treknovelfest | Member Posts

Title: Learning the Steps
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Fandom: The Goblin Emperor
Pairing: Csethiro/Maia
Written for:

dontstophernow in

fffx 2025
Rating: Teen
Length: 10k
Summary: As the wedding day approaches, Csethiro and Maia get to know each other better

At AO3. On Squidgeworld. On Dreamwidth. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.

AN: The Tale of the Loathly Lady is a real story which crops up in Arthuriana and other places. It's the Wife of Bath's tale in the Canterbury Tales, and it was told on its own as Gawain and Lady Ragnell.

***

The original proposal—Csethiro did not know who had made it, whether her father or the Emperor or some nameless secretary—was for the wedding to take place on Nan'desazh, the spring lambing festival. This was the most auspicious date for a wedding in the whole year; unfortunately, it was also a mere three months after the contracts had been signed, and there was simply no way to arrange things in time. Csethiro was not often grateful to her stepmother, but she was in this; the Marquise Ceredaran had flatly refused to contemplate so early a date.

The spring equinox had been suggested instead; it was almost as propitious as Nan'desazh, and would give them an extra month to plan. Besides, there was a certain symmetry in it; Edrehasivar had been crowned just before the fall equinox, and his birthday was the winter solstice, and so to marry him on the spring equinox seemed to Csethiro (and many others at court) to be a harbinger of good fortune.

It was still ruinously short. The preparations for Csoru's wedding had taken a full year.

( Read more... )

Tags:

fic,
goblin emperor

This sequel to Annihilation takes an unusual approach. Rather than returning to Area X, almost the entire book takes place outside of it, focusing on the scientific/government agency, the Southern Reach, which has been sending expeditions into it.

Most of the book is bureaucratic shenanigans with creeping horror undertones. The main character, unsubtly nicknamed Control, is slowly losing his mind trying to figure out what the hell happened to his predecessor and why she kept a live plant feeding off a dead mouse in her desk drawer, what is up with the bizarre incantatory literal writings on the wall, and what's up with the biologist, who has seemingly returned from Area X but says she's not the biologist and asks to be called Ghost Bird. There's parts that are interesting but also a lot of office satire which is not really what I was looking for in this series.

About 80% in, the book took a turn that got me suddenly very interested.

( Read more... )

I kind of want to know what happens next but I'm not sure Vandermeer is interested in giving readers what they want.

Tags:

I have had recs from several recent exchanges, but haven't actually posted them. So! Here we go.

Five Figure Fanwork Exchange is the most recent! I received two fics, both of them lovely:

a star or two beside (5070 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Maia Drazhar, Chenelo Drazharan, Shaleän Sevraseched, Shaleän Sevraseched's Wife, Ursu Perenched, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Chenelo Lives, Alternate Universe - Maia Has a Good Childhood, POV Multiple, sailing ships, References to Illness
Summary:

It is something out of a wonder-tale when a stranger arrives at Isvaroë and whisks Maia and his mother away.

Before, After, Always, Already (9151 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kira Nerys/Keiko O'Brien/Miles O'Brien
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Post-Canon Bajor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
Summary:

Keiko was over Miles's shoulder in the video message. "Hi, Nerys!" she said. She looked the same, too, although her hair was up, and she was in uniform. "We're moving to Bajor!"

Other faves from FFFX include:
( Five Figure Fanwork Recs )

( AU5k Rec )

( Fic In A Box Recs )

Tags:

fic rec

One day every adult on Earth gets a box that contains a string that measures out the length of their life.

This premise seems designed in a lab to create a book to be read for book clubs, where everyone gets to discuss whether or not they'd open their box and how they'd react to a long or short string. It worked, too. And it is absolutely about the premise. Unfortunately, the book is bad: flat, dull, sappy, American in the worst possible way, and emotionally manipulative.

It follows multiple characters, all American, most New Yorkers, and all middle or upper class. Some get long strings. Some get short strings. The ones with short strings agonize over their short strings. The ones with long strings who are in relationships with people with short strings agonize over that.

One of them is black, a fact mentioned exactly once in the entire book, and one has a Hispanic name. One set is an old right-wing politician and his wife. But all of them have identical-sounding narrative voices. Other than the Hispanic-named dude, who is mostly concerned about job discrimination, and the politician, who just wants to exploit the issue, everyone is worried about having a relationship and children with someone who will die young/worried that they'll get dumped and not be able to have children because they'll die young.

Ultimately, isn't everything really about baaaaaabies? Shouldn't everyone have baaaaaaabies no matter what?

