a metaphor)
The next volume in Forsyth's compulsively readable Witches of Eileanan series
Of course, Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters generally has the kind of thing I'm looking for as well, though the quality of those books has gone down just a bit since the splendid Phoenix and Ashes. Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses series also offers splendid portrayals of mage heroines, but sadly, the last book, Fortune and Fate -- the only one I haven't read yet -- has a "badass normal," not a mage, as its heroine, so while I'll want to read it soon, it may not suit my present mood.

This list is by no means complete; these are just the ones that popped to the top of my head. What are some other good epic/historical fantasy books with mage heroines? (No urban or contemporary fantasy, please. Also, while I love Tamora Pierce, she's not quite what I'm hungry for just now. Now, if I owned a copy of Barduro's Crooked Kingdom at the moment, I would dive right in.)

169> I'd recommend A College of Magics. The only other one on that list I've read is Lireal, but it was so long ago that I can't remember much about it.

I'm not sure if you've read Sunbolt or not, but I know you've read Thorn by the same author. Sunbolt's a YA novella about a teenage girl who's an unregistered mage. I just finished the novel length sequel Memories of Ashes and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Howl's Moving Castle and the loose sequel House of Many Ways would both count. However, in Howl's Moving Castle, the protagonist isn't really aware she's doing magic until near the end of the book. House of Many Ways might be more down your alley for that reason.

I'm pretty sure the heroine of Wheel of the Infinite had magic powers, although I can't remember the details of how they worked.

I'm sure you're familiar with Robin McKinley, but I don't know if you've read Chalice. That one definitely qualifies.

The other ones I can think of I know you've already read. Good luck finding something!

I really enjoyed The midnight queen, and the heroine gets even more awesome in the second book. She also has lots of female friends and allies.

170, 171: Thanks! Those are rising to top positions in my TBR ranks.

And of course, whenever I get low, I can always pay a call on Tiffany Aching...

A College of Magics is one of my favorite books. The sequel, A Scholar of Magics, is also good though not quite as wonderful.

I agree on all the comments about Behind the Throne. It's just a lot of fun. I finished the sequel this weekend, After the Crown and it's more of the same. Both books are going on my favorite SF reads of 2016.

>171 Sakerfalcon: I have that one on the shelf, and once started it, but it wasn't the right time. Mostly I remember it starting with failure, which is not my favorite. It seems from the blurb that the professor's daughter has no power. Is that true?

175: From what I've heard, she's not supposed to have power, but in fact, she does. If this Spoiler is not accurate, someone please tell me so I don't set myself up for disappointment.

>176 kceccato: That's correct. I didn't care for it despite the good world-building, because the plot was so very, very predictable. I skimmed after the first quarter, and had called the major plot points. Which was a bummer because I really wanted to like it.

>176 kceccato: She actually has stronger powers than the hero, and he is totally fine with that.

>177 Marissa_Doyle: I too predicted the major plot point, but I liked the world and characters enough not to care. The second book is much better in that respect.

>176 kceccato: >177 Marissa_Doyle: Ah, okay. Maybe I should give it a try again.

So, I started A College of Magics. This book promises to be a lot of fun, in a "Ruritanian Romance" kind of way, and I do like the heroine, Faris. Unfortunately, for a book with this title, there has been little to no magic of any kind so far, and the few inconsequential Spoilers I've come across suggest that Faris herself never actually learns/does any magic. Instead the most powerfully talented female mage is -- *sigh* -- the villain. So while I'm enjoying the story and have every intention of finishing it, it's not really scratching my itch for a mage heroine. The poison of the "weak is women's magic/ wicked is women's magic" ethos can never have too many antidotes.

I really need to get back to Kate Forsyth's Eileanan series. I know those books are popcorn, hardly as complex or substantial as the work Forsyth is writing now, but I love those books so much. I also found that I do indeed have a copy of McKinley's Chalice on my shelves. Looking forward to that one.

My current entry in the Big Epic Series sweepstakes is Beyond Ragnarok by the almost-never-discussed Mickey Zucker Reichert. I should say a few things about this one. First and foremost, why is this series not better known? It has all the cool stuff people generally love about epic fantasy, yet it has garnered less than ten reviews on Goodreads. I brought it to the top of my TBR ranks because I found the last two books of the trilogy at a favorite local used bookstore (which is on its way out of business *weeps*). I remembered I'd had the first book on my shelf for a while, so I bought the last two on the assumption that I would read the first one and like it. Thank God I grabbed them up when I did. The book is lovely so far, in that impossible-to-duplicate epic fantasy way. People who don't like elves and demigods would be well advised to steer clear, but I don't mind them and can even like them. It has multiple characters engaged in their long games, yet it's not as relentlessly dark as George R.R. Martin. I won't say it's better than Michelle West's Sun Sword series (which I really need to get back to, next year at the latest), but I find it a faster, smoother read; I think the reason I haven't reached for Vol. 2 of West's series is that I know it will take me a while to get through.

