WHAT. Stop it.

Jae just told me she was also about to post something. IT IS CHRISTMAS FOR YOU, YOU GUYS.

--------------

Hey! We’re alive! Did you know? Because I wasn’t 100% sure myself.

No, we’re totally alive, and Jae is still totally reading 900 books a day on topics ranging from dragons to vaginas to dragon vaginas* and I'm still taking six months to get through fucking Westeros. God, fuck Westeros so much.

I've been "away" forever because reasons. I did really want to do a total revamp and get an honest-to-god dot com and everything, and I tried! I really tried! But I had so many problems with importing the blog and like, webby, texty, codey stuff, that I basically just shut down, wept, and did not even want to look at anything. I used to be good at that sort of thing! In 2002. Yeah. Web design? Has changed. In ten years. Whoda thunk.

I guess my existential crisis is over (ha, ha, ha) because I do want to do something with this blog again. I just ordered a box of 35 (!) Sweet Valley High books (!!!!) and that shit is going to need to go somewhere. I don't know in what format or how, but I'm predicting ridiculously high levels of awesome.

Oh, while I was away, I did in fact read all of the Meredith Gentry series by our titular buddy LKH and here are my reviews:

Book 1: Fairies, torture, fucking

Book 2: Torture, fucking, fairies

Book 3: Fucking, fucking, fairies, title character completes metamorphosis to Mary Sue

Book 4: Fucking, torture, incest, rape, wait wtf?

Book 5: Unbearable. Just unbearable.

Book 6: what is this i can't even

Book 7: If you say the words "and thicker things" one more fucking time, I WILL CHOKE ON MY OWN VOMIT

There, I did something.

Back soon! Possibly with Jessica and Elizabeth. Oh stop. I know you're excited.

* if there is actually a book about dragon vaginas, someone needs to let me know ASAP

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

So! It's been a while since I've posted. Sorry about that. I've been too busy reading to write anything. Plus, January was a weird month, reading-wise. Everything seemed to be either super awesome or buh-oring with very little in between. I managed to finish every book I started (with one exception) but a few books took me weeks to finish because I just couldn't concentrate on them.

When She Woke is based on The Scarlet Letter. It's set in a Big Brother-ish* future, one that seems more than possible (way more possible than I am comfortable with), where democracy and theocracy in the US have twined together, setting the tenets of one religion over all others (which religion? You get three guesses and two of them don't count). In this future, abortion is now out-and-out illegal (not just more and more difficult to access) and instead of housing convicts in expensive prisons,  a process called melachroming changes a person's skin color based on their crime and then the person is set free (sort-of, it's more complicated than that, but words, there are too many). The narrator, Hannah Payne, after having been tried and convicted of "fetal murder", is sentenced to 10 years as a Red. The father of her almost-baby is a high muckity-muck in her church and Hannah has refused to name him, a decision that added years to her sentence.

Hannah was raised in an evangelical Christian household and the challenges to her faith comprised a great deal of the story. Her recollections of her life show that things happen to her as opposed to her making her own choices. Even though  she was a naturally inquisitive child and asked a lot of questions that were difficult to answer without an "Because god said so", she managed to convince herself that her affair with the married minister happened because...Jesus. Seems weird, but I can understand that it's easy to justify doing what you want if the decision never in your hands. It was mostly satisfying to see her become more self-sufficient and aware of her own motivations and beliefs but the story takes place over a pretty short period of time and she doesn't quite get where I want her to be.

The story is about more than Hannah though, it's a commentary about prejudice. Chromes are subject to wide-spread hatred; violence against a Chrome is nearly always ignored, both by regular citizens and by law enforcement. The women especially are prone to sexual violence. It's difficult to get a job, find housing, even use a public restroom if your skin is Red, Green, Yellow, or Blue. And while it would have been easy for the author to make racial prejudice disappear, there is an effort to confront that. There is also an effort to address Queer issues, but I don't think it was handled well. It felt more like "Inclusivity, we got it!" than anything else.

*Convicts are subject to a 30-day prison stay, during which all of their activities are nationally broadcast. I'll admit I don't quite understand how this voyeurism fits into the story, unless it's to drive home that Chromes aren't really considered people and have no real rights. 


Final Reckoning

Should you read this? Yes, overall, I think this was a pretty good book. Until the last quarter or so, where it takes a bizarre turn that detracted from the strength of the story. I would like to recommend it unreservedly but the ending made me glad I got it from the library.