The book is so bland and flat. The strings are a metaphor for discrimination, as short stringers are discriminated against. It explores some other social issues, all extremely American like health insurance discrimination and mass shootings, but only peeks outside America for brief and stereotypical moments: North Korea mandates not opening the boxes, China mandates opening them, and in Italy hardly anyone opens their box because they already know what really matters: family. BARF FOREVER.

It was obvious going in that the origin of the boxes would never be explained, but no one even seemed curious about that. Once all adults have received them, they appear on your doorstep the night you turn 22. Video of this is fuzzy. No one parks themselves on the doorstep to see if they teleport in or what. No one has a paradigm-upending crisis over this absolute proof of God/aliens/time travel/magic/etc that the boxes represent. No one comes up with inventive ways to take advantage of the situation a la Death Note. No one is concerned that this proves predestination. No one wonders why they appeared now and what the motive of whoever put them there is.

The point that life is precious regardless of length is hammered in with a thousand sledgehammers, to the point where it felt like a bad self-help book in the form of a novel. The romances are flat and sappy. In the truly vomitous climax, someone pedals around on a bicycle with the stereo playing "Que Sera Sera" and it quotes the entire song.

It's only April but this will be hard to top as the worst book I read all year.

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In a future Morocco, a young woman named Hariba with no prospects has herself jessed, a process which renders her loyal to whoever buys her, and sells herself as an indentured servant to a wealthy household. There she meets Akhmim, a harni - a genetically engineered human designed to be a perfect lover or companion. Hariba falls in love with him and runs away with him, but because she's jessed, she becomes extremely sick due to defying her loyalty implant.

Up until this point, the book had a compelling atmosphere a bit reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale in that it explored the daily life of people living with very little agency in the home of someone who owns them. But once Hariba gets sick, she becomes completely sidelined from the story and basically lies in bed suffering for the entire middle part of the book, while the POV switches from Hariba and Akhmim to first her mother, then her friend - neither of whom are very interesting.

( Read more... )

This is a well-written book with interesting issues that sags a lot in the middle portion when Hariba basically drops out of the story, and ends in a note of depression and gloom.

Though I didn't love this book, I'm sorry that McHugh doesn't seem to be writing novels anymore as I did quite like China Mountain Zhang and Mission Child.

Tags:

Too many patients were upset and stressed out today. Only one because of taxes and money. All the rest about relationships. As per usual. Even had to see a patient in crisis this even after 7:00. But he was so upset that I'm glad he called and I was able to talk him down.

But I'm wiped out and exhausted. My eyes are actually burning from tiredness. So, I'm going early to bed. As soon as this song is over. Duncan, Methos, and Connor, I promise I'll get back to you tomorrow. Promise. I just need sleep tonight.

The sweetness of that Mick and Keith pic always makes me smile.

Current Mood: worn to a frazzle
Current Location: Home
Current Music: 'Óró Sé do Bheatha Bhaile' Seo Linn

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing! My big accomplishment is having the energy to put together a Book Club for the 616 Discord. It consists of two comics about the Avengers doing their taxes.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Ultimate Wolverine #16 )

What I'm Reading Next

Not sure yet; it's hard to tell how much brain I will have at any given time, as I am currently getting two or three days between migraines. In baseball non-fiction reading, I am partway through Billy Bean's autobiography but I don't know what fiction to try reading. Probably I should just go for some more tropey m/m romance or something.

Current Mood: dorky

Tags:

Danny is a 15-year-old closeted trans girl in a world where superheroes are real. She's across town from her home and her transphobic abusive father, hiding in an alley and painting her toenails with polish bought in a shop as far from her home as she can manage, when America's strongest superhero, Dreadnought, gets in a fight with a supervillain, crashes at her feet, and passes on his powers to her, since she's the only one there to receive them, before dying.

His powers automatically reshape her body into her mental ideal. So now she's physically a very pretty, very strong girl with superpowers... who now has to explain this to her abusive transphobic parents, everyone at her school, and the local superheroes, one of whom is a TERF. Not to mention that the supervillain who killed Dreadnought is still out there...

This is basically exactly what it sounds like: a superhero origin story for persecuted trans teenagers. It's very earnest and has absolutely no subtext. My favorite parts were the bits where Danny gets her gender affirmed by new friends and a sympathetic superhero, which are genuinely very sweet, and when Danny finally proclaims herself the new Dreadnought, which is a great stand up and cheer moment . But overall, I'm too old to be its ideal reader.

Content notes: A LOT of transphobia and transphobic slurs.

Tags:

As you may have guessed, I completely failed to live up to my goal of reviewing everything I read, even in brief. Rather than attempting to catch up to my backlog, I am re-starting from where I am.

