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aseEight, including one nonfiction. I have got to change my non/fiction ratios up.
I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith): I should know better than to read novels in gigantic chunks; resolution of any novel makes very little sense at 3 AM. Epistolary novel that almost worked for me, except I empathize with the father's lazy genius too much, so it's a little painful.
Old Man's War (John Scalzi): I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army. Starship Troopers, except for the wife thing. Which actually is sort of late Heinlein, if you have a twisted brain. However, it doesn't follow through for me, because Johnny Rico is supposed to be an everyman, and John Perry is a little more special. His dead wife reappears (sort of), he gets a special commendation for thinking on his feet which comes up more than once, and oh, he accidentally finds out about and fights alongside the super-elite secret Ghost Brigade (see also "dead wife"). This makes for fun storytelling, but fails to provide the sort of philosophical considerations Heinlein did. (Yes, I am complaining their weren't enough infodumps about How Things Are, Son. Novels written to respond to Heinlein get a rare pass on the moralizing, because by God, Heinlein was an agenda writer.) Scalzi constructs a universe where humanity is in constant conflict, scrambling not to get its collective butt kicked by one of the many equally avaricious alien races in the black. That this conveniently lets Scalzi resurrect Heinlein's "veteran for citizenship" premise - in this case, old folks are told they can be young again and colonize the universe if they sign on the dotted line and give two or more years of their new lives to the Colonial Defense Forces - is useful, but he doesn't offer a response to the moralizing that elevates ST from shoot-em-up to still discussable (if at the top of the debators' lungs).
What Old Man's War did very well is engage and entertain me as a genre book. Scalzi can get a character from Point A to Point B in fun, if not always plausible, ways, and has fun with snappy one-liners. Examples:
"Consider this the culinary equivalent of falling on a grenade for the sake of my comrade."
"Most grenades aren't soaked in syrup." -p50
"I have never wanted to punch a doctor so much in my life." -p60 (This may be funnier in context.)
"My earlier impression of my form turned out turned out to be correct; for lack of a better term, I was totally buffed out." -p88 Restrain your glee, boyo.
"Our job is the go meet strange new people and cultures, and kill the sons of bitches as quickly as we possibly can." -p190
On tachyons: "So far they've just been a theory, because after all it's difficult to track something that is both faster than light and going backward in time." -p244 It's funny because it's what researchers might say.
I am less impressed with the worldbuilding on display in Old Man's War, but the Colonial Defense bodies give me hope that the high concentration of SFnal gimmes is a function of the author playing off Starship Troopers, rather than Scalzi's reflexive worldbuilding style. Points off OMW for not being deep, worldbuilding, and Special Protagonist Effect; points to OMG for engaging characterization of non-POV characters and snappy dialogue. Conclusion? Scalzi stays on the "to read" list.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (Jon Krakauer): Journalist's experiences during the 1996 climbing season, supplemented by interviews with climbers who survived the circumstances that killed eight people in less than 24 hours. The mountain would ultimately claim 15 lives that season, the greatest number of fatalities in one year.
The Everest fatality list lists deaths up to and including 2002. There's been a death on the slopes every year since 1978. So when I say, "people die every year on that mountain", people do, in fact, die every year on that mountain because they put themselves in harm's way. Enthusiasts with limited experience throw thousands of dollars at the opportunity to experience significantly subzero wind chills, hypoxia, and did I mention possibly death?
However, this makes for great drama. Guides and their clients are pushing the envelope so far there's not much margin for error when something doesn't go to plan. I am fascinated, if convinced I am never, ever doing it without a winning lottery ticket and five-year training program. Good nonfiction.
I should disclose that I read Into the Wild, Krakauer's book about Christopher McCandless, the summer before my senior year of high school. I loathed it, because I had no sympathy for No Map McCandless in my cautious soul, and Krakauer inexplicably (to me) did. My loathing of Into the Wild is a reflection of my fundamental difference in worldview from McCandless and should not be taken as a reflection on Krakauer's writing, which is extremely readable. Oh hey, there is an Into the Wild movie less than a month from release. I had no idea!
