Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter > Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall

What are you reading?

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Spritelady:
I have so far read three books in 2024 and recently started a fourth, so I am apparently going through one of my manic reading phases. I know it won't last but I'm enjoying it at the moment.

I began If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio in 2023 and finished it off in the first couple of days of January. It was an excellent book, with interesting characters and very much reminded me of A Secret History (which was the comparison given by a reviewer that led me to purchase the book in the first place, as that is one of my favourite books). I solidly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a mystery with a side of social drama.

My second book was The League of Gentlewomen Witches, a very funny, very well written book that manages to both gently poke fun at multiple genres and tropes (period dramas and epic romances among them) while creating interesting characters that I felt really quite invested in, despite or perhaps because of the silliness of the plot. It also left me with several new favourite phrases, including 'Assault With a Deadly Compliment' and this little gem of an exchange:
Two characters who do not like one another are talking
-Character 1 is interrupted-
1: "Oh, where was I?"
2: "I cannot recall. But I have a suggestion as to where you might go."

And finally I read The Book of Deacon, which I borrowed from my sister several centuries ago and neglected to either read or return until now. I thought the worldbuilding was excellent, the story was interesting but sadly the writing style was absolutely appalling. I'm not yet sure whether this is because of personal taste or an objective lack of quality, but either way I am interested enough to keep reading, so clearly the author is doing something right.

Jubal:
I have finished my second book for the year so am really not keeping up with Spritelady's pace!

It was Tower of the Swallow, the penultimate book in the main Witcher run (meaning I have two books left because there's also the standalone Storm of Swords to read sometime.) It was fine. It had a lot of the things I kind of expected from a Sapkowski novel, including some interesting historical and mythological references which I enjoyed - especially bits like the reference to the theory that swallows spend winter buried in mud at the bottom of lakes, a subject on which there was a real debate in the lat eighteenth century. There are also some stand-out side characters in the forms of Kenna and Vysogota (though Vysogota's reappearance at the end hit a bit weirdly for me). I think Vysogota is among my favourite side-characters, he was very well written.

Unfortunately it also included other things I expected from a Sapkowski novel, including bizarrely gratuitous levels of violence and sexual commentary or sexualisation of very unsexual situations, all of which kind of stops having any impact because once you're into needing to count the specifically sadistic villains in a story they start losing their impact. I think Sapkowski really leans into the random uncontrolled violence and the use of sexual assault as an "oh look this world is quite bad" background detail to an extent that robs it of any sense and power in the narrative.

There are also some character issues: Bonhart is a solid uncomplicated villain, but also having to keep track of all the other villains makes him lose his impact, coupled with the fact that not enough is done to solidify their respective roles. I think Skellen/Tawny Owl probably gets the worst deal here, he's potentially a much more interesting antagonist and I'd have liked a bit more exploration of his motives. Also, Ciri doesn't always feel well written to me, and this book is really more about her than Geralt, which is sort of one of its problems: Sapkowski's story is pushing him more and more to rely on bits of his writing that he just isn't as good at. This is partly because I'm not sure anyone could write Ciri well given the bizarre complexity of her biography (it's really hard to follow what she's doing at any given age) and her skill set: but the mess of anger, violence, heroism, sexuality and deep trauma ends up meaning she never really either breaks from or processes any of the trauma, but she can't be written to be as traumatised as someone with her backstory should be or she'd lose her functionality as a character.

Anyway, I have critiques but I don't regret having read it, and I'm interested to see how the last book pans out. I think another thing that I'm increasingly thinking about is how this all ends up transferring forwards into the games and what they've had to twist to make the game narratives work. Will report back when I've finished the series!

Spritelady:
I have also recently read Tower of the Swallow! And intend to start on Lady of the Lake soon.

I always find it interesting to read your analysis of these books, because I think I tend to switch off a little and enjoy the story, and then I read your thoughts and think "Actually, that's a very good point". I also enjoyed the mythological references (and have throughout the series, I think they're quite well worked in), and found some of the unnecessary sexualisation rather odd and flat to read.

I particularly enjoyed the two short story collections in this series, and have enjoyed the overall dramatic plot novels rather less, but I'm interested to see what happens in the last book, Season of Storms (I think Storm of Swords is from A Song of Ice and Fire?), since it's set between some of the stories from the first book I believe.

In other updates, I have now read a total of 14 books this year (and done very little else it seems!), most of which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I wonder if I should make a separate post somewhere to talk about the various books I've read, since this one will get a little clogged if I were to put up 14 short reviews! In brief though, the major thing I have read was the ACOTAR series, which despite being a major fad among the fiction reading world was very enjoyable and had a range of interesting characters, cool worldbuilding concepts and intriguing magic.

Jubal:
You're absolutely right, it is Season of Storms (though I think from the blurb it is actually a book themed around swords, hence my confusion).

I have meanwhile gotten round to reading The Lady of the Lake. Decisions sure were made in the writing of this book. Rest of post spoilered because I know Spritelady hasn't read it yet:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)So, we get into a lot more "Ciri bwips around between universes" stuff, and a bunch of "Weird elf shenanigans" stuff, a whole bunch more weird sexual stuff including with unicorns in it, and a lot of jumping between subplots rather oddly. Ultimately, there is a big ol' confrontation with Vilgefortz, the key villain of the books, and due to a magic amulet that Geralt obtained by giving a random secondary sorceress a very good time he tricks the guy and wins, yay for that (what witcher amulets can and can't do is one of those "this is very relevant and never discussed properly" topics.)

Also, framing narratives are used like they're going out of fashion. In the Tower of the Swallow we had Ciri's discussion with Vysogotha as a single core frame for most of the book, but here we have tons of the damn things in weird nested overlaps, starting with "the whole book is Ciri telling literal Galahad from actual Arthurian romance England what is going on" and not getting much less odd from there. As much as I don't mind catching up with fictional colleagues now and again, being randomly transported into future schools in the Witcherverse to get the starts of lectures on events in the main text wasn't awfully necessary. Even the eponymous Lady of the Lake is yet another framing device character who is more mundane than being the actual Lady of the Lake which is somehow more weird in a book where literal Galahad and actual dimension travelling unicorns are very much present. She has a marginal but important effect on the plot which is tied up about 2/3 of the way through the book with almost no interaction with the characters and plot themselves. Honestly, CDPR going "nope, we're putting the actual Lady of the Lake in, full fey nonsense" was definitely a very sensible change in the games.

The Witcher works its best I think as a relatively twist-folkloric, low-focus setting, and on average gets weaker the bigger things get and the more everything ends up tying back to wide-scale politics, having to lean on scientistic explanations of its magic, etc. The Lady of the Lake is the book that goes biggest, and is consequently kind of the weakest, which is a pity.

Anyhow, time to read some other stuff, still not sure what...

Spritelady:
I finally also finished Lady of the Lake. I agree with pretty much everything you said about it really - once I started noticing how often odd sexual things cropped up, it really started to irk me, especially when it was completely unnecessary.
I've started playing the Witcher 3 again, to give myself some good Witcher vibes.

I am currently almost at the end of The Bone Shard War, the third part in a trilogy that I really really like, not least because of its excellent characters, interesting magic and good suspense building. Strongly recommend.

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