So it's been a while since I posted and also a while since I posted a book review. Between school and work and moving my brain noped out on anything new, so getting this pre-order this week combined exciting--NEW BOOK--with wary, as Anne Bishop took a turn for the wtf in the Black Jewels series to the point I didn't even buy the latest book in that series.

Crowbones is the third book from her series The World of the Others, which is an offshoot of her series The Others.

The Others
Written in Red
Murder of Crows
Vision in Silver
Marked in Flesh
Etched in Bone
Summary: Urban Fantasy/AU Earth - Meg, a cassandra sangue (prophet whose prophecies are triggered when her skin is cut) escapes the equivalent of slavery to basically hide in a city's enclave of terra indigene, who are both a single species made up of many subspecies, the least terrifying of which are vampires, werewolves, werecrows, werebears, werepanthers, weresharks, etc; Elementals (Winter, Summer, Spring, Fall, Water, Air, Atlantica (yes, the Atlantic Ocean), etc); and ponies that are horses that are also Tornado, Hurricane, Fog, Tsumani...you see where this is going

Those are the less terrifying terra indigene; the Elders are worse. And then there is plot, disaster, predation, and a surprising amount of found family/mixed species family. I reviewed the first and third books (I am annoyed I didn't do the fifth; i could have sworn that I did), so you can check under the tag on the first to see if ti's your speed. I recommend; it's multiple pov, with primary povs from the protagonist, Meg, Simon, a very cranky werewolf/bookstore owner (all Anne Bishop's characters are voracious readers so book store owners really come into their own in the two Others series), Vlad, a vampire, and Monty, a cop sent to the city of Lakeside for punishment after saving a teenage female werewolf from a rapist (humans are generally going to suck). The cast will grow, so be prepared.

World of the Others
Lake Silence
Wild Country
Crowbones
Summary: This series is set after the first series and follows up on some tertiary characters and towns mentioned in the wake of the Great Predation (spoilers but the word 'predation' probably gives you a hint of something going terribly sideways).

Book 1 and 3 are about Victoria Devine, a recently divorced woman and DV (extreme emotional abuse/gaslighting/etc) survivor who gets a rustic hotel in her divorce settlement that is located near a terra indigene controlled village and is basically the border between human-occupied (but not human-controlled) land and wild country, where the most powerful and dangerous terra indigene called the Elders--who don't have human forms and sometimes don't have much of a form at all--live. Book 2 is about Jana Paniccia, who wants to be a cop but sexism, so gets her chance in a small town that's occupied by both humans and terra indigene (shapeshifters, vampires, basically the kind of terra indigene that both have a human form and also hold down jobs. Yeah) to be deputy to a werewolf who doesn't really like humans. It's great.

Link to my review of Lake Silence, but you can find everything Anne Bishop's done in the tags.

( lake silence: a very short recap )
( crowbones: the world of the others, book 3 )

This has been an essay that went on much longer than expected.

Re-reading Temeraire, as I anticipate hitting all my favorite parts--impression, Laurence and Temeraire Torn Apart by Lying Airpeople, every instance of Temeraire's or Laurence's jealousy, meet-cute with Tharkay, Treason Drama, the Incan Empress, etc, I have to admit I most anticipate hitting Dragons Learn About Finance.

That's probably my top re-read portion. On occasion I skim entire books (or skip entirely, which always feels dishonest so I never do either anymore) to get to it. Why?

I just don't know.

I have a theory it has to do with Temeraire's reaction to interest mirrors mine when I first a.) learned about the stock market (something I'd assumed all my life was rather mythical, like Avalon, Atlantis, and the Free World) and b.) got my very first dividend. It was like, twelve cents. Still blew my mind.

But it's not just that. It's very soothing. The entire thing from Nice Bank Guy Basking Under Dragon Attention to Dragon Investing in the 'Change (I assume?) is just so wholesome. I'm just starting Black Powder War so I won't get to Banking With Dragons until probably tomorrow night or Monday morning, but already I feel excited.

