hrj

No way am I going to keep this schedule up for long, but let's cover another two months of past reading.

March 2022

A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2) & The Hollow of Fear (Lady Sherlock $3) by Sherry Thomas - audio

I don't remember why I started this historic mystery series -- possible a sale at Audible -- but I quickly got hooked on two aspects of the books. The central character (Charlotte Holmes, who has set up a detecting business posting as her fictional brother Sherlock) is decidedly and unapologetically neurodiverse, and the stories are told in a convoluted, non-linear, full of unreliable narrators fashion. The latter feature means that I generally re-read (re-listen) immediately on finishing each book to see how everything is revealed once I know how it comes out. The overall series arc includes a variety of characters who aren't what they seem, and looming threats from mysterious villains, and the gradual negotiation of the relationship between Charlotte and her childhood friend and benefactor. So...you may have noticed that I haven't said anything about the specific plots of these two books. It hardly matters. I loved the whole series, a couple of volumes more than the rest, which we haven't come to yet.

Band Sinister by K.J. Charles - audio

I repeatedly note that my devotion to the historic m/m romances of K.J. Charles is due to her masterful hand at characterization and decidedly not due to the significant quantities of explicit sex involved. This Regency-era story reminded me a lot of Georgette Heyer's Venetia in the set-up: the accident and convalescence of a sibling brings the central character into forced proximity with a rake and romance ensues -- although very little else in the plot lines up with the Heyer work. As often happens in Charles' books, we have self-discovery, self-imposed psychological roadblocks to the romance, lots of sex scenes, a climatic crisis of "we can't make this work" which is then resolved into a satisfactory HEA. Other features of the story include diversity and tolerance, and negotiating open relationships. Unlike many of Charles's books, this is a stand-alone (though I think maybe there are covert cross-over references in other books? I'm not sure).

The Art of Theft (Lady Sherlock #4), Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5), & Miss Moriarty, I Presume (Lady Sherlock #6) - Sherry Thomas - audio

As you might be able to tell, I got very hooked on this series and did a bit of binging. Our heroine is involved in blackmail, art theft, defending a policeman (a continuing character) accused of murder who definitely Does Not Approve of her, and getting caught up in the family dramas of Moriarty, the arch-villain. Each book has an assortment of subplots (Charlotte's sister is fictionalizing her adventures and gaining covert fame as a writer, the non-standard romance with Lord Ingram progresses) which means I'm having a hard time remembering which volume had the subplot where the reveal is a sapphic relationship, which bumped that story up in my estimation. I think it was one of these? Maybe?

April 2022 (actually Lady Sherlock #5 started April, but that would break up my clustering)

Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5) by Seanan McGuire - audio

I've dipped into several of the Wayward Children novellas, without reading the entire series. I find them interesting and well-written, but somehow they never grab me enough to want more than tastes. The over-arching premise is that of children who have lived in portal fantasies but then find themselves back in the "real" world, and the consequences of that loss and adjustment (or lack thereof). This particular installment is more of a "and then what happened?" continuation of a previous story.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid - audio

I don’t tend to pick my reading based on what other people are raving about—-my tastes tend to be too idiosyncratic for that to work well—-but I became aware of this book because lots of people were raving about it and I think because it was part of an Audible sale. Wow, this book. It would have been an interesting enough story even if it were just a chronicle of the life of a closeted bisexual actress in Hollywood, but the story lays out a trail of clues for a hidden but intertwined story that provides a powerful twist at the end. Loved it! And don't let yourself be spoiled before reading it the first time.

The Company Daughters by Samantha Rajaram - print

I spotted this for the "new sapphic historicals" for the podcast, and interviewed the author. The story moves from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies, taking its leisurely time in doing so. The two central characters--one an impoverished maidservant and the other a privileged girl precipitously fallen by her father's business failure and death--sign up to become "company daughters", young single women sent to the colonies to become wives. While I definitely hadn’t been expecting a capital-R Romance, I wasn’t quite expecting the direction it ended up taking, with a bit of a one-sided and exploitative devotion. Definitely a sapphic book, but more along the lines of the movie Portrait of a Woman on Fire in its resolution.

Stormsong (Kingston Cycle #2) by C.L. Polk - audio

Because my to-read list is so long, sometimes I’ll pick just one book in a series to sample, and in the case of C.L. Polk’s Kingston Cycle—which might reasonably be described as “alternate-England Downton Abbey with magic and lots of politics”—I picked book #2 as my sample because that was the one advertised as involving a sapphic romance. My conclusion is that this series is not one that can be read piecemeal or out of order. While I was able to jump in and keep up, because that’s one of my reader super-powers, I doubt most people would have that experience. The romantic subplot was sweet and satisfying, but overall I’m not fond of plots that revolve around protagonists frantically running around thinking they have to save the world single-handed. So I’m not sure I’m going to circle back and pick up the other volumes.

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher - print

At least, my notes indicate I read this in print, though I could swear I listened to the audio? But evidently not because it isn't in my Audible library. Hmm. Anyway, a delightful quest-adventure-romance involving one of Kingfisher's practical, down-to-earth heroines and a love interest who inconveniently (or conveniently) lives in a sword much of the time. This is in the loosely connected "World of the White Rat" universe, which has included some books that didn't grab me and others (like this one) that I loved.

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott - audio

For something completely different, I listened to Kate Elliott’s mil-sci-fi space opera Unconquerable Sun, which she pitches as a gender-flipped queer Alexander the Great in space. If you like lots of casual queerness in your space opera, this may be your jam. While I admire Elliott’s writing and have loved some of her other books, I find that space opera focusing on lots of technical details of ships and battles just isn’t my thing. Great characters but…I guess this is what drives some fans to write coffee shop AUs. I want to spend more time with the characters, just not when they’re fighting battles.

Passing as Elias by Kate Bloomfield - print

I started on this historic romance involving a woman cross-dressing for a career as an apothecary. The cover copy had intrigued me enough to buy the book when I first encountered it, but the writing style ended up not working for me well enough to finish it.

That feels like a LOT of books for two months, especially since some of the audiobooks are rather long. It's funny how my reading habits will fluctuate. When I'm really binging audiobooks that suck me in, I'll listen while biking, while cooking dinner, while doing jigsaw puzzles, while gardening...but when I'm not in a binging mood, then it's mostly just on my commute to Berkeley (which is at least one day a week, but sometimes more). I tend to go for audio for very long books, due to the more limited time I have for reading print, but when I contemplate starting an 18-20 hour audiobook, sometimes I'm daunted.