Light novels are growing in popularity in the US, but are still a bit niche. I don't know too many people who read them, even though many of those who are anime fans have watched numerous anime based on them. Most reviews only cover the series on a volume by volume basis, which makes it hard to see whether a series is worth getting into given that these can get pretty massive.
They're essentially YA serials, aimed at a similar age in Japan as YA is in the US. Generally each book has its own story (though sometimes there are multi-parters) and the characters keep moving forward as long as the series lasts. It's not uncommon for popular series to go on for a dozen plus volumes, but this means sticking with a series can be a serious time investment.
Spice and Wolf by Isuna Hasekura is the first light novel series that I can say I've "finished." It was one of the first translated for American audiences, and the earliest editions even had removeable Americanized covers in an attempt to reach a crossover audience. It's also been around long enough that all seventeen volumes of the original series have been completely translated. I put "finished" in quotations because the series picked up again and there are more installments in the form of Volume 18 and beyond, but Volume 17 is clearly the end of the original story and the Spring Log sequel books seem to be forming their own ongoing subseries.
This review will have some general spoilers, since I want to be honest about the direction the series goes, but it will be light on specifics since I'd like more people to read this series. Though I may complain about parts, I enjoyed it enough that I've spent seventeen books with these characters!
Probably like most English speakers, I became interested in Spice and Wolf through the anime, and though I like Holo, the character I actually fell in love with was Lawrence, who is so different from the usual male protagonist. Lawrence is weak, he's no good in a fight, and while his best asset is his head for economics, he's not perfect about using it and gets himself in trouble when he can't see the forest for the trees. He understands that he's a traveling merchant with meager assets, and his dream is to one day make enough money to settle down somewhere and open a shop. He's simple, but realistic for the time and place he exists.
Of course, what isn't simple is meeting Holo, the erstwhile harvest goddess of one of the towns he routinely visits in his travels. Tired of being taken for granted by the locals, Holo decides to stow away in his wagon and convinces him to take her back to her homeland in the north. Though she was worshipped, in actuality she is more of a very large and ancient wolf from older times when beasts like her were common. She's been gone from her home so long she doesn't remember how to return, nor does she know what happened to her former packmates, but she promises Lawrence that traveling with her will be good business and she will earn her keep.
From there, the series is largely a tale of Lawrence and Holo's misadventures in the various cities and towns they visit along the way. They are rarely in any physical danger (because what danger could possibly stand up to Holo) and there are a lot of details about medieval economics that other authors gloss over. Hasekura makes that his focus, and quite a few of the books are "solved" by Lawrence coming up with an economic scheme that will pan out for all parties involved.
Holo and Lawrence also have good chemistry with each other. Lawrence is tight with his money out of necessity. He doesn't have much of it. But Holo is fond of the finer things in life, particularly good food and drink. While she often helps Lawrence get a good deal, she also eats her way through much of the fortune she brings him, leaving it unclear just how much money he has at any given time in the series.
Despite their differences, as they travel together they realize they're growing fond of each other, but their journey by its nature is designed to be a temporary one. Once they reach her home, Lawrence has other things to do, and there's no reason for her to venture away. Aside from that, Holo is painfully aware that Lawrence is only human and will pass away long before she ever does.
The anime skips the Vol 4 story and uses Vol 5 as its finale, which makes for a good ending for Season 2 since it ends with Lawrence confessing to Holo that he loves her and he's made a choice that puts her well being over his chance to make a profit. It also was a good time for the anime to end in general, because there clearly came a point when Hasekura realized that this series was going to end sooner than the fanbase would like, given that there was a world map and we know the general vicinity of Holo's homeland. Vol 5 puts the end of her journey close enough that it could end in weeks.
Volume 6 begins what I call "the detour." Lawrence and Holo decide to chase after the perpetrator of a business deal gone wrong as an excuse to avoid going to her home right away so they can extend their time together. Eventually they do a lot more than that. Between the three short story collection volumes and the detour itself, the main story is on hold until about Vol 14.
To be fair, I think you could skip from the end of Vol 5 to the start of Vol 14 and the only thing you'd be confused about is the occasional mention of a non-human character from the middle volumes and the fact that Lawrence and Holo obtained a third traveling companion in the form of the boy Col.
And Col never really worked for me. I felt like he upset the Lawrence and Holo dynamic since he was obliviously third wheeling everywhere they went and Holo would use him to try making Lawrence jealous (which wasn't really that effective since Col is clearly underage and ignorant of his part of any of it). If Hasekura added Col expressly to stop Lawrence and Holo from getting any closer, he did a fair job of it, as I feel their relationship didn't go anywhere during those middle volumes.
Volume 14 puts them back in Lenos, the town of Vol 5, which is why it's an excellent place to pick up the series again, and Lawrence is once again confronted by whether he'd rather follow Holo or his livelihood. Unlike most series where characters fall in love and expect everything to work out, over the last few books, Lawrence comes to realize what being in a commitment really means, and sometimes that means giving things up. It's not that he has to stop being a merchant, but he can't pursue every opportunity willy-nilly like he used to, and sometimes it might mean taking a loss.
Volumes 15 and 16 comprise the Coin of the Sun duology and series finale, and while Lawrence and Holo's devotion to each other is clearer than ever and they understand that they will not part at the end of their journey, it's rather dampened by the fact their journey actually isn't over. It also hurts that the second half of this duology focuses more on the needs of other characters than our two leads.
Fortunately, there is Volume 17 to provide the epilogue and the proper ending to the series, because I would have been rather upset if it seriously ended at Vol 16. Hasekura calls Vol 16 the final book in his afterward for it, but really, it's incomplete without Vol 17, which provides the closure the previous volume is missing. Unfortunately there is still one glaring omission in Vol 17, which will no doubt annoy a fair number of people (even my friend who has only watched the anime series was in disbelief about it), and Hasekura brings it up in the narration so it's in no way an accidental omission, but at least it's clear that the pair are settling into their happily ever after.
I still enjoyed the series. There aren't many I'd read seventeen volumes of, but it's more for the journey and the characters involved.
Spice and Wolf continues in both the spin-off series Wolf and Parchment, following a now-adult Col and Myuri, the daughter of Lawrence and Holo, and the main series under the Spring Log arc name. I haven't read either yet.
Part of this is because Spring Log assumes some familiarity with Wolf and Parchment and I'm not sure if I want to read Wolf and Parchment. Col was mostly inoffensive, but also terribly bland as a hapless kid along for the ride. He had an dream about restoring the lost lore of the northlands while also being in service of the church, which could be interesting as an adult, but it would depend a lot on what his adult persona ended up being like.
Showing posts with label spice and wolf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spice and wolf. Show all posts
Monday, October 12, 2020
Monday, January 27, 2020
My Favorite Books of 2019
I'm afraid I've mostly been reading series last year. Since I was going through cancer treatment I had a lot more time for reading, and that gave me a fair bit of catch-up time. That said though, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of stand alones.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and in the order I read them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher
I was introduced to Ursula Vernon via her short fiction, and knew that she wrote her books for older readers as T. Kingfisher. She's always been a pleasure to read and from her Twitter I've become familiar with her sense of humor and passion for gardening, so when one of her books went on sale I figured I should pick it up. The Seventh Bride has a lot of funny asides and jumps in logic to dress up what is otherwise a retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale. I never got entirely attached to the protagonist Rhea, but the narration was snappy enough to keep me moving along.