Reichert's work isn't quite consistent when it comes to female characters. Her series The Legend of Nightfall, for instance, is entirely dude-driven, and I haven't read much about a female presence in the other "Renshai" trilogy which I think is a prequel series to this one. But here we have a number of female characters, primary and secondary and tertiary. The country where most of the action has taken place so far, Bearn, is a surprisingly gender-egalitarian society. Both men and women have seats on the Royal Council. One of the main characters is a bard's apprentice, and the bard in question, in whose footsteps he longs to follow, is his mother. The throne falls to any one of the ruling monarch's many heirs who can pass a magical "staff test" (a good description of which eludes me), and both men and women are tested, so a woman is as likely to ascend the throne as a man, though regrettably, in this instance, all female potential rulers have failed the test. Renshai, both men and women, are formidable warriors. It's nice to read about a Norse-inflected fantasy world in which it doesn't automatically suck to be a woman.

As to the main heroines, on the surface they fall into the usual "Tomboy and Girly-Girl" dichotomy: girly Princess Matrinka and her tough-as-nails Renshai bodyguard Kevral. Kevral is prickly and imperfect and easily catches our interest as we wonder just what can be up with her, but I wasn't expecting to like Matrinka as much as I have so far. Her image on the cover -- where she looks more like a twelve-year-old than the sixteen-year-old she is, and her features are puckered as if she's about the burst into tears -- didn't exactly make the best first impression. But I've come to like her because, despite being traditionally girly (one of her first interior monologues touches on her desire to have and raise children), she is NOT going to wait patiently and passively in the background while others solve the important problems. She's determined to play an active role in saving her kingdom, even though she's not yet sure what that role might be. And she and Kevral make a great pair so far. Bechdel Test Pass.

Has anybody else read these books? Again, it astonishes me that they aren't better known.

>180 kceccato: I remember being thoroughly confused by A college of magics, so I honestly couldn't tell you if your spoiler is correct or not. I adored the sequel though, which stars the awesome Jane (who you will meet soon, if you haven't already).

I haven't read anything by Reichart, although I am aware of her books. I'm not so into epic fantasy with godlike characters so I think that's why I've never checked her main series out. I do have the first Nightfall book which I'm hoping will be similar to Llyn Flewelling's Nightrunner books.

181: Be warned: according to Goodreads reviews, the female characters are dreadful in the Nightfall books. Positive reviews don't mention them at all, and negative reviews make mention of how negligible/caricatured their roles are. I was a little startled by this, since I'd already begun Beyond Ragnarok and had been pleased with the female characters therein (at least so far). Note to writers: "Bromance" or "M/M romance" does not HAVE to translate into "Women Suck"! (I've read that the women are pretty tolerable in the Nightunner books, at least beginning with the second one.)

>180 kceccato: Give it a chance. The magical element creeps up on the story (which is the kind of story I like best, so maybe I shouldn't try to recommend books here) and Faris will very, very definitely come into her power.

>180 kceccato: I see that Beyond Ragnarok is a follow-up series. Did you read the first series as well?

184: Nope. Just started with Beyond Ragnarok because that one was on a Goodreads list I like. So far I have had no trouble following it, so starting with the first series would not seem to be a necessity.

183: Don't worry. I am already engaged by the story and ready to watch the adventure unfold. 181: I've met Jane, and you're right -- she's splendid.

The Wind-Witch was my favorite of the Susan Dexter books I've read. I hope you enjoy it. All of Dexter's books have good female characters, even if they aren't the main character.

>185 kceccato: Ah good, because it sounds better than the first series.

<182 Thanks for the warning. The book is still a way down Mount Tbr so it could be a while before I read it. Yes, there are plenty of awesome female characters in the Nightrunner series.

I've finished Behind the Throne! Here is my Goodreads review. Beware: Spoilers abound.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1708923236

I've recently acquired a book about which I've heard a lot of good things: The Girl With Ghost Eyes. I'm keen to start this one. Maybe if I call it "urban fantasy," since it is set in late 19th century San Francisco, I can get away with slipping it into my "challenge" spot after Wagers' book.

