Reading roundup
Apr. 1st, 2022 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartJuliet E. McKenna - The Green Man's Heir. Basically, urban fantasy in a rural setting. The novel started off looking like it was going to be a supernatural police procedural, with the hero (the son of a dryad and a human man, and therefore possessed of some supernatural abilities and able to see and speak to fey creatures) stumbling into a crime scene and trying to bring the killer to justice while avoiding the police's suspicions, but wrapped that storyline up about halfway through; it felt a bit like two linked novellas rather than one novel. I definitely enjoyed it, though, and will read the rest of the series.
Liz Williams - Comet Weather. I absolutely loved this fantasy novel about four sisters who grew up in a house full of ghosts and star spirits coming back together to search for their missing mother. It felt like a grown-up version of the children's fantasy novels I grew up with - The Children of Green Knowe, Narnia, and others, as well as a generous helping of Pratchett's Lords and Ladies - with its own engaging characters and wonderful sense of place.
Victoria Whitworth - Swimming with Seals. A lovely book, structured around a sea-swim off the coast of Orkney and punctuated by Facebook updates describing other swims, part memoir, part history, part nature writing, part meditation on life and faith. Less swimming than I had expected but I enjoyed it very much nevertheless.
Alan Garner - Treacle Walker. It's hard to find the words to describe Garner's latest novel. Treacle Walker is poetic, absorbing, profound in places and extremely funny in others. On the surface it seems slight - the story of an encounter between a young boy recuperating from an illness and a mysterious rag-and-bone man - but its depths go down for miles, and I don't think a single reading got me even halfway down; I was so wrapped up in the glorious way Garner uses words that I don't think I had much space for plot. Absolutely wonderful.
Daisy Johnson - Everything Under. A watery, elliptical book, telling the story of a mother and daughter who have been estranged for many years, with lots of shifting times and points of view. The mythical underpinnings were perhaps more obvious than they were meant to be, and I'd forgotten just how bleak litfic can be, but I still found it hauntingly original.
Seanan McGuire - Beneath the Sugar Sky. The third in the Wayward Children series, about what happens to the children who travel to other worlds in fantasy when they return. As always, the series is really strong on acceptance and diversity, but I found this one just a bit too whimsical for me.
Rainbow Rowell - Fangirl. The protagonist of this YA novel, Cath, writes fanfiction for a fictional book series which is clearly basically Harry Potter; Fangirl is about her first year at university, and how she adapts. I found this a really compelling read, and it was quite sweet, but I didn't love it; the plotting felt a bit too pat, sometimes, and often the characters' various Issues felt a bit shoehorned in to be convenient. (And in a novel set in 2011, why the hell did one character clearly have undiagnosed dyslexia?)
Liz Williams - Comet Weather. I absolutely loved this fantasy novel about four sisters who grew up in a house full of ghosts and star spirits coming back together to search for their missing mother. It felt like a grown-up version of the children's fantasy novels I grew up with - The Children of Green Knowe, Narnia, and others, as well as a generous helping of Pratchett's Lords and Ladies - with its own engaging characters and wonderful sense of place.
Victoria Whitworth - Swimming with Seals. A lovely book, structured around a sea-swim off the coast of Orkney and punctuated by Facebook updates describing other swims, part memoir, part history, part nature writing, part meditation on life and faith. Less swimming than I had expected but I enjoyed it very much nevertheless.
Alan Garner - Treacle Walker. It's hard to find the words to describe Garner's latest novel. Treacle Walker is poetic, absorbing, profound in places and extremely funny in others. On the surface it seems slight - the story of an encounter between a young boy recuperating from an illness and a mysterious rag-and-bone man - but its depths go down for miles, and I don't think a single reading got me even halfway down; I was so wrapped up in the glorious way Garner uses words that I don't think I had much space for plot. Absolutely wonderful.
Daisy Johnson - Everything Under. A watery, elliptical book, telling the story of a mother and daughter who have been estranged for many years, with lots of shifting times and points of view. The mythical underpinnings were perhaps more obvious than they were meant to be, and I'd forgotten just how bleak litfic can be, but I still found it hauntingly original.
Seanan McGuire - Beneath the Sugar Sky. The third in the Wayward Children series, about what happens to the children who travel to other worlds in fantasy when they return. As always, the series is really strong on acceptance and diversity, but I found this one just a bit too whimsical for me.
Rainbow Rowell - Fangirl. The protagonist of this YA novel, Cath, writes fanfiction for a fictional book series which is clearly basically Harry Potter; Fangirl is about her first year at university, and how she adapts. I found this a really compelling read, and it was quite sweet, but I didn't love it; the plotting felt a bit too pat, sometimes, and often the characters' various Issues felt a bit shoehorned in to be convenient. (And in a novel set in 2011, why the hell did one character clearly have undiagnosed dyslexia?)