Yesterday I did a quick book cull by pulling books off my shelves that have been sitting there for ages, reading the first couple chapters, and deciding if I was likely to continue. I focused on books I'd started before and not gotten very far into. Here are the books that landed in the "move to Paper & Clay's used section" bag.

Trouble and Her Friends, by Melissa Scott

See the new cover? If you've been wanting to read this, it's now available as an ebook!

This is a classic lesbian cyberpunk novel that I have tried to read at least three times, and never managed to get very far into. I kept putting it back on the shelf because it's a classic and probably objectively good, but I'm just not that into cyberpunk. If a lot of the action is taking place online, I tend to lose interest. Also, some books just don't grab me, due to a mismatch between me and the book, rather than being objectively or even subjectively bad. This is clearly one of them. Someone else can be thrilled to find it at Paper & Clay, take it home, and enjoy it.

The Splinter in the Sky, by Kemi Ashling-Garcia

A tea specialist becomes a spy in a far-future colonized world! Unfortunately, this starts with a prologue which reads much like the infamous "trade war" crawl at the top of The Phantom Menace. Yes, I know that turned out to be prescient, but the problem was that it was written in a stultifying manner. The next couple chapters were much more lively, but also had a tendency to clunky exposition - some of which was pretty cool, to be fair. This was the second time I attempted this book, and had essentially the same reaction I did to Trouble and Her Friends - not bad, but not for me.

Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher

This has been described to me as "Pokemon in alternate ancient Rome," which sounds amazing. For at least the third time, it failed to grab me. I got about four chapters in and there's still no Pokemon. Someone else will like it more than me.

The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe

A race of people called the Tufa have lived amongst normal humans in Appalachia since the beginning of time. They can see ghosts, have music-based magic, etc. This opens with a Tufa woman very very clearly based on Jessica Lynch, who was a real-life American soldier who was wounded and captured in the US/Iraq war, returning from Iraq. I found this in poor taste. The general style also got on my nerves.

While doing this, I got sufficiently grabbed by the openings to keep reading and finish Maureen McHugh's Nekropolis, which hopefully I will actually review. I also returned Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies and Tanya Huff's Sing the Four Quarters to the shelf.

Tags:

book review

On Sunday, we had Ny's Online Thing. (Wake. Memorial.)

It was very good; full of singing and poetry and science facts and art and memories and sadnesses. and made me sort of/almost cry at various time periods, but because I was the Official Zoom Host I felt like I couldn't, like, take breaks, which is of course Never True. Once it finished, I ended up with a dyspeptic-and-congestion-related headache that took a bit to clear out, but it did eventually.

There were a thousand small details that I didn't quite think of, which makes sense because generally I'm not the one hosting large Zooms, or, for that matter, organizing memorials. And also, the sad.

The general inchoate "we" of the Discord have been hashing out ethical stuff about posting and/or linking to the video of the memorial. Because, it was a semi-public event, but also private, and the simultaneous chat in particular had a lot of linking up wallet names and online handles that is perfectly fine in a semi-private space, but less so in the wider world. And yet, one of the things I appreciated about Ny was that she created a life where she could, to the extent possible, be as much herself as she could, out loud, and I don't want her life's celebration muffled.

But, we didn't quite make it clear that it might be posted later, or ask people if they were OK with it being posted (see above re: small details), and in the general sense, we're fans of opt-in rather than opt-out. So we've come to a (current) compromise. I am quite positive there will be further movement later. (For all I know, someone'll make it a Project to ask everyone who was there if they're OK with it being public, or if they'd like their identities ambiguated. I'm sure not doing it, though, because I have overdue client notes to write.) But anyway, for now, we're not sending out the chat, but will send out the video. So!

If you're interested, either

a) email vicka about it, and she can send you the video. (vicka's the one with the Ny Page, which was where I originally found out about the dying-of-COVID part. Her email is findable on the wider andor pages.)

or b) PM me/comment here/email me/send me a carrier pigeon, and I can send you a link to the video, which is on Mega, which is how I got it to vicka because I decided I wasn't up to figuring out SCP. I'm not including the chat there because of the aforementioned linkages.

Or c)

gingicat is, soon, going to post the link to the announce-list, if you're on that.

Natalie is a wildly successful trad wife influencer. She and her husband Caleb have a farm and six adorable children, and Natalie has parlayed carefully edited clips of her perfect life into a lucrative career. (She leaves out the two nannies, 30 farm hands, and the fact that Sassafras the cow is actually four sequential cows, replaced every time one dies, like goldfish.)

