It's a magical world

Yes, it's the anniversary of another trip that I have made around the sun. Here's to more of the same, but better, next year. :D

What I've Read
Ms. Marvel Vol 1, G. Willow Wilson et al - I finally got Comixology and I am hopeful that it will result in increases of the numbers of comics I actually am able to read. I loved this, but you're not surprised. What I will say is that I spotted that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure joke, and I laughed, and what really warmed my heart above and beyond the story itself was how goddamn Jersey it all is, the actual Jersey that doesn't often make it into media. ♥

The Tropic of Serpents and Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan - These books are so great. They operate in a familiar mode (lady Victorian naturalist/adventurer) but do everything completely opposite, except what they don't, and I really enjoy Brennan's ability to pack a lot of complex undercurrents into rather pulp-y yarns, and the way that Isabella is so willing to attempt to conform to the norms of the cultures among which she sojourns, because dragons.

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge - Hardinge's newest, and with this I'm now back to having read all but one of her books. I liked it a lot! skygiants said a thing that I agree with a lot, which is that Hardinge's protagonists are perpetually encountering women who they think are standing in their way but instead are much more complex, and that goes double for Faith. The book actually makes a great pair with the Brennan novels since they are both about the same thing (women and natural science) but are totally different. Anyway, it was great, though still not my favorite Hardinge; that will always be Fly By Night, with an honorable mention for Gullstruck Island, which I still think is her most ambitious. But this one was great too. I would read oodles of fic about the badass lesbian couple on the island, IJS.

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer - The final volume in the Southern Reach trilogy; I devoured it in less than a day and I loved it. I think I'm nearly alone in liking how Control is a sarcastic failboat, qualities which are not on display in this final book, but I did want to say that I appreciated VanderMeer's not having every character in the story be a straight white guy, because that could easily have happened, but instead the cast of the final book is a brown career spy, a black lesbian government agent, a part-Asian scientist, a gay white man, and a white woman psychologist. I think the Southern Reach trilogy is great; it's an attempt to deal with climate change and the horrors it's unleashed and revealed, it's a way of grappling with the latest realizations in ecology and biology, namely that humans aren't special; it's some of the most interesting and critically engaged SF I've read in a long time.

Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace - I blew through this book quite rapidly too, it's post apocalyptic YA scifi with a female protagonist, the eponymous Archivist Wasp, who makes a deal to journey to the underworld in the company of a ghost who's looking for his fallen comrade. It turns out the ghost and his comrade were genetically engineered super-soldiers before the world ended, and that everything Wasp thought she knew is wrong, and you're only as trapped in the past as you let yourself be. In a weird way, this reminded me powerfully of Sabriel crossed with…a really high-tech SF book about genetically engineered super-soldiers, who have got such style, I cannot even tell you. Anyway it was great and I have no idea where a sequel would go but I am so there.

Silver Spoon vol 9 by Arakawa Hiromu - Still great.

What I'm Reading
Silver Spoon vol 10 by Arakawa Hiromu - Still great.

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone - I don't think I'm quite as into this book as some other people have been, but I'm enjoying it a lot all the same. I really like Gladstone's determined mixing of magic and modernity, as well as how inventive he is.

What I'll Read Next
Probably some of Tanith Lee's Secret Books of Paradys, and also Michelle West's Oracle!!!

We're back and better than ever! Or at least, I'm reading for fun again for the first time since before my exams.

Just finished
Rachel Hartman, Seraphina (2012)
I really liked this YA novel about a girl caught between two worlds in conflict (humans and dragons, natch) in a for once believably plausibly medieval world, with much greater gender equality and non-stigmatized homosexuality, even. I was reminded of Frances Hardinge's Fly By Night in that respect, actually, which is very high praise indeed. I could barely put the book down, given how much I loved Phina, and sympathized with her struggles, and I think the book is also making some fairly sophisticated arguments about embodiment and what it means for who we are. The dragons were great too, and I'm looking forward to the sequel very much.

Michelle Sagara, Cast in Peril (2012)
I really enjoy the Cast books, even though I'm perpetually falling behind--the newest, Cast in Flame, is about to be published, and I still haven't read the one in between them. I was also thinking to myself while reading it that I really wished two characters would sleep together, and thinking that it would never happen, when it was explicitly discussed in text a few pages later (and rejected; I like that Sagara's characters often know and enforce their own boundaries). So there is indeed character development going on, and for a book that's all about a journey from Point A to Point B, it was surprisingly gripping. Anyway. If you like Sagara West's central protagonist type, you should totally check out the Cast books, since they really are Kaylin's story.

Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass (2012)
I think this is Hardinge's best book yet, at least of the ones that I've read. (I only have three left to read! Noooo! I've been trying to pace myself.) Neverfell isn't as brave as Mosca, and that makes her equally interesting in a different way, and the worldbuilding was spectacular. I can't recommend Hardinge's books highly enough to everyone, and I also want to say that I think that her books are a great example of art being found everywhere, even in denigrated categories such as middle grade.

N.K. Jemisin, The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun (2012)
I really liked both these books, though I thought that The Killing Moon stood better on its own, particularly since The Shadowed Sun was rather heavy in its subject matter at times. Everyone should read these books! Pseudo-Egyptian epic fantasy with interesting magic and an interesting and varied cast of characters and…ninja priests of death! All that being said, while I liked Hanani a lot, I didn't like the denouement to her story, or the ending of the book in general; I wanted more of the politics related to the resolution, and less of the personal. I also think that…how do I say this. Jemisin is clearly in conversation with certain romance novel tropes at times, and I'm not personally a romance fan; I also feel that giving female protagonists in fantasy novels romance novel endings feels conservative, even if it's actually not for the characters themselves. I'd rather see Jemisin give queer characters the romance novel endings; that would feel more revolutionary for me, and more satisfying. Also there should be another whole book about Nijiri; I found him annoying initially, but by the end he was my favorite character by a long shot.

N.K. Jemisin, The Kingdom of Gods (2011)
On the other hand, I really liked this conclusion to the Inheritance trilogy; I liked the politics, the magic, the godhood and its problems; I liked Sieh and his trio with the Arameri siblings. I actually mostly just wish it had been longer, really; Jemisin really managed to draw the threads of everything else that had come before together in a very satisfying way.

Sherwood Smith, Revenant Eve (2012)
I hadn't read the previous two books in this Dobrenica trilogy, but that turned out to be mostly okay as it's a time travel tale in which the viewpoint character isn't actually the protagonist, which is interesting structurally, and the book itself was a fun romp through largely under-explored back alleys of the Napoleonic period in France. I quite enjoy Smith's books, and this was very enjoyable. Awesome ladies with swords and pistols! What more could you want, I ask you.

Sherwood Smith, Banner of the Damned (2012)
That said, I enjoy Smith's epic fantasy sequence even more, and this is the next one in the main continuity, set about 800 years after the Inda books. I really, really liked that the main character was asexual (this may be the first book I've read where that was explicitly acknowledged as a thing, actually), and I liked the way that you could see glimpses of history changing and being retold in the background, even as by the ending of the book it became an explicit issue. I'm also really impressed in general at the way that Smith can make just about anything suspenseful, even things that rightly shouldn't be; her pacing is always a marvel. I also think she's a master worldbuilder who doesn't get anywhere near enough credit. Also highly recommended.

Currently reading
Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Burning City
Because I've been hearing a lot of buzz about Love Is the Drug on Twitter and I want to try to clear out the backlog. Currently I'm not very far in and I'm still trying to remember who everyone is (I've been consulting the pre-synopsis literally). I'm still really sad that there's currently no plans to finish the third volume, even as I both enjoy the book and recognize that it's weaker than her more recent books. Anyway, she's awesome, you should read everything she's ever written.

Recently acquired
CLAMP, Gate 7 vol. 4 (I don't think I finished 3?)
CLAMP, Gouhou Drug - Drug & Drop vol. 1
CLAMP, xxxHoLiC Rou vol. 1
Arakawa Hiromu, Silver Spoon vol. 10 (it was packaged with an ema from the shrine in the manga! I haven't even finished vol. 1)
Yoshimoto Banana, Kitchen
Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text, ed. Michael Emmerich

Reading next
Probably Diana Wynne Jones or Kameron Hurley or Ann Leckie. Note to self: vote for the Hugos.

Hardinge, Frances. Twilight Robbery. London: Macmillan, 2011. [In the United States as Fly Trap]

Six years ago after purchasing a truly massive (2kg) Cadbury bar at the mall in Derry, Northern Ireland, I popped round into a little bookshop called The Bookworm, which proved to be yet another treasure trove of books. No one told me that Ireland is the paradise of English-language bookshops, but it is. I picked up a great many excellent books on that trip, from Kenny's in Galway to The Bookstore in Carndonagh to Waterstone's in Dublin and many shops in between. One of the books at The Bookworm that caught my eye, however, was a book called Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge. I bought it, devoured it, loved it, went back and bought another copy for a friend, and spent the next six years haunting English-language bookshops on two continents looking for more of Hardinge's books. This fall I wised up and let the internet provide them for me. Twilight Robbery is the sequel to Fly By Night, and it's just as thrillingly, heart-stoppingly excellent and wonderful as its predecessor. It is, like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. If I haven't made this clear enough yet: GO READ FLY BY NIGHT, YOU WILL LOVE IT. YES, I MEAN YOU.

