Bloodline (Among Other Things)
Jun. 12th, 2018 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maplemoodBack in January, I set my 2018 reading goal at 50 books and assumed I would have blown well past that by now...I think I'm around the thirty-four, thirty-five mark? Which isn't bad at all, but a little depressing when I remember that only a couple years ago I was reading something like a 150 books a year. I'm just telling myself it's because I have more to do (work and school) and also because I've been writing a lot more than I was back then, and not because I've been wasting so much time on the Internet. Obviously.
Bloodline by Claudia Gray: Oh gosh, but did I LOVE this. Maybe even more than Princess of Alderaan, which I didn't think was possible, but Bloodline is a more complicated, twisty story, full of politics and intrigue and characters who I either loved or loved to hate--I expected Carise Sindian to get more page time than she actually did, and in some ways I'd have loved to see more of her and in others...nope, what we got was plenty enough. Talk about doing a lot with a little.Her last scene with Leia hit all the right buttons for me; it was completely furious and poisonous in the most controlled, low-key way, both exactly what she deserved and also nowhere near enough, and I just...I could read ten more books charting her and Leia's way to an eventual reconciliation--or not. I don't imagine that Leia would be all that forgiving to her, or that Carise would even want her forgiveness. Still, it's such an interesting AUish idea to think about.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman: Reread this one because I love it and also because I nominated it for Fic Corner. Silas and Mrs. Lupescu are, as always, my favorite characters, with Bod and Liza Hempstock running a close second. I've also always loved all the side characters who get only a handful of lines in a chapter or two but have stuck in my head ever since: Louisa Bartelby, the twenty-year-old grandmother who died in childbirth, Mother Slaughter, the Lady on the Grey. There's such a sense of community in the graveyard, which I'm always a sucker for, and when it happens to be between ghosts, a vampire, and one human kid? Even better. Bod also grows up to be genuinely pretty scary and troubling in some ways, which makes sense for a kid who was, again, raised in a graveyard, but it's not an element of the story I really cottoned on to any of the times I've read it before. (Probably because I was too busy wishing I'd been lucky enough to be adopted by ghosts.)
Wild Boy by Nancy Springer: Two or three weekends ago my sister and I traded in a pile of our old, never-picked-up-in-years books to 2nd & Charles, and used the in-store credit we got from that to...buy more books. As you do. Anyway, one of the ones I picked up was Wild Boy--I think it's the third book in the Tales of Rowan Hood series? It's also pretty much a straight-up rewrite of "Know Your True Enemy", another Robin Hood retelling Nancy Springer wrote for the short story collection Sherwood, which I've loved for years.Wild Boy didn't quite grab me in the same way, because even though the plot is almost identical it switched up some events and characters in ways that didn't hit me emotionally like the short story did. It also isn't all that long (less than a hundred pages, I think) but still feels a lot more drawn-out and almost diluted. Which doesn't mean it's bad, and I think I would have liked it a lot more if I hadn't read the short story years ago and built up such good memories of it, but an emotional sucker punch it ain't.
Books-in-Progress: The Stand (still), A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson (love the setting, love the heroine, would love the hero if he'd stop jumping to conclusions and giving the heroine the cold shoulder based on said crappy conclusions), The Hidden Horses of Briar Hill by Megan Shepherd (winged horses! WWII hospitals! My inner eight-year-old loves this book, and it's also that quiet, compassionate brand of fantasy that I've always had such a huge soft spot for).
***
Bloodline by Claudia Gray: Oh gosh, but did I LOVE this. Maybe even more than Princess of Alderaan, which I didn't think was possible, but Bloodline is a more complicated, twisty story, full of politics and intrigue and characters who I either loved or loved to hate--I expected Carise Sindian to get more page time than she actually did, and in some ways I'd have loved to see more of her and in others...nope, what we got was plenty enough. Talk about doing a lot with a little.Her last scene with Leia hit all the right buttons for me; it was completely furious and poisonous in the most controlled, low-key way, both exactly what she deserved and also nowhere near enough, and I just...I could read ten more books charting her and Leia's way to an eventual reconciliation--or not. I don't imagine that Leia would be all that forgiving to her, or that Carise would even want her forgiveness. Still, it's such an interesting AUish idea to think about.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman: Reread this one because I love it and also because I nominated it for Fic Corner. Silas and Mrs. Lupescu are, as always, my favorite characters, with Bod and Liza Hempstock running a close second. I've also always loved all the side characters who get only a handful of lines in a chapter or two but have stuck in my head ever since: Louisa Bartelby, the twenty-year-old grandmother who died in childbirth, Mother Slaughter, the Lady on the Grey. There's such a sense of community in the graveyard, which I'm always a sucker for, and when it happens to be between ghosts, a vampire, and one human kid? Even better. Bod also grows up to be genuinely pretty scary and troubling in some ways, which makes sense for a kid who was, again, raised in a graveyard, but it's not an element of the story I really cottoned on to any of the times I've read it before. (Probably because I was too busy wishing I'd been lucky enough to be adopted by ghosts.)
Wild Boy by Nancy Springer: Two or three weekends ago my sister and I traded in a pile of our old, never-picked-up-in-years books to 2nd & Charles, and used the in-store credit we got from that to...buy more books. As you do. Anyway, one of the ones I picked up was Wild Boy--I think it's the third book in the Tales of Rowan Hood series? It's also pretty much a straight-up rewrite of "Know Your True Enemy", another Robin Hood retelling Nancy Springer wrote for the short story collection Sherwood, which I've loved for years.Wild Boy didn't quite grab me in the same way, because even though the plot is almost identical it switched up some events and characters in ways that didn't hit me emotionally like the short story did. It also isn't all that long (less than a hundred pages, I think) but still feels a lot more drawn-out and almost diluted. Which doesn't mean it's bad, and I think I would have liked it a lot more if I hadn't read the short story years ago and built up such good memories of it, but an emotional sucker punch it ain't.
***
Books-in-Progress: The Stand (still), A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson (love the setting, love the heroine, would love the hero if he'd stop jumping to conclusions and giving the heroine the cold shoulder based on said crappy conclusions), The Hidden Horses of Briar Hill by Megan Shepherd (winged horses! WWII hospitals! My inner eight-year-old loves this book, and it's also that quiet, compassionate brand of fantasy that I've always had such a huge soft spot for).
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Date: 2018-06-12 08:44 pm (UTC)Also Sibensko, holy shit. I want like a short story collection of all the various minor criminals of the GFFA passing through and intentionally or unintentionally helping the First Order see what a government looks like.
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Date: 2018-06-13 02:03 am (UTC)Oh, wow, that sounds amazing??? Underwater cities are kind of my thing and I think it's maybe the coolest setting I've read about in a Star Wars book. Which is saying a lot.
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Date: 2018-06-13 04:08 pm (UTC)Have you read Gray's Lost Stars. OMG. I can't recommend that book enough. I think it's getting a graphic novel too. Claudia gave some teaser shots of it on her instagram. *nods*
Enjoy all your reading!
Graveyard book is on my to-read list
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Date: 2018-06-14 05:13 am (UTC)The Graveyard Book is SO GOOD. I hope you enjoy it!