Then Natalie suffers a mysterious fall from grace. And then she finds herself in what appears to be an alternate version of her own life in the 1800s, with a husband very similar but not quite identical to her original husband, and children who claim to be her own. Has she time traveled? Is she delusional? Has she gotten kidnapped into a non-consensual reality show?

This is an extremely interesting novel that makes a good companion to Saratoga Schrader's Trad Wife. The beginning of the book is extremely similar, though Natalie is much more successful than Camille. Burke's version of a trad wife influencer deluding herself and lying to her followers about her supposedly perfect life is much better-written than Schrader's. But that's a double-edged sword, because it makes Natalie much more unlikable. She's an incredibly hatable character and the book is from her POV, and that makes a lot of the book not really enjoyable to read.

But the book turns out to be much more ambitious and clever than it seems at the beginning. When I finished it, I was glad I'd read it and appreciated it a lot. That being said, I enjoyed Trad Wife more on an emotional level.

I highly recommend not clicking on the cut unless you're 100% positive you'll never read the book. I really enjoyed the non-spoiled experience.

( Read more... )

Content notes: Domestic violence, rape (on-page, graphic), child abuse and neglect, farm animal neglect/poor caretaking (just mentioned), gaslighting, non-consensual drugging, current American right-wing stuff.

While attempting to buy Saratoga Schaefer's Trad Wife, I accidentally bought a different novel called Trad Wife by Michelle Brandon. And Sarah Langan is coming out with yet another book called Trad Wife in September. I am now on a mission to read all four trad wife books, to compare and contrast.

Tags:

Thus far no writing today. At all. But Killa and talked for probably an hour about the plot of Book 3--my problems with it, her problems with it and how to fix said problems without losing what I want the story to be about which is mostly Methos being in danger, the danger bringing feelings about trauma in the past, Duncan and Connor and Methos, himself, being committed to keeping Methos safe and emotionally stable (hey, that's not always easy when severe trauma from the past is coming up) saving and/or rescuing him (or other characters) as needed with assistance from Joe, and less so but still there and available Amanda and Richie. And I'd have to say that that previous sentence may have achieved the status of being numbered among the most run-on sentences ever written. And that is not even all of the elements of the plot, because omigods, I forgot to even mention the ever important on-going and on-going and on-going plot about Methos and Duncan doing what all of us have to do in relationships--fighting, making up, and negotiating and renegotiating how to maintain a long term relationship. And the on-going work that goes on between everyone and everyone about having a long lasting friendship. And no, friendships do not require the same amount of work as committed relationships, but all relationships require some work.

Gods that was a long run-on babble. Thanks for your patience if you actually read it.

And hooray, hurrah Lissa and I got to spend hours and hours hanging out and talking and talking and talking today. Glorious. Made me so happy I'm still glowing. Yay.

Then had a lovely chatting conversation with annavere. Now just hanging about and thinking about writing. May or may not. At least I know more about where I'm going.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Home
Current Music: Moondance Van Morrison

Last week: Titus saving the day single-handedly as a millenium-old trope. The synoptic gospels foreshadowing these events, and discussion of the abomination of desolation. The Yom Kippur service description of the priest in his vestments. How much Titus might have intended the destruction of Jerusalem, and when, and how much that question may be different from how Josephus feels like he needs to justify it? A mention of R. Yochanan ben Zakkai, which all of you should definitely tell me more about :D

This week: Jerusalem is under siege. It's quite awful for those under siege, what with famine inside the city and getting crucified by Romans if they try to escape. Titus and Josephus continue to be blameless and awesome.

Next week: First half of Book 6: "...from its rebuilding by Haggai in the second year of the reign of Cyrus to its capture under Vespasian was 639 years and 45 days" (270).

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Man, why do I not have a They Might Be Giants icon?

They just released a new album (The World Is To Dig), their 24th album, and, yeah, okay, I know I've been listening to them since I was in high school, but I am honestly impressed and pleased that they are still out there making music and also have (unlike most of the other bands I really liked in high school) managed not to do anything massively problematic that I am aware of and are just, you know, seeming to genuinely enjoy getting to spend their lives hanging out and making music.

The r/tmbg subreddit asked people not to rehash the same argument we have every album (that we have been having since the days of Usenet, as they pointed out), which is "why isn't this album more [X] like the last album?" and while I will say that it doesn't have any songs where I'm like "this is definitely the best on this album" (like "Brontosaurus" which was clearly the best thing on Book, their last album) I think "Sleep's Older Sister" (described by someone on reddit as "what if Taylor Swift was high" lol) is going to be stuck in my head, as is "Outside Brain," and "In the Dead Mall," so it's a little weird to me how most of my faves are Flansburgh songs this album, though I do like Linnell's "Character Flaw" and "What You Get." But this seems like a very good Flans album to me.