Buy It . Borrow It . Skip It

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
Series: n/a
P.O.V.: First person, past; single narrator
Language: Fairly clean

It's more Speculative Fiction than Fantasy, but I don't feel like starting a new tag

I read this, and other things.

So! I’ve read some books in the past, what … 6 months. Eight months? My laziness actually extends to the point that I don’t even want to check. But I have read books, and I will talk about them in a minute, swearsies.

I am planning on overhauling this extension of a bloated ego … I mean, blog … in the somewhat near future. I realized at some point during my extended sabbatical from book reviews that I was on an extended sabbatical from book reviews because I suck at writing them. When I suck at writing something, I tend to not do it (obv!). And while I still love the concept of tearing apart Laurell K Hamilton in a public forum (MORE PEOPLE SHOULD DO THIS), it has been a long enough time since I read those horrific books that the idea of going back to them and destroying them in minute detail feels more daunting than enjoyable. Like, who am I punishing here? Ah yes. Myself. The whole situation is completely sideways.  I have already suffered by reading them. The pleasure I would get from shitting all over them would not outweigh the torture of having to go through them a second time. You see what I’m saying.

Jae, however, is really good at book reviews! So she will totally still do that as much as she wants to. The concept for the new blog is more esoteric than book reviews. It’s more just another Shit We Dig kind of premise, which is not original, and I don’t care. My schedule is relentless through the end of March, so I don’t think I’ll make any real progress on the revamp until after graduation (WHAT.) But I’m looking forward to messing with it and you know, just an FYI, the winds of change are blowing, et cetera.

Those books I read! These are absolutely in no discernible order. Check it:

ReadyPlayer One (Ernest Cline) – I could have sworn Jae already reviewed this, but I guess not? She definitely told me to read it. And I did, after, whatever, 19 weeks of thinking about it. YOU GUYS. I’m a doucebag. This book is fucking amazing. Why haven’t you read it yet? Do I need to harangue you for 19 weeks? I will absolutely do that. It’s about this dude who lives in the future, and shit is bleak. There’s a total immersion virtual utopia called OASIS (shades of the metaverse, which I kept thinking, until the metaverse was actually referenced in the book and I’m like WELL PLAYED, SIR) where said dude spends 90% of his time, because real life sucks and the planet is dying and he lives in a van (kind of) not even down by a river.  A Steve Jobs-type dude [the one who invented the OASIS] kicks it and leaves his entire fortune up for grabs to whomever can solve an elaborate easter egg hunt inside the OASIS. There are like forty million 80s pop culture references, which you will enjoy the fuck out of if you have even a tiny shred of nostalgia/love for the 80s. Honestly, read this book. It is one of the best ones I’ve picked up in years.

TheNight Circus (Erin Morgenstern) – For once, there is actually a good reason for a book to be on the best seller lists. Jae already reviewed this. I agree with all of it. It’s been a long time since a book actively made me wish its reality was my own. I want to be a reveur so bad. And dude! This book made me so hungry. The descriptions of food were absolutely RIDIC. I think I’m going to dedicate a day to actually trying to make some of the things described in this book. Chocolate mice! Black & white popcorn! Oh god.

11/22/63:A Novel (Steven King) – I picked this up with some serious misgivings. I hated Under The Dome [which I heard is getting a mini-series, and ugh SHUT UP] and I felt like this was going to be another 4000 pages of unnecessary brutality and 15 page character portraits for people I don’t give a shit about. However! I was pleasantly surprised. A dude discovers a time portal in the pantry of a diner (LIKE YOU DO) and every time he walks through it, it is 11 o’clock in the morning on September 2, 1958. Every time he walks through, time resets. The cook who owns the diner has bought and served the same 10lbs of meat like 500 times. Right, I know, WTF. Anyway, the premise of the story is that the dude (Jake) is going to go through the portal and live in the past, working his way up to stopping the execution of JFK in 1963. There are the requisite million nuances of time travel, and the butterfly effect, and all sorts of wacky/weird shit you get with this classic scifi trope. The book is really, really well written. The characters are, you know, fine – standard Stephen King “Good People” and “Bad People.” The pacing is spot on. It’s a pretty hefty book but I breezed through it in like a week. Definitely check this one out – it’s probably his best one in at least the past 10 years.