Note: if anyone can rec semi-canonical or author-approved illustration of all dragons with an emphasis on relative size I'd be grateful.

I've seen separate bits in the books and online but that confuses me badly so I need them all in reference to each other. This is especially a problem when the issue of Temeraire's mating with Iskierka comes up and my entire brain shuts down on how...that worked. Relative size and for that matter shape seem to fail me badly even in drawings (sometimes, that just makes it worse). I'm hoping if I have working references I won't spend an inordinate amount of time combining bafflement with doubt about my understanding of physics as well as horrified curiosity how Temeraire escaped without some third degree burns on places one should not ever be burned. Water burns really, really hurt. Then I want to cry. It happens.

(Yes, I could email the author and I would if it were a question about literally anything not related to her books, but in this context, it's like like emailing Stephen King about a map of Salem's Lot or asking about the route to Boulder they took in The Stand. Even if there might be an answer I'm horrified at the idea of asking.)

Just finished The Queen's Bargain by Anne Bishop, the latest installment of the Black Jewels series.

Okay, so.

So you know how in canon, if one half of your OTP gets with another character, even if you previously really liked that character, you sort of hate them, too, and you're conflicted as shit? And then you try to be fair and write fanfic about Member of OTP/Other Person to power through the conflict and as it turns out, your id gives no shits about fair but you don't realize that until you're in too deep but it's so satisfying you just can't stop and then you're writing your OTP again, the other character isn't recognizable even to you, and you just don't care, fuck canon.

Welcome to The Queen's Bargain.
( I still liked it except the parts I didn't at all. Also, incest. Yes, exactly what you've wondered for all those books )
I don't hate it and actually enjoyed it--though you couldn't prove it from this entry--but for the life of me, I can't work out why the hell happened. After I re-read, maybe I'll be less--wtf?--but I just can't get over the primary goddamn plot is one usually posted to AO3 three days after canon fucked your OTP and you had a lot of feelings to express about it and didn't sleep until you expressed them all.

I reviewed the first three books of the series The Others, which was Anne Bishop's third series, unconnected to the id-tascular beauty of the Black Jewels which if you haven't read, I don't know what to say, it's insane with canonical cock-rings used to control and torture men OR they wear because it honors their queen.

This has nothing to do with that series, but I take every opportunity to try and get more people to read Black Jewels (did I mention some of the main characters are named Lucivar, Daemon, Saetan, and Surreal? And leather pants for men to show off their goods are canonical? CANONICAL LEATHER PANTS).

Okay fine, getting back: The Others series is her third series and Lake Silence is a one-off in this world. I liked the series--though with so many wtfs, but I also like that, too--but this is one of those times if you're not feeling 'read a five book series first' then go to wikipedia because this is really fun.

Lake Silence has everything I liked about the series and all the stuff that got on my nerves isn't in here. Specifically, it minimizes Bishop's weird and inexplicable desire to make the reader believe superpowered terra indigene (earth natives who were created before humans and who take many forms like werewolves, elementals, and vampires) who own all the land and water and feed on humanity and mass kill them not infrequently are super, super oppressed by the bad humans because they...get made fun of and sometimes, humans fight back?

It's more complicated than that except everything I just said is also true. In other words, you have to be willing to go with it, and it's worth it, but you do at times stop and want to explain to the terra indigene what 'learned helplessness' is and also, where they learned it because it wasn't from humans. Because yeah, the humans do shitty things to the terra indigene but so do the terra indigene and also eat humans add to that do mass extinction events on human groups so really? Like, in book it makes sense for short periods of time and then you just stop and go "...oh come on."

Lake Silence does not make an effort to convince us of the non-existent institutional oppression of the terra indigene (they..are the institution for fuck's sake), but instead scales this back to one area and group and plots within plots and crime and so much fun stuff with what should have been the point: the coolness of shapeshifters and humans and human-adjacent living in towns, running businesses with names based on puns, and solving murders, wheee.