(I think most of the fanbase would say that Their most popular songs are Linnell's -- Birdhouse, Ana Ng, and so on -- and the Ratings on the wiki bear this out, as the top ten are Linnell. You don't even get to a Flans song on this list until what is currently #17, which is "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head," which I like a lot but I think is, you know, maybe not one of Their most well-known. So I am in kind of a weird position where I generally agree with the fandom consensus but also my absolute favorite TMBG song is actually "Sleeping in the Flowers," which is a Flans song.)

Because I guess it wouldn't be a TMBG album if I didn't have to look any words up while listening, I did have to look up two words. And I don't mean "I couldn't understand the words they were singing so I had to check the lyrics," I mean "I've never heard that word before in my life." So, yeah, I had to look up "galliard" (a Renaissance courtly dance, apparently) and "Coffey still," although in my defense I don't actually know anything about how distillation works.

So, yeah, new TMBG album. At least the world contains that.

Current Mood: dorky

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music: they might be giants

I saw three clients or maybe four. I chatted with three or four friends, including Anna, <user name=Annavere>, and Lissa. And chatted and chatted with Lissa, off and on all day, starting at about 10:00 am my time and not saying g'night till 10:00 pm. And she said something awesome about my story:

"Funny, hot, and sweet! (registered trademark: dswdiane) ♥"

Oh, Lissa, how I adore you.

So I also reread a wonderful Sherlock story by LauraJV and made a bunch of comments about it. And I went through my spam folder and rescued all the comments and replies to comments and kudos that had been going to spam since a month ago in March. And for all I know before that. I just thought no one was reading anything I said. Gods. I'm so preoccupied with writing I hardly know what else is happening.

Why the hell does my type keep changing size? I want to get back to book 3, chapter 5. Which I will do tomorrow. I really, really will. I'm considering making the title Present, Past, Future Tense--All Imperfect. Omigods, I'm already thinking about making book 4, like 10 or 20 years into Duncan/Methos being together. Stop that right now. I still haven't finished plotting Book 3, though I know exactly where it's going for a while yet.

I give up on figuring out what my type is doing. Oh. Lissa told me how to steal an icon. <user name=carenejeans> I'm going to steal one from you right now. It's after 1:00 am. I need to crash.

I want to work on chapter 5 tomorrow. And I will. The music right now is keeping me. Enough of rock for now. Perfect the next track on my playlist is one from the Jaws soundtrack. Time to go to bed and fantasize about my favorite scene that I won't get to write for probably quite a little bit of time. Um, no. I can see a way to get to it more quickly and efficiently. Poor Methos.

Oh. Funniest interaction of the day: Me: So tell me that I do NOT want to even contemplate participating in Whump challenge involving a story about Methos/Kronos. And later in same story h/c with Duncan/Methos. TELL ME that. Make it mandatory.
Killalissa: honey, you are already writing that
Me: Hmm. Yes, I guess I am. I don't need to write anything for a Whump challenge. All of what I write is Whump challenge.
Me: "Darkness is a hunger that insatiable. Lightness has a call that's hard to hear. I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it. I'm crawling on your shores." is so Methos, isn't it really?
Killa: yes, I never thought of it that way before! Indigo Girls always make me think of Xena and Gabrielle, but that lyric is totally Methos

More chatter then Me: Thinking title of book three might should be Present, Past, and Future Tense all Imperfect. Maybe
K: I like that! they are/Methos is a work in progress
Me: Aren't we all. But he is more so than a lot--because he has a lot more of all of it.
K: Methos just said to me, "Me a little more than most, I think."
Me: Poor sweet baby. My Duncan just announced in my head "*My* baby." yes, Duncan, we know that. Truly. We do.
K: 😂 to “ My Duncan just announced in my head "*My* baby." yes, Duncan, we know that. Truly. We do. ”

And now I really, really have to crash. G'night all.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: home
Current Music: "Whip It" Devo

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duncan/methos writing friends

I have checked my preferences on AO3, have not changed a thing, and all seems to be as desired--so--

If you're reading this, please be advised, that I am not getting email notifications of any kudos, comments, or replies to ANY comments I've made on other people's works. And this has been going on for well over a week. I have notified AO3 of this problem as of about ten minutes ago, so of course, not response has been made yet. But if you have replied to any comments I've made on AO3, please be advised I do not know about it.

That's all for now. Gods.

Nope, nope, nope. All my fault. I have no idea what I did, but all my emails from AO3 have been going to spam. Since the beginning of March. Ye fucking gods. I think I rescued all of them. All 40 I could finds in the bloody spam folder which only goes back to March 10. Kill me now, please.

