![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Put aside:
A tenderness of wolves by Stef Penney: Picked up because the title had a "is this a classic?" ring to it, and the first page was fantastic, as was the setting and the premise (Woman goes out into Canadian winter wilderness to try and clear her son's name, or least find out wtf he did, from memory). But I found myself getting frustrated with it very early on - it's told in aggressively present tense, even the flashbacks when it 'should' have been past tense or past perfect. Artistic licence and all that, but this was a first novel and it was probably a good first novel, it…should have varied its tenses, dammit. *has judgey feelings, plus I really like tense changes*
Bone witch Rin Chupeco: gorgeous cover, interesting premise, and witches! But then we started getting to "people get a heart jewel necklace that fill with colour to show their True Selves/Destinies" and I'm so Done with rigid pre-destination stories. Returned to library.
Finished
a record of a spaceborn few by Becky Chambers. I liked it - all of the many characters had time to breathe and got satisfying arcs - but I cannot overstate how little plot there is. It is not necessarily a bad thing: Chambers clearly wanted to do a character novel, and that's fine, but there was very little narrative drive as a result. This is my second favourite of the three novels (the second being my most favourite) but I'm still very keen to see what she comes up with next.
My Candlelight novel by Joann Horniman. This is the sequel/companion novel to the novel of my heart (Secret Scribbled Notebooks). I was delighted to find it in a second-hand bookshop and to own a copy of both. I love it still even if I'd rewritten some parts of it in my memory in the intervening years. Queer (bisexual) YA.
Woman world by Aminder Dhwaliwal. A webcomic(?) in book form. Men die out, right down to the Y-chromosome-sperm in the sperm banks, leaving a world of women. An interconntected series of comics strips with the lightest of narratives strung together with jokes rather than a 'actual' story, which wasn't what I'd expected and threw me for the first half. But I also found myself chuckling out loud quite a lot, so I'm not sure what to make of it. Charming, and A+ for diversity of ages, races, and disabilities.
The thing with Finn by Tom Kelly. Younger YA. Picked up because of the title, the charming art of the cover and the first few pages of excellent first person narrator voice that I wanted to curl up with and learn more about. A 10-year-old boy, Danny, and whatever (tragic) thing happened to his twin brother, Finn.
(Having now finished) This was a wonderful, perfectly-distilled-10-year-old voice that makes some really incisive points about grief and feelings, and I was very impressed. I'm not sure what the actual significance of the last page or so was, but that doesn't stop me from reccing this highly.
Currently reading:
Seraphina by Rachel Hart. A book that's been on my radar for years, and finally picked up. It's a legit lovely fantasy story of humans and dragons forging an uneasy truce, but it's also somewhat dense and just enough second-world that I don't quite have the brain for atm, so pausing it for a few days to read The thing with Finn. Going to open it up and try again.
Up next:
I'm really hoping that Mandy by Julie Andrews actually exists in Dymocks' warehouse somewhere.
A tenderness of wolves by Stef Penney: Picked up because the title had a "is this a classic?" ring to it, and the first page was fantastic, as was the setting and the premise (Woman goes out into Canadian winter wilderness to try and clear her son's name, or least find out wtf he did, from memory). But I found myself getting frustrated with it very early on - it's told in aggressively present tense, even the flashbacks when it 'should' have been past tense or past perfect. Artistic licence and all that, but this was a first novel and it was probably a good first novel, it…should have varied its tenses, dammit. *has judgey feelings, plus I really like tense changes*
Bone witch Rin Chupeco: gorgeous cover, interesting premise, and witches! But then we started getting to "people get a heart jewel necklace that fill with colour to show their True Selves/Destinies" and I'm so Done with rigid pre-destination stories. Returned to library.
Finished
a record of a spaceborn few by Becky Chambers. I liked it - all of the many characters had time to breathe and got satisfying arcs - but I cannot overstate how little plot there is. It is not necessarily a bad thing: Chambers clearly wanted to do a character novel, and that's fine, but there was very little narrative drive as a result. This is my second favourite of the three novels (the second being my most favourite) but I'm still very keen to see what she comes up with next.
My Candlelight novel by Joann Horniman. This is the sequel/companion novel to the novel of my heart (Secret Scribbled Notebooks). I was delighted to find it in a second-hand bookshop and to own a copy of both. I love it still even if I'd rewritten some parts of it in my memory in the intervening years. Queer (bisexual) YA.
Woman world by Aminder Dhwaliwal. A webcomic(?) in book form. Men die out, right down to the Y-chromosome-sperm in the sperm banks, leaving a world of women. An interconntected series of comics strips with the lightest of narratives strung together with jokes rather than a 'actual' story, which wasn't what I'd expected and threw me for the first half. But I also found myself chuckling out loud quite a lot, so I'm not sure what to make of it. Charming, and A+ for diversity of ages, races, and disabilities.
The thing with Finn by Tom Kelly. Younger YA. Picked up because of the title, the charming art of the cover and the first few pages of excellent first person narrator voice that I wanted to curl up with and learn more about. A 10-year-old boy, Danny, and whatever (tragic) thing happened to his twin brother, Finn.
(Having now finished) This was a wonderful, perfectly-distilled-10-year-old voice that makes some really incisive points about grief and feelings, and I was very impressed. I'm not sure what the actual significance of the last page or so was, but that doesn't stop me from reccing this highly.
Currently reading:
Seraphina by Rachel Hart. A book that's been on my radar for years, and finally picked up. It's a legit lovely fantasy story of humans and dragons forging an uneasy truce, but it's also somewhat dense and just enough second-world that I don't quite have the brain for atm, so pausing it for a few days to read The thing with Finn. Going to open it up and try again.
Up next:
I'm really hoping that Mandy by Julie Andrews actually exists in Dymocks' warehouse somewhere.