It’s voting day, and as a Texan I am trying not to think about that. I always vote early, because this state likes to make doing your societal duties as difficult as possible, and Tuesdays are currently already the most exhausting day of the week for me. I could go on a WHOLE ASS rant about this, but we’ll spare the outrage for now.
HOLY SHIT TEXAS WE DID IT NOW LETS GO OUST SOME FASCISTS
Not been a stellar week so far. I have been reading, but it’s mostly rereading stuff, and bouncing between titles. I had a bunch of library books that I had meant to read, but my schedule was still a little jacked up last week, and I simply did not have the energy to venture into new territory, as it were.
There is an exception to this rule, of course; the last of K.L. Noone’s Kitten and Witch series, which had been delayed, finally came out, and I cannot tell you how long I have been waiting for it. Port in a Storm was one of the first K.L. Noone books I read. I remember at the time I really enjoyed the anthropomorphization of the setting, even though it didn’t quite stick the landing plot-wise, so I was pleased when the second installment, Fire and Ink, had a little more going in that area. There were two more stories since then, both featuring different characters: The Arch Mage’s Firebird, which is more along the lines Port in A Storm, a sweet but relatively rote rescue narrative; and Primrose Magic, which is also a rescue narrative, but a more internal style of such, and Noone utilizes present tense instead of past tense, something I don’t recall seeing in her work before. It worked well to create the feeling of immediacy the story needed, and I’m not one of those people who automatically hates the present tense style; as with every style, it’s the quality of the writing that counts, and Noone does have a deft hand with emotional narrative.
But I was still glad that The Warlock Affair fell more on the plotty side. Noone’s work shines best when she delves into the story more deeply; Character Bleed is a wonderful example of this.
I also read Carrie, by Stephen King, after listening to an interesting video about all its various adaptations. You can tell he still had editorial oversight back then. XD
Some of the library books I did manage to get to since my last post:
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve – an extremely compelling story, the premise should make it too weird to work, but somehow Reeve’s brisk prose and deft grasp of character just does.
BLAME! Volume 1, by Tsutomu Nihei – I read this in scanlations ages ago and the story still holds up.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Volumes 2-5 – Not entirely sure how I feel about this. As an adventure, it’s pretty mediocre, and I don’t feel the translator and publisher did the best job getting the cultural nuance across, and as a queer romance, it’s pretty fucking bad, especially once they get the smut scenes, which were TRULY atrocious, shades of those Problematic Yaoi manga that were so popular in the 2010s. I’m planning to do a longer critique of the series, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.
Some library DNFs:
Witch Hat Atelier, by Kamome Shirahama – this was partly a DNF because the library doesn’t have permission to allow local downloads onto devices, only on a web interface, which makes it too annoying to read anywhere that doesn’t have reliable internet. Like, you know. My house. The story does intrigue me, and the art is pretty, so I might try again at some point.
Angels Before Man by rafael nicolás – Not really sure how this is so popular, honestly. Doesn’t have a lot of substance aside from the subtext. Maybe it would have picked up, but I wasn’t interested enough to continue.