( lake silence )

This is just quick thoughts:

(Note: If you see Hindi characters jump out, not my fault. I somehow made a hotkey--somewhere--that flips my keyboard to Hindi. I can't do it on purpose at Duolingo to save my life, but by God, when writing, I am suddenly in a different language. It's--weird. And I can't find the goddamn hotkey.)

( huh )

That subject line is now the title of my future biography. I was moved, inspired, alerted, delighted, baffled, maybe communized a little, idk.

I'm just saying I'm free now. Free. The superstitions of syntax hold no sway over me.

* Clouds of Witness, Dorothy Sayers

Because I just realized starting tomorrow the next week is going to be hellish for work and pre-Christmas shopping, I need to abruptly relax.

So. Book rec.

Jane Doe by Victoria Helen Stone

( this book was not entirely what I expected: spoilers )

My review of Written in Red, which was the first book of the series. The second, Murder of Crows, I read last year but I don't think ever reviewed. Mostly to this day--and especially after Vision in Silver, I'm ambivalent, though not Mercedes Lackey hostile.

The review of Written in Red had a short character and country directory if you need a refresher.

This may not be organized well, but I have feelings.

( vision in silver, book three of the others )

It's that time again--that would be time for more books. And I found my author to hit their works like the fist of a very literature-deprived god.

...but she has like a lot of books (two delicious series, even), so okay.

N.K. Jemisin - is The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms author-entry level or should I start with the other one first to get a better feel for her? It got amazing reviews (and is a trilogy), but I'm worried about another Neil Gaiman American Gods where I only found out after reading it that I should have started with Anansi Boys first to get a better feel of his style (as I loved Anansi Boys like beyond words).

So yes, no, maybe, do it alphabetically?

True/False

Anyone who read The Godfather - the most enduring, healthy, and happy relationship in the entire goddamn book is between Lucy, the girl who made Sonny's Cock an actual supporting character (and for whom I spent serious time learning about pelvic floors to explain this particular plot point) and Jules, the former surgeon turned Las Vegas abortion doctor.

( very minor digression on Dr. Jules )

Here's why this book remains one of my favorites and a maybe every three year full re-read; in a novel about gangsters, murder, the evils of the heroin trade, the bizarre and invisible double standards that they couldn't even acknowledge ruled everyone's lives, the ups and downs of the olive oil monopoly, all deathly serious and honestly not a little unsettling--we get Lucy, who any other sane writer would have left periphery at best but Mario Puzzo, whatever, that shit is for amateurs; gangsters, murder, heroin, corrupt cops, American values versus Old World values, big shit, and of equal weight...Lucy and her sex life aka Sonny's Cock.

No other writer on earth could just throw an entire subplot like that into the mix and make it work so effortlessly it's not until long after you read it that you realize, a little surprised: wait, what?

And you go check and realize, yeah, it went from pasta murder to Lucy dreaming of dead Sonny's cock, again, and your investment in Michael's goddamn broken-ass nose is like nothing compared to desperately hoping Lucy finds a Sonny Cock Mark II that makes her happy. Michael, get the fucking surgery and go to Italy and screw sheep or whatever, that's gross, now tell me more about Lucy's life and that hotass doctor in Las Vegas.

Okay, maybe this is just me, fine.

Mario has literally no ability to be sentimental (blank prose murders almost an afterthought, spare lines describing spousal abuse and torture, and most clinical pedophilic off-screen rape I've ever read with nothing, not one thing, that wasn't horrifying), and while I never got the impression he disapproved of a single thing they did (seriously, no; the horsehead thing was about as close to glee as Mario ever got, just on the basis of how many words he spent in description), sometimes there was almost a documentary feel to it, like a naturalist describing his world as he understands it, not as he wishes it (or wishes it not) to be.