DarkEarth (Jason Halstead) – This is still free for Kindle, so if you want to pick it up, you should get cracking. This one was? Weird? Kinda? I didn’t really know what it was about when I started reading it, and it starts off as a sort of Lifetime movie-ish yarn about a single dad and his teenage daughter living an uncomplicated life in the Great Lakes area woods. At some point it turns into a fantasy novel with witches and werewolves and dragons and parallel universes. I mean, all of those things are fine, but the way they were introduced was bizarre. The dad basically walks around the whole book going “This is CRAZY” and you’d think after you’d slain your 8^th ogre, maybe you’d lose the skepticism. It ends really abruptly, but I think there are more books in the series. I did buy the second one, but never got to reading it. It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and it’s free, so why not, give it a go.

TheWorld On Blood (Jonathon Nasaw)[reread] – I’ve been compelled to reread this book twice a year since it came out and a friend gave me a copy in the 6^th floor girls bathroom of Brooklyn Technical High School in 1997. This book manages to be completely amazing while somehow not having one shred of literary significance. It’s total trash. It’s absolutely a product of the early 90s. It’s about vampires who are not like Dracula vampires, just dudes & dudettes whose bodies process human blood like a drug (think equal parts booze, ecstasy, and PCP). There are blood orgies like every fourth page. Yes. Amazing.

I also read: The Big Book Of Death [graphic novel], the Big Book Of The Weird, Wild West [graphic novel], the first three books in the Dexter series [skip these, seriously, the show is way better], and probably like five more things that I can’t remember.

A Pirate's Love by Johanna Lindsey

Dear baby Jesus and all the little angels,

Thanks for letting me have been born in 198-you-know-when. I am very grateful that I was not alive pre-20^th century. Because even though things aren’t even close to perfect as regards rape/sexual assault, gender politics/performance, sexism, etc., they are slowly getting better (I am ever the optimist [this is a lie{sorry baby Jesus}]) When you consider that spousal rape wasn’t even considered to be rape before the 19^th century and wives were considered chattel and couldn’t own property in their own name and didn’t even have rights to their own children, shit doesn’t suck nearly as much now as it did in, let’s say, 1667 (where this book/mega-shit-storm-of-epic-proportions takes place). Homigod (sorry again), I don’t really know where to begin.

I know you give everyone in the whole world their ideas, so I figure you need a refresher. Here’s the plot summary (it’s not really a plot so much as a stinking sack of shit):

Bettina Verlaine is being sold into marriage (its 1667, that’s what they did) by her father. Her dad is some snotty French dude with a major attitude problem, but Bettina has been striving her whole life to make him love her (SPOILER ALERT: he’s not really her dad). Anyway, because it’s 1667 and women didn’t really have many choices, especially if you were 1. Rich 2. Super beautiful  (flowing silver-blonde hair, slim hips, breasts like ripe apples but no purple eyes [her eyes are blue or green depending on her emotional state, like a mood ring but with blood vessels]) 3. No, really, SUPER BEAUTIFUL. Bettina’s intended husband lives in the Caribbean so she has to sail from France to go meet him. She leaves her beloved Mama (who had an affair, because unhappy marriage, blah blah, hence her dad/not-her-dad) but takes her beloved nurse with her as a companion. Natch, because of the pretty, all the dudes on the ship want to bone her, one gets whipped for trying, Le Capitaine on another ship sees her from afar, goes MINE!, kidnaps her and lies to her about killing people to get her not to fight him while he rapes her. So! Of course she hates him, right, but he makes her feel all tingly in the nether-bits.  She tries to escape (she’s on a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, not a high probability of success) and cracks him one in the head with an I-forget-what. Some other dude thinks Le Capitaine is dead and decides that Bettina should be whipped until she is dead. But lo! Le Capitaine is not dead, only mildly concussed and uses the threat of whipping to keep Bettina compliant whilst he rapes her (repeatedly). Long story short: rape, rape, rape, reluctant desire, rape, rape, escape, revenge, reunion, Stockholm Syndrome, pregnancy, reluctant love, sword fight, revenge, reunion, marriage, baby, The End. (Whew! That was one alliterative sentence [not actually a sentence]).

Honestly, I’m not certain how I managed to finish this book. I’ve read other books that were not nearly as offensive to me and threw them away without a qualm. Maybe I was hoping that somehow it would not end the way I knew it was going to end (like with a timely miracle perhaps, you’re good at those). But no, it ended exactly the way I was afraid it was going to. And you know, even with all the rape, the worst part was all of the women who weren’t being raped kept telling Bettina that at least Tristan (Le Capitaine) wasn’t, like, really hurting her. He was just using her body. I just about lost my shit every time this was said.