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard *
I've been meaning to read this one ever since it came out, and finally got it as a Christmas present. It primarily follows two characters, Quyen and Linh, during their stay together at the rapidly fading Prosper Station. What's amazing is that both characters are sympathetic, but both of them are carrying such incredible amounts of baggage that it prevents them from ever fully understanding or wanting to understand the other's point of view. It's set in Bodard's Xuya universe, so it's a spacefaring future based on predominantly Vietnamese and Chinese culture. I really liked this one and I'm not surprised it was nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 2: Ambition by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I really enjoyed the first volume of LotGH last year and bought Vol 2 almost immediately after, not knowing when I'd get around to it. This time we see Reinhard and Yang operating on parallel tracks to do similar jobs in their respective nations, though for vastly different reasons. As such the core conflict isn't between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planet Alliance, so enjoyment may vary depending on which side you enjoy reading about more. I really loved Yang's chapters, but Reinhard's probably have more setup for what's going to happen later in the series. There's no cliffhanger though, so you won't be left hanging at the end, and I like that.
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka *
I'd been wanting to read this for a while, even before the US movie adaptation came out as Edge of Tomorrow. Even if you've seen the movie, it's worth reading as it's tonally different (much less funny) and forgoes the Hollywood ending. Keiji is a hapless private set to head off into his first ever battle with the alien mimics when he finds himself caught in a time loop that always seems to end with him getting killed. Frustrustated with the whole thing, he decides that the only thing to do is become so damn good he can make it out of the meat grinder alive, and he spends well over a hundred attempts trying to do just that.
Baccano! Vol 5: 2001 The Children of Bottle by Ryohgo Narita
This is a rather odd time jump that brings the series up to modern day, though it's more understandable after you realize the author's notes and realize this could have been the second book instead what became the start of The Grand Punk Railroad duology. It doesn't make much use of the modern day setting, it probably could have been set in the 30s without much of a difference, but what the time skip allows is for many of the series' original immortals to reunite after they no longer have to fear being killed (since the source of that concern died in Vol 1). It's a decent stand alone, and we finally learn the number of surviving immortals from the ship, but I'm also looking forward to going back to the 30s in the next volume.
Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone
Third book in the Craft Sequence. As always, Max Gladstone's world building is impeccable. I love the island setting for the third book and how such a small nation has to manage its power and security against more powerful, larger nations outside its borders. As in Two Serpents Rise, change and colonization by outsiders is very much a thing, with foreigners kicking back on this world's equivalent of a Hawaiian vacation. Kai and Izzy are good protagonists, and Teo comes back for a second round, though it took me a while to remember who she was.
Serpentine by Cindy Pon
This had been sitting in my Kindle backlog a while, but the Kindle is really nice for reading when you're not feeling up for the weight of a regular book. I don't read a lot of Chinese fantasies, but this is one of the better ones. I mostly found it weird how all the servant names are translated into their English meanings, but the other names are not. It's hard for me not to like a snake girl though, and Skybright is easily the highlight of the book. Not only can she take on a demonic half-snake form, but she figuratively kicks real ass with it too.
Sacrifice by Cindy Pon
This was a spur of the moment pick because I was still recovering from surgery while I finished reading Serpentine on Kindle, and it was literally a button push and $0.99 to get the sequel, so I figured I'd go ahead while the first book was fresh in my mind. It was a good choice. The change to multiple POVs was different, but I didn't mind too much except that I found I didn't care about Kai Shen enough to really enjoy gaining his POV scenes. What was going on around Skybright and Zhen Ni was always more interesting. There's a bit of a love triangle in this one and I don't quite like the way it resolves, but it implies that eventually the resolution I would have liked will happen.
Spice & Wolf Vol 14 by Isuna Hasekura
I picked this up because I still wasn't well enough for gaming and I realized that I really wanted to do a better job of catching up with Spice & Wolf since Vol 13 was just an anthology and reading Vol 14 would let me get back into the main story. Spice & Wolf is always at its best when Lawrence is fretting over a future with Holo, and now that the end of their journey is looming he finds himself daydreaming about one day living with her, while also assuming that once they part ways they will likely never see each other again. This is probably the best volume I've read since the first half of the series, and it helps that it takes place in Lenos, where Lawrence first told Holo that he loves her.
Spice & Wolf Vol 15: Coin of the Sun I by Isuna Hasekura
And then I couldn't stop, because I already had the book in my backlog and Vol 14 left me wanting to plunge into the two-part finale. For a two-parter it actually has a pretty good resolution except for the obvious cliffhanger dropped at the end of the last chapter. Though there are the usual economic shenanigans going on, it's nice that at one point Lawrence is encouraged to stop looking for everything that could potentially go wrong and take a step towards realizing his dream of owning his own shop.
Spice & Wolf Vol 16: Coin of the Sun II by Isuna Hasekura
Unfortunately this volume was a bit of a letdown. It would have been fine as a middle book, but a lot of the dramatics force Holo and Lawrence into reacting rather than acting themselves. While I understand the realistic message that there are some things that a single person cannot change, I think Hasekura was trying to up the stakes, but didn't do it in a way that really served the characters, making the final book a lot less personal despite all the callbacks and obvious trust the two leads display in each other.
The World Awakening by Dan Koboldt
The last book in the Gateways to Alissia trilogy. I was on the fence with this one, but had some Amazon ebook credit and a long wait at the DMV ahead of me so I picked it up for my Kindle. I was pleasantly surprised and this is definitely the best book of the series. Still got some nits, and the decision-making of most of the major characters from the Earth side of the portal is pretty predictable, but overall it was a fun read.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and in the order I read them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher
I was introduced to Ursula Vernon via her short fiction, and knew that she wrote her books for older readers as T. Kingfisher. She's always been a pleasure to read and from her Twitter I've become familiar with her sense of humor and passion for gardening, so when one of her books went on sale I figured I should pick it up. The Seventh Bride has a lot of funny asides and jumps in logic to dress up what is otherwise a retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale. I never got entirely attached to the protagonist Rhea, but the narration was snappy enough to keep me moving along.
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard *
I've been meaning to read this one ever since it came out, and finally got it as a Christmas present. It primarily follows two characters, Quyen and Linh, during their stay together at the rapidly fading Prosper Station. What's amazing is that both characters are sympathetic, but both of them are carrying such incredible amounts of baggage that it prevents them from ever fully understanding or wanting to understand the other's point of view. It's set in Bodard's Xuya universe, so it's a spacefaring future based on predominantly Vietnamese and Chinese culture. I really liked this one and I'm not surprised it was nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 2: Ambition by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I really enjoyed the first volume of LotGH last year and bought Vol 2 almost immediately after, not knowing when I'd get around to it. This time we see Reinhard and Yang operating on parallel tracks to do similar jobs in their respective nations, though for vastly different reasons. As such the core conflict isn't between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planet Alliance, so enjoyment may vary depending on which side you enjoy reading about more. I really loved Yang's chapters, but Reinhard's probably have more setup for what's going to happen later in the series. There's no cliffhanger though, so you won't be left hanging at the end, and I like that.
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka *
I'd been wanting to read this for a while, even before the US movie adaptation came out as Edge of Tomorrow. Even if you've seen the movie, it's worth reading as it's tonally different (much less funny) and forgoes the Hollywood ending. Keiji is a hapless private set to head off into his first ever battle with the alien mimics when he finds himself caught in a time loop that always seems to end with him getting killed. Frustrustated with the whole thing, he decides that the only thing to do is become so damn good he can make it out of the meat grinder alive, and he spends well over a hundred attempts trying to do just that.
Baccano! Vol 5: 2001 The Children of Bottle by Ryohgo Narita
This is a rather odd time jump that brings the series up to modern day, though it's more understandable after you realize the author's notes and realize this could have been the second book instead what became the start of The Grand Punk Railroad duology. It doesn't make much use of the modern day setting, it probably could have been set in the 30s without much of a difference, but what the time skip allows is for many of the series' original immortals to reunite after they no longer have to fear being killed (since the source of that concern died in Vol 1). It's a decent stand alone, and we finally learn the number of surviving immortals from the ship, but I'm also looking forward to going back to the 30s in the next volume.
Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone
Third book in the Craft Sequence. As always, Max Gladstone's world building is impeccable. I love the island setting for the third book and how such a small nation has to manage its power and security against more powerful, larger nations outside its borders. As in Two Serpents Rise, change and colonization by outsiders is very much a thing, with foreigners kicking back on this world's equivalent of a Hawaiian vacation. Kai and Izzy are good protagonists, and Teo comes back for a second round, though it took me a while to remember who she was.
Serpentine by Cindy Pon
This had been sitting in my Kindle backlog a while, but the Kindle is really nice for reading when you're not feeling up for the weight of a regular book. I don't read a lot of Chinese fantasies, but this is one of the better ones. I mostly found it weird how all the servant names are translated into their English meanings, but the other names are not. It's hard for me not to like a snake girl though, and Skybright is easily the highlight of the book. Not only can she take on a demonic half-snake form, but she figuratively kicks real ass with it too.
Sacrifice by Cindy Pon
This was a spur of the moment pick because I was still recovering from surgery while I finished reading Serpentine on Kindle, and it was literally a button push and $0.99 to get the sequel, so I figured I'd go ahead while the first book was fresh in my mind. It was a good choice. The change to multiple POVs was different, but I didn't mind too much except that I found I didn't care about Kai Shen enough to really enjoy gaining his POV scenes. What was going on around Skybright and Zhen Ni was always more interesting. There's a bit of a love triangle in this one and I don't quite like the way it resolves, but it implies that eventually the resolution I would have liked will happen.
Spice & Wolf Vol 14 by Isuna Hasekura
I picked this up because I still wasn't well enough for gaming and I realized that I really wanted to do a better job of catching up with Spice & Wolf since Vol 13 was just an anthology and reading Vol 14 would let me get back into the main story. Spice & Wolf is always at its best when Lawrence is fretting over a future with Holo, and now that the end of their journey is looming he finds himself daydreaming about one day living with her, while also assuming that once they part ways they will likely never see each other again. This is probably the best volume I've read since the first half of the series, and it helps that it takes place in Lenos, where Lawrence first told Holo that he loves her.
Spice & Wolf Vol 15: Coin of the Sun I by Isuna Hasekura
And then I couldn't stop, because I already had the book in my backlog and Vol 14 left me wanting to plunge into the two-part finale. For a two-parter it actually has a pretty good resolution except for the obvious cliffhanger dropped at the end of the last chapter. Though there are the usual economic shenanigans going on, it's nice that at one point Lawrence is encouraged to stop looking for everything that could potentially go wrong and take a step towards realizing his dream of owning his own shop.
Spice & Wolf Vol 16: Coin of the Sun II by Isuna Hasekura
Unfortunately this volume was a bit of a letdown. It would have been fine as a middle book, but a lot of the dramatics force Holo and Lawrence into reacting rather than acting themselves. While I understand the realistic message that there are some things that a single person cannot change, I think Hasekura was trying to up the stakes, but didn't do it in a way that really served the characters, making the final book a lot less personal despite all the callbacks and obvious trust the two leads display in each other.
The World Awakening by Dan Koboldt
The last book in the Gateways to Alissia trilogy. I was on the fence with this one, but had some Amazon ebook credit and a long wait at the DMV ahead of me so I picked it up for my Kindle. I was pleasantly surprised and this is definitely the best book of the series. Still got some nits, and the decision-making of most of the major characters from the Earth side of the portal is pretty predictable, but overall it was a fun read.
Monday, January 7, 2019
My Favorite Books of 2018
I'm afraid I've mostly been reading series last year. Since I don't read as often as I used to, but I really like novel series, my reading is increasingly crowded by newer series and older series I'm trying to keep up with. That said, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of stand alones.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I read them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
I usually don't like pan-Asian fantasy worlds, because it feels like the mixing of real world influences is arbitrary, but that's not the case here, perhaps because JY Yang is Asian and lives in Asia where different Asian ethnic groups are able to meet without being viewed through the lens of an outsider. If you're looking for some queer Asian fantasy with prophecies and non-western technology you can't really do better than this, and it's the first in a series.
Murder of Crows by Annie Bellet
This is the second book in the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series and I've been reading it on-off since 2016. Contemporary urban fantasy isn't really my thing (especially something with pop culture references), but the story is entertaining enough that I intend to continue the series anyway. What's happened is that this series became my go-to "I have five minutes and I'm not at a computer, let's read off my Kindle" series because as long as you know the characters you don't need to remember a lot of other details. I can come back months after my last reading and pick up where I left off without rereading more than a page.
The Island Deception by Dan Koboldt
The sequel to The Rogue Retrieval. I got into this one easier than I did the last, and overall it was more entertaining, save that I have serious beef with the Quinn and Jillaine relationship. (I really hate relationships where we're supposed to be sympathetic to somebody who is also manipulating their love interest for outside gain.) If I could have just cut that out I would've had a massively better time.
Spice & Wolf Vol 12 by Isuna Hasekura
Another installment in the long-running Spice & Wolf series. Lawrence and Holo have postponed their journey to her homeland for the sake of enjoying each other's company while they can, but they finally receive a tip about a mapmaker who might be able to draw them a map to her long lost village. If you enjoy the series, this is one of the better volumes, featuring a mystery about a holy phenomenon and Fran Vonely is one of the more interesting side characters.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 1: Dawn by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I forgot that I'd actually pre-ordered this when the series was first announced for English translation, but the 2018 anime reminded me that I had it, so I read through it after I finished watching. This has to be one of the best written Japanese novels I've read in translation so far and the best space opera I've read in a long time. If you like the new anime (which doesn't finish the book!), I'd recommend checking this out. While the anime is good, the source material gives a lot better context as to what's happening.
The Iron Beast by Andy Remic
This is the third and final novella in the trilogy that started with A Song for No Man's Land. Robert Jones is still stuck in the alternate world and spends almost the entire book there, so if you weren't won over by the change in setting in the second novella, the third isn't going to change your mind.
Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone
Second book in the Craft Sequence. I really liked the world building in this one, featuring a Mesoamerican-inspired setting, but modernized with the hallmarks of Gladstone's world of Craft. There's a lot to unpack here with themes of colonization with multiple perspectives from the POV of the colonized, who comprise most of the cast. I didn't like it as much as Three Parts Dead, mostly because Caleb did not click with me nearly as much as Tara, but his rocky relationship with his father is one of the highlights of the book.
Garrison Girl: An Attack on Titan Novel by Rachel Aaron
I'm surprised this book exists, as spin-off novels for Japanese properties rarely originate on this side of the Pacific, but Garrison Girl is an English language original, and because it's by an American author, it reads differently from a Japanese light novel and more like an American YA. It covers old ground as far as the source material is concerned (the Trost arc is the finale), but it's an engaging read with an original cast. You can tell that Aaron has an affection for the series and I feel like it fits in almost seamlessly with the greater Attack on Titan world. (Almost. A couple things will likely stick out for the lore nerds.) Though I would not call this a romance, for those who wished there was a little more of that in the main series, what's here might be enough to scratch that itch.
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine *
I received this book as a gift from my dad, who heard it was good and thought it would give me more insight into my ancestral country. It's a middle grade book, but packs a punch even for adults, especially if you have or know someone with young children. Ling is growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution and doesn't understand why some things (and people!) are considered bad or have to be taken away. There are a couple things that stuck out as me as being concessions for the American audience, but for the most part the book is a chilling view of the revolution through the eyes of a child, and reading it as an adult is no doubt much different from reading it as part of the intended age group. It's not fantasy or science fiction, but worth checking out.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells *
Though I ended up enjoying this book tremendously, I had multiple false starts with it. Murderbot has an entertaining and relatable narrative voice, but I start my Kindle reads in short bursts (usually under five minutes and sometimes even less) and the personality was not enough to draw me in when Murberbot's job was still business as usual. However, given a longer reading period the situation quickly gets interesting and the rogue Murderbot tries to do its best at the job it actually doesn't like very much. Despite the name though, Murderbot doesn't do any murdering in this book.