Faking It (Jennifer Cruise):
The premise: Matilda Goodnight is a frustrated painter. She executes murals to keep the family gallery from going under. Until one day, her niece sells a faked painting she did under an assumed name. Enter breaking and entry, stage right, to recover the fake lest someone start connecting the dots and out her as a fraud. Enter stage left Davy Dempsey, con man, trying to steal back a small fortune from a brittle, gold-digging ex. Slapstick and True Love ensue. Matilda's mother is presented with a life beyond her dead husband's gallery, Matilda's niece tried to date careers, Matilda's sister has a little fun and learns a lesson about false fronts, and Matilda wins it all.
This was fun, in the way blockbuster movies are fun: I knew where it was going (Matilda and Davy, the gallery saved, Tilda getting hermusic painting back), but it has the mainstream appeal of a blockbuster, and I am not mainstream. I disliked that, at some level, the Goodnight women's problems are solved by men without reciprocity. Davy gets Matilda's paintings back, bails out the gallery, and helps Matilda resurrect her painting drive (not to mention her sex life). Matilda helps Davy... be happy? She does not help the man who helped her reorganize her life in like degree, in trade or in kind. The characters are zany and colorful, if prone to quoting movies and ancient pop hits I am unfamiliar with; the plot is a well-constructed romance; the humor was pretty good. Well, except for the climatic "everyone falls out of the closet" scene. I think I was supposed to laugh at the final reveals, but I could see what Cruise was trying to do without really caring. This was a fun bubble gum beach novel and spoke to my love of colorful characters, but the darker underpainting of old tragedy was too washed out to really hit any of the themes that make me love and remember a novel. If this romance cannot please me, then nothing will, and I wash my hands of the genre.
(For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, local casting declares that Ford Brown is played by Jason Momoa. Okay, maybe the reasons do need exploring, 'cause this is a book that is sorely lacking in people who aren't white. I cannot believe I'm leaving this in the actual post.)
Fire Logic (Laurie J. Marks): The Shafthali resistance, as seen through the eyes of Zanja na'Tarwein. There, have a useless blurb.
The usual strategy for epic war fantasy novels is to focus on the battles and political maneuvering. Marks focuses on the resistance, on avoiding and seeking out small local skirmishes, and on the toll armed hostilities take on the people and the land: farms destroyed, lives sacrificed to duty, etc. Marks gets points for LGB content and a fantasy system which does not actively irritate me. She also gets points for quietly telling a story featuring women interacting with women, which is a weird thing to say, but consider the last five SF novels you read and ask yourself how many of them featured a scene with three people doing a job, all of whom happen to be of the XX persuasion. According to her biography, Marks is in a writing group with Rosemary Kirstein, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Didi Stewart. People who know me know that I think Kirstein's Steerswoman series is doing awesome stuff, and that I may break the bank for a hardcover copy of the next one, if published in that format, to get it faster. So I am very excited that I have other authors who seem to be in a conversation I want to eavesdrop on.
The Machine's Child (Kage Baker): From the diary of Labenius, an Immortal: Book 7. Still not 2355!
Alec Checkerfield and his electronic twins rescue Mendoza from Deep Time. Joseph is forced to admit Project Adonai may have destroyed Mendoza's life three times by accident. The pawns are arrayed for the Silence. And don't get there. If you're following the series, there is nothing to say to encourage or dissuade you; if you aren't, I strongly suggest starting at the beginning with In the Garden of Iden, or sampling some of Baker's short stories in the Company universe.
V for Vendetta (David Lloyd, Alan Moore): Graphic novel of 1982 - 1988 comic series. I saw the movie first, rushed through the comic in the two days after I realized I had a due date coming up, and in some ways like the movie more. Yes, gasp, horror, shock, get it out of your system so I can explain. Ready?
The movie has audio, which would have vastly increased my read of the book 2 prologue song "Vicious Cabaret". References to musical numbers book one - Beethoven's Fifth, the jukebox - made me aware of the inadequacies of the written word for feeding the audience auditory cues. That's the frustrating but not deal-killing problem; my fundamental issue is the artwork, because I sometimes found it tough to figure out which white guy was which. I kept wishing th panels were bigger and more detailed, with a bit more color palette, so I could more easily track people. These may be petty and indications of laziness on my part, but like I said, I mainlined this, so I don't feel too bad about missing subtleties. I did like Evey, who is remade in V's image, and I liked the emphasis on V as an idea, and the lurking idea that V is playing himself, making a bloody vengeance into the first part of a theatrical revolution. (Notice how he leaves the hard part - building on the rubble - to Evey. I am reminded of the scene in one of KSR's Martian novels where the anarchists, eyes bugging out, demand to know why they have to discuss sanitation law as part of the How Society Will Work party-conferences.)
