Books

[schneefink]

Some books I read in the past three months that I was too lazy to write about in more detail:

The Fire's Stone by Tanya Huff
eglantiere recommended this one and promised it has " canon ot3! soulbonding! h/c out of the wazoo! shenanigans!" All of which is true. The adventure plot was fun, the minor characters were good too, and I really love the relationship between Aaron, Darvish, and Chandra, how it develops, and how it promises to develop in the future. I already read it twice (and may or may not be plotting time travel fic, help.)

Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones
Such a wonderful atmosphere, great narration. I really like all the kids, and the friendships, and the different cultures and the relationships between them.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
I really liked the first book, especially the human-alien communication and diplomacy. I was a bit disappointed with the next two because while they had very interesting elements that I liked a lot, I didn't find the resolutions to the story arcs completely satisfying.

Jade City by Fonda Lee
I knew this was a mafia story, but I did not expect quite this level of violence and misery, that's not really what I was in the mood for. I liked most of the characters and especially how we saw them differently in different characters' PoVs. The ending quite obviously demands a sequel, I wasn't quite satisfied with it.

The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher
I enjoyed this a lot. I liked the worldbuilding, I liked all the characters (especially the cats), the plot was interesting, and the airship battles were very exciting. (Another first book in a series but this one had a much better ending than the one above imo.)

The Hangman of Wolves by J.S.Briggs (auburn)
The atmosphere was a bit too, hm, grey for my taste/mood, but if you like both Teen Wolf fic and detective stories you will probably enjoy this.

Clocktaur War by T.Kingfisher
Some cool worldbuilding ideas, good plot especially in the second book, and I liked the characters. (I would have preferred a bit less romance, especially in the first book. The author tried to balance out "we're all in constant mortal danger" with "oh no s/he's hot" but imo there could have been a lot less of the latter. Priorities.)

Comments

[eglantiere]

this is such a fun book, is it not? i've reread it like four times, i think, and it always puts me into an excellent mood. plot that fic! i want to write that fic!

[schneefink]

This is you volunteering to help with the plotting, right? ;) Because I really want the story where Darvish gets sent back in time to, say, two or three years before canon, but it keeps being unexpectedly sad.

[eglantiere]

i'm always down for some plotting! i tend to get people to put h/c in, though, not out :P what is he doing in the past?

[schneefink]

My idea was that he ended up in the past because of a magical accident (probably something Chandra tried went wrong.) And at first he wants to go back and looks for wizards to help him, only then he finds out he can't, and he doesn't know what happened to his original timeline, so either the Aaron and Chandra he loves don't exist anymore or they lost him and neither option is good, and in either case he lost them.
At this point the only one who could comfort him would probably be Shahin, once Darvish confides in him. Which I think he probably would, because in his future he got to know Shahin pretty well and trusts him, but not immediately: he'll try to show his brother that he's trustworthy first, and that means acting differently than past!Darvish did, which he planned to do anyway. He hasn't drunk any wine in years, only it turns out it's a lot harder when everyone keeps offering it to you and expects you to be a partying alcoholic and nothing else.
Once he gets over that, he tells Shahin to keep an eye on the lord chancellor and concentrates on making sure he finds the people he loves again, at least their younger versions. Chandra is easy, he knows where she is, and he just needs to find an excuse to contact her early but otherwise he could just wait until she's older and then propose. Aaron is a lot harder, because Darvish doesn't know where he is, much less how to get him to trust him. He knows Aaron will visit Faharra eventually, but that's years off (also Darvish kind of wants to get to know Faharra, and he thinks his Aaron would like that, but what if that changes things so Faharra and Aaron don't meet and what if he never finds Aaron.)
So then ideally there's an adventure of some sort that brings them together again, but I haven't figured that part out yet. Maybe a timeskip would make it a bit easier, then at least Chandra is older and as powerful as in canon.

[eglantiere]

he replaces the original darvish, right? goes into his body, but with his older!mind? maybe you could do it juuust because the beginning of canon, so everybody is more or less in place, but nothing had happened yet, and he'll try to fix the things that went wrong the first time (aaron getting tortured, the plot with the stone, the works, et cetera), but initially keeps making things worse because of the butterfly effect? and then better again.

(if he goes back to his original body, it's interesting because mentally he's sober but his body is addicted, right? there's some interesting mileage to be gotten out of that too.)

[schneefink]

I had him arrive pre-canon partially because then Chandra isn't powerful enough to help him yet, but on second thought canon Chandra is powerful but not time travel level powerful so it could still work. I'll have to figure out how exactly it happened and why it can't be replicated, and how he finds that out soon, because I don't want him to wonder the whole time if he'll be able to return or not.

Having him arrive just before canon would be interesting too, and I think the most difficult thing might be getting Aaron to trust him again. Aaron is not in a good place, and not comfortable with the fact that this stranger knows him so well. Darvish would probably tell both Chandra and him about the time travel pretty soon because anything else can't end well, and both of them don't quite know how to deal with that, while Darvish is still struggling with the grief of losing their future versions.

Dealing with the addiction will definitely be interesting, but also difficult, so I'm not thinking about it in detail yet.

[lilysea]

Jade City by Fonda Lee
I knew this was a mafia story, but I did not expect quite this level of violence and misery, that's not really what I was in the mood for. I liked most of the characters and especially how we saw them differently in different characters' PoVs. The ending quite obviously demands a sequel, I wasn't quite satisfied with it.

The author has confirmed on her twitter account that there's a sequel in the works.

I really liked this book. ^_^

[schneefink]

I assumed there would be a sequel, but I still wanted a better ending for this book on its own. It sort of had a good stopping point plot-wise, but not really character-arc-wise, if that makes sense.

I mostly enjoyed the book, but I think I would have liked it better if I'd been clearer about what it is and waited until I was in the mood for it.