I do have a sort-of sentimental fondness for Old Skool romance novels and will forgive them a lot that I wouldn't forgive in a modern novel, but this book crossed every line I have. And if the truly bad story wasn’t enough, it wasn’t even written well. Poor sentence structure, choppy dialogue, unclear timeline, cardboard characterization, I mean EVERYTHING that could suck, sucked.  

But anyway baby Jesus, I was half-afraid I would be struck blind by the sheer, overwhelming awfulness of this book. So thanks for saving me from that at least. But please find all the Johanna Lindsey books in the whole world and SET THEM ON FIRE (don't really do that, book burning is bad).

You're the best.

Sincerely,

Jae

Buy It . Borrow It . Skip It

A Pirate's Love by Johanna Lindsey

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

Lola and the Boy Next Door is a companion novel to Anna and the French Kiss. I got AatFK last year when Amazon promoted it for free on Kindle and loved the hell out of it. But I have a serious weakness for YA lit. So when LatBND came in from the library I just about squealed.

Blurb from author's website because the review is a little long-winded:

Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn't believe in fashion . . . she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit - more sparkly, more fun, more wild - the better. But even though Lola's style is outrageous, she's a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighborhood.

When Cricket - a gifted inventor - steps out from his twin sister's shadow and back into Lola's life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.

Lola's adopted and I love that her family is not a traditional mom-dad-kid family. Her dads aren't written as stereotypical gay men, voguing and shrieking FABULOUS at the top of their lungs (if that's you, that's awesome, but it's not everybody). They have a loving, stable relationship and they are very (very) protective of Lola. They aren't presented as Other but just as a regular family, like it's nothing remarkable (because it shouldn't be treated as if it were). Realistic portrayals of non-traditional family units are important.

I also love that Lola is in  charge of her own sexuality/desire*. She's having sex with her boyfriend and although she doesn't love sex yet, she's confident it will be pretty awesome with practice (because she's researched it, FTW!). It's refreshing to see depictions of teen sex (the sex itself is off-page) that are neither glamorizing nor demonizing nor shaming. Lola is having the sex and her best friend isn't but neither one is judging the other. Also, Cricket is inexperienced and no one judges him about that either. The one thing that I would have liked to see addressed was protection, both for STI's and pregnancy. It is never referred to by anyone in the book and Lola never thinks about it, which I find both weird and a little off-putting (especially considering her family history; if you read the book you'll know what I mean). I think the reader is meant to assume that at least condoms are being used, but in a book for/about teens, it's an important topic to S-P-E-L-L O-U-T. (For what it's worth, I don't like to read adult romances, especially contemporaries, where safe-sex practices aren't at least being discussed by the people sexing it up. It's irresponsible not to include that stuff in the story.)

Despite all of that goodness, I didn't always love Lola (I did seriously lust after her clothes though). She's sometimes selfish and immature but since she's 17 and she does grow up a bit as the book progresses, it's cool. I'd rather a protagonist with some flaws than a Mary Sue. Overall, I think the writing and the story itself and Cricket, because if I were still teen-aged, swoon, were enough to overcome my occasional objections. But if I'm going to be perfectly honest, I may be judging a little harshly because Cricket sounds so great.
As a whole, this book covers a lot of difficult topics that tend to make adults scream "Won't someone think of the children!?!?" like infidelity, teen sex, some drug use, homosexuality, etc., etc., but for the most part I think it does a pretty good job of being honest and forthright without being preachy (unlike this review). And it also doesn't overwhelm with the Very Important Subjects.

Should you read this? Yep, you should. Especially if you like romantic YA. Also read Anna and the French Kiss. 

Buy It . Borrow It . Skip It

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

Series: Unnamed trilogy
Previous book in series: Anna and the French Kiss
Next book in series: Isla and the Happily Ever After (forthcoming)
P.O.V.: First person, present; single narrator
Language: Pretty clean with a couple of dingers
Sexxxoring: Off page


*ETA: Regarding sexual agency, the way I framed that makes it sound as though Lola's sexual agency is entirely to do with her having the sex. This is not true. Her friend who is not having the sex is also expressing her own agency; she is not sexing it up because she has shit to do (i.e. college, etc.) and wants to concentrate all of her energy on that. There isn't really a lot a background related to her first experience (the fact that her BF is 22 to her 16/17 is worthy of squick and grossed me out a bit) but the tone of the whole book makes it seem that she is having the sex because she wants to.