What are you reading?

[Jubal]

My eighth book of 2024: The Old Goat and the Alien, by Veo Corva (aka Vicorva, of this parish). The basic pitch is "friendly but clueless alien arrives on planet, shenanigans ensue" but in this case the friendly alien is a human and the planet is inhabited by telekinetic very long lived animal-shaped aliens with some kind of anarchist-unionised social structure. The fundamental themes of the book are about change and the importance of finding ways to live with our society and with our networks of people and with ourselves, a process which sometimes involves changing each of those things in certain ways.

I like this book a lot, for the reasons I like much of V's work. It has a lot of heart, and the earnestness and relatability of Avari as a protagonist is very powerful at times. V writes some of the day to day tensions of anxiety and family and living with chronic illness really very well, and Avari's council speech really hit home at the end of the book on an emotional level for me.

The bits that I probably found most interesting were about how Comoran society worked. Whilst this is a 'cosy SF' book in some ways, it doesn't shy away from giving its characters actual real problems, and I love that it portrays a fairly utopian sort of society in ways that actually still show the people there as real people to whom real things and problems actually happen. Societal interactions still happen, there are still unions and social gatherings which can have personal tensions and politics, family relationships are still tricky and nobody necessarily has to be a bad person for grating miscommunications and people not getting past their misunderstandings to be a problem. The question, too, of "well why should they be allowed into our utopia that we built" is one that hangs over things as well, and is I think mostly handled very successfully. It was also really well done how the different cultural emphases of Comoran society could create their own issues: for example, the importance of community and reputation in adjudicating problems in society and Avari's thoughts on how that could disadvantage more isolated people.

There were a few things my brain had to put aside (why are all the XYZ-shapes named for earth animals, when said earth animals for the most part aren't present) but I just headcanoned that this was presumably all a translation anyway and some poor traveller taking Avari's account down a while later had to go through a photo catalogue of relevant Comorans with a biologist. This amused me.

The characters as a whole are very nicely done: I've already mentioned Avari, the protagonist Old Goat of the title, but the wider cast include some very enjoyable figures as well. Cloud was lovely, Journey was very sweet, the general rounds of sibling teasing all landed well in how they were written. I enjoyed the Octopus learning to shake hands too even if they were technically in a very slightly antagonistic role until that point. I'd have liked to spend more time with some of them: one very sweet little character whose name I forget who Avari somewhat rescues from their struggles with keeping their flat clean felt relatable. I sometimes forgot which shape which character was so in my head I think there are more quadrupeds than the book actually contained because everyone just defaulted to some kind of goat-antelope when I couldn't remember.

A side note on identity (this book being very much in the queer SF category too). My favourite of V's books so far was Books and Bone, and I think I worked out why while reading this book. Specifically, Books and Bone is a book where a lot of things about identity and gender and relationships etc are all in a kind of flux state. The Beautiful Decay and The Old Goat and the Alien both feel like they've moved on from that and characters are by and large settled and able to discuss identities in quite clear categorised fashions for the most part, at least for their own identity groups. I think in a way this makes the latter books more important as a whole: it's good to have books where people can see themselves, and it's a really important challenge to be able to say "well what if a society did just treat all of this as normal and wasn't horrible to LGBT folks". That said, as a person who thinks a lot about identities and how they're shaped and is also the Awkward Straight Cis Man In The Room, a book with that set of focus points means a book that is definitionally less written for me. As I'm someone in the category of people for whom most SFF has been written this is very much a good thing! And if you're aro, ace, nonbinary, plural, trans, etc, I think this is an important selling point: this is a book that's willing to actually in-detail dive into the lives and thoughts of people in all those categories and that's super important. That said, I think that sense of not always being able to put a name to who and what you are and having that relationship to one's self represented is important in how a lot of people navigate the world, too, and it's something I now realise I do particularly treasure Books and Bone for writing particularly well.

If any more Comoran fiction appears, I'd have been interested in seeing a bit more about the unions as a structure: they're sort of background building blocks for the society, but most of for example Jenna's interactions with the Gardeners are kept a bit offscreen so we can spend more time with Avari's feelings (which is absolutely the correct choice for this book, I'm just curious: if sent to that world myself I'd very rapidly end up cataloguing their history and culture as best I could).

