semper-legens

[semper-legens]

34. How To Gut A Fish, by Sheila Armstrong

Owned: No, library Page count: 207 My summary: A girl is bound and sold at a market. A fisherman takes a stag group to a small island. A man is plagued through his life by the monkey his mother abandoned. My rating: 2.5/5 My commentary:

Hey there! Sorry for the sporadic updates - I've been having what I'm going to call a little bit of a brain problem, and I've had to leave some things by the wayside while I sort myself out. Similarly, I know I said that next time would be a different book, but that one is proving a bit too much for the ol' brain right now, so I read this one in between. Short stories are easier on the noggin, right? Well, yes and no. While I did find this book way easier to read, I didn't really get a lot out of it. The book promised weird short stories, which it did deliver, but I wasn't really engaged with a lot of them.

The problem with these stories, as a whole, is that I didn't really see a reason to care about what was going on in a lot of them. None of them really had much of a point to them, they were just describing something weird happening or a situation a character was in, but they didn't go anywhere or do anything. Maybe it's me, maybe I'm missing something or not looking deep enough, but to me this just seemed to be what I really don't like about litfic - a lot of pretentious rambling that isn't engaging. I hesitate, even, to call most of these stories, because there wasn't a story there! It was just 'here's a guy who hates his wife rambling and being disgusting' or 'here's some people disappearing and a little about their lives'. That, plus it had another litfic pet peeve of mine - no, describing your characters pissing isn't edgy or interesting or anything. It's just kind of gross and not needed. I struggle to even distinguish the different stories from each other here. A lot of them just kind of rambled their way into nothingness. I don't care about this couple who have split up for never-explored reasons and one's at home while the other goes on holiday in Iceland. You haven't given me a reason to. Even the day after I finished the book, I'm finding it hard to remember many details! The prose was so florid as to be purple and it was just waffling. (Kinda like I'm doing here. Oops.)

That's not to say that there was no effective writing in this collection. The title story was actually pretty good; a set of instructions on, well, how to gut a fish, mixed up with the ongoing story of the fisherman and his apparently kind of shady dealings. The story where a woman was auctioned at a market was interesting in how it blended together a pretty mundane scene with something that most readers would find absolutely horrifying just on principle. And the prose was at times very evocative and descriptive! It's just that all of these parts didn't add up to a greater whole that kept my engagement at all. I wasn't impressed, and I'm probably gonna forget about this book the second I schedule this post.

Next up, trans history and trans husbands!

#How To Gut A Fish #Sheila Armstrong #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #2.5

[semper-legens]

33. You're Not Supposed To Die Tonight, by Kalynn Bayron

Owned: No, library Page count: 228 My summary: Charity is a final girl. No, not for real - she plays one at the simulated horror movie game that is Camp Mirror Lake. This season's not going so great, though. She's basically been left alone in charge of a bunch of other teenagers to run this entire operation, and her staff keep ditching her. It's frustrating enough, but then weird things start happening. Shadows on the cameras, strange things in the lake. And suddenly, this camp doesn't feel like a game anymore… My rating: 2.5/5 My commentary:

Ah, Kalynn Bayron. She's an up-and-coming name in YA, but the only other one of her books I've read is Cinderella Is Dead, and I came away from it somewhat disappointed. But I've always felt a little mean for it. After all, Cinderella Is Dead has a defined audience that is very much not my demographic, so it's not really all that surprising that it didn't appeal to me personally. Doesn't mean people who are in that demographic would get nothing out of it! So when I saw this on the shelf at work, I decided to give it a shot. It's a lot closer to being my sort of genres - I like horror, although admittedly slashers aren't my usual style - and the premise of a fake final girl actor becoming a real final girl when a real slasher killer invades her summer camp sounded like an interesting twist on some of the standard slasher tropes. What I got, though? A book that was tropey and formulaic, that didn't really offer anything new over your classic slasher movies. I was kind of bored, and I think that's a massive shame, because there was promise there. So, let's get into it.

I think I can sum up my grievances against this book into two main points, so here they are. Number one - there are too many characters, and none of them are particularly well-defined. Our main character is Charity, and she's joined by a cast of other teens who are stuck at Camp Mirror Lake when they start being stalked by a real slasher killer. The fact that I can't tell you most of their names, or anything about them at all, should be indicative of the kind of story we're talking about here. Look, I know that in slasher horror we tend to paint a deliberately shallow cast of characters so it doesn't really matter when they start getting their faces sliced off, but these characters didn't really have anything going for them. Even Charity - she has a girlfriend, she's got a shitty home life that gets alluded to a couple of times, and she's responsible, but that's literally all I can tell you about her character. In slashers, stereotypically we get characters like The Mean Girl or The Jock or The Nerd, immediately recognisable archetypes so that we can distinguish them quickly. Here, there wasn't any of that, but there also wasn't much of anything. One of the teens liked talking about horror movie cliches? When they started disappearing/being killed off, I almost didn't notice, so ill-defined were they.

And the plot itself has no space to be anything other than the typical slasher-horror beats. Set up the setting and the characters, start making things go wrong and people disappear slowly, then have it build up until these kids are running around in the woods being chased by enigmatic maniacs with knives. It's a short book - in order to make any of its ideas a bit more interesting and fleshed out, or to do any of the deconstructive work that the summary promised, you'd need to double the page count, easy. Things move from A to B to C in perfectly predictable manners. It doesn't help that the beats and twists were either predictable or understated enough that I didn't care about them. One of the other teens was betraying the group the whole time - I didn't see it coming, but I also wasn't able to distinguish the characters enough to tell you which one was most likely to be a traitor. The cops are crooked and the guy running the camp was in on the whole slasher-killer thing - no fucking shit, guy was shady from the start, and the main cop we see was literally named for Matthew Lillard, so he's obviously a secret bad guy. The plot stayed on those rails the whole time, and there wasn't anything else there for me to latch onto. Sorry, Bayron. But this one just wasn't it.

Next up, a look back into history - specifically, the history of female husbands.

#You're Not Supposed To Die Tonight #Kalynn Bayron #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #2.5

[semper-legens]

32. Leif and Thorn: Forget Me Not, by Erin Ptah

Owned: Yes Page count: 187 My summary: Things are going weird for Thorn Estragon. Amid an outbreak of the Whispers, he's dealing with a crowd of people wanting to break into the Embassy and looking after his bed-ridden friend who really shouldn't get the Whispers right now. But juggling all of that is not his problem anymore. The Woman in Black is on the case, and on the case, and on the case…yep, that's right, it's a time loop. My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

New Leif and Thorn day! At least, I'm writing this on the day the book arrived on my doorstep. Given the queue, it's probably been about a week before you're reading this. Anyway, Leif and Thorn! People who've been around these parts for a while will know that it's one of my favourite webcomics, I'm actually currently doing a full reread at the minute, and I have gotten each of the print copies of the books as they come out since I started reading. And as a webcomic, you too can go and read it for free right now! Check the link at the start of this paragraph! Anyway, this covers the arcs from Ø is for Øverwritten to Final Rest, but is mostly dealing with the Time Loop plot. Let's go!