Notice how I'm avoiding the big questions of Moore's politics and projections, as well as comparisons to the movie. I think anarchism is one of those ideas that works well if people conform to the system, but people don't, and I'm not sure how well it works once the system breaks down. (Good government: a system that continues to serve the people even when some or many of the People are trying to subvert it to selfish ends. Discuss.) The matrix of events the novels respond to is part of that funny "almost current events" period I should know more about but don't, so I can't talk about how the forces Moore riffed off of have twisted to give us our current future. Other than the USSR not being the Big Threat it was supposed to be, I guess. (Hi. I am, for most intents and purposes, post-Wall and post-USSR. See how blithely my generation skips around the rusting nuclear warheads and chemical weapons cannisters of the Cold War.) I think the politics are different from mine in interesting ways, and that the work is useful as a thought experiment in actors, masks and ideas. However, I might tell you to watch the movie first, despite Moore's repudiation of the film. He rejects it (if I follow the arguments) as an Americanization and simplification - and gee, he's kind of right - but what novel isn't going to lose something when it hits Hollywood?
The Sons of Heaven (Kage Baker): IT IS FINALLY 2355. PoV juggling and collisions ensue. Mendoza and Edward get magic time-and-space transcendence powers, and everyone is told to start a new Golden Age of mortals ruling themselves. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Victor. The Mendoza/Project Adonai romance manages to hit my incest button and jump on it many times, which goes to show: never trust a time-traveling immortal with your heart. However, if I can take a step back from my identification of characters as people and shift over to characters as archetypes, it's a pretty play on creation myths and ancient pantheons of gods, most of whom I've forgotten. What I do remember is a series of Greek deities to killing or locking up their fathers and marrying their sisters. From the perspective of Zeus Immortals = the New Gods, it works. But only if I don't think about it for too long, because the whole "I carried you in my womb for nine months, raised you for another 17, and then had sex with you!" part really, really grosses me out.
I am saddened that there wasn't more Joseph in this book. You can never have enough of Joseph, in my opinion. He is smart and funny and a trickster, a combination which works really well with Kage Baker's writing style. Take this non-Joseph part:
Yes, Bugleg is having a crisis because he has eaten the wicked chocolate. It's moments like these that make me think Kage Baker is at her best when she's writing some flavor of satire.
What she doesn't do as satisfactorily is the grand passion-play of Mendoza's love life. However, I got sick of the angst and mental breakdowns somewhere around Mendoza in Hollywood, so there's no news on that front. Unless you want my rant on why I dislike that Victorian jerk Edward most.
Good things about The Sons of Heaven: the series wraps and everyone except Victor gets their just reward. (Victor! Don't die! Or fake death, whatever! You pined like Mendoza, but in a way that didn't interfere with your triple-agenting! I really appreciate compartmentalization that effective, you crazy man!) The cuteness of raising immortal kids - seriously, it's gooey, "awwwww!" territory - and the ultimate choice to let the mortals take some initiative. Things I was less pleased with: the scattered nature of the narrative, as it flipped between many, many fields of action; the even more magic time-and-space manipulations (now with pretty much zero rules or energy investment!); the very pat ending. I would recommend the series in a second for zippy light reading, and am very likely to go back and pick up the short stories I've missed so far, but I am reading this for fun, and will probably love Sky Coyote most for as long as I can imagine.
I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith): I should know better than to read novels in gigantic chunks; resolution of any novel makes very little sense at 3 AM. Epistolary novel that almost worked for me, except I empathize with the father's lazy genius too much, so it's a little painful.
Old Man's War (John Scalzi): I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army. Starship Troopers, except for the wife thing. Which actually is sort of late Heinlein, if you have a twisted brain. However, it doesn't follow through for me, because Johnny Rico is supposed to be an everyman, and John Perry is a little more special. His dead wife reappears (sort of), he gets a special commendation for thinking on his feet which comes up more than once, and oh, he accidentally finds out about and fights alongside the super-elite secret Ghost Brigade (see also "dead wife"). This makes for fun storytelling, but fails to provide the sort of philosophical considerations Heinlein did. (Yes, I am complaining their weren't enough infodumps about How Things Are, Son. Novels written to respond to Heinlein get a rare pass on the moralizing, because by God, Heinlein was an agenda writer.) Scalzi constructs a universe where humanity is in constant conflict, scrambling not to get its collective butt kicked by one of the many equally avaricious alien races in the black. That this conveniently lets Scalzi resurrect Heinlein's "veteran for citizenship" premise - in this case, old folks are told they can be young again and colonize the universe if they sign on the dotted line and give two or more years of their new lives to the Colonial Defense Forces - is useful, but he doesn't offer a response to the moralizing that elevates ST from shoot-em-up to still discussable (if at the top of the debators' lungs).