Still enjoying Beyond Ragnarok, but I have a quibble to report: there is a subplot involving an underage girl who is made pregnant and gives birth; she's described as having given birth "before her 'coming of age.'" This is not treated, to my mind, with the condemnation it deserves, and at one point there's a reference to the man who made her pregnant as her true love. I wish I could edit this element out of the book, since I'm enjoying the rest of it so much.

>189 kceccato: WRT to romance in Behind the throne Emmory will never become Hail's romantic partner because he and Zin are partners in more ways than one! By the end of book 2 she is still very definitely single with far more pressing things to worry about. Which book did the review who said BTT was "full of romance" read, because it wasn't the same one I read!

189, 190> Something I wrote about in my review was how I wished the book would be more up front about whether or not Emmory and Zin were in a romantic relationship. It seemed like it was doing the "keep it ambiguous" thing that a lot of stories do with same-sex couples. There was a brief mention of Zin being Emmory's husband, but that was at the very end of the book and sort of blink and you'll miss it.

190, 191: Emmory/Zin would be a big win for diversity and an equally big win for portrayals of strong bonds of friendship, pure friendship, between men and women. That's what I would like to see. Besides, Hail has just lost Portis, whom she loved deeply. I don't think she's ready to fall in love again. Unlike entirely too many female protagonists, she doesn't NEED a romantic plot to make her interesting.

192> A year or so ago I tried making a list of female led SFF books without female leads but couldn't come up with the ten I'd need for a post. Maybe with Behind the Throne and some other new releases I'd finally have enough.

>191 pwaites: You mean Emmory and Zin, right?

>192 kceccato: I like that Hail clearly has other priorities and makes that very clear throughout both books. She meets/reencounters several male characters in the sequel and I could imagine another author making those into romantic or at least sexual encounters, but no. Other things are far more important. And ATC makes it clear that she's not over Portis.

I think a true friendship will be difficult for Hail, given her role as Empress. Anyone she gets close to who doesn't have a clearly defined role (bodyguard, maid, secretary, etc) is going to be at risk of manipulation, assassination, bribery, being used to get to Hail for good or ill. While there are bonds between her and others, notably Emmory and Zin, it's not exactly friendship, although I can't define just what it is.

194> Yes! Thank you! I don't know where my head is sometimes.

Issue Number One: My holiday haul

So, after Christmas, my collection of print books now includes Sanderson's Bands of Mourning, Marillier's Den of Wolves: A Blackthorn and Grim Novel (which for some reason is NOT showing up as a touchstone), and Barduro's Crooked Kingdom, all of which are very high on my To-Read scale. My audiobook collection is also growing. One I'm particularly looking forward to is Arcanum Unbounded, which I specifically requested as an audiobook. I normally don't care to read short stories or novellas -- they tend to leave me wishing for more, and not in a good way -- but I decided I wouldn't mind having them read TO me, and I'm keen to experience The Emperor's Soul and "Edgedancer."

One book I've bought for myself: After the Crown, which I mean to get to pretty quickly since I need to see what's next for Hail & co.

Thoughts on Current Reads:
Beyond Ragnarok still goes well. Its cast of significant female characters has grown with the introduction of a female warrior (the same race as one of our main questers) who finds herself a captive of a band of nonhumans whose existence everyone has forgotten. This character could have been written as a highly annoying standard-issue damsel in distress, but Reichert doesn't take that road. Instead, we see the woman soaking up every bit of information she can about this race, so that she might 1) figure out a way to escape, and 2) let her people know in as much detail as possible about the danger that awaits them and how they might defeat it. Plus, she's just so darn curious about these creatures, and curiosity is a character trait I always appreciate seeing.

I've gotten much further with A College of Magics. There still isn't much magic going on, but there's a helluva lot of adventure set in rugged alpine climes. I'd say this is an interesting blend of what's often called "Ruritanian romance" (which follows the political intrigues of made-up nations that somehow exist right alongside real countries -- which is why we can have a heroine from a place called "Galazon" whose best friend is an outspoken and amusingly proper British witch) and the "fantasy of manners." Faris and Jane are a delightful pair, and I will be seeking out the sequel to see more of Jane's adventures. While it hasn't quite satisfied my "mage heroine in action" need, it's been tons of fun to read so far, despite the occasional digressions on matters of propriety that seem to function as a sort of cushioning between the action bits.

I'm a hundred pages into The Girl With Ghost Eyes. This one IS promising to scratch my itch for a mage heroine, as it's clear that the mystical priestess lead, Li-lin, is just getting started. Boroson's prose is fluid and detailed in its depiction of turn-of-the-twentieth-century San Francisco, though it doesn't quite reach the heights of The Golem and the Jinni.