Saga of Tanya the Evil Vol 1 by Carlo Zen
This was a really difficult read, which is a shame because there's a lot of nuance that the anime adaptation loses, primarily that the protagonist is well aware of the fact he's actually a thirty-something year old man reborn into the body of a little girl, and it's very clear that he does not consider himself and Tanya as one and the same. Unfortunately the author is also very intent on showing his homework, so there is a lot of rambling historical and tactical discourse in the book, which was mercifully cut in adaptation. It gets better towards the end of the volume, but I'm rather torn about whether to continue the series.
Baccano! Vol 4: 1932 Drug & The Dominos by Ryohgo Narita
I can't let the year end without getting another dose of Baccano!, which wraps up the last of the books adapted for the TV series. One of the main plots of this book (Eve looking for her brother) is lifted for the 1932 storyline in the anime, but the rest of it wasn't integrated into the series, probably for running time. Narita's penchant for simultaneously running multiple plot threads is in full force here, with a number of unrelated characters eventually all ending up in the same place through various circumstances. If you wanted more of the Gandor brothers and the reason why Claire Stanfield was recalled back to New York, this is the book to read. Several other leftover plot details from the Flying Pussyfoot arc wrap up here as well.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I read them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
I usually don't like pan-Asian fantasy worlds, because it feels like the mixing of real world influences is arbitrary, but that's not the case here, perhaps because JY Yang is Asian and lives in Asia where different Asian ethnic groups are able to meet without being viewed through the lens of an outsider. If you're looking for some queer Asian fantasy with prophecies and non-western technology you can't really do better than this, and it's the first in a series.
Murder of Crows by Annie Bellet
This is the second book in the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series and I've been reading it on-off since 2016. Contemporary urban fantasy isn't really my thing (especially something with pop culture references), but the story is entertaining enough that I intend to continue the series anyway. What's happened is that this series became my go-to "I have five minutes and I'm not at a computer, let's read off my Kindle" series because as long as you know the characters you don't need to remember a lot of other details. I can come back months after my last reading and pick up where I left off without rereading more than a page.
The Island Deception by Dan Koboldt
The sequel to The Rogue Retrieval. I got into this one easier than I did the last, and overall it was more entertaining, save that I have serious beef with the Quinn and Jillaine relationship. (I really hate relationships where we're supposed to be sympathetic to somebody who is also manipulating their love interest for outside gain.) If I could have just cut that out I would've had a massively better time.
Spice & Wolf Vol 12 by Isuna Hasekura
Another installment in the long-running Spice & Wolf series. Lawrence and Holo have postponed their journey to her homeland for the sake of enjoying each other's company while they can, but they finally receive a tip about a mapmaker who might be able to draw them a map to her long lost village. If you enjoy the series, this is one of the better volumes, featuring a mystery about a holy phenomenon and Fran Vonely is one of the more interesting side characters.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 1: Dawn by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I forgot that I'd actually pre-ordered this when the series was first announced for English translation, but the 2018 anime reminded me that I had it, so I read through it after I finished watching. This has to be one of the best written Japanese novels I've read in translation so far and the best space opera I've read in a long time. If you like the new anime (which doesn't finish the book!), I'd recommend checking this out. While the anime is good, the source material gives a lot better context as to what's happening.
The Iron Beast by Andy Remic
This is the third and final novella in the trilogy that started with A Song for No Man's Land. Robert Jones is still stuck in the alternate world and spends almost the entire book there, so if you weren't won over by the change in setting in the second novella, the third isn't going to change your mind.
Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone
Second book in the Craft Sequence. I really liked the world building in this one, featuring a Mesoamerican-inspired setting, but modernized with the hallmarks of Gladstone's world of Craft. There's a lot to unpack here with themes of colonization with multiple perspectives from the POV of the colonized, who comprise most of the cast. I didn't like it as much as Three Parts Dead, mostly because Caleb did not click with me nearly as much as Tara, but his rocky relationship with his father is one of the highlights of the book.
Garrison Girl: An Attack on Titan Novel by Rachel Aaron
I'm surprised this book exists, as spin-off novels for Japanese properties rarely originate on this side of the Pacific, but Garrison Girl is an English language original, and because it's by an American author, it reads differently from a Japanese light novel and more like an American YA. It covers old ground as far as the source material is concerned (the Trost arc is the finale), but it's an engaging read with an original cast. You can tell that Aaron has an affection for the series and I feel like it fits in almost seamlessly with the greater Attack on Titan world. (Almost. A couple things will likely stick out for the lore nerds.) Though I would not call this a romance, for those who wished there was a little more of that in the main series, what's here might be enough to scratch that itch.
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine *
I received this book as a gift from my dad, who heard it was good and thought it would give me more insight into my ancestral country. It's a middle grade book, but packs a punch even for adults, especially if you have or know someone with young children. Ling is growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution and doesn't understand why some things (and people!) are considered bad or have to be taken away. There are a couple things that stuck out as me as being concessions for the American audience, but for the most part the book is a chilling view of the revolution through the eyes of a child, and reading it as an adult is no doubt much different from reading it as part of the intended age group. It's not fantasy or science fiction, but worth checking out.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells *
Though I ended up enjoying this book tremendously, I had multiple false starts with it. Murderbot has an entertaining and relatable narrative voice, but I start my Kindle reads in short bursts (usually under five minutes and sometimes even less) and the personality was not enough to draw me in when Murberbot's job was still business as usual. However, given a longer reading period the situation quickly gets interesting and the rogue Murderbot tries to do its best at the job it actually doesn't like very much. Despite the name though, Murderbot doesn't do any murdering in this book.
Saga of Tanya the Evil Vol 1 by Carlo Zen
This was a really difficult read, which is a shame because there's a lot of nuance that the anime adaptation loses, primarily that the protagonist is well aware of the fact he's actually a thirty-something year old man reborn into the body of a little girl, and it's very clear that he does not consider himself and Tanya as one and the same. Unfortunately the author is also very intent on showing his homework, so there is a lot of rambling historical and tactical discourse in the book, which was mercifully cut in adaptation. It gets better towards the end of the volume, but I'm rather torn about whether to continue the series.
Baccano! Vol 4: 1932 Drug & The Dominos by Ryohgo Narita
I can't let the year end without getting another dose of Baccano!, which wraps up the last of the books adapted for the TV series. One of the main plots of this book (Eve looking for her brother) is lifted for the 1932 storyline in the anime, but the rest of it wasn't integrated into the series, probably for running time. Narita's penchant for simultaneously running multiple plot threads is in full force here, with a number of unrelated characters eventually all ending up in the same place through various circumstances. If you wanted more of the Gandor brothers and the reason why Claire Stanfield was recalled back to New York, this is the book to read. Several other leftover plot details from the Flying Pussyfoot arc wrap up here as well.
Monday, August 6, 2018
Spice & Wolf VR
I'm not entirely sure what a virtual reality anime is, but Spice & Wolf is getting one. It's one of my favorite novel series at the moment, for being a generally low key romance about a traveling merchant escorting a wolf goddess home.
There was a proper anime series a few years ago, but the adaptation stopped after the fifth book, whereas the novel series itself is over twenty volumes (and counting, even though by now Holo has gotten home).
So, the VR anime.
The visual is gorgeous and it's being written by the original author, Isuna Hasekura. But being VR, one of the things I figured is likely, is that the player would take on the role of Lawrence and interact with Holo. The reverse would be be unlikely, as would the possibility of the player interacting with both characters.
This is because Holo is the wolf goddess. She's cute and feisty, she's the face of the series, and she's on all the merchandise.
And it turned out that my original prediction was eventually confirmed.
