Mid-April media: novella edition

[bironic]

Today I started reading the e-book of Every Heart a Doorway that Tor.com is offering for free until midnight Eastern. I hadn't read anything by Seanan McGuire before, despite many of your rave reviews, and the blurbs I'd seen for this book hadn't grabbed me. Well, it turns out that all anyone needed to have said was LAND OF THE DEAD and I'd've been on this much faster!

Pomegranates and Persephone references! The Lord of the Dead's stroking fingers turning a dance partner's black hair white! A young woman's yearning to go back to the Underworld after being sent away! *cough* Up my alley, even though it's only a small part of the story.

I'm enjoying the ace/not aro layer to the protag, the matter-of-fact presentation of Kade's trans identity, the Gothic horror AU and the general misfits stuff too, and I empathize with the tension a physically still, introverted character feels in a motion-filled, privacy-free school environment. The prose could be tighter, but I guess it's YA? Whatever: it's working, because I'm already two-thirds of the way through.

For me it's the happy medium between the grotesquerie of Catherynne Valente's Deathless and the -- what's the word for when you need more tension? -- uneventful, I guess, utopia of Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; but that's a subject for a more intensive post that I do not have the brain cells to write these days.


ETA: thoughts on the ending.

Comments

[monanotlisa]

Oh, thanks for that heads-up! Downloading now. :)

[bironic]

Hooray!

[isis]

Huh, I seriously hated it (felt as though the premise was awesome but the murder mystery plot contrived and pointless), but - we are all different! And actually I'm planning to read Deathless soon, via another Tor.com giveaway.

[bironic]

I would bet $ that if it weren't for my preexisting kink for underworld themes, I would be enjoying the book much less. Boarding schools are not my genre, I'm neutral on portal fantasy, the categorization of the realms feels restrictive, and I'm less interested in the mystery than in how Nancy and her friends differentially react to it. As it is, though, I'm having fun. Sorry you did not!

Curious to see your thoughts on Deathless. Our book club was divided on it. Holding my tongue for now on what I liked more & less in it. :)

[yhlee]

The underworld bits were beautifully evoked, I agree. I didn't enjoy the book for similar reasons as isis, but I know a lot of people loved it. =)

The realms categorization doesn't turn out to be terribly relevant to anything, but I wasn't expecting coherence on that front from this book anyway. (I don't think that's a particular spoiler.)

I'm curious about Deathless, which I also downloaded, but I have to finish Leviathan Wakes first!

[bironic]

The realms categorization doesn't turn out to be terribly relevant to anything

True. I did like the aside toward the end about Vitas and Mortis being potential dimensions.

I didn't enjoy the book for similar reasons as isis

Turns out the ending sapped much of my enthusiasm - just tried to articulate my thoughts in a new post.

Also funny that you're reading Leviathan Wakes, since isis and I had differing opinions on it, and on the book vs. the TV adaptation! Maybe to do with which one you encounter first.

[yhlee]

Now that I've finished Leviathan Wakes I want to try the TV show! :) I'm very curious. I had people spoil me to the extent of reassuring me that the TV show did NOT choose to enact the vomit, which I can deal with in print but would maybe gross me out too much in a visual medium. XD

[selki]

less interested in the mystery than in how Nancy and her friends differentially react to it

Yes. Poor mystery, interesting angles on people and their favored spaces/ways.

[bironic]

Yes! If the novella had been longer, I would have liked more development of each of the main characters and how the worlds they went to both suited their incongruities and helped them discover and grow into their truest