It's a sign of a good ensemble piece, I think, that this volume is mostly about people who are not title characters Leif and Thorn, and for me to barely notice it beside a little bit of lampshading. Okay, granted, future Thorn does show up and is a major character, but the main arcs covered in this volume are from Mulberry and Rowan. More on Rowan later, but who the hell is Mulberry? Turns out the Woman In Black is Leif and Thorn's time-travelling future daughter here on a mission to keep a particular Big Bad Thing from happening (Kale getting the Whispers) and is stuck looping around one particular day in order to achieve that goal. Which sounds a lot sillier on paper than it does when it shows up! Poor Mulberry shows a lot of pluck and grit here - she's trying her hardest to put everything back together and avoid all of the family drama stuff while still being very much affected by, you know, seeing her dad and also her dad (and maybe probably also her dad) as younger people. Her almost gleeful throwing herself through this loop, trying options over and over again and even skipping bits so that she can figure out all of the puzzle pieces is really interesting and relatable - she's almost approaching gamer girl status in how she approaches the time loops, it's really interesting. That Mulberry has a connection to the people she's observing adds a good angle, she's not able to detach herself entirely from the characters because she's related to some of them! I fucking love time loops, man.

The other main story here is the Rowan/Archie one, where Thorn's knight Rowan goes on a date with showrunner of an NCIS-style show Archie. They get in some Peril from a dark magical girl, we get more of Team Thorn's magical girl Atarangi and her system, and that's all very well and good but what I want to talk about is virginity! Specifically, Rowan is very much into casual sex and one-night stands, we know this as a character trait of his at this point. Archie, however, is self-described as a thirty eight year old virgin who's not necessarily asexual or aromantic, but hasn't had a lot of experience with romance and sex. And the way they negotiate that is really interesting! There's conflict there, but it's not triggering or anything to me as a sex-repulsed ace - they have their own feelings about it, but ultimately deal with it in a very adult and very reasonable way. It's something that you see so rarely in fiction and I have to commend it for being a really engaging look at sexuality and asexuality (if that's what's actually going on with Archie) from a different angle.

Next up, a summer camp where things are most definitely about to go wrong at all…

#Leif and Thorn #Erin Ptah #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #5

[semper-legens]

31. The Explorer and the Journalist, by Richard Evans

Owned: No, library Page count: 206 My summary: In 1909, Frederick Cook returned from the north with a startling claim - he'd reached the North Pole, the first person to ever set foot there! Naturally, the press swarmed to him looking for news of this great feat. But English reporter Philip Gibbs smelled a rat. What followed was a series of truths and untruths, and a journalistic scandal that would rock Europe and the USA… My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Polar explorations? Well, this one isn't quite about a polar exploration, but it's still very much my brand. I've come across Frederick Cook before - he was the doctor on the Belgica exploration detailed in one of my favourite non-fiction books I read in 2022. He ended up making some pretty smart decisions and saving some lives on the crew, but that doesn't make him not a scammer. Because yeah, he lied about reaching the North Pole, and also about summitting one of the tallest mountains in America in a separate incident. But he's still an interesting guy - much like the book about the Belgica, it's clear that the author here has a fair amount of respect for him, but not uncritically. I am of the same opinion! Cook was a weird guy, but you kinda gotta hand it to him for his audacity, if nothing else. He was definitely interesting. And I love that in a historical figure. The ethics of him lying about having been to the North Pole are dubious; it's not as though a lie like that is the worst thing in the world, but there's all this weird racism tied up with him being The First White Man to blah blah blah, and the fact that the testimonies of the Inuit men he was supposedly with were never sought? Plus, you know, the history of Explorer's Societies in general necessarily has racist and colonialist overtones. I'm not saying this guy was perfect, that's my point, but he's interesting to read about from a modern perspective.

Our other main character, Gibbs…jeez, guy was in the right place at the right time to start a motherfucking shitstorm of the highest degree, huh. He was dubious the whole time that Cook was telling the truth, and put his journalistic career on the line in order to report on it. He was the first to disbelieve Cook, and wound up the figurehead of those who thought Cook was a liar. I have a lot of sympathy for this guy, he seems like a decent man trying to get along in the world who nonetheless ended up in the middle of a giant media storm and ended up as the representative for a whole point of view. The book contains information on his later life, too - apparently he went on to be a World War One journalist and it had a huge impact on his life and relationships, and he was even at the centre of his own scandal at one point. I can't help but feel for him, as this book presents him in a very sympathetic manner.

Next up, webcomics and time loops and magic, oh my!

#The Explorer and the Journalist #Richard Evans #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #4

[semper-legens]

30. Revealed, by PC and Kristin Cast

Owned: No, library Page count: 306 My summary: Neferet has been exposed. Disgraced, abandoned even by Darkness, she flies to safety under a tree to regroup and rethink. Meanwhile, Zoey and her friends have problems of their own. After the shocking death of their friend Erin, splinters have formed - can Zoey and her friends accept more red fledgelings coming to the Light? And Aurox is becoming more like Heath, causing Stark's possessiveness to go into overdrive. Zoey's got a lot on her plate… My rating: 1/5 My commentary:

So! Close! To! The! End! The last book is on its way to the library, but it's coming from outside my county so it's probably gonna take a while. Which means both I and you will have a break from it for a bit, thankfully. The penultimate book in the House of Night series. It's all coming to a dramatic climax, you guys! By which I mean more teenage angst, more circling around the same five plot points, and more dumb bullshit drama for no reason. As is the trademark of this series. So, without any further ado, let's get into…all of that.

First off, this book comes with a helping of Neferet's backstory. And it's stupid as hell! See, apparently Neferet was abused by her father as a child before being Marked. This is all kind of glossed over in a few paragraphs, no need to focus on it. Because the real pain for her came from when her cat died. She prayed to Nyx to save the cat, and Nyx gave her the ability to soothe pain…but the cat still died. And that was Neferet's start of darkness. Because God didn't save her cat. She then goes on to be a slutty slut slutterson, getting with different creepy guys for no particular reason other than to feel power. One of whom is a vamp Warrior who, like, is a masochist - literally, sexually - and that's both his whole characterisation and a bad thing for some reason? Because he's into being hurt? And then she drives one of her would-be suitors to off himself, because he annoyed her? For a subplot that should exist to make Neferet less one-dimensional, it's really not succeeding. She's just an oversexualised villain, at the end of the day. And seriously, girl, why was the cat the breaking point here?

Zoey's anger issues are a large part of the plot here, especially the later plot, but as usual they are not really handled well at all. The idea is that Zoey is getting angrier and more influenced by Old Magjyk (ugh) and will eventually end up doing something bad that she can't come back from. Aphrodite sees this in a vision and, despite her entire characterisation being 'blunt bitch mean girl who is reluctantly on the side of Good', doesn't say anything about it and instead recruits Shaylin to stalk her for a bit and spy on her magical aura in both an underhanded and unsubtle way which just makes the situation worse. Once again, characters picking up the idiot ball for drama. And the explosion comes with Zoey accidentally using her Seer Stone to kill two homeless guys in a park, which…one, I feel like if it's accidental it kind of negates the idea of it being a facet of Zoey's character if it was an unintended magical side-effect. Two, we've literally had this plot point before when Zoey smashed a car into some guys, and she didn't face any real consequences then? And three, it comes pretty much out of nowhere - there is a build with Zoey becoming more pissed off with everything around her, but it's not that unreasonable a reaction to her environment and the things that are happening to her. Once again, a minor character trait is introduced as a massive flaw just to give the characters some extra drama.

One big thing that Zoey et al keeps going on about with Thanatos is that 'We're not bickering kids!' - she wants herself and her friends to be taken seriously as adults and as sensible people, and resents being infantilised. The problem is that Zoey and her friends are just acting like bickering children constantly. They care more about their interpersonal issues than anything more important. They bitch and moan at each other constantly. They deal with everything like a stereotypical teenager from a mean girl Disney Channel movie. It's so obviously meant to be a 'don't underestimate teens!' style power fantasy, but the kids aren't being smart about anything they do. That kind of power fantasy only works if the teens do have a point and are being talked down to by the adults in their lives! Not if the adults are being pretty reasonable and the teens are making everything worse!