But I think not having Lawrence does him a disservice.
Though I like Holo, I actually read the series for Lawrence. I love him as a male lead because he has very practical concerns and does a lot with what little he has. He can't fight, but somehow finds himself meeting demigods, smugglers, and soldiers, and yet every situation he gets into he (or Holo) manage to diffuse it without resorting to violence. That is, if those kinds of situations arise at all, since this is a low key series and the source of conflict is not always a grand one. Most of the time, Lawrence can solve the book's problems just by using his knowledge of the local economy. And, particularly for anime, he's not a complete idiot about romance.
Though Lawrence is a bit slow at the start, once he realizes that Holo likes him in return the series gets a lot more fun as he and Holo readily flirt with each other. Their banter, and constant trying to one-up each other, is a highlight of the series. Usually Holo wins, but Lawrence gets in his digs, and he's smart enough to realize when it's better to let something go rather than win for the sake of winning (sometimes Holo's comments bite because she's upset and hiding it). He spends a lot of the series trying to understand her and why they might not be seeing eye to eye.
Also, Lawrence has excellent life goals. After all this traveling is over he wants to settle down and open up a shop.
I find Lawrence incredibly endearing, and while he's not the sort of man one would expect to end up with a goddess, I can see why one might fall in love with him.
And that's why I'm disappointed that the VR anime is making Holo while the viewer is playing from Lawrence's perspective. It's clear that it's being made to appeal to heterosexual men, but for those of us who find Lawrence appealing as well, it's unfortunate.
There was a proper anime series a few years ago, but the adaptation stopped after the fifth book, whereas the novel series itself is over twenty volumes (and counting, even though by now Holo has gotten home).
So, the VR anime.
We will make "Spice & Wolf VR". It is scheduled to be released in 2019. VIVE, Rift, others!! pic.twitter.com/SYkCF6Jc13
— SpicyTails@ (@spicytails) July 16, 2018
The visual is gorgeous and it's being written by the original author, Isuna Hasekura. But being VR, one of the things I figured is likely, is that the player would take on the role of Lawrence and interact with Holo. The reverse would be be unlikely, as would the possibility of the player interacting with both characters.
This is because Holo is the wolf goddess. She's cute and feisty, she's the face of the series, and she's on all the merchandise.
And it turned out that my original prediction was eventually confirmed.
But I think not having Lawrence does him a disservice.
Though I like Holo, I actually read the series for Lawrence. I love him as a male lead because he has very practical concerns and does a lot with what little he has. He can't fight, but somehow finds himself meeting demigods, smugglers, and soldiers, and yet every situation he gets into he (or Holo) manage to diffuse it without resorting to violence. That is, if those kinds of situations arise at all, since this is a low key series and the source of conflict is not always a grand one. Most of the time, Lawrence can solve the book's problems just by using his knowledge of the local economy. And, particularly for anime, he's not a complete idiot about romance.
Though Lawrence is a bit slow at the start, once he realizes that Holo likes him in return the series gets a lot more fun as he and Holo readily flirt with each other. Their banter, and constant trying to one-up each other, is a highlight of the series. Usually Holo wins, but Lawrence gets in his digs, and he's smart enough to realize when it's better to let something go rather than win for the sake of winning (sometimes Holo's comments bite because she's upset and hiding it). He spends a lot of the series trying to understand her and why they might not be seeing eye to eye.
Also, Lawrence has excellent life goals. After all this traveling is over he wants to settle down and open up a shop.
I find Lawrence incredibly endearing, and while he's not the sort of man one would expect to end up with a goddess, I can see why one might fall in love with him.
And that's why I'm disappointed that the VR anime is making Holo while the viewer is playing from Lawrence's perspective. It's clear that it's being made to appeal to heterosexual men, but for those of us who find Lawrence appealing as well, it's unfortunate.
Monday, January 1, 2018
My Favorite Books of 2017
Happy New Year, everyone! It's time to start my 2017 entertainment round-ups, kicking off with the books I read last year.
For a while I was afraid that 2017 would be the year of sequels for me, as I continued reading older series that I'd already started, but I did get a number of stand alones novels in there and even started a new series.
That said, these are the twelve books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I finished them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*), though there is a cheater in there since I also included an inseparable pair that cannot be read independently of each other.
Return of Souls by Andy Remic
This is a sequel to the A Song for No Man's Land dark fantasy WWI novella that I read last year. It is totally a middle installment, ending on a cliffhanger, and definitely a lot weirder as most of the story now takes place in the alternate world realm where all the monsters comes from. I wanted to see the skogsra from the end of the first book, but she doesn't turn up in this one.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
I've heard that this one of the best modern Lovecraftian takes in recent years and it is. It's a retelling of "The Horror at Red Hook," but a version Lovecraft himself never could have written about an African American hustler in 1920s Harlem who crosses paths with all the eldritch weirdness that Lovecraft is known for. The work is really good at capturing what it must have been like as a second class citizen both from the perspective of the titular Black Tom and from the POV of the white detective Malone (Lovecraft's original protagonist) who doesn't really hate New York's racial minorities but accepts their lower status for what it is.
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo *
The daughter of a failing merchant house is being pressured into a ghost marriage with the deceased son of the rich man her father owes money to, but unsurprisingly she's not interested. It doesn't helping that the ghost of the dead son is haunting her dreams, courting her like the worst of "nice guy" stalkers. He also might have been murdered. The story takes place in late 1800s Malaysia in the Chinese expat community and contains a smorgasbord of southern Chinese culture, particularly in regards to customs involving the dead. I consider it a huge plus that the author went with older, pre-pinyin spellings of names so that the regionalism of the different dialects comes through.
Spice and Wolf Vol 11: Side Colors II by Isuna Hasekura
Vol 11 is another short story volume containing two "lost" moments that take place early in Lawrence and Holo's journey and a novella about the side character Eve Bolan. "The Black Wolf's Cradle" is the clear winner of the three, as it follows the disenfranchised noblewoman Fleur and her transformation into the cunning merchant Eve. Fleur's naivete is heartbreaking, but her resolve is just as unyielding, making her a fantastic protagonist. And that ending! Wow, I did not expect it. It's very dark for this series, but perfectly in line for who Fleur becomes. Though I read Spice and Wolf for the fluff, it's nice to see Hasekura is capable of moving beyond it.
Iron Cast by Destiny Soria
Iron Cast was a whim purchase of mine and honestly I was afraid I would regret it, but I didn't! All I had to go on was one good review, but given the setup with a duo of young women doing skullduggery in the year 1919 through the use of their special powers, I was a easy fish to reel in. And it works! This story is really more YA given the ages of the characters and the themes, though it's told in third person which isn't de rigueur at the moment. The story is a little slow to get going, but Corinne and Ava are lovely and spirited protagonists, and all the building in the first half is rewarded by the second.
The Rogue Retrieval by Dan Koboldt
I volunteered to review this for the author so I persisted when I might not have otherwise, and it was a good thing since I was enjoying myself by the end. It's about a stage magician from Las Vegas who is pressed into a job where he needs to go to a medieval fantasy world and help a powerful corporation extract a researcher who has gone rogue. (Alas, the rogue retrieval does not involve capturing thieves.)
Baccano! Vol 2: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local by Ryohgo Narita *
Baccano continues to be a hot mess in the most entertaining fashion. Most of the cast is different from the last book, but Narita's affection for taking a multitude of colorful characters, trapping them in the same location, and then seeing how it all plays out is done to great effect. This time it's on a cross country train ride with cultists, mobsters, bootleggers, and of course Isaac and Maria, where everybody except the latter two has a different crime job in mind, all of it involving shenanigans on the train. The only flaw really is that it's a two-parter, but with good reason, as I'll get to in a moment.