Romance is a word without meaning, I'm pretty sure humor is something he heard about once at a party that he never did quite understand, and his sex scenes have all the sizzle of a medical journal article on the mechanics of coitus in the human heterosexual pairbond and that includes surprisingly graphic cameos of Sonny's Cock at Work and Play. I don't deny this, and I get why people say he's not a great writer, and I almost get why some people think he's not a good one, but if you accept what he's doing as a very, very specific and very deliberate style, one that works for you or never will, he really does know exactly what he's doing with every word on the page.

And then he blindsided me like whoa; Lucy and Jules's first time.

Stop me if you don't want to be spoiled, but seriously, it's worth reading; if you've made it that far into the novel, you've either acclimatized by sheer blunt force or fell right into his style from the first page, and what you will read next will be Puzzo writing a romantic comedy and holy goddamn shit, someone told him what it meant to have a sense of humor and for a few pages, he knew what to do with it.

Lucy--who has yet to inform Jules of her somewhat non-standard vagina (as she has no idea what the hell is going on down there but Sonny's Cock was fucking amazing in mitigating it)--freaks out when Jules first achieves penetration at which time the issue is difficult to hide, and we are maybe two steps from screaming trauma and thinking Jules would look fantastic in his component parts because fuck you, Lucy need some goddamn love (and sex) and you have your doubts about Jules (and Jules Cock) being up to the task.

Foolish reader: never doubt the man who can calmly compare cancer to melons and give you a visual to haunt your nightmares in twenty words or less.

Jules jumps--shifts? Maybe retrenches would be the most accurate description--to Orgasm Plan B without missing a beat, and not only orgasms for everyone (you will feel so happy for Lucy, you have no idea; I almost cried), but epic cuddling even A/B/O knotting can only dream of achieving. Romantic (I had no fucking clue Puzzo could spell it), sexy (Puzzo style sexy; who knew that was even possible?), funny (it's like for a moment, he achieved humor enlightenment and someone showed him something by Disney) and sentimental full-contact post-coital cuddling without anyone experiencing a traumatic locked bathroom screaming session.

Sexist? Yes: this is goddamn Mario Puzzo writing about the mafia; magic in a JK Rowling book about Harry Potter would be less expected. But. Jules. I'm gonna have to admit; any guy who while having sex with me discovered my Terrible Secret Sex Deformity, switches mid-stroke and gets me off, then indulges in massive cuddling while gigglingly telling me about my totally normal medical condition that is so so totally normal not even a thing before round two and hunts me down a surgeon while telling me he wants to marry me and also kind of finds the entire thing hilarious--the rest of it I could resist, maybe, but the last part, I can't.

(Post-Coital Cuddling Includes Medical Explanation-I finally got a very clear explanation of Lucy's Problem in five paragraphs that took Encyclopedia Brittanica several articles to get.)

Someone who can laugh at himself as easily and unselfconsciously and sincerely at the same time as he's laughing at me, because he gets the best and funniest jokes are always the ones that are shared; I couldn't say no to that, unicorns are too goddamn rare.

The Godfather; Totally Serious Fucking Mafia Shit. And also, The Totally Fascinating Adventures of an Italian girl With a Terrible Sex Secret who finds epic love with an abortion doctor in goddamn Vegas and lives happily (and post-surgically orgasmically) ever after.

I've read Romance novels less romantic than this.

...I'd actually offer up one third of my liver free and clear to see Mario Puzzo take on the Regency, just to read how he'd describe an evening of hijinks at Almack's. On a guess, it would not be entirely unlike an alien writing a report to his superiors about humanity's odd fascination with a being known as 'Sheldon' on a bizarre human entertainment known as a 'television show' that despite its title has nothing whatsoever to do with the big bang but has an unsettling focus on graphic t-shirts and things called 'superheroes' and it's still debatable whether or not they're supposed to be real, as the 'characters' don't seem to know either.

Tell me I'm wrong. Go ahead, just try.