Where has Mosca Mye been in my life these past six years. ‪‪#twilightrobbery‬‬

The books are set in a very, very alternate post-Revolution England, in which the London equivalent is a city named Mandelion and the part of the Puritans was played by a group of monotheists called the Birdcatchers, since the old religion was one of multitudinous little godlings called the Beloved. Every hour of the day and night is sacred to one or another Beloved, and it is tradition that people be named for the Beloved in whose hour they were born. Mosca Mye has the misfortune to be born under Goodman Palpitattle, the Beloved of flies who has no good reputation among gentlefolk, and consequently she grows up too smart, too sarcastic, and too independent for her own good. After her father's death she and her faithful, semi-homicidal goose Saracen strike out for Mandelion, where they have a series of awesome adventures, recounted in Fly By Night, before striking out from the city two steps ahead of the people pursuing them on the trail of their fortune. They are accompanied by the Stationer spy Eponymous Clent--the Stationers being one of the many Guilds that now have de facto oligarchical control over the Realm, since the multitudinous contenders for the empty throne have not managed to attract enough popular or political support for any one of them to regain it.

Twilight Robbery: Frances Hardinge does Beszel/Ul Qoma, and Omelas.

Twilight Robbery soon finds our heroes in the toll town of Toll, down on their luck, hard up for cash, and under the guns of a three-day term limit for their stay in the daylight side of the town, after which they will be consigned either to the daylight or nighttime sides based on their names--though living in the same spaces, each side of the town is obliged to pretend that the other half doesn't exist during their designated hours. No surprise, Mosca is slated for the nightside, a dismal dystopia in the grip of the Locksmiths, the most fearsome of all the guilds and one with which Mosca and Clent have already had some dealings. It's clear that Hardinge is drawing on, to some extent, China Miéville's excellent The City & the City, but as I continued along in the novel I realized that she was also doing her own take on Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" too. It's typical Mosca that she makes a totally perpendicular choice to the sets of options that either of those stories offer.

Mosca Mye would not walk away from Omelas. Mosca Mye would burn that whole city down. ‪#twilightrobbery‬

I don't think I can fully express just how much I love Mosca Mye. After an additional six years of reading YA/middle grade books, Mosca is even more of a revelation than she was the first time. I love her sarcasm, her cynicism, her hard-bitten capacity for mayhem, her good heart and her well-hidden idealism despite the odds, and most of all I love her radical political principles and her budding atheism. I've complained before about how little love for democracy there is in fantasy literature, or republicanism, small R, and that is one complaint I will never have to make about Hardinge, or about Mosca. They know where their politics are, and they stick to those politics, even in the face of some very determined opposition. Along the way, Mosca learns some home truths about what's in a name, and what isn't, in a way that feels true, partly because it's hard.

Oh go on, underestimate Mosca some more, I'm sure that will work out well for you. ‪#twilightrobbery‬

The other thing I love about these books is the sheer inventive wordsmithing verve of Hardinge's prose. At times she is laugh-outloud funny, and she never, ever resorts to a hackneyed turn of phrase because she doesn't have to.

Mosca could not help feeling that the "poor dear" might have a point about the likelihood of disaster. Having tasted Toll-by-Night's moonlit stew of murder, menace, treachery and pursuit, she had fallen wildly in love with the six shabby bolts that held the door shut and the danger out. Her new regalia did not make her feel any better about venturing out either. There was no help for it however. Time was not on their side… (286)

I haven't seen the U.S. versions of either of these books except in passing on bookstore shelves; I don't think the U.S. title for this book is as terrible as some of the other retitles of Hardinge's books. (The terrible titles and U.S. localization may be part of the reason Hardinge is so undeservedly unknown here.) I've heard that it's possible to get the unlocalized books in e-form, and the internet is quite happy to provide you with the actual British paperbacks. In any case, I can't recommend Hardinge highly enough, and I'm so looking forward to reading her other books.

Just finished Twilight Robbery. This book may well be perfect.