Anyway, yes, the Old Goat and The Alien is available online and it's a book I'd recommend reading, as evidenced by the fact I've just written a thousand word plus froth/review about it. It's good!

[The Seamstress]

That goes on my wishlist, thanks for the review! Sounds interesting.

[Spritelady]

Yes I'll certainly put that on my ever-expanding reading list. I'm currently reading Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang, which I'm very much enjoying, not least because the narrator is so blatantly unreliable that I'm quite enjoying trying to establish the reality behind the plot put forward.

I'm making good progress on my 2024 goal to read an average of one book a week - I currently sit at having read 44 books this year!

[The Seamstress]

I'm in a similar reading goal situation with 46 books so far! (My goal were 50 for this year.) I guess making one hour every morning into exclusive reading time has helped with that progress a lot.

I'm in the process of finishing "A Case of High Stakes", volume 3 of "The Violet Veil Mysteries" by Sophie Cleverly. I can only recommend these if you like (murder) mysteries with a hint of the paranormal. I also really liked how the friendship between the main characters Violet and Oliver is portrayed and developed.

When I've finished reading this one I'm starting my Spooky Season reading, I have collected a bunch of books over the last months for that purpose. (Yes, September counts as Spooky Season. It is pre-Spooky Season, don't @ me.)

[Spritelady]

Ooh I shall have to add those to my list! I've acquired a bunch of standalone books recently, in stark contrast with my usual reading pile of books in series I'm working through. I've started reading Woman in White, which was written in the 1800s and has a very interesting style as a result.

I very much approve of starting spooky season now, today I unpacked my autumn decorations and put them out! Bring on spooky season 🥧🎃👻

What's on your spooky reading list?

[The Seamstress]

Ooh I liked "The Woman in White", I read it years ago and it sparked my interest in 19th century novels! Maybe it's time for a re-read this winter.

For this Spooky Season I have the following on my list:
- "Where the Dead wait" by Ally Wilkes (I've read her "All the White Spaces" last year and it was quite nerve-wracking & creepy, so I'm curious what this one will be like.)
- "A Haunting in the Arctic" by C. J. Cooke, because I found "The Lighthouse Witches" by the same author quite good, though it was definitely not a cosy read, either.
- "Among the Living" by Tim Lebbon, more Arctic horror...

And to balance it out a bit, I also got a few middle-grades:
- "The Witchstone Ghosts" by Emily Randall
- "The List of Unspeakable Fears" by J. Kasper Kramer, and
- "What lives in the Woods" by Lindsay Currie.

Don't know if I'll manage to read all of them, but will try.

[Jubal]

I read Sorcery Rising by Jude Fisher!

It is... very 2002 somehow? It's very much in that bucket/generation of fantasy of "we grew up reading Tolkien and early le Guin and then decided to write something similar but with a lot more sex and explicit violence involved". It's the first part of a trilogy, and the first book mostly takes place at a single giant fair-type event where we get introduced to a fairly large cast of characters, who are split into three entirely distinct groups: the two main ones are the "Southerners" of the Istrian Empire, who all worship a fire goddess and keep women covered and in the home and think of themselves as very civilised, and the "Northerners" who are slightly less regressive about women and generally considered Barbaric And Free and have longships and stuff. Then there's a third group of nomads who live in harmony with the land etc etc.

So the whole thing feels a bit oddly culturally boundaried, and definitely feels odd in its approach to sex and gender by modern standards. Everything is very straight except for occasional references to men having sex with men, but usually this is treated as a curiosity, and it's all oddly sexualised (the question "why are absolutely zero women attracted by the bewitchingly beautiful magic lady, and absolutely all men" is not one that has arisen).

All that said, it's not a bad story for what it is, at all, the protagonists are quite an interesting group, and heck, it's not like I manage to write plots with this number of characters and juggle them all this effectively. The world is very legible, and the tropes familiar, but that's why they're tropes, and it's sometimes good just to see them executed fairly well with a fairly interesting plot between a lot of different noble families etc.

I'm now reading book 2 of the trilogy, Wild Magic, so will report back on that at some point.

[Spritelady]

I have officially achieved my goal of reading 52 books this year (actually gone a ways past that now!), so I'm pretty pleased.

My book club has covered some interesting books lately that have sparked a lot of discussion (although we haven't always liked the books...). I'd definitely recommend The Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, which is very wholesome if also heart wrenchingly sad at times...

[Jubal]

I am still on... 11? Eep.

I did read the other two books in Jude Fisher's Fools' Gold trilogy, Wild Magic and Rose of the World. Things kinda continued as per the first book, with oddly bounded peoples ultimately ending up working towards the restoration of a divine three or four part being involving the Man, the Woman, the Beast, and Death, or something. Death being excessively horny for the Divine Feminine was kind of an odd take, but was very much in there. We also got some very 2002 feminism takes where the Civilised Southerners Who Veil Their Women had their cultural values challenged by Free Northern Women Who Don't Wear definitelynotburkas in a way that feels a bit clumsy in 2024. And the real good guys are the wandering vegans.

All this probably makes it sound like I enjoyed it a lot less than I did: it was a pretty good book for me to read at the time I read it, there's a lot of classic swords and magic stuff in there, and there are some bits of place and connection to place that I think the author captures really well, and some quite effective complex-character takes that are a bit better than some of the overarching themes they're attached to in my view. I'd have rather had those characters in a more grounded setting I suppose.

[The Seamstress]

Uhm... 65/50. But tbf, a lot of them were kids'/middle-grade books which I tend to read fairly fast compared to books for adults. From the list I posted earlier btw, I've read

Where the Dead wait by Ally Wilkes: A bit... tedious? I don't know. It just dragged on and on, and I felt kinda lost now and then. There's cannibalism, surviving in the Arctic & supernatural occurrences, which was, to no one's surprise, quite gruesome.
A Haunting in the Arctic by C. J. Cooke: Eww. Huge CW for sexual abuse/violence. The writing was good, but otherwise, 0/10 do not recommend.
Among the Living by Tim Lebbon: This one went to the DNF pile really quickly, I found it rather generic and therefore predictable, so I didn't bother, tbh.
The Witchstone Ghosts by Emily Randall: I liked this one. Creepy island & folklore, ghost friends, and dogs.
The List of Unspeakable Fears by J. Kasper Kramer: This was good, too. It's about a girl with a lot of trauma & anxiety and her journey to get better, it does deal with very dark topics though so be warned.

What I also read devoured were the "Scarlet & Ivy" books by Sophie Cleverly (six in total). 10/10!

Oh and "The Carrefour Curse" by Dianne K. Salerni - magic, a creepy house, a family curse, & ghosts. Everything a spooky season read needs! Also 10/10.

[Spritelady]

Sorry that the first few of your spooky season books didn't deliver on quality, but I'm glad you enjoyed the others!

Last night, I started (and finished in one sitting!) a book that I bought at Comic Con from an author who had a stall there. It was all about witches in 1940 and a pumpkin-headed scarecrow so that felt very appropriately themed for the season, and I quite enjoyed it.
It was a quick read, but very interesting and reminded me somewhat of a more serious version of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I solidly recommend it: The Crow Folk by Mark Stay (who was very nice and autographed the full set for me). It also has very pretty cover art.

[indiekid]

I'm about halfway through The Big Con by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington. The title is a pun - the cover suggests it should be "The Big Consultancy". It's a pretty damming critique of the consulting industry and and interesting for someone who does not usually read non-fiction. One interesting case study is the US government's contracting McKinsey to basically run Puerto Rico's recover from hurricane damage in 2017 despite a blatant conflict of interest - the company had investments there which it then favoured. It turns out consultants will sometimes deliberately under-sell their services to a government or company, then bleed the expertise out of the client and finally up the charges when they are powerless to resist. I think this parasitic strategy would be an excellent start point for a board game.

[Rob_Haines]

I read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Saturation Point over the past couple of days, a fairly grim novella about scientists attempting to reclaim Earth's equator after global warming pushes the local environment persistently over the wet-bulb temperature.

Like most of Tchaikovsky's darker work it feels like it's making a point pretty well, and while the narrative didn't entirely land for me, the setting definitely did.