What Old Man's War did very well is engage and entertain me as a genre book. Scalzi can get a character from Point A to Point B in fun, if not always plausible, ways, and has fun with snappy one-liners. Examples:
"Consider this the culinary equivalent of falling on a grenade for the sake of my comrade."
"Most grenades aren't soaked in syrup." -p50
"I have never wanted to punch a doctor so much in my life." -p60 (This may be funnier in context.)
"My earlier impression of my form turned out turned out to be correct; for lack of a better term, I was totally buffed out." -p88 Restrain your glee, boyo.
"Our job is the go meet strange new people and cultures, and kill the sons of bitches as quickly as we possibly can." -p190
On tachyons: "So far they've just been a theory, because after all it's difficult to track something that is both faster than light and going backward in time." -p244 It's funny because it's what researchers might say.
I am less impressed with the worldbuilding on display in Old Man's War, but the Colonial Defense bodies give me hope that the high concentration of SFnal gimmes is a function of the author playing off Starship Troopers, rather than Scalzi's reflexive worldbuilding style. Points off OMW for not being deep, worldbuilding, and Special Protagonist Effect; points to OMG for engaging characterization of non-POV characters and snappy dialogue. Conclusion? Scalzi stays on the "to read" list.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (Jon Krakauer): Journalist's experiences during the 1996 climbing season, supplemented by interviews with climbers who survived the circumstances that killed eight people in less than 24 hours. The mountain would ultimately claim 15 lives that season, the greatest number of fatalities in one year.
The Everest fatality list lists deaths up to and including 2002. There's been a death on the slopes every year since 1978. So when I say, "people die every year on that mountain", people do, in fact, die every year on that mountain because they put themselves in harm's way. Enthusiasts with limited experience throw thousands of dollars at the opportunity to experience significantly subzero wind chills, hypoxia, and did I mention possibly death?
However, this makes for great drama. Guides and their clients are pushing the envelope so far there's not much margin for error when something doesn't go to plan. I am fascinated, if convinced I am never, ever doing it without a winning lottery ticket and five-year training program. Good nonfiction.
I should disclose that I read Into the Wild, Krakauer's book about Christopher McCandless, the summer before my senior year of high school. I loathed it, because I had no sympathy for No Map McCandless in my cautious soul, and Krakauer inexplicably (to me) did. My loathing of Into the Wild is a reflection of my fundamental difference in worldview from McCandless and should not be taken as a reflection on Krakauer's writing, which is extremely readable. Oh hey, there is an Into the Wild movie less than a month from release. I had no idea!
Faking It (Jennifer Cruise):
Then the light caught Tilda's crazy blue eyes again, and she looked stubborn and difficult and exasperating and infinitely more interesting than Eve, if he could keep from maiming her. And he already knew she could kiss.And so it was that on page 76 I said, "thank God, one romance novel is finally talking to me."
The premise: Matilda Goodnight is a frustrated painter. She executes murals to keep the family gallery from going under. Until one day, her niece sells a faked painting she did under an assumed name. Enter breaking and entry, stage right, to recover the fake lest someone start connecting the dots and out her as a fraud. Enter stage left Davy Dempsey, con man, trying to steal back a small fortune from a brittle, gold-digging ex. Slapstick and True Love ensue. Matilda's mother is presented with a life beyond her dead husband's gallery, Matilda's niece tried to date careers, Matilda's sister has a little fun and learns a lesson about false fronts, and Matilda wins it all.
This was fun, in the way blockbuster movies are fun: I knew where it was going (Matilda and Davy, the gallery saved, Tilda getting her
(For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, local casting declares that Ford Brown is played by Jason Momoa. Okay, maybe the reasons do need exploring, 'cause this is a book that is sorely lacking in people who aren't white. I cannot believe I'm leaving this in the actual post.)