Stark's possessiveness rears its head here - by which I mean, shows up again because we gotta have a love triangle. Man, one of the very few things I was going to give to this series was that it seemed to have dropped the love triangle bullshit in the later books but nope, here it is again, this time between Stark and Aurox. Which is dumb for several reasons, mostly that Zoey doesn't consciously want to be with Aurox, she's just got the spiritual hots for him because he's Heath and soulmates are a thing apparently. And Stark is pissed, despite the fact that Zoey is trying to talk to him about it and trying to open communication about it and trying to work through it, and Stark is just doing the caveman NO ME ANNOYED thing, and it's exactly the goddamn same as every fucking time that a love triangle has shown up in this series. Exactly the same! It wasn't even interesting the first time!

And finally - hey, remember how there's been this whole thing about Erin going over to the bad guys for no real reason and none of her so-called friends seem to care about her? Yeah, so she dies at the start of this one. Just, boom! Neferet ghosts through her and she dies. And the gang get over it pretty damn easy. Shaunee is the only one who actually seems to give a fuck. Meanwhile, her replacement is coming in with the form of red fledgeling Nicole, who wants to come over to the good guys also for no stated reason. And she kisses Shaylin, I guess? Just as I was about to criticise the series for not realising lesbians are real. Still, this is a penultimate-book romance between two incredibly minor characters - if you were going to add lesbians, why not have Stevie Rae and Aphrodite be a thing around when they were Imprinted, or have like Erin and Shaunee get together or something? Not these two girls who got introduced very last-minute who I don't care about and have no connection to.

Next, something thankfully different - a trip to the North Pole.

#Revealed #PC Cast #Kristin Cast #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #1

[semper-legens]

29. Hidden, by PC and Kristin Cast

Owned: No, library Page count: 302 My summary: The truth is out. The world know how terrible Neferet is - or, at least, they should. But while she's been shunned from the House of Night, Neferet is working her evil magic on the humans surrounding it. She's conned herself into the mayor's office, into a penthouse suite, and into a dangerous position for Zoey and her friends. The Darkness still needs sacrifices. And what better victim than Grandma Redbird? My rating: 1/5 My commentary:

Speedrun, speedrun, only got three more of these let's go! What else is there to say about the House of Night at this point? Not a lot. It's still bad, it's still offensive and bigoted, it's still a giant piece of shit. And I'm still getting a perverse kind of joy from seeing just how bad it is. Seriously, though I'm going to be glad to see the back of this series, I don't actually regret having read it. If nothing else, it's a great what-not-to-do when it comes to crafting a story. Just do the absolute opposite of House of Night, and you've made a reasonably solid story! Yay! Anyway, let's get into it.

So, picking up from the pointlessness last time, we kick off here with Lenobia and a fire in the stables. And we learn one more thing about Lenobia! Is it about her as a character, or about her relationship to sex and romance? Surprise! The latter. Yeah, turns out Lenobia's pointless sexy cowboy is actually the reincarnation of her lost love from when she first came to America in the 1700s. After he died (because she failed to save him, natch) she swore she'd never love another person. Travis is that guy's soul come back to her after so long, and it's a stupid plot point for two reasons. Reason one - the dead lover was a black man from New Orleans, while Travis is explicitly white. Which…is not a good look. Black lover is fridged, white lover is endgame. Given that the only other men of colour are Kalona and Rephaim (maybe? I don't remember if Rephaim is actually described as looking Cherokee) this is not a particularly good look. Reason two - we're just doing soulmates, I guess. Lenobia has exactly one person she's allowed to be in a relationship ever. Zoey's thing with Heath (more on that later) is a very similar vibe, they're just ~cosmically connected~ and so they've gotta be endgame. People aren't allowed to develop attractions to each other! Don't be silly! You've got to get with the one person you're cosmically destined to be with! Bleh.

Most of the ongoing plot of this one concerns Neferet's rise in human society, a plot point that…does not really go anywhere. It's not even that Neferet needs to struggle to get to the top in human society, she literally just goes up to the mayor like 'you support me unconditionally now' and he's like 'duh you're hot okay sure'. It's bizarre how mundane the conflict between Neferet and Team Zoey is here. Team Zoey are trying to make her seem like a disgruntled ex-employee, and both sides are using the news media to influence people to their way of thinking. Which, given that Neferet's 'exposing' Stark as a murderer, feels…disproportionate? The worldbuilding, or lack thereof, is being thrown into focus here. Surely the police would have something to say about Stark being a murderer? Like, it's established that the vamps are allowed by the police to take care of their own security and policing and such, which is fine, but a) this has not come up so often and b) the amount of vamps there are in the world makes this suspect? At various points, the worldwide vamp population has been implied to both be substantial and not so much. Almost every celebrity has been said to be a vamp in this world, and yet vamp numbers are actually small enough that the world governments apparently just let them take care of themselves with no other oversight. Vampires are supposed to be both incredibly powerful and influential and also a minority, both at the same time? It's vague to the point where you're obviously not meant to think about it, but incidents like this just bring into light the fact that it hasn't been well thought through. Hey, Casts? If you're not gonna worldbuild this stuff, don't bring it up.

More Aurox…ugh. Once again, we're circling the 'badboy redeemed' trope. Honestly, it wouldn't even bug me that much if it wasn't exactly the damn same every time it showed up. The Boy has done some shitty things, but feels bad about them and wants to change. Some people won't give him the time of day, but at least one other person, usually his love interest, is ride or die for him and totally believes he has changed. Over time, the change is proved to be correct, usually with one big heroic action. Stark, Rephaim, and Kalona have all had this arc. Can we have a different arc please. It's getting boring.

So the big climax to this one comes when Neferet kidnaps Grandma Redbird to use her as a sacrifice to the Darkness, which means it's time to talk about Grandma a bit more. Grandma is Zoey's Cherokee grandmother. That is also the extent of her characterisation. She is loving, forgiving, spiritual, and always knows the right thing to say. Everyone loves her. She has no flaws. She is perfect. She knows everything. And she's boring as hell. She's not a character, she's a plot device! Grandma Redbird exists either to be a perfect moral guide or to give exposition about Cherokee culture and spiritual practice (which, as we've talked about previously, isn't by necessity actual Cherokee culture). Oh, and to be in danger. This is, what, the third time her life's been endangered? There's no tension in it anymore, because there's no way that the Casts will actually have anything bad happen to her. Zoey's mother can die, because she was a bitch, but Grandma? Nah, she's too good to die. I never got the feeling here that anything bad was actually gonna happen to her, because she's bounced back from being the damsel in distress so many times.