Baccano! Vol 3: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express by Ryohgo Narita *
I read this immediately after Vol 2 because they're a duology within the greater series, but it's not in the conventional sense. The Local and Express parts of 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad cover approximately the same span of time, but are told from two different sets of POV characters. Local gives us what is happening on the surface and Express gives us the POV characters with something to hide. It answers the remaining mysteries of the previous book, including the truth about the Rail Tracer. One is not complete without the other, and for that reason I'm including the two volumes as a pair in my Top 3 of the year.
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City - Part 1 by Ryo Kawakami
I rarely go into a series so much that I follow spin-offs written by other people, but Attack on Titan is one of my favorite series and I picked up Harsh Mistress of the City mostly because it sounds like something I would like to have written had I the opportunity. Taking place immediately after the fall of Wall Maria (the first two episodes of the anime), we follow a young soldier, Rita Iglehaut, as her district is cut off from the rest of civilization by the man-eating Titans. Due to the loss of nearly all the Garrison soldiers, Rita becomes the highest ranking soldier left alive, and her childhood friend Mathias Kramer, who escaped the district, is now coming back to find her.
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City - Part 2 by Ryo Kawakami
After a six month time skip and a heck of a way to end the first volume, things have gone from bad to worse. As far as spin-offs go, if you like those that stick to canon and feel like they really could have happened in the main storyline, this is an excellent pick. Unfortunately the ending is a bit of a deus ex machina and the ultimate fates of our protagonists are left unknown. Kawakami does put his characters through some gut-punch worthy moments, but he's not as clever at getting them out of it.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson *
I came into this one with high expectations, and they were mostly met. Mind, it's not that it wasn't good, but I'd expected more economics and less time marching with an army that belonged to neither Baru's people nor their conquerors. Fortunately, there's a reason for all that, and the writing is good enough that I liked following Baru and the scheming of the various dukes of Ardwynn. Baru is a fantastic protagonist, who is willing to put absolutely everything (love, loyalty, life) through the meat grinder if necessary to save her people. My primary disappointment was finding out this book is the first in a series and the second isn't out yet.
Writers of the Future Volume 33 (anthology)
I almost always read the latest of these, since I know so many of the writers who end up in them. There's a wide variety so subgenres can jump drastically from story to story. This approach might not work for someone looking for a theme, but there's more than likely something that appeals. My favorite this year is "The Fox, the Wolf, and the Dove" by Ville Meriläinen, for leaving me sobbing at the end.
For a while I was afraid that 2017 would be the year of sequels for me, as I continued reading older series that I'd already started, but I did get a number of stand alones novels in there and even started a new series.
That said, these are the twelve books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I finished them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*), though there is a cheater in there since I also included an inseparable pair that cannot be read independently of each other.
Return of Souls by Andy Remic
This is a sequel to the A Song for No Man's Land dark fantasy WWI novella that I read last year. It is totally a middle installment, ending on a cliffhanger, and definitely a lot weirder as most of the story now takes place in the alternate world realm where all the monsters comes from. I wanted to see the skogsra from the end of the first book, but she doesn't turn up in this one.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
I've heard that this one of the best modern Lovecraftian takes in recent years and it is. It's a retelling of "The Horror at Red Hook," but a version Lovecraft himself never could have written about an African American hustler in 1920s Harlem who crosses paths with all the eldritch weirdness that Lovecraft is known for. The work is really good at capturing what it must have been like as a second class citizen both from the perspective of the titular Black Tom and from the POV of the white detective Malone (Lovecraft's original protagonist) who doesn't really hate New York's racial minorities but accepts their lower status for what it is.
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo *
The daughter of a failing merchant house is being pressured into a ghost marriage with the deceased son of the rich man her father owes money to, but unsurprisingly she's not interested. It doesn't helping that the ghost of the dead son is haunting her dreams, courting her like the worst of "nice guy" stalkers. He also might have been murdered. The story takes place in late 1800s Malaysia in the Chinese expat community and contains a smorgasbord of southern Chinese culture, particularly in regards to customs involving the dead. I consider it a huge plus that the author went with older, pre-pinyin spellings of names so that the regionalism of the different dialects comes through.
Spice and Wolf Vol 11: Side Colors II by Isuna Hasekura
Vol 11 is another short story volume containing two "lost" moments that take place early in Lawrence and Holo's journey and a novella about the side character Eve Bolan. "The Black Wolf's Cradle" is the clear winner of the three, as it follows the disenfranchised noblewoman Fleur and her transformation into the cunning merchant Eve. Fleur's naivete is heartbreaking, but her resolve is just as unyielding, making her a fantastic protagonist. And that ending! Wow, I did not expect it. It's very dark for this series, but perfectly in line for who Fleur becomes. Though I read Spice and Wolf for the fluff, it's nice to see Hasekura is capable of moving beyond it.
Iron Cast by Destiny Soria
Iron Cast was a whim purchase of mine and honestly I was afraid I would regret it, but I didn't! All I had to go on was one good review, but given the setup with a duo of young women doing skullduggery in the year 1919 through the use of their special powers, I was a easy fish to reel in. And it works! This story is really more YA given the ages of the characters and the themes, though it's told in third person which isn't de rigueur at the moment. The story is a little slow to get going, but Corinne and Ava are lovely and spirited protagonists, and all the building in the first half is rewarded by the second.
The Rogue Retrieval by Dan Koboldt
I volunteered to review this for the author so I persisted when I might not have otherwise, and it was a good thing since I was enjoying myself by the end. It's about a stage magician from Las Vegas who is pressed into a job where he needs to go to a medieval fantasy world and help a powerful corporation extract a researcher who has gone rogue. (Alas, the rogue retrieval does not involve capturing thieves.)
Baccano! Vol 2: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local by Ryohgo Narita *
Baccano continues to be a hot mess in the most entertaining fashion. Most of the cast is different from the last book, but Narita's affection for taking a multitude of colorful characters, trapping them in the same location, and then seeing how it all plays out is done to great effect. This time it's on a cross country train ride with cultists, mobsters, bootleggers, and of course Isaac and Maria, where everybody except the latter two has a different crime job in mind, all of it involving shenanigans on the train. The only flaw really is that it's a two-parter, but with good reason, as I'll get to in a moment.
Baccano! Vol 3: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express by Ryohgo Narita *
I read this immediately after Vol 2 because they're a duology within the greater series, but it's not in the conventional sense. The Local and Express parts of 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad cover approximately the same span of time, but are told from two different sets of POV characters. Local gives us what is happening on the surface and Express gives us the POV characters with something to hide. It answers the remaining mysteries of the previous book, including the truth about the Rail Tracer. One is not complete without the other, and for that reason I'm including the two volumes as a pair in my Top 3 of the year.
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City - Part 1 by Ryo Kawakami
I rarely go into a series so much that I follow spin-offs written by other people, but Attack on Titan is one of my favorite series and I picked up Harsh Mistress of the City mostly because it sounds like something I would like to have written had I the opportunity. Taking place immediately after the fall of Wall Maria (the first two episodes of the anime), we follow a young soldier, Rita Iglehaut, as her district is cut off from the rest of civilization by the man-eating Titans. Due to the loss of nearly all the Garrison soldiers, Rita becomes the highest ranking soldier left alive, and her childhood friend Mathias Kramer, who escaped the district, is now coming back to find her.
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City - Part 2 by Ryo Kawakami
After a six month time skip and a heck of a way to end the first volume, things have gone from bad to worse. As far as spin-offs go, if you like those that stick to canon and feel like they really could have happened in the main storyline, this is an excellent pick. Unfortunately the ending is a bit of a deus ex machina and the ultimate fates of our protagonists are left unknown. Kawakami does put his characters through some gut-punch worthy moments, but he's not as clever at getting them out of it.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson *
I came into this one with high expectations, and they were mostly met. Mind, it's not that it wasn't good, but I'd expected more economics and less time marching with an army that belonged to neither Baru's people nor their conquerors. Fortunately, there's a reason for all that, and the writing is good enough that I liked following Baru and the scheming of the various dukes of Ardwynn. Baru is a fantastic protagonist, who is willing to put absolutely everything (love, loyalty, life) through the meat grinder if necessary to save her people. My primary disappointment was finding out this book is the first in a series and the second isn't out yet.