Fire Logic (Laurie J. Marks): The Shafthali resistance, as seen through the eyes of Zanja na'Tarwein. There, have a useless blurb.
The usual strategy for epic war fantasy novels is to focus on the battles and political maneuvering. Marks focuses on the resistance, on avoiding and seeking out small local skirmishes, and on the toll armed hostilities take on the people and the land: farms destroyed, lives sacrificed to duty, etc. Marks gets points for LGB content and a fantasy system which does not actively irritate me. She also gets points for quietly telling a story featuring women interacting with women, which is a weird thing to say, but consider the last five SF novels you read and ask yourself how many of them featured a scene with three people doing a job, all of whom happen to be of the XX persuasion. According to her biography, Marks is in a writing group with Rosemary Kirstein, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Didi Stewart. People who know me know that I think Kirstein's Steerswoman series is doing awesome stuff, and that I may break the bank for a hardcover copy of the next one, if published in that format, to get it faster. So I am very excited that I have other authors who seem to be in a conversation I want to eavesdrop on.
The Machine's Child (Kage Baker): From the diary of Labenius, an Immortal: Book 7. Still not 2355!
Alec Checkerfield and his electronic twins rescue Mendoza from Deep Time. Joseph is forced to admit Project Adonai may have destroyed Mendoza's life three times by accident. The pawns are arrayed for the Silence. And don't get there. If you're following the series, there is nothing to say to encourage or dissuade you; if you aren't, I strongly suggest starting at the beginning with In the Garden of Iden, or sampling some of Baker's short stories in the Company universe.
V for Vendetta (David Lloyd, Alan Moore): Graphic novel of 1982 - 1988 comic series. I saw the movie first, rushed through the comic in the two days after I realized I had a due date coming up, and in some ways like the movie more. Yes, gasp, horror, shock, get it out of your system so I can explain. Ready?
The movie has audio, which would have vastly increased my read of the book 2 prologue song "Vicious Cabaret". References to musical numbers book one - Beethoven's Fifth, the jukebox - made me aware of the inadequacies of the written word for feeding the audience auditory cues. That's the frustrating but not deal-killing problem; my fundamental issue is the artwork, because I sometimes found it tough to figure out which white guy was which. I kept wishing th panels were bigger and more detailed, with a bit more color palette, so I could more easily track people. These may be petty and indications of laziness on my part, but like I said, I mainlined this, so I don't feel too bad about missing subtleties. I did like Evey, who is remade in V's image, and I liked the emphasis on V as an idea, and the lurking idea that V is playing himself, making a bloody vengeance into the first part of a theatrical revolution. (Notice how he leaves the hard part - building on the rubble - to Evey. I am reminded of the scene in one of KSR's Martian novels where the anarchists, eyes bugging out, demand to know why they have to discuss sanitation law as part of the How Society Will Work party-conferences.)
Notice how I'm avoiding the big questions of Moore's politics and projections, as well as comparisons to the movie. I think anarchism is one of those ideas that works well if people conform to the system, but people don't, and I'm not sure how well it works once the system breaks down. (Good government: a system that continues to serve the people even when some or many of the People are trying to subvert it to selfish ends. Discuss.) The matrix of events the novels respond to is part of that funny "almost current events" period I should know more about but don't, so I can't talk about how the forces Moore riffed off of have twisted to give us our current future. Other than the USSR not being the Big Threat it was supposed to be, I guess. (Hi. I am, for most intents and purposes, post-Wall and post-USSR. See how blithely my generation skips around the rusting nuclear warheads and chemical weapons cannisters of the Cold War.) I think the politics are different from mine in interesting ways, and that the work is useful as a thought experiment in actors, masks and ideas. However, I might tell you to watch the movie first, despite Moore's repudiation of the film. He rejects it (if I follow the arguments) as an Americanization and simplification - and gee, he's kind of right - but what novel isn't going to lose something when it hits Hollywood?
The Sons of Heaven (Kage Baker): IT IS FINALLY 2355. PoV juggling and collisions ensue. Mendoza and Edward get magic time-and-space transcendence powers, and everyone is told to start a new Golden Age of mortals ruling themselves. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Victor. The Mendoza/Project Adonai romance manages to hit my incest button and jump on it many times, which goes to show: never trust a time-traveling immortal with your heart. However, if I can take a step back from my identification of characters as people and shift over to characters as archetypes, it's a pretty play on creation myths and ancient pantheons of gods, most of whom I've forgotten. What I do remember is a series of Greek deities to killing or locking up their fathers and marrying their sisters. From the perspective of Zeus Immortals = the New Gods, it works. But only if I don't think about it for too long, because the whole "I carried you in my womb for nine months, raised you for another 17, and then had sex with you!" part really, really grosses me out.