And finally…good Lord, I cannot believe that it has taken me this long to realise exactly what's wrong with Nyx as a plot element. To be fair, I haven't given much thought to Nyx as a character to this point; she literally just shows up to be a perfect mother goddess and be right about everything and then disappear. But the climax of this book comes about when Zoey and co are scared and unsure of what to do about Neferet kidnapping Grandma Redbird. Zoey prays to Nyx, and essentially gets the answer that she needs to stop cowering in the darkness and actually do something. All very fine and well, and even a half-decent plot beat. The thing is that how the plot actually resolves is that Kramisha gives Zoey one of her prophetic poems, and it tells Zoey exactly what to do to save the day. And since Nyx gives Kramisha her visions, this is essentially just Nyx ssaving the day with Zoey as a conduit. And the problem with all of this is that it's the worst of the conservative Christian idea of God and humankind's relationship to God. God is infallible and doing what He wants will always solve your problem. Nyx is always right, and finding what Nyx wants you to do, even if it's hard, is always the right path. Zoey has free will, but pretty much any path other than specifically what Nyx wants her to do is usually wrong. I don't know much about what the Casts believe theologically, but I really wouldn't be surprised if it was a 'raised Christian, switched to 70s Neo-Paganism' kind of thing, because Nyx here just reads as if the Casts switched Christian God for a mother goddess without really changing anything about how they percieve this deity and their relationship to said deity. I've been getting the vibe as we go through the series that Nyx does some shitty things, but I'm not sure I was meant to? Her forgiveness of people like Kalona and Rephraim seems overly punitive at times, but at this late stage in the series there's no room for that to be an arc or anything, I think we're supposed to take as read that Nyx is perfect. And that just skeeves me out in general.

Next, I told you it was a speedrun! The penultimate installment of the House of Night series!

#Hidden #PC Cast #Kristin Cast #bookblr #book blog #1

[semper-legens]

28. A Haunting in the Arctic, by C.J. Cooke

Owned: No, library Page count: 368 My summary: 1901. Nicky, abandoned by her husband and grieving the loss of her daughter, is kidnapped onto the Ormen, her father's whaling ship. They think she owes her, and they're going to collect. 1973. The Ormen is a research vessel, drifting in Arctic waters. Only one of the dead is found, mutilated and alone. 2023. Urban explorer Dom is documenting the ship before it is sunk. She thought she was alone - until a trio of other explorers joined her. But there's something else here. Something angry. And it won't let any of them go... My rating: 2/5 My commentary:

Well, this was inevitable. If you know anything about my predilections, you'll know that I am absolutely fascinated by Bad Things Happening At Sea, survival situations including survival cannibalism, and in particular bad things going on during Arctic expeditions. So when a historical horror novel called A Haunting in the Arctic crosses my path, of course I have to read the darn thing. It's practically an obligation at this point. A split narrative, one woman investigating what went wrong on this whaling ship, one woman experiencing events as they happen…there's a lot that's appealing about the premise, and I had high hopes going in!

The key words there being 'going in'. Unfortunately, I found this book rather too bland for my tastes. See, the reason behind the split narrative is obvious from early on. Dom has dreams of being a selkie, and Nicky is called a selkie wife and is obviously physically transforming into a selkie…hmm, could these two perchance be linked? That Dom is Nicky is obvious from the start, but the book only reveals this at the very end. The idea of a ghost working through her trauma by haunting, in a way that inadvertently causes the deaths of others (the trio Dom meets are the ghosts of two of the research team and one man from the whaling ship) could be interesting. So too could be the idea of ghosts trapped in a loop, trying desperately to redeem their killer. But this is all just mentioned in passing, backstory to be uncovered in the climax.

And the 'mystery' here, aside from being obvious, is treated really clumsily. There are so many points when another character will say to Dom 'I know who you are!' or something like that, then conveniently be interrupted before they can spill all. It doesn't build suspense, it's just frustrating after a point. And when you've realised Dom's secret, it makes all the clumsy references to TikTok and social media that much clunkier - they're there seemingly to mislead the reader, as Nicky wouldn't know about the internet, obviously. Characters are not given full names so their reveal can be a surprise later, but the omission is glaring given parallels between present-day and past characters, to the point where it's not hard to work out who's who. Nicky and Dom's names are the most egregious - they're both short for Dominique, which is only brought out at the end.

Aside from that, though, I think the book's biggest problem is that Dom and Nicky are both really passive characters. And I feel bad for calling them that - this book is about trauma, and how trauma can shape you as a person - but the fact is that they just don't do anything. Nicky only makes one belated, half-hearted attempt to escape captivity. Dom mostly goes along with the others, there's nothing that she really does but decide to explore the ship. I know, I know, this sounds victim-blamey, but there's ways to write this sort of character in this sort of situation that doesn't stray into complete passivity. Nicky is helpless against the will of the men on the ship, but maybe if we saw more of her as a person beside her grief and pain then she might seem more whole? If Dom was actively making attempts to discover herself and change, unconscious as they may be, then she might appear more active? But no, they just don't do much until the time comes for the reveal, and that's disappointing. I can't tell you much about these characters other than the pain they went through. Their likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams…nothing.

And, look. I don't know much about whalers in the early 1900s. I'm pretty sure they weren't outfitted with cages that can be dragged behind the ship as a punishment, and that they weren't in the habit of cutting people's hands off? The myth of the selkie as portrayed in this book is also not much like any selkie-story I know. I don't want to say that the author did no research - on the contrary, her afterwords shows a lot of time researching - and there's something to be said for artistic licensce, but this seemed a wee bit egregious. Also, this is a minor thing, but Nicky's husband is away fighting because of the grief caused by their daughter's death. He's fighting in the Second Boer War. You know, where Britain invented the concentration camp. And it's mentioned that he's actively doing war crimes too! What a baffling thing to just bring up as background detail. Feel sorry for the man actively participating in starving, abusing, imprisoning, and murdering civilians! He lost a kid! And now he's burning farms, murdering prisoners of war, and forcing people into literal fucking concentration camps. But he's sad about it! Like, Jesus fucking Christ.

Next…like I said, I'm speedrunning. House of Night!

#A Haunting in the Arctic #CJ Cooke #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #2

[semper-legens]

27. Thank You, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse

Owned: No, library Page count: 263 My summary: Thanks to his insistence on playing the banjolele, Bertie Wooster has been 1) kicked out of his flat and 2) dumped by Jeeves. But not to worry. He's out into the country, where nothing can go wrong! Except maybe love triangles, wacky escapades, imprisonment on a yacht, forced marriages, and a distinct lack of butter. Just his lucky day. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

You know, despite my usual tastes in literature and my general predilection for the stuffy English gentleman, I've never actually engaged with any Jeeves and Wooster. I've seen clips from the Steven Fry/Hugh Laurie show, as every English person is legally required to, but I've never actually sat down to read any Wodehouse myself. Well, one of my coworkers is currently working her way through Jeeves and Wooster, and decided that I'd like it too. So, on her recommendation, I've gone in blind with this book. Let's see what it's like!

First off - Wodehouse's voice is delightful. Archaic without being impenetrable, sardonic and drawling, punning and witty in all the right ways. I was charmed and captivated from the start, not less because of how full-on it is right out of the gate. It's a very droll writing style, the kind that was definitely a spawn of the 30s; I can't imagine someone writing like that now except to satirise. Still, it's wonderfully charming. And Wooster himself is well-characterised as a complete brainless twit. He actually had a lot more heart than I was expecting from what I knew of his character, but he's still a big idiot who doesn't ever help himself out of any situation at all.

Also, like, I know calling Jeeves and Wooster gay isn't exactly the hottest of takes, but it surprised me just how gay it was. Seriously, Jeeves says that he's got a policy of never working for a married man. I can't be the only one reading implication into that. And he's always at Wooster's beck and call, even in this book where he's not technically working for him. (More on that in a bit.) And Wooster is not all that put out that the eligible young lady who is also his ex in this book isn't into him. In fact, he goes out of his way to avoid getting into a relationship with her! Any tension between them is coincidence and awkward encounters. Just…so gay.