Writers of the Future Volume 33 (anthology)
I almost always read the latest of these, since I know so many of the writers who end up in them. There's a wide variety so subgenres can jump drastically from story to story. This approach might not work for someone looking for a theme, but there's more than likely something that appeals. My favorite this year is "The Fox, the Wolf, and the Dove" by Ville Meriläinen, for leaving me sobbing at the end.
Monday, May 22, 2017
Mini-Reading Binge
I don't normally read nearly as many books as I'd like. A part of me wonders if it's just that I've gotten more critical as I've become a writer, or it's just that it's harder for me to sit down since there are so many ways to spend my time.
But, I did finish three books so far this month, which is unusual for me, and I'm in the middle of two others (one is an anthology, so it's very easy to pause in the middle for another novel).
I particularly like the two novels I finished. One is The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo, which hits all my southern Chinese buttons. I might have told the author over Twitter that reading the dialogue with its older style of romanizing Chinese words made me think of my grandmother and great aunt, because my family never learned to use pinyin. It just wasn't a thing with the Hoisan who came over to the US early in the 20th century, and given the book's late 1800s setting (though in Malaysia), it makes sense.
There's a lot to like about The Ghost Bride. Though the details sometime feel a little much for someone who grew up with similar traditions, they should be enough to bring non-Chinese up to speed, and I really liked the details about Malaysia, which I'm largely unfamiliar with.
The other novel I finished is Iron Cast by Destiny Soria, which is set in 1919 Boston, just before Prohibition. It starts a little slow, though I was pretty hooked by the second half. I liked the diverse cast, and the author doesn't let the reader forget that main character Ava is a second class citizen in her own city by virtue of the color of her skin. I also liked the addition of Gabriel, a Russian immigrant who Americanized his name because though he is white by our modern day standards, he would not have been back then.
I'm a complete sucker for something involving magic and period gangsters, but I have to admit I was surprised this ended up being a YA book. I didn't pick this up in the store so I don't know where they shelve it and unlike most contemporary YA it's not written in first person, so I was a bit thrown off when my brain had to age everyone down by about ten years.
The third book I finished is the second Spice and Wolf short story volume, Volume 11 in the series overall. Usually the stories are told from Lawrence's point of view, more rarely Holo's, but Volume 11 has a real gem in the novella "The Black Wolf's Cradle," which is a prequel telling the origin of Eve Bolan. If you've watched the second season of the anime, you may remember Eve as the backstabbing merchant in the second half.
"The Black Wolf's Cradle" gives us an early version of Eve, when she has recently become a young widow of a destitute noble family. It's painful watching her fumble her way through her first transactions, because she needs a trade in order to earn money, but she is so trusting that even when things begin to look promising for her, we're waiting for the sword to fall. When it does, we see how she becomes the person that we know in the main series. This is easily the best of Isuna Hasekura's shorts in this series, and better than a few of the novels.
But, I did finish three books so far this month, which is unusual for me, and I'm in the middle of two others (one is an anthology, so it's very easy to pause in the middle for another novel).
I particularly like the two novels I finished. One is The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo, which hits all my southern Chinese buttons. I might have told the author over Twitter that reading the dialogue with its older style of romanizing Chinese words made me think of my grandmother and great aunt, because my family never learned to use pinyin. It just wasn't a thing with the Hoisan who came over to the US early in the 20th century, and given the book's late 1800s setting (though in Malaysia), it makes sense.
There's a lot to like about The Ghost Bride. Though the details sometime feel a little much for someone who grew up with similar traditions, they should be enough to bring non-Chinese up to speed, and I really liked the details about Malaysia, which I'm largely unfamiliar with.
The other novel I finished is Iron Cast by Destiny Soria, which is set in 1919 Boston, just before Prohibition. It starts a little slow, though I was pretty hooked by the second half. I liked the diverse cast, and the author doesn't let the reader forget that main character Ava is a second class citizen in her own city by virtue of the color of her skin. I also liked the addition of Gabriel, a Russian immigrant who Americanized his name because though he is white by our modern day standards, he would not have been back then.
I'm a complete sucker for something involving magic and period gangsters, but I have to admit I was surprised this ended up being a YA book. I didn't pick this up in the store so I don't know where they shelve it and unlike most contemporary YA it's not written in first person, so I was a bit thrown off when my brain had to age everyone down by about ten years.
The third book I finished is the second Spice and Wolf short story volume, Volume 11 in the series overall. Usually the stories are told from Lawrence's point of view, more rarely Holo's, but Volume 11 has a real gem in the novella "The Black Wolf's Cradle," which is a prequel telling the origin of Eve Bolan. If you've watched the second season of the anime, you may remember Eve as the backstabbing merchant in the second half.
"The Black Wolf's Cradle" gives us an early version of Eve, when she has recently become a young widow of a destitute noble family. It's painful watching her fumble her way through her first transactions, because she needs a trade in order to earn money, but she is so trusting that even when things begin to look promising for her, we're waiting for the sword to fall. When it does, we see how she becomes the person that we know in the main series. This is easily the best of Isuna Hasekura's shorts in this series, and better than a few of the novels.
Monday, January 9, 2017
My Favorite Books of 2016
I didn't read nearly as much as I'd wanted to in 2016, though I read more than the list below suggests since I'm omitting my research books. It's hard to stack up a historical non-fiction piece with novels and anthologies since they're read for so many different reasons.
That said, these are the nine books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I read them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too.
Thief of Songs by M.C.A. Hogarth *
Thief of Songs is what Hogarth describes as a pastoral romance; low stakes, not a lot of drama, lots of sweetness. It made the long list for the James Tiptree Jr Award, and features a world where there are four genders; female, male, hermaphrodite, and neuter. The world building is amazing and feels like a living place, though the hermaphrodite pronouns are a little hard to get used to at first since they don't map to any real world ones (as far as I know).
Justice Calling by Annie Bellet
Annet Bellet's Justice Calling is the first in her Twenty-Sided Sorceress series and stuffed full of pop culture geeky references centered around magic. I'm not usually an urban fantasy reader, but this was fun and I have the second book in my to-be-read pile.
A Song for No Man's Land by Andy Remic
World War I is one of my favorite settings (as most of my writer friends are well aware of, considering the stuff I send them) and Andy Remic's dark fantasy take on it is really dark, melding what's real and what's not with the horror of the trenches. This is the first in a trilogy and again I already have the second book waiting to be read.
Romancing the Null by Tina Gower
Disclaimer, I got a review copy of this one since Tina is a friend. That said, Romancing the Null is a fun urban fantasy romp through the eyes of an actuary for fantastical events. The fact her profession is such an unusual one (and not one pre-disposed towards ass-kicking) is what makes this fun.
Baccano: The Rolling Bootlegs by Ryohgo Narita
Baccano is one of my favorite anime series and the original novels are finally being translated into English! It's a hot mess (in a good way) when mobsters, an alchemist seeking immortality, and two cuckoo thieves get mixed up in the transit of a few bottles of alcohol that are totally not the booze most people take them for.
Spice and Wolf Vol 10 by Isuna Hasekura
Spice and Wolf is my guilty pleasure. Hasekura is not the strongest writer out there, but he still manages to spin a charming romance between a wolf goddess and an ordinary merchant who don't want their time together to come to an end. Volume 10 takes them to a monastery heavily in debt that might have the bones of Holo's fellow wolves, which leads to the usual economic shenanigans the series is known for.