I am saddened that there wasn't more Joseph in this book. You can never have enough of Joseph, in my opinion. He is smart and funny and a trickster, a combination which works really well with Kage Baker's writing style. Take this non-Joseph part:
"You liked it," said Ratlin, right there beside him. He elbowed Bugleg convivially. "You did so. I could tell. A little bit of pure pleasure for you, eh, cousin?"
"I wasn't supposed to," gasped Bugleg. "It's wrong!"
"Bugger wrong," Ratlin scoffed. "Who's ever going to know about it? A sweet silent thrill in the safe dark, and it won't show, no, not at all. Long as you wipe that dribbly bit off your chin," he advised.
Bugleg turned to the mirror and busied himself with wiping the last trace of the chocolate away.
Yes, Bugleg is having a crisis because he has eaten the wicked chocolate. It's moments like these that make me think Kage Baker is at her best when she's writing some flavor of satire.
What she doesn't do as satisfactorily is the grand passion-play of Mendoza's love life. However, I got sick of the angst and mental breakdowns somewhere around Mendoza in Hollywood, so there's no news on that front. Unless you want my rant on why I dislike that Victorian jerk Edward most.
Good things about The Sons of Heaven: the series wraps and everyone except Victor gets their just reward. (Victor! Don't die! Or fake death, whatever! You pined like Mendoza, but in a way that didn't interfere with your triple-agenting! I really appreciate compartmentalization that effective, you crazy man!) The cuteness of raising immortal kids - seriously, it's gooey, "awwwww!" territory - and the ultimate choice to let the mortals take some initiative. Things I was less pleased with: the scattered nature of the narrative, as it flipped between many, many fields of action; the even more magic time-and-space manipulations (now with pretty much zero rules or energy investment!); the very pat ending. I would recommend the series in a second for zippy light reading, and am very likely to go back and pick up the short stories I've missed so far, but I am reading this for fun, and will probably love Sky Coyote most for as long as I can imagine.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-02 08:39 pm (UTC)I enjoyed OMW and the sequel. As science fiction fluff, but wouldn't go after the books myself. There's a third apparently, but as our book pusher (he's been pushing them on Tom) just got the second, I doubt we'll see/read it anytime soon.
I really have to be more coherent when commenting. Would help if I didn't catch up on LJ when I was half asleep. But then I never would! ;-p
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-02 08:42 pm (UTC)Forgot to say: Crusie is one of the weird romance authors that was highly recommended to me that I really couldn't like. At least, the one I read, I really didn't like --- something with "temptation" in the title? But then I tried another and really loved it. And another, I think. But haven't read the one you reviewed. I didn't read the review because I didn't want to hear about it and I probably will get to it eventually. But I'll try to remember to come back and read this after I read that! I'll be interested in reading a romance that you did like! :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-03 04:02 am (UTC)I did and didn't like it. I did not hate it, which is unusual, but the wrapup was too slick for me. But I think I was supposed to find the climatic scene funny, and I didn't laugh. That may just be me, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-04 03:07 pm (UTC)hunh. I'm tempted to rec you some romances that I really love -- and I love a humorous romance -- to see if you would. But probably not. ;-p
Anyway, I just looked up crusie, and I found Bet Me!, which I really enjoyed. Ah, and Fast Women, as well.
Those two were great. Somehow remember likeing Fast Women a whole lot. But Welcome To Temptation really rubbed me the wrong way!
Probably her sense of humor is a bit too slapstick for me. I like the intelligent humor -- Gilmore Girls, West Wing, Buffy, etc. in my books as well as TV. Books-wise, Jayne Ann Krentz has some very witty repartee in her books under all her pseudonyms. And tends to favor strong females. All good for me. But if I rec her books to you, I"ll have to think about it first and give you specific titles -- she's not always that consistent. I'd have to ask you more questions about what you'd like in a romance too before I'd risk it! ;-p
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-04 05:57 pm (UTC)What didn't you like about Welcome to Temptation, BTW?