Unfortunately with literature written in the early 1900s, and particularly literature by white people, you're gonna get some racism. In this book, it takes the form of the banjolele and the blackface. The former is the inciting incident for the novel; Wooster has to move to the country because he has taken up playing the banjolele, a cross between a banjo and a ukulele. Everyone hates the noise, but it's the instrument itself that's brought up as being the problem. Jeeves, in particular, hates it. The racial connotations of this can't be ignored - the banjo is associated with black Americans, where obviously the ukulele is a native Hawaiian instrument. But more egregiously, Wooster spends half the novel 'comically' in blackface. There is a never-seen troupe of minstrels referred to with the n-word - whether they are actually black or white people in blackface is unclear from the text, but apparently that was the contemporary term for blackface performers. And every person who sees Wooster in blackface assumes he's a devil and screams and runs away, again 'comically'. Look, I know this was written in 1934, but honestly I don't care. This is just straight-up racist. The idea of Wooster being blacked up is treated as hilarious rather than insulting, and of course not a single actual person of colour shows up at all. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth, the casualness of these stereotypes and this behaviour. It's just bad. (And apparently, the TV episode based on this book also had the blackface in 1991. Plus ca change…)

Next, we're off to the Arctic, where there's a haunting on a beached ship…

#Thank You Jeeves #PG Wodehouse #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #3

[semper-legens]

26. Rebellion on Treasure Island, by Bali Rai

Owned: No, library Page count: 229 My summary: Clara wants to read the classics, and the universe obliges. The TARDIS takes her and the Doctor back to the Caribbean in the 1700s, where there's a war brewing. The Crown is oppressing the enslaved people of the area, but they're starting to fight back. A terrible mist has swept in over one island, providing both cover and danger. And there's pirates in the land... My rating: 2.5/5 My commentary:

I love Doctor Who. I love pirates. So even though it is a book aimed at children, this Doctor Who book about pirates was certainly on my radar when it appeared on the shelves at work. Look, I have a lot of fondness for the Doctor Who novels of my youth - the 9th and 10th Doctor series, of which I owned the whole collection, if I recall rightly. Although I very seldom dabble in straight-up children's books, I thought that at the very least my nostalgia for the older series of books would carry me through, even if I am about a decade or two older than the target audience. Alas, I found this book to be entirely bland, and I am sure that I will forget it the second it is out of my vision.

The problem was that the premise, Doctor Who meets Treasure Island, never really happens? They're on a Caribbean island in the 1700s; the Doctor gets summoned by a colonial officer, then they go to this island which is beset by thick fog. Nanny is there, as in Queen Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons, but we don't learn enough about her for this book to be in any way educational. If I didn't already know about Queen Nanny, I'd just have assumed this was an original character. Then Clara gets kidnapped by the mist and largely disappears from the story, to be replaced by River Song, Jenny, Vastra, and Strax. Which…ugh, I am not their biggest fans at all, but even aside from that they didn't belong here. Their presence cluttered up the narrative - it stopped being a Treasure Island story and started being a River Song story. Even the Doctor got sidelined! It was just too busy, there was so much going on and none of it was at all interesting. Characters don't talk about unusual things for a while (the fact that the colonial officer can call the TARDIS phone goes unmentioned for quite a while), morality is black-and-white, and the whole things gets wiped from everyone's memories at the end. A very frustrating and utterly unmemorable book. Bleh.

Next, a little bit of Jeeves and Wooster.

#Doctor Who #Rebellion on Treasure Island #Bali Rai #bookblr #book blog #2.5

[semper-legens]

25. Destined, by PC and Kristin Cast

Owned: No, library Page count: 325 My summary: Neferet's plans have ramped up. Killing Zoey's mother to make her perfect vessel, Aurox, wasn't enough. She wants to destroy Zoey and her friends, and she's going to need power to do it. The Darkness is calling...meanwhile, Zoey's friends face trouble amongst themselves. Rephaim is still settling in, and Erin and Shaunee have started to separate themselves. And Zoey is grieving her mother's death. Can they get it together long enough to find out what really happened? My rating: 1/5 My commentary:

Back at it again with the House of Night and hoo boy folks, this one's a doozy. I'm so close to the endgame now - only three more to go after this! And as soon as they come into the library, I swear, I'm speedrunning this shit. But this post is going to be the opposite of speedrunning. Turns out I have a lot to say about this continued train wreck, and I'm gonna spill a lot of digital ink in so doing! So without further ado, let's get down to it.

Right off the bat, we have a healthy dose of ableism! Yep, this book introduces Shaylin, who became blind as a child and is Marked by Erik. But she's Marked as a red vampire, and immediately regains her sight - and is gifted an aura-sensing True Sight. And of course, she goes on and on and on about how great it is that she's not blind anymore, and how bad being blind was, and it's just enough to make me cringe. Because all blind people need is to magically get their sight back! Not, like, better accommodations to help them live in a world that hasn't been built for them, or to be treated like actual adults or something. Nope. Magical sight, that's the best thing. It carries forward that unhealthy idea that vampires in this world are physically 'perfect' - before, we've seen the kids whose bodies reject the Change being portrayed as fat, greasy, and unfit. Now, it seems that disabled kids aren't allowed to be vampires while retaining their disability. Gross!

Nefert has a new boytoy, and his name is Aurox. Get it, because he's a werebull. Sort of - he was gifted by the white bull of Darkness, and he can turn into a bull involuntarily. But because Neferet botched the summoning, Aurox has a soul and stuff. Specifically, Heath's. Remember Heath? Zoey's human boyfriend, got necksnapped by Kalona? Yeah, the book treats it like it's a big mystery, but it's so obvious that it's Heath. Aurox knows things about Zoey he shouldn't, calls Zoey by Heath's pet name for her, has his mannerisms…it's one thing for a book for teenagers to be simpler than I, an adult, expect, it's another for it to be so obvious that a toddler could realise what's going on. And yet again, we've got another topless teen badboy who angsts about being evil and is gonna get a redemption arc. Christ alive, how many of those are there? Stark, Kalona, Rephaim, now Aurox…we get it, Casts, you got a kink. Can you please come up with another male character?

Speaking of male characters, in order to sew some chaos, Neferet's invited humans to come work at the House of Night, which means we're introduced to Lenobia's cowboy, Travis. He's a cowboy. Who works at the stables. And Lenobia, running minor character and horsemaster at the House of Night, is falling hard for him. What does this relationship do, plotwise, other than add a sexy cowboy to the cast? Even though I've criticised things like Stevie Rae and Rephaim or Zoey and…most male characters…I can at least acknowledge that they serve a function. Introducing or adding to the theme of redemption, giving those characters conflicts and secrets, furthering the plot somehow. But this? I guess it's giving us an insight into Lenobia, but so far all I've gathered is that she has a thing for cowboys and doesn't want to be romantically involved with anyone but oh no this guy's too sexy. It drags the book down and takes up valuable page time - not to mention that Travis himself has less depth than a Mills and Boon cowboy. He's just…charming and folksy and respectful to Lenobia and loves horses. Exactly the sexy cowboy archetype. Bleh. Lenobia seems like she might have been an interesting character, but the new context we learn about her is entirely about her love life, or lack thereof, and nothing to do with who she is as a person. It's lacklustre, is what I'm getting at here.

