Am Reading

#AmReading, Ally is Reading

This time I have some queer sci-fi and a non-fiction book about the First World War.

A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine, Sub Zero by Angel Martinez and Elsie and Mairi Go to War by Diane Atkinson.

 A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Cover, A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Cover, A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine

So, I’m late to the party with this duology. I have read both in the last week and been blown away by them. The world-building is amazing, the character development is fascinating and the way everything pulls against each other…the different cultures, the different expectations…is perfect.

In the first book there is the tension between the Stationer culture and the ever-expanding Teixcalaan empire, which have radically different values and ways of being. They are both human, but the Teixcalaan’s don’t really see non-Teixcallaanim as being real people. In book two, the human cultures are thrown against aliens who are so completely <i>other</i> that the Sationers and the Teixcallaani need to put aside their differences to learn to communicate with them and survive as a species.

Interwoven with the big, space-opera story of both books is a delicate, touching, personal story of the tentative relationship growing between the Stationer ambassador to Teixcalaan and her Teixcallaan translator. They struggle with their feelings and cultural differences against a background of violence, attempted rebellion and political maneuvering.

I found the whole thing completely absorbing and I’ll be going back to them in a few months, as I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve missed. It’s rich, textured and absorbing. Read them. They’re good.

Elsie and Mairi Go to War by Diane Atkinson
Cover, Elsie and Mairi Go to War

I read this as part of research into women doctors and nurses in the First World War for a story I’m writing. It started off a bit of a mad dash though the pages, extracting information to use as background colour. However, I soon got sucked into the story for its own sake…they were amazing women who saw a job that needed doing and did it. They spent a great deal of time running a first aid post very close to the Belgian lines in the cellar of a bombed out building and went out every night looking for wounded who had been overlooked on the battlefield. Their story is told through letters and photos and recollections and is a very easy read.

Elsie was quite a bit older than Mairi and I took an instant dislike to her…she was clearly an adventuress who thrived on adrenaline. She lied about being a divorcee and having a child to the Belgian nobleman she went on to marry during the war. Afterwards when he found out and they parted, she flitted from one thing to another…for example setting up a first aid post in the East End of London during the General Strike and actually causing more problems than she solved.

Mairi on the other hand settled back to post-war life with comparative ease. She, a close friend and a couple of other women opened a chicken-breeding farm in Scotland, temporarily moved the whole shebang to Guernsey and from thence back to Scotland again.

I found it a really interesting, colourful book that brought the protaganists to life. I also came away with a distinct feeling that Mairi had a crush on Elsie. She never married although she and her close friend lived together for decades after the war. Although that isn’t surprising for women of that generation, I guess, because of the swathes of men lost in the trenches.

Sub Zero (The ESTO Universe) by Angel Martinez
Cover, Sub Zero by Angel Martinez

I loved this queer SFF story. It has a really well defined sense of place–a planet colonized by humans not once, but twice. The first colonizers abandoned their genetically engineered slaves who then became indigenous and more and more undervalued in the eyes of the second wave of humans when they arrive.

The main protagonists are a human and a not-quite-human, one sent to solve a murder, one accused of it. They fall in love, they solve the mystery, they bring a better sense of balance to the world. It sounds so simple.

But the universe is deeply textured, the details are painted with a bright, engaging brush and the relationship between the MCs grows at a steady, tender pace. It’s lovely and you should read it.

That’s it for this time!

#AmReading

Ally is reading

This week’s reading. I’ve got a bit behind, but today I have Conspiracy Theory by Elle Keaton, Echoes of the Storm by Char Newcomb and Work for It by Talia Hibbert!

Conspiracy Theory by Elle Keaton
Cover. Conspiracy Theory by Elle Keaton.

This is the first in a complete trilogy following the same couple in all the books and I like this first one best, because I am a sucker for UST and there is soooo much of it. I am also a sucker for police stories, so it hit all my hot buttons.

It’s a contemporary, set on the islands off the west coast of the USA, which seems a bit wild-westy to my English self, and which I loved. Matt and Niall are both sympathetic characters and I found the mystery really engaging. So a big yay from me all round.

Echoes of the Storm by Charlene Newcomb
Cover: Echoes of the Storm by Charlene Newcomb

This has complicated relationships and spaceships. I put it forward for your consideration on that basis!

Jack’s lover has betrayed the resistance and he’s now on the run across space and has become an unlikely rallying point for survivors to begin the fight to win their planet back. The slow-burn romance with the space-pirate captain is perfect and there are battles and spies and ace rep. It’s perfect and you should read it!

Work For It by Talia Hibbert
Cover: Work For It, Talia Hibbert

I really, really liked this. There’s so much angst. Soooo much. And it’s all from a really deep painful place inside each man that hits where it hurts. Olu suffers from depression and that is painted very realistically, with no magic-lovespell curing it. Griff is stuck in his small village and doesn’t think he’s worth anyone’s time. It’s slow-burn, well paced and heart-wrenching and the happy ever after is perfect. Also it’s set on a farm, which is my catnip.

And that’s it for this time!

#AmReading

This week’s reading! You can also follow me on Goodreads for these as I’m trying to be better as saying something about what I’ve been reading on there.

Stray Fears by Gregory Ashe
Cover of Stray Fears by Gregory Ashe

I am not normally a seasonal fiction person, but I made an exception for this, because a) Gregory Ashe and b) the seasonal touch is very light. I love the spookiness of it, which echoes the weird magic of his Hollow Folk series whilst being a completely different universe. As usual the characters are real people, flawed in some ways and wonderful in others. The paranormal aspects are completely my bag and very well imagined. Five stars.

Restored by Joanna Chambers
Cover of Restored, Joanna Chambers

Restored takes Kit Redford, gentleman’s club owner, glimpses of whom have been woven in and out of the Enlightenment series since the beginning, and gives him to us whole. He’s always struck me as a brittle character with an interesting back-story and this is an extremely satisfying culmination of years of wondering what formed him. The MCs are mature, which these days is a big draw for me as I’m knocking on a bit too. It’s easily read as a stand-alone, but if you’ve read the earlier books in the Enlightenment universe this will be particularly engaging. Again, five stars.

His Name was Wren by Rob Winters
Cover, His Name was Wren by Rob Winters

I don’t know why I picked this up, but I’m so pleased I did. It’s labelled as YA, but I think it stands anywhere you want to put it, despite the MCs being children. It’s got a perfect balance of history and sff that landed in my sweet spot with a big thump. The characters are very well drawn and the flip between 1944 and the present was done beautifully. I loved the visiting aliens, their personalities and their tech, but it’s the children who really make the story beautiful. It’s a story about humanity and I really think you should read it!

That’s it for this week! I’m going to try and make this a weekly thing, because we’re all desperate for reading recs, right?

#AmReading

This week I’m doing a lot of reading of things to avoid thinking about real life. Because you know, real life sucks quite dramatically at the moment. To fair that’s my normal M.O. too, but it feels very much like I’m hiding at the moment!

The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion by Marie Sexton and Cari Z, which is a queer space opera romp of the finest kind, with a romantic sub-plot that’s very satisfying. There’s a sarcastic AI, space wreckage, a destroyed earth, searching for a home; all the good tropes. I wanted it to be longer, but I always want books with a ‘finding a new home’ trope to be longer, because finding the home is the beginning of a new story as well as the end of the current one. Anyway…five stars, will read again!

Innocence by Suki Fleet. This was a surprise like for me. I don’t read a lot of contemporary and when I do it has to have a lot of angst for me to stay engaged. This has loads of angst and I loved it. Two broken people with secrets from each others past find each other. It’s an age gap romance and I was slightly freaked by the fact that the younger MC is only eighteen and the older one is twenty-nine. They both feel like babies to my fifty-year-old self though and the younger one is very mature, so I got past that quite quickly. The story is lovely, evocative of the English countryside I love. I’m really pleased I read it and I will read it again.

I’ve also been deep in An Archive of Our Own (AO3) again. If you haven’t found it yet, it’s a huge collection of fan fiction collected and collated by series, by pairing and by a huge number of cross-referenced tags. At the moment I’m read-reading all the Vorkosigan-universe stuff and it’s immensely satisfying to hide in someone else’s mind for a while.

That’s it! I’m trying to log things on Goodreads a bit more–you can see my current reads here.

Taking Stock in the NYT

I am so happy this morning that I have been doing more good-crying. Taking Stock has a wonderful write-up by Olivia Waite in the New York Times Book Review today. In case you don’t have a subscription or are over your free reads this month, she says…

Book cover of Taking Stock
Taking Stock

…small-town found-family solace is also the bedrock of our fourth and final romance, TAKING STOCK (JMS Books, 280 pp., e-book, $3.99), a queer 1970s romance by A. L. Lester set in rural England. Fans of Cat Sebastian and K. J. Charles will find this book quieter but no less pleasing. Phil is a stockbroker in disgrace after his ex-boyfriend frames him for insider trading; when he retreats to a country cottage he is soon smitten by Laurie, a former runaway turned farmer just beginning to put his life together after a stroke. It’s rare to see chronic disability handled with such precision in romance — the author’s own experience certainly informs the text — and this book is open about how Laurie’s frustration makes him vulnerable as he relearns the limits of his body’s capabilities. But it is no savior narrative: Phil’s own past has enough pain in it that it feels like any rescuing is entirely mutual. It’s a delicate story, clearly told. It’s restrained but earnest; the focus on farm life (spring-fed ponds and sheep shearing!), and on rebuilding and rebirth, offers an earthy kind of hope, for whenever you feel like the world is falling to pieces around you.

I can’t really articulate how chuffed I am by this. The other three books Olivia reviews are by authors I admire immensely and it’s wonderful, and rather shocking, to be written about on the same page as both them and Cat Sebastian and K. J. Charles. Thank you so much to everyone who has bought Taking Stock. I really hope you enjoy it.