Anyway. Romance. Comedy good. May/December acceptable if the story doing something I really love in addition to the age gap. "Us against the world that would divide us" codependence always loses, hard. (Mercedes Lackey, I am looking at you.) Lightweight is problematic. Science fiction with explosions is a winning sub-genre. Heroines bailing out heroes is pretty cool, too. (Apparently I like romances where your dashing hero is totally the girl.) I think that's a good start.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-05 08:36 am (UTC)Hmmmm.... maybe you'd like romances that Tom likes then. He's from the SF/F world as well. So far he's enjoyed any romances I've thrown at him.
He's the same way -- needs to be another bigger story involved.
The Jayne Ann Krentz alter ego Jayne Castle has some great SF setting romances. They're probably more science fiction backgrounds with psychic stuff being at the forefront romantic suspense (meaning that there's a murder mystery involved). So there's a story that doesn't revolve solely around the romance and there's SF elements -- a bit of world-building you can tear apart, plus the romance. They're not gender switched, but you've got dominant males that do get dominated by the females at times. A bit of male/female rescue probably, but not too bad.
The first series she's written is Amaryllis, Zinnia, Orchid. I believe in that order. It's not that new, but you do libraries, so you might find them there. Not absolutely necessary to read them in order, but you may not want to read all three. One is much like the next, though I enjoy them all. She does some great playing with psychic powers in them, in my opinion.
The second series, I can't remember the order of, but they're on a different world in that same universe. They're better in some ways and a bit lamer in others.
it's been a really long time since I read Welcome to Temptation -- so I don't remember what I liked/disliked about it. I remember getting into it and then realizing a long way in that it really just made me annoyed. Too supplicating a female probably. I really hate romances where the woman is a doormat. I'm a romance reader, but I'm definitely picky!!
I'm not sure I have any romances where the heroine bails out the hero, though many where they're equal partners in doing something bigger.
I'll think some more. But since Tom loves them, I'll also mention the Nora Roberts aka J.D. Robb science fiction universe homicide detective series (procedural mystery, I think they're classified as). Near future civilation, over 20 books in the series, great character development throughout the series, romance of the protags in the first 2 books, but really not romance novels per se as they don't have a new genre defined romance every book. They get fairly repetitive through the series, but they're always good fun. The murders can be gruesome to squicky to not very described. OH, and she does the genetics really really well. There's one in particular that I really loved for that reason. It's one of the more recent ones, so late on in the series, but maybe that's the one you should start with. I'd tell you more, but it'd give away the plot/murder mystery ending. I'll find out which one it is if you're interested. Also available from libraries. At least, if the libraries you frequent have all the SF/F you write about, they should have these romances too.
Enough rambling, but these are two of my most favorite authors. I'd recommend some of their contemporaries too, but I'd really have to go look at them.
Oh, Jayne Ann Krentz also writes regencies under the pseudonym of Amanda Quick. Some of them are awesome, though I thought some of the more recent were not so great and haven't read the most recent 4 or 5 or 3. Anyway, the women always have some really interesting hobby and tend to ignore the man in favor of the hobby. Which is really fun. I'll have to look to recommend them, but I really enjoy Deception -- it's one I own, so I've read it lots and know that's a good one for sure.
Okay, enough rambling, I'd better get to work! Let me know if you find any of these intriguing or you'd like to explain your likes more and we can see if I can come up with something else! ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-05 07:10 pm (UTC)I really hate romances where the woman is a doormat.
I cannot agree emphatically enough. Capslock and exclamation points would only begin to approximate my feelings on that one. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-05 08:43 pm (UTC)Keep them in mind -- but don't just grab a random book by these authors, I wouldn't want you to hate the author by doing that!
They both have their good and bad points...
Rescuing women is overrated as a romance theme. Blech!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-05 09:16 pm (UTC)Oh! Have I mentioned that I like your new default icon? Apparently, I find simpsonized icons fun. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-05 09:23 pm (UTC)Sounds like fun! I'd read it and love it!
I've actually got a science fiction/genetics novel in my head that's got the girl saving the world in it. Not really a romance, though there is a plan for some aspect of romance in it. I'll probably never write it, but I like thinking about it sometimes.
Thanks! You should simpsonize yourself too! Did you see my whole simpsonized family on Facebook? You should check it out. It's very cute! :-D
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-03 03:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-04 02:45 pm (UTC)Yeah, fun, light SF so far. And I enjoyed the two!