Neferet continues to be the big bad, evilly doing evil things because she's evil. She's escalated to human sacrifice and gives blood to the Darkness to drink whenever she needs something. As if she wasn't enough of a cackling supervillain already. My biggest problem with Neferet is that there's no depth to her. Why is she doing what she's doing? Sure, she wants power, she wants to rule the world and become a goddess, but why? I don't need a Disney-live-action-movie backstory for her, just something other than her hatred for Zoey and lust for power! Has this always been a facet of her from before Zoey? Was she striving towards this goal before Zoey? And, of course, for all that the Casts seem to think they're clever for making the evil bull the white one, we have the Darkness demanding blood in order to do Neferet's bidding. Not at all an overdone trope. And the way they take it from her is uncomfortably sexual - almost like the Casts haven't gotten over their whole 'slutshame the villainous female character' thing. Above all, though, Neferet falls into the biggest trap for her character archetype - she's not camp enough. If you want to have a cackling balls-to-the-wall Evil Bitch as a main villain, she needs to own it. Think Maleficent! Think Ursula! Neferet just isn't interesting enough or ridiculous enough, that's my problem.

Meanwhile, there's trouble in Zoey's inner circle. Erin and Shaunee, the Twins, have started to un-twin themselves, separating from each other to become their own people. This would be a perfectly fine plot point, but for three things. One, Erin and Shaunee aren't well-developed in general - literally, their only character trait is that they are Twins. This would be a good time to give them more character, except that this mostly unfolds with people standing around and telling Shaunee how much nicer she is now, rather than us being shown it really. Two, it seems to come right out of nowhere? There's no particular reason it happens. And three, none of the other characters seem to care about Erin after it happens. They're obviously setting up for Erin to become more of an antagonistic character later, but as soon as the split occurs, all Zoey and her friends seem to care about and check in on is Shaunee - nobody ever checks in on Erin or seems to give much of a shit about her as a person. Which is…really fucking weird? Like, if Zoey et al had checked in on Erin and been yelled at or something, that'd make sense. But it's like this girl wasn't their friend at all, so quickly is she dumped. And that's just lazy writing. It's a clear signal to the reader that Shaunee is the 'good one' and Erin is the 'bad one', despite it being a particularly cold and uncaring thing for the characters to do in-universe. There's no reason why Zoey can't be like 'hey are you okay' to Erin at least once. It'd give a chance to show how Erin is changing! But nope. Subtext is for cowards. Let's just spell it all out to the audience. Wouldn't want them to start thinking.

And yet, for all that seems to be going on here, that's actually a negative. Because it makes the book so unfocused. You can hardly concentrate on one plot thread, so much is being brought up and juggled and dropped. And a lot of it isn't resolved - sure, this is a series and there's three more books after this, but it just feels like the Casts are throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall to see what will stick. It strikes me as a series that hasn't been tightly planned, that was loosely improvisational, and it really shows. New conflicts come out of nowhere and aren't properly foreshadowed in anyone's behaviour. New twists are set up that are predictable from the moment they are introduced. Characters are sort of fleshed out, but only in very limited ways. Characters stick to one-dimensional archetypes. There's a lot going on, but it's all as thin as paper. And it's just as bad as all the books that came before it.

Next up, time travelling meets a pirate tale.

#Destined #PC Cast #Kristin Cast #bookblr #book blog #1

[semper-legens]

24. Not Good For Maidens, by Tori Bovalino

Owned: No, library Page count: 358 My summary: Laura and May had their whole lives planned out. They were going to be witches, like their mothers and grandmothers before them. Then May was tempted away to the goblin market, and all hell began to break loose. Now, eighteen years later, Laura's daughter has lost her cousin to the market. She knows nothing of her family's heritage...but now, she has to brave the worst parts of it. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Witches and goblins and magic, oh my! When I read the blurb for this book, I decided it was most definitely in my wheelhouse. The Goblin Market, though not among my favourite poems, is still one I think of fondly. ('We must not look at goblin men/We must not buy their fruits/Who knows upon what soil they fed/Their hungry thirsty roots?') And this book is very consciously based upon that poem. The problem is that I'm not sure that the narrative bore out its promise. The ideas that were brought up on the blurb didn't go much further, and the characters were largely forgettable. It was a shame, really, because I feel like this is the kind of thing I would have been a lot more charitable towards and even enjoyed as a teenager - but alas, the adult version of me was not too impressed.

First of all, the narrative is actually two narratives - the focus is split between Lou's rescue of Neela in the present day, and May's ill-fated journey into the Market eighteen years ago. This more hampers than helps the narrative. May and Laura are pretty clear on what happened to May in the present part of the story, meaning that there isn't a lot of tension, more just learning the details of what happened. But Lou's story isn't all that better. Lou isn't a particularly proactive character - outside of insisting she goes to York with May, she doesn't really do a lot, just allowing herself to be pushed and pulled with the whims of both witches and market. It's only in the last section, where she goes back to help Eitra, that she really takes matters into her own hands. She's static thanks to the greater focus on Laura and May; Laura and May are static because their story is flashback, because it can only lead to the point at which we started. And certain things are made obvious by the framing - obviously the older goblin lady helping Lou is Eitra, there's nobody and nothing else she could be. The narrative doesn't even bother with a big reveal of that to the reader! Eitra just casually tells Lou her name, and so any sense of threat Lou could have from her is instantly negated.

And the worldbuilding here…sort of isn't? It's established that the people of York are fully in on the goblins and magic, but not a lot of time is spent among them exploring that. What is the Market, when it's being enticing? It's built up as a threat so much that, purely under the logic of the book, I struggle to understand why people actually go there. Even when May or Louisa are being drawn in, there's still lurid descriptions of market stalls selling human body parts. Do the genuine revellers…just look past that? If we saw the Market from their perspective, it'd add a lot to our understanding of it, but the narrative doesn't seem that interested in it. Furthermore, the whole 'Laura and May are on the verge of their witch graduation' thing doesn't come up until halfway through the book. Nor does the magic ice that can kill goblins. And what worldbuilding and exposition there is just seems to circle around a few key points, so I was sick of hearing about the Market and the fruits and the Doctrine and this and that over and over and over again.

I feel like I've been too negative on this book, though. The fact is that it did have some good ideas. The Goblin Market in itself is not a bad concept, and some of the manifestations of its creepiness did genuinely work. The bleakness of the lower levels Lou traverses came through quite well, even if the overworld was not shiny enough to contrast it. May was a fairly engaging character, with her struggles with sexuality and obvious attraction to women caught up with the Market and the traumas she underwent there. This book had a lot of promise, that's what I'm trying to get across. it's just that the actual narrative as-writ didn't quite live up to that promise.

Next…sigh. I've put this off long enough. Back to the House of Night.

#Not Good For Maidens #Tori Bovalino #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #3

[semper-legens]

23. Mansions of Misery, by Jerry White

Owned: No, library Page count: 296 My summary: The Marshalsea debtor's prison: a place of misery, where those already at rock bottom were extorted out of their last few pennies, where people were killed by the conditions they were kept in, where bodies were dumped in pauper's graves. This is the story of a prison. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

The non-fiction books I read really tell you a lot about me as a person, huh? Medieval sex, debtor's prisons…yet, it's those microcosms of social history that truly fascinate me. And debtor's prisons, just as a concept, seem completely bizarre. If you can't pay your debts, and your creditors file a case, you are sent to prison. In prison, you will need to pay for your bed and board, pay to have your chains taken off, pay for any furniture or entertainments you get - and if you can't pay, then you will likely starve or die of exposure. So we take someone in debt…and put them in a place where they have to pay more money to survive. Sure. Makes sense. But it was the reality for the many people who passed through the Marshalsea in its years of operation. Frankly, I'm surprised that anyone made it out of that place - but apparently the average stay was not that long, debtors being bailed out or helped by people on the outside. Still, with torturing jailers and greed in every corner, the Marshalsea was still a hellish place to be.

