omnia_mutantur | January 2017 books

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I had written a thoughtful post about my adventures today (namely my MRI) and a bunch of book reviews that the cat somehow deleted by leaping upon my mouse and closing the window in which I had composed it. Abundance was very sympathetic and informed me I should compose in a separate, less likely to be lost window.

So, instead of book reviews a list. My intention is reviews later

Good

As Kinky As You Want to Be by Shanna Germain

Hagseed by Margaret Atwood

Salt to the Sea by Ruth Sepetys

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya Von Bremzen

She’s Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan

Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

Imprudence by Gail Carriger.

Meh.

Throne of Glass by Sarah Maas

Bad.

Some Girls Bite by Chloe Neill

Other

Space Time Lunch Battle (comic) by Natalie Riess

The Year of Cozy (cookbook and craft book)

The Vegetable Butcher (cookbook)

Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book (cookbook)

Crossposts: http://omnia-mutantur.livejournal.com/486045.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

cactus_rs

Here's my Sarah J. Maas story that I always want to tell people, but I don't bring it up over on my LJ because I'm connected with her there and once in few dozen blue moons she'll comment. Anyway!

I went to college with Maas. Our freshman year was just when Facebook was starting out, but no one really knew how to use it. I had set up a profile and then just forgot about it for days on end (lol no more). During one of those stretches, I guess she found my profile and saw that I had listed Singin' in the Rain as one of my favorite movies. She sent me a message about it, but I never replied because I wasn't connected to Facebook 24/7 back then. (Who was?) A couple of days into freshman orientation she stopped by to see me in my room to say hi, and to "make sure I didn't think she was a weirdo" (essentially; paraphrasing there). It was surreal for me, because she was put-together and good-looking and I was very clearly A Dork, and here she was afraid I thought she was weird?

Anyway I told her no, I just hadn't checked Facebook, and she invited me to a party she was throwing after the talent show that night. I said sure, and dutifully turned up after the talent show, only to arrive with Sarah and her roommate already blasted off the single (!) bottle of JD they had scored for this party. I stood around for a while, felt a little weird, made brief small talk with someone who would later be one of my best friends out of school, and then left.

Obviously she cleaned up after that, and by senior year she was actually my RA, but whenever I see her books turn up on book blogs or in stores I have a little chuckle and remember that "party."

I also feel bad that I was so unsure of myself and, like, aggressively asocial that I didn't ever follow up on her friendship overture. Not because she's like a B-list book celebrity now and I could have a ~famous~ friend, but because she seems like someone I would genuinely like. We were both creative writing majors, but I somehow missed having a workshop with her until senior year, so while I knew she was like THE QUEEN OF FICTION PRESS (from Facebook stalking), I didn't really read any of her writing until that workshop, and generally I would say her rough drafts were among the best, most-polished rough drafts in the group.

This means I have Opinions about Throne of Glass, too. The first book has SO MUCH fangirl pandering; it feels very unlike anything she shared in class, so I have to wonder if the endless descriptions of ballgowns and the I LOVE BOOKS! and the OTT ~~~cool~~~ were shoehorned in as editorial decisions. Someone at Bloomsbury must have been paying attention to the reviews and the book bloggers, though, because that definitely got toned down for the rest of the series—though possibly in favor of other story decisions that I felt were rather hackneyed. I know she had started working on her other series during our university years, but she never brought that one to workshop. The stuff I read from her was a really cool fantasy idea about fairy godmothers—like, women who kill themselves end up being magically bound to being fairy godmothers to pay back the debt of suicide—but at this rate I don't know if she'll ever finish that project, or if it'll come out as cool as it was in workshop (that is to say, without Bloomsbury stepping in to make it more "marketable"). But I've committed to finishing the series and having it on my shelf, because I like to have books by people I know. I also have a small Kamila Shamsie collection for the same reason—she was one of my professors—even though I think she can be a little melodramatic.

From:

omnia_mutantur

I would love to hear your opinions about Throne of Glass, especially if you think it improves as it goes on.

This is, by the way, an awesome story and I'm glad I gave you the opportunity to tell it.

I wanted to like Throne of Glass. I think I went into it with a fairly indulgent mindset. And there were parts I liked, I liked the world building (the magic and the history) I liked the friendship with the princess, I liked the tiny hints of discussing class issues.

But there were so many issues. Seriously, how many times can a world-renowned assassin get surprised by people sneaking into her room? Especially after she makes a point of telling us she made the hinges extra squeaky? Why is the pacing so weird? Why does the tournament feel so unimportant to the main character? How do you become Captain of the guard without killing anyone? Why is she so squeamish about bodies if she's been killing people since forever?

From:

cactus_rs

Broadly speaking, I think things get better. Bear in mind, I read each book more or less as soon as it's out and then don't go back again, so I can't comment on things like pacing or plot holes. But by the second book, there's much less fangirl pandering. The world's complexity also kind of explodes (in a good way): a lot more characters, a lot more actors, etc. The most interesting group of people in the whole thing are the witches, and I don't think they even turn up (except from an incidental character in the first book) until book 3 or 4?

But even so, it's not a series I would really be super jazzed about if I didn't have a personal connection with the author. Part of that is just that YA fantasy has not been my thing since I was actually a member of the target demographic; part of it is that I get the sneaking suspicion that Sarah (it feels very weird to refer to her as "Maas"!) is crafting that complexity as she goes, taking random moments and encounters in the first book and then blowing them up into a huge Thing for the sake of drawing the series out. If I were to take a scalpel and excise everything I thought was like quasi retconned/post hoc into canon, it would probably be a trilogy instead of six books.

Seriously, how many times can a world-renowned assassin get surprised by people sneaking into her room? Especially after she makes a point of telling us she made the hinges extra squeaky? Why is the pacing so weird? Why does the tournament feel so unimportant to the main character? How do you become Captain of the guard without killing anyone? Why is she so squeamish about bodies if she's been killing people since forever?

Yeah, these questions I can't answer, lol.