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone *
Gladstone's Craft Sequence is supposed to be readable in any order since the volumes are stand alone, but I figured I'd start with the first, and I have to say that after reading it, I'm really going to miss Tara when I move on to the next! She's easily my favorite new protagonist of the books I've read this year, for being so creative in how she gets the job done. And the setting doesn't hurt either, being a sort of early 20th century magic-tech society.
Another by Yukito Ayatsuji *
Though there is an anime based on Another, Ayatsuji's original is much, much better, with a lot more details fleshed out. Kouichi Sakakibara gets a late start at his new school, and when he gets there, he discovers there is a supernatural phenomenon that is periodically killing the students and families of those in class 3. It sounds like a creepy horror novel, but in practice plays out like a whodunnit mystery, as there are rules to the phenomenon involving how a dead person can masquerade as one of the living.
Writers of the Future Vol 32 (anthology)
I almost always read the latest of these, since I know so many of the writers who end up in them. There's a wide variety so subgenres can jump drastically from story to story. This approach might not work for someone looking for a theme, but there's more than likely something that appeals. My favorite this year is "A Glamour in Black" by Sylvia Anna Hiven, for being so creepy and having the best reveal at the end.
The three novels I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year, the ones I considered the page turners where I tried to get a few more pages in every night before going to bed. I can't recommend them enough.
That said, these are the nine books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I read them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too.
Thief of Songs by M.C.A. Hogarth *
Thief of Songs is what Hogarth describes as a pastoral romance; low stakes, not a lot of drama, lots of sweetness. It made the long list for the James Tiptree Jr Award, and features a world where there are four genders; female, male, hermaphrodite, and neuter. The world building is amazing and feels like a living place, though the hermaphrodite pronouns are a little hard to get used to at first since they don't map to any real world ones (as far as I know).
Justice Calling by Annie Bellet
Annet Bellet's Justice Calling is the first in her Twenty-Sided Sorceress series and stuffed full of pop culture geeky references centered around magic. I'm not usually an urban fantasy reader, but this was fun and I have the second book in my to-be-read pile.
A Song for No Man's Land by Andy Remic
World War I is one of my favorite settings (as most of my writer friends are well aware of, considering the stuff I send them) and Andy Remic's dark fantasy take on it is really dark, melding what's real and what's not with the horror of the trenches. This is the first in a trilogy and again I already have the second book waiting to be read.
Romancing the Null by Tina Gower
Disclaimer, I got a review copy of this one since Tina is a friend. That said, Romancing the Null is a fun urban fantasy romp through the eyes of an actuary for fantastical events. The fact her profession is such an unusual one (and not one pre-disposed towards ass-kicking) is what makes this fun.
Baccano: The Rolling Bootlegs by Ryohgo Narita
Baccano is one of my favorite anime series and the original novels are finally being translated into English! It's a hot mess (in a good way) when mobsters, an alchemist seeking immortality, and two cuckoo thieves get mixed up in the transit of a few bottles of alcohol that are totally not the booze most people take them for.
Spice and Wolf Vol 10 by Isuna Hasekura
Spice and Wolf is my guilty pleasure. Hasekura is not the strongest writer out there, but he still manages to spin a charming romance between a wolf goddess and an ordinary merchant who don't want their time together to come to an end. Volume 10 takes them to a monastery heavily in debt that might have the bones of Holo's fellow wolves, which leads to the usual economic shenanigans the series is known for.
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone *
Gladstone's Craft Sequence is supposed to be readable in any order since the volumes are stand alone, but I figured I'd start with the first, and I have to say that after reading it, I'm really going to miss Tara when I move on to the next! She's easily my favorite new protagonist of the books I've read this year, for being so creative in how she gets the job done. And the setting doesn't hurt either, being a sort of early 20th century magic-tech society.
Another by Yukito Ayatsuji *
Though there is an anime based on Another, Ayatsuji's original is much, much better, with a lot more details fleshed out. Kouichi Sakakibara gets a late start at his new school, and when he gets there, he discovers there is a supernatural phenomenon that is periodically killing the students and families of those in class 3. It sounds like a creepy horror novel, but in practice plays out like a whodunnit mystery, as there are rules to the phenomenon involving how a dead person can masquerade as one of the living.
Writers of the Future Vol 32 (anthology)
I almost always read the latest of these, since I know so many of the writers who end up in them. There's a wide variety so subgenres can jump drastically from story to story. This approach might not work for someone looking for a theme, but there's more than likely something that appeals. My favorite this year is "A Glamour in Black" by Sylvia Anna Hiven, for being so creepy and having the best reveal at the end.
The three novels I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year, the ones I considered the page turners where I tried to get a few more pages in every night before going to bed. I can't recommend them enough.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Japanese Light Novels
Last year I started reading the Spice & Wolf series by Isuna Hasekura. It's what is called in Japan a "light novel" series. It's a short novel comes with a few illustrations up front and more or less makes for "light" reading, though I'm a little skeptical about whether that's where the name comes from.
Light novels appear to work much like comics in that they are serials marked by volume number rather than with a separate title for each installment. If Spice and Wolf is anything to judge by, each volume is a self-contained story, an episode if you will, of the larger series, with an overarching storyline running between multiple books.
It's not quite the same as a fantasy trilogy, which is why the serial analogy works.
For instance, in volume 1 of Spice and Wolf, the characters of Lawrence and Holo begin traveling together, with the goal of returning Holo to her long forgotten home in the distant north. That's the overarching story. But the climax of volume 1 has nothing to do with her homeland, so much as to what lengths do Lawrence and Holo want to remain traveling companions when they have the opportunity to part ways.
Volume 2 covers a deal gone wrong where Holo has to bail Lawrence out of a mess of his own creation, which of course is at a city that's a stopover on their travel north.
Volume 3 looks to further the relationship between Lawrence and Holo as their journey continues (since there's definitely some unresolved sexual tension between the both of them), with of course another wrench thrown in the plan.
Persumably the series, which has gone up to sixteen volumes as of this writing, continues in this way until Lawrence and Holo inevitably find Yoitsu. Or, perhaps, there will be a different reason for them to keep traveling.
Spice and Wolf is a fresh and breezy read. It's a very minimalist sort of narration with short paragraphs, lots of dialogue, and the pages turn fast.
I don't think we really have an analog to the light novel in the US, save the ones that are translated from the Japanese, and that's too bad. I feel like we're missing some sort of marketing niche.
Light novels appear to work much like comics in that they are serials marked by volume number rather than with a separate title for each installment. If Spice and Wolf is anything to judge by, each volume is a self-contained story, an episode if you will, of the larger series, with an overarching storyline running between multiple books.
It's not quite the same as a fantasy trilogy, which is why the serial analogy works.
For instance, in volume 1 of Spice and Wolf, the characters of Lawrence and Holo begin traveling together, with the goal of returning Holo to her long forgotten home in the distant north. That's the overarching story. But the climax of volume 1 has nothing to do with her homeland, so much as to what lengths do Lawrence and Holo want to remain traveling companions when they have the opportunity to part ways.
Volume 2 covers a deal gone wrong where Holo has to bail Lawrence out of a mess of his own creation, which of course is at a city that's a stopover on their travel north.
Volume 3 looks to further the relationship between Lawrence and Holo as their journey continues (since there's definitely some unresolved sexual tension between the both of them), with of course another wrench thrown in the plan.
Persumably the series, which has gone up to sixteen volumes as of this writing, continues in this way until Lawrence and Holo inevitably find Yoitsu. Or, perhaps, there will be a different reason for them to keep traveling.
Spice and Wolf is a fresh and breezy read. It's a very minimalist sort of narration with short paragraphs, lots of dialogue, and the pages turn fast.
I don't think we really have an analog to the light novel in the US, save the ones that are translated from the Japanese, and that's too bad. I feel like we're missing some sort of marketing niche.
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