Unfortunately, this book wasn't quite what I was looking for in a history of the Marshalsea. While it did track the lives of some of the Marshalsea's residents over the years, the focus was a bit too scattershot for my liking, never quite zeroing in on one particular person for long enough. The book would sometimes ramble off down tangents and disappear away from interesting points, meaning that I was often disappointed in it not following up something that could have been exactly what I was looking for. I don't quite lay the blame there at the book's feet - it was, after all, not written for me specifically - but other than my own expectations, I just found it a bit lackluster? The details when they emerged were interesting enough, but the book never quite felt focused enough on its subject. We raced through the eras of the Marshalsea's existence, barely taking a breath. The case studies were small and the details were brief. It was fine, but…I don't think I can blame myself for wanting more.

Next, witches walk the streets of York, as the calls to the goblin market echo in the air…

#Mansions of Misery #Jerry White #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #3

[semper-legens]

22. The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages, by Katherine Harvey

Owned: No, library Page count: 228 My summary: Did you know that having too much, or too little, sex can be fatal? And that both parties need to orgasm in order for a child to be conceived? This book covers Medieval attitudes to sex, from the Church to the courts to the home - and everything in between. My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

This is both something that you wouldn't assume is on my radar and something that immediately appealed to me. As a sex repulsed asexual, I don't really seek out overly sexual media; however, I'm interested in social history and all aspects of life throughout the ages, and particularly the Middle Ages in Europe. So this, an uncompromised and unflinching look at the history of sex and how people in the Middle Ages viewed and responded to sex, is something I really wanted to read. And I wasn't disappointed! This book is pretty comprehensive, covering all areas of sex including the kinds of sex that were permitted and the kinds of sex that were prohibited, social attitudes to sex, sexual violence, sex work, sex in culture and literature…the list goes on and on. It was hugely fascinating and I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject at all. Yay for social history!

It's a subject everyone thinks they know. Of course medieval people thought sex was evil, and rape and violence were commonplace, and children were frequently being married to old men…except that's not actually the case. It's complicated, as are a lot of things. Yes, people in Medieval Europe had views on sex and virginity that we might frown upon today, but that's not the whole story. There were many, hugely contrasting attitudes. For example, a lot of writing about sex from the era placed a huge amount of importance on the woman's pleasure, because it was thought that both the man and woman needed to climax in order to conceive. Pretty cool! Unfortunately, this meant that some courts didn't believe that rape had occurred if the woman conceived, as she must have enjoyed or consented to it. Sex was meant to be sacred between men and women for conception only, but plenty of people were having sex for pleasure or otherwise enjoying it, and men were having sex with men and women with women the same as today, as far as we can tell.

This book covers near enough everything you'd need to know on the subject, and it's all both well-sourced and interesting. There's no childish giggling around the subject, just plain matter-of-fact documenting of the evidence that's available. The text points out from time to time when there is scant evidence for something and offers reasons that might be - for example, there are few court cases for rape of men, but that doesn't mean it never happened, just that the rape itself was considered lesser to the 'crime' of sodomy. It's fully grounded in presenting the medieval way of thinking, and I was really pleased with how it presented itself. An excellent book!

Next, still in the past, and a biography of the Marshalsea Debtors Prison.

#Fires of Lust #Katherine Harvey #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #5

[semper-legens]

21. Dragonfly in Amber, by Diana Gabaldon

Owned: No, library Page count: 963 My summary: 1968. Claire Randall and her daughter have returned to Scotland from America, tracking the history of a band of Jacobites. But why did Claire leave Jamie and return to the future? Back in 1744, there's a war to stop. Armed with foreknowledge of the future, Claire is trying desperately to keep her friends alive. Jamie won't be doomed to die at Culloden if Culloden doesn't happen...right? My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Ah, Outlander. While I may have only read the first book on a whim, I found myself enjoying it far more than I thought I would. What can I say, there was just something charming about our hero, ex-World War Two nurse Claire, travelling through time to meet her Scottish rebel beaux, Jamie Fraser. They were strong characters, very engaging, and the story itself (though not without flaws) was interesting enough to keep my attention for all of its 800+ pages. So of course I tracked down a copy of the next one. And for the most part, it's just as good! Immediately, it grabbed me with the opening premise - Claire and her daughter Brianna, who is obviously Jamie's, have travelled back to Scotland in 1968 after Claire's twenty year marriage to original husband Frank Randall ended in his death. How did Claire get back to her present? Why is she in Scotland tracing the fates of the Lallybroch men? And what actually happened to Jamie Fraser? These are the mysteries of Outlander book two - Dragonfly in Amber.

(Warning for talk of rape under the cut.)

There's so much to talk about in this near 1000 pages of novel, so I'm just going to hit on some key points here. Jamie and Claire continue to be brilliant. Claire is pregnant for much of this novel, and Jamie feels a lot of protectiveness towards her, which often frustrates her. Jamie is in his element, fighting both physically in the field at Culloden and more mentally and socially in the courts of France, and doing a good job at both. I think the reason I like Jamie and Claire so much, in hindsight, is the fact that they could so easily be one-dimensional stereotypes of their genre, but have a lot more depth than that. Claire is often in distress and needs Jamie to save her, but she's also cool-headed from her time as a war nurse and is very capable of arguing her case and getting her way when she knows what's best. Jamie is a rugged, tough Scot, but he's also got a core of vulnerability and kindness beneath him - and moreso than just the 'burly guy with a heart of gold' stereotype either, he's as emotionally reliant on Claire as she is physically reliant on him, and the pair of them make an excellent team together. There's a lot of character to them, we find out a lot about them as individuals, and they're both as flawed and liable to make mistakes and argue and fall out as each other. The saving grace is, of course, their genuine and deep love for one another. It's lovely to see their passion and devotion, even through the trials they have faced across these two books.

Sex and sexual violence rear their head thematically once more here. The sexual violence and rape that is often either threatened or actioned in these books are somewhat sensationalised - see poor Mary Hawkins being raped by strangers on the street, a fate that Claire very closely avoids. Randall continues to be a sadistic monster. Jamie's trauma comes back up, and he responds by wanting to fight it - literally, in the form of Randall. It's very matter-of-fact, and part of me does wonder if Claire being threatened so often is meant to be somewhat titilating for its assumed audience. But then, perhaps I am being unfair. Such things are shown as being as traumatic as they are in real life, with Mary basically becoming catatonic as a result of her treatment, Claire being duly freaked out by her narrow miss, and Jamie still suffering the aftereffects of Randall. And to balance that, there's plenty of consensual sex. Mary and Alexander Randall find solace in each other, Claire and Jamie enjoy a very healthy s-x life even through her pregnancy, and nobody is ever shamed by the narrative for wanting consensual sex. And for a story largely set in the 1740s, that's a huge breath of fresh air. I feel like sex is used very deliberately in these books, as both a means of characterisation and as a fact of the 18th century lives our protagonists lead. Because it's everywhere, from the gossip and frivolity of the French court to the bawdy Scottish warriors to the intimacy of Claire and Jamie's bedchamber. It happens. And that's a very mature attitude to the subject, I think.

