Yes please more please. A brilliant, hilarious old-fashioned piratical yarn, with magic and ships and sea serpents and old friends and enemies and sorYes please more please. A brilliant, hilarious old-fashioned piratical yarn, with magic and ships and sea serpents and old friends and enemies and sorcerers. By far the funniest thing is that Amina, the pirate captain, loves God. She wants to serve God. It's just, being a good Muslim and a pirate queen are difficult to resolve sometimes but she's trying! I love her. I love this....more
Look, I feel like you are either in the cult of the Saint of Steel by now, or not, but if you're not, this is book 4, go and start with book 1 (PaladiLook, I feel like you are either in the cult of the Saint of Steel by now, or not, but if you're not, this is book 4, go and start with book 1 (Paladin's Grace) and thank me later. These books are sweet, delicious romances, each one featuring a paladin of the Saint of Steel (a god-touched warrior who has recently been rent asunder by the death of their god) and a new love interest. They are very good romances, they're fluffy and good-humoured and consistently brilliant and hilarious. I love them, would read a million of them, etc.
However. These books (plus the Clockwork Boys books from earlier in the author's career, and Swordheart, also a delightful romance) are set in the same universe and their common factor is the Temple of the White Rat. It's a holy order of lawyers. And some community organisers too. Lawyers. Religious service that consists of filing affidavits and going to court. And honestly, these silly light fantasy books embody so clearly how legal public service works that it blows me way. The Temple's bishop, the remarkable Bishop Beartongue, is my favourite character in the series and in this book is quietly orchestrating the overturning of a continent's economy. For good reasons. But real reasons. And the fluffy romance against this background, of public service and community and real-world consequences to things, is to me unique and remarkable. Really would read a million of them. ...more
I love this! It's a stylish, twisty jaunt through a kind-of-dystopian Golden Age, with disaster lesbians. The only sensible person in the entire book I love this! It's a stylish, twisty jaunt through a kind-of-dystopian Golden Age, with disaster lesbians. The only sensible person in the entire book doesn't appear until the last chapter! Just a delight....more
Lots of Jenny Colgan's Scottish-set books have Gaelic in them and in a remarkable instance of consistency it is always, always wrong. There are about Lots of Jenny Colgan's Scottish-set books have Gaelic in them and in a remarkable instance of consistency it is always, always wrong. There are about five lines of Gaelic in this one and four mistakes that even barely-coherent me could spot at one glance. HOWEVER I love that all these books have Gaelic in, I love their rich, deep love for Scottish life and landscape, and I love the romance. One of her best....more
What did I do when I couldn't read prose because I was mad? I read poetry about being mad. I didn't necessarily like all the poems in this collection,What did I do when I couldn't read prose because I was mad? I read poetry about being mad. I didn't necessarily like all the poems in this collection, but I did find them all interesting. ...more
What it says on the tin: 30+ poems that are addressed to lithium carbonate, the anti-manic mood stabiliser drug. I was fascinated by the idea of this,What it says on the tin: 30+ poems that are addressed to lithium carbonate, the anti-manic mood stabiliser drug. I was fascinated by the idea of this, and it's wonderfully jarring to read a poem and have to keep reminding yourself that "you" doesn't mean me or the poet or some unnamed lover or the world at large, it means lithium, our beloved med. It probably speaks well about this book that I recognised lithium in many of its guises in the odes. Ultimately though I wasn't that keen on the poetry *as* poetry - the language isn't particularly beautiful or pleasingly precise, and I wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much as I did if it had been about any other topic. But I did enjoy it.
True story: I obviously read this as Mentally Ill Teenager (my Prozac Nation Et Al years) and reread it now, after fifteen years, because I'm writing True story: I obviously read this as Mentally Ill Teenager (my Prozac Nation Et Al years) and reread it now, after fifteen years, because I'm writing something set in early 1950s New York and thought it would help. I'm not sure what I think of it now. It's beautifully written of course, and I understand why it's quite so influential. But it doesn't touch me in either of the ways I would have expected: neither as literary text or as twenty-first century manic-depressive. ymmv, I think....more
A sweet, kind of flatly-written book about a trans girl in a US middle school who's having trouble convincing the adults in her life that she *is* a gA sweet, kind of flatly-written book about a trans girl in a US middle school who's having trouble convincing the adults in her life that she *is* a girl. I like that it's her best friend and her big brother who support her first. It really is quite flat, though. I would be interested in the sequel....more
I didn't realise it was aimed at children/teenagers/young adults, hence all the stories being very... inspiring, I guess? All happy endings all aroundI didn't realise it was aimed at children/teenagers/young adults, hence all the stories being very... inspiring, I guess? All happy endings all around, anyway. It's interesting enough, though I'm definitely the wrong audience for it. I did really enjoy the stories of older activists and elders, though, especially one from a gay man who was at the Stonewall Inn the night of the riot. He talks about the riot, but also about growing up in seventies New York in a very traditional Sicilian family who didn't know what to make of him but weren't necessarily unaccepting. In her last years, his Sicilian grandmother had drag queens come to the house and sing her to sleep. That image alone is worth the price of admission....more
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