Current Mood: Annoyed with myself
Current Location: home
Current Music: "Blood Brothers" Iron Maiden

18-year-old Evelyn is on a plane, transporting her father's ashes, when there's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive, and everything goes white. Then Evelyn is back on the plane, which is no longer nosediving. There's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive...

Evelyn quickly realizes that she's in a 29-minute time loop. She tries to figure out why the plane is crashing and how to stop it, but gets absolutely nowhere. She talks to other passengers. She steals their food and eats it. She watches every movie on the plane. She learns everything about everyone, except the handsome sleeping teenage boy who never wakes up during the loop. She goes through 400 loops and almost loses her mind. And then, on one loop, the boy wakes up. And on the next loop, he also realizes that he's in a loop...

Like the last novel I read by Reiss (Out of Air, the one with the teenage scuba divers), this book has a great premise. I enjoyed how Evelyn makes herself free with everything on the plane while trapped, and I also enjoyed how she and Rion, the sleeping boy, work together once he wakes up to figure out what's going on. However, it had an issue that more-or-less ruined the book for me. Rion suggests something that somehow Evelyn failed to try in 400 loops, which is to follow one person on the plane at a time, and observe everything they do. It never occurred to Evelyn to watch the flight attendants, and watching one of them reveals exactly what's causing the crash. They try to prevent it in several ways that don't work. Then Rion figures out a clever plan that saves the plane and fixes the loop.

The author clearly wanted to have Evelyn be alone in the loop for a long time. I can see why she wanted that - we get a vivid sense of her frustration and despair - but it makes Evelyn seem useless when she spends ages watching movies and so forth, and then Rion figures everything out almost immediately. This is exacerbated when Rion also comes up with the plan to fix things. This wouldn't have been a problem if they'd been in the loop together much earlier - then they could have bonded while investigating, taken breaks and done the fun stuff that she did alone, and mutually figured stuff out. It would have been more fun to read and felt less sexist, which I'm sure was unintentional but is inevitable when the girl fails at everything for ages, then a boy shows up and both solves the mystery and fixes the problem.

I'll be interested to see if Reiss's third book also has a three word title that rhymes with "care."

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5/5. I am having SO many feelings about this book that I am not sure I can actually articulate them all. But also I am very aware that my feelings are entangled partially in, uh, currently being obsessed with a fanon ship that maps super easily on to this one, so you know, as usual, I am not to be trusted about my feelings and I'm very willing to believe that it might not hit quite right if one doesn't happen to be exactly in that situation? Anyway... it's about these two eighteen-year-old boys who start the book at boarding school together in 1914. Sidney Ellwood is half-Jewish, social, charismatic, demonstrative, loves and writes poetry. Henry Gaunt is half-German, intense, introverted, anxious, loves ancient Greek. (...I also have Feelings about characters who quote poetry. And, as it turns out, ancient Greek.) The two of them have strong and more-or-less repressed feelings for each other. (Gaunt's feelings are particularly repressed.)

But. It being 1914, it rapidly starts being about something else than boarding school.

I should probably also mention a huge, extremely gigantic content note for trench warfare and historical levels of wounds and death.

( no spoilers, perhaps mild meta-spoilers, but at least I am more-or-less coherent )

Major spoilers, starts reasonably coherent but rapidly devolves into word-vomiting

I was so sure that one or both of Elly and Gaunt would die because it struck me as That Kind of heartbreaking book plus which I guess I've been socialized to understand that Teh Gays Always Die (and Carruthers and Sandys died so early on!! :( :( ), and I really REALLY wanted them to have a happy ending, I can't actually think of the last time I've wanted that so much for a couple, and when they got together I felt like, okay, at least they got one happy time before one of them died! All I wanted was for someone somewhere to get some happiness in the end.

The only thing that surprised me was that Gaunt died when the book was only half over. (BURGOYNE.) I was sure then that the next half would be Ellwood writing poetry about him, like Tennyson, or like Sassoon. I was SO surprised when he turned out to have survived! And then my reaction was that the book was now going to find new and exciting ways to break me (true, but not in the way I thought), and I spent most of the second half of the book worried Gaunt would die in some other way, and expressed that I was never going to forgive Winn if Gaunt died, or Ellwood did, without Ellwood finding out that Gaunt was still alive.

I absolutely absolutely adored Hayes and his friendship with Gaunt and his more prickly friendship with Ellwood and the contrast between him and the public schoolboys (who always get promoted over him, the poor guy), and him looking after Ellwood (both physically and e.g. warning him away from Watts) even though he thought Ellwood was looking down on him. I was also convinced he was going to die because I loved him so much (I actually said that I thought he would make it to the end of the war and then die, just to spite me. I actually said this!) And he didn't die but he ended up with BOTH LEGS (or at least 1 1/2) gone! I was like. Winn. Could you not have left him ONE leg?! COME ON. I would rather Gaunt or Ellwood had lost their legs. HAYES.

(Also Hayes panicking to Ellwood and Ellwood trying very very badly to reassure him (no wonder Hayes doesn't want to write him), then Ellwood having that exact panic after he's invalided out, omg)

I absolutely loved that Elly was into poetry and used poetry to basically articulate his emotions (I do the same kind of thing -- a lot of how I understand the world is made up of quotations from novels and poems and songs; my head has been full of Sassoon and Owen writing this post) and that moment when he declaimed Keats at Gaunt and Gaunt had to accept that he was in love with him, except that was when Gaunt knew he was going to die, auuuuugh. And also when Elly lost his poetry and then -- that little glimpse of how he might be getting it back at the end -- auuuuuugh

And also Gaunt and his ancient Greek and how sometimes he just quotes in Greek and I love it

And also I love that Winn doesn't just give us the one side, when Gaunt gets captured by the Germans it's a very stark reminder that although we've been POV English, the English aren't the only ones dying in this war and that even if it's easy for the English soldiers not to see the German soldiers as people and vice versa, they both are. And Gaunt being half-German of course knew this from the beginning, which adds another layer. This line, augh: Had it not been for his khaki uniform, no one should have known he was the enemy.

(And that shattering German POV, for just a minute.)

And also the prisoner-of-war scenes which are almost comic, we needed some of that at that point in the book, and ALSO Pritchard and Devi totally being like oh, yeah, no big deal at all about Gaunt being an "invert," and making ordinary jokes about it like they would about anything else and being totally accepting, instead of all the rejection and awfulness Gaunt's been fearing (and might have gotten from someone else), and that healing something in Gaunt so that he can face his love for Elly and actually tell him that, and be okay with it even if Ellwood can't love him back, I LOVE THIS and I know it's absolutely wish-fulfillment, but we already saw the part where Caruthers basically committed suicide so he didn't have to deal with the terrible consequences of being homosexual (augh!), so yeeeeeah I didn't need that to happen again, that was quite all right.

And then I read the bit where Maud says she's not going to marry Elly and I was cheering for her and also thinking that okay, even if everyone else's life is messed up (I still worried that Ellwood and Gaunt wouldn't find each other again, at this point) maybe Maud is the one character things will work out for, because it would be awful if she married Ellwood

AND THEN THEY DID MEET AGAIN
And they were both so damaged! Except that Gaunt, having been in the POW camp instead of fighting for a while, had recovered a bit mentally if not physically, and Ellwood was completely broken, augh. I had not thought that they would have to deal with shell shock instead of death, but of course they did

And Maud and Gaunt making up, and Maud being supportive and Gaunt apologizing (he really has been awful to her) and them speaking in Greek to each other <3

This bit: "Sometimes I think the War is harder on parents than on soldiers," said Pritchard. Gaunt could tell he was lying, but Gaunt would have lied too, if he had thought of it. And then, having learned from Pritchard, he says it to Mrs. Ellwood AUUUUUGH

(I said this before, but, now that I have the spoilers to back me up: all the little moments of kindness between characters that didn't have to happen, but did anyway, are I think what make me so hopelessly a fan of this book)

I think as we get close to the ending my thoughts just get more and more incoherent as Winn breaks my heart over and over again and I hadn't at all thought it would be because things were more-or-less going to be okay except that they can't exactly be okay but they can be as okay as possible:
Devi being ALIVE
CYRIL ROSEVEARE giving them the Brazil out!

"You don't have to give me your answer now, of course," said Roseveare. "I've already written to my uncle about you, just in case--"
He didn't finish. They both knew what he meant: in case I'm killed before I can help you.

Also: KEATS
Gaunt giving Hayes a JOB (and not a job as his freaking valet, either, not that I don't love Lord Peter but... like, let's let Hayes have a little class mobility here, that's the LEAST we can do)
"I'm not playing, either."

I mean, the rational part of my brain knows that the book is doing a few backflips to give them an ending where they can be alive and together ~~and not be Alan Turing~~ (although hi I found while writing this post that Robert Graves actually had the experience of almost dying of a lung wound and being reported dead, like Gaunt, though not because he was a pow, so it's not like she's completely making UP backflips, either) but the rest of my brain does not really care -- I think because we saw all the ways in which things could go wrong, it's a little like Carruthers and Sandys ( :(((((( ) and Aldworth and the Roseveare brothers and Lantham and -- and everyone else -- are the other stories that didn't work, that ended tragically, so in a sense my brain thinks of it like survivor bias; not everyone did die in WWI, or even most of everyone; someone had to survive; it might as well be them.
And also because they didn't survive unscathed. At all. Either physically or mentally. Which also seems -- reasonable, statistically speaking.
Also because no one should be Alan Turing (including especially Alan Turing) and I don't at all mind a universe where my characters ARE NOT (now, can I have a fix-it AU for Turing)

Physically speaking: Sassoon (who admittedly did not get his face shot off) lived until age 81 and Graves lived until age 90 after getting shot in the lung, so my headcanon is that Ellwood and Gaunt lived a very long time together :P

And then that last, awful twist of the knife. OH COME ON, the book was DONE and we were all going to live happily (or at least hopefully) EVER AFTER and now the third Roseveare brother is dead (as he dreamed back in the beginning, that was a shoe I had been bracing to drop for forever and when I finally let my guard down...). (While I was reading about WWII poets... I guess this happened to Wilfred Owen. Augh!)

And the LAST PARAGRAPH which didn't even register for me the first time -- I might not have actually read it properly then, because I was too busy trying not to throw the book across the room because Cyril was dead: Let us, like the soldiers of Waterloo, have our century of peace and prosperity, for we have paid for it in blood.

:(
Well, I'm thinking about that a lot this week.

( Here, have the Sassoon poem 'They', because it's been rattling around in my head for days now )

And I suppose reading this book, now, is: well: I think this should be required reading for anyone who tells the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

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So, first they distract me from the third book in this series in which I have written four chapters and am halfway through a fifth one to insist I HAVE to write a new scene after the end of "Til Death." After Methos has precipitated Duncan dropping and shattering a Ming vase.

Then Methos refuses to be happy with the first five versions of what I write which is close to what he wants, but not quite. Finally, finally, finally Methos and Duncan and me are happy with the first 2000 words. And I happily go to sleep last night. At 1:30 am.

Then they wake me up at 5:00 am this morning demanding the next scene and describing it to me in detail--and it is absolute porn (shut UP, both of you, you can call it erotica until you turn blue and fall right over). (Yes, I know it's not graphically explicit, but it IS sex from beginning to end). Gods. And both of them are implicated. There's plenty of blame to go around. Thank the gods, several clients cancelled today. I am fried.

Maybe more later. And it is later. And since I started writing at about 7:30 am because I very considerately did NOT wake up my spousal unit so I could go type in the same room. Which is where this computer lives and there is naught to be done about that except live with it. For now anyway. Anyway I now have close to 4000 words and only one more scene to write with is actually mostly a denouement.

And now I want to tear up chapter 5 of book 3 and change it. A Lot. Because I have had a better idea. So it was good that I got distracted into writing a different story instead of forging on. Thank you beta Paul for totally brilliant suggestion.

If I have more to say, I can write more later.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Home
Current Music: "I Want My Tears Back" Nightwish

What I Just Finished Reading

KD Casey, Breakout Year: A m/m baseball romance that the author apparently wrote in response to feedback saying her books had too many Jewish characters, so now everyone in this book is Jewish, which is clearly the best way to respond to bigoted criticism. A+. Loved that. I wish I could say the same about the rest of the book, which is a fake-dating second-chance romance where only one of the main characters currently plays baseball, which means there's way less baseball than in her other books, which made it kind of meh for me because the author is really amazing at putting baseball as an integral part of her baseball romances (sometimes it's hard to find sports romances where the author seems like they actually care about the sport) so unfortunately I spent most of the book hoping for more baseball in the baseball book and not getting it.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Iron Man #4 )

What I'm Reading Next

No idea. But, hey, maybe I can read books now? Here's hoping, anyway.

Current Mood: full

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Star Trek Novel Fic Fest

Fic: Learning the Steps

Authority, by Jeff Vandermeer

Fic recs from FFFX, AU5k, and Fic In A Box

The Measure, by Nikki Erlick

Nekropolis, by Maureen McHugh

Actually gonna take care of myself. Miracles do happen.

Wednesday Reading Meme

Dreadnought, by April Daniels

Book Cull Reviews

stupid ethics, making life ... minimally more complicated (Ny stuff)

Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke

Killa and writing and plotting

The Jewish War: Last half of book 5

At least there's TMBG...

What did I do today?

Actually NOT a Misbehaving AO3

Seconds to Spare, by Rachel Reiss

In Memoriam (Winn)

Aggravating muses

Wednesday Reading Meme

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