And finally, there's something I haven't talked about yet, either in this or the last time I've talked about Outlander - the idea of fate, destiny, and changing history. Claire is from nearly two hundred years in Jamie's future, and given that her husband was interested in both Jacobite history and his personal family history, knows a fair amount about what is to happen in the uprisings. Given that Claire has no intent to revisit the future, is it possible for her to change it? She has a close personal connection to Lallybroch and the Lallybroch men (other than Jamie, that is) and doesn't want them to die at Culloden, as many Jacobites did. Claire and Jamie's reason for being in France assisting Bonnie Prince Charlie is actually to avert the Jacobite risings, though they have to be subtle about it lest they be branded traitors to both Scotland and England. Can Claire change fate? She knows that Jack Randall was meant to die at Culloden, despite his apparent ignominious death at Wentworth. Yeah, I thought that was a bit too quick and throw-away a death for a figure that haunted the first book. Turns out Randall's alive and up to his old tricks, leading to Jamie wanting to kill him dead as well as having panic attacks and bad dreams thanks to his trauma. (As an aside, I did find that Alexander Randall being Frank's true ancestor as was implied here to be a bit of a cop-out - of course Frank couldn't actually be the direct descendant of a sadistic rapist.)

This ambiguity, however, of whether Claire and Jamie can actually save anyone is a large theme of the book, and I like that. It's a kind of time travel narrative that skips all the moralising about paradoxes and gets to the personal. Claire loves Frank, and wants him to have existed in the future. Claire loves Jamie and the Lallybroch men, and wants them to survive Culloden. Claire and Jamie want to save as many people as they can. And that's a noble cause, and not something the narrative punishes them for. For all the pain and trauma that come about as a result of the uprising, it doesn't rest at the feet of that caring impulse. Which is nice to see, you know? Claire's just one person trying to make the best of it in an intensely hostile world, and her struggles and choices make for an engaging read.

Next, something not all too far from Outlander - a look at sex in Medieval Europe.

#Dragonfly in Amber #Diana Gabaldon #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #4

[semper-legens]

20. Death: The Cost of Living, by Neil Gaiman

Owned: No, library Page count: Unknown, not numbered My summary: Once every hundred years, Death takes a mortal form and walks among the living. This time, she's a girl called Didi, who happens to meet a suicidal young man called Sexton. He follows her around, and his world explodes. Mysterious mages stalking Didi, immortals showing up on the doorstep...he's in for an interesting twenty four hours. My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

I still really like the Sandman. I have certain opinions of Neil Gaiman, both as a person and as a writer, but ultimately there is something within the Sandman universe that is intensely appealing to me, both as a lover of longwinded fantasy fiction and as a lover of the occult and the supernatural. This is a Sandman side-story, focused around the character of Death, who is for a day incarnated as a mortal human teenager called Didi. She is a full part of the world around her, well-known to people in her life, despite the fact that she has only existed for a few hours when protagonist Sexton meets her. It's weird (though admittedly lucid for the Sandman universe) and melancholy, and I really liked it.

As I said, our protagonist is a teenager called Sexton, who starts the story writing up his suicide note. He meets Didi by chance, and ends up following her around on her travels during her one day of mortality, including meetings with Mad Hettie, who is looking for her heart, and a man known as 'the Eremite', who wants to steal Death's powers via her ankh. Didi/Death remains to be a really great character. I love the idea of an avatar of Death who is perky and cheerful and friendly and genuinely loves life and the idea of preserving life. She intervenes in Sexton's life, presumably due to seeing something in the guy and wanting him to have that chance, even though the narrative presents him as kind of a loser. She always maintains her upbeat attitude and is very open about the fact that she's Death, though Sexton and many of the other mortal characters do not believe her. There's a wonderful dramatic irony going on here, where the reader takes it as read that Didi is in fact Death, even as Sexton uncovers more and more evidence that she could just be a deeply unwell and traumatised girl. And when Didi reaches the end of her day of life, she is taken by Death just like any other person. She's made an impact from being there, but ultimately she just gets one day in every century, and there's something bittersweet about that - knowing that Sexton and all the other lives she touched will only see her again once. But that's the nature of being in love with Death, isn't it?

Also, at the end, there's a short from Death originally published around the time of the AIDS crisis,

Next, we're back to the Outlander series with the second novel, twenty years later…

#Death the Cost of Living #The Sandman #Neil Gaiman #bookblr #book blog #3.5

[semper-legens]

19. Steven Universe vol 1

Owned: No, library Page count: Unknown, not numbered My summary: We are the Crystal Gems! And they're saving the day once again, in this collection of stories from Beach City. Join the Crystal Gems, Steven, and Connie as they go to an open mic night, invent a new taxi service, and do some racing. What can go wrong? My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

I read this at the end of a very long day. Up since 6am, not much sleep beforehand, so I wanted something a bit lighter while I waited for fatigue and sleep medication to finally sweep me away into the blissful arms of unconsciousness. And lo, I went to my cupboard, and there was a Steven Universe comic sitting in there, and I thought that would serve. And it did! I can't remember where I originally got this - I think it was a present from someone - but I definitely enjoyed it. I wouldn't call it a personal favourite or anything, but that's in part due to the fact that I'm pushing thirty and reading a comic book aimed at eight year olds, you know? It served its purpose, both relating to my personal needs and also the purpose for which I assume it was originally published, adequately, and was in line with the main Steven Universe stories. I dug it.

There are two main types of story and two main artstyles in this comic - one, the fuller stories that mark the main part of an issue, presented in full colour, and two, the shorter two or four page stories presented in black and white. Weirdly, of the two art styles, I actually found myself preferring the black and white. The colour comics were a bit too crowded and busy for me (more proof that I am becoming something of a Sad Adult) and I found them difficult to follow at times. In contrast, the black and white comics were a lot cleaner. I'm sure some of this is due to the fact that I wasn't exactly compos mentis while reading, but hey, that's how I was feeling. Overall, though, these have the same style and zest as the earlier parts of the cartoon, and are just as funny and charming. I enjoyed the stories a lot, and really, that's all that matters.

Next, still in the world of comics, but for a completely different audience - Death walks among the living for a day.

#Steven Universe #book blog #bookblr #book blogger #book blogging #3

[semper-legens]

18. Female Executions, Geoffrey Abbott

Owned: No, library Page count: 294 My summary: Executions of women are far rarer than executions of men, but throughout history they have happened with alarming frequency. Here are some of the stories of female criminals who have died for their crimes across history. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Yet another of my more morbid personal interests. I saw this in the basement at work, and the title intrigued me. After all, I am interested in the history of capital punishment, and while the death penalty historically has been applied less frequently to women than to men, women have been executed by the state before. While I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book, I thought it would at least have something interesting to say about this darkest part of history. (Albeit something that presently occurs in other parts of the world.) It…wasn't that, not really. It was more just an A-Z of women who had been executed for various reasons throughout history, in different places but mostly the US and UK. And while it was fine by that standard, there wasn't really much to it other than that. It seemed to want to exist just as a lurid little bit of non-fiction, with no idea of digging any deeper into its subject matter. Which is fine, it just wasn't really what I expected.

The women in this book are presented in alphabetical order of surname, with a summary of their cases and any pertinent events or facts. That all of them end up meeting their deaths is a foregone conclusion just from the premise of the book. The shorter entries ended up being nothing much - the woman was found guilty of something, usually theft, and killed, without much else to say about it. I found the prose to be somewhat annoying at times, with its apparent delight over the gory details or lurid facts on each death as opposed to anything more interesting. It seemed to play more on shock value than anything else, characterising its subjects as either wicked and remorseless or innocent and virtuous depending on the story. Am I being unfair here? A little, but this book was overall not all that interesting, so its flaws stand out to me a bit more. Such is the way with books I randomly pull from the shelf, I suppose.

Next, something completely different - Steven Universe!

#Female Executions #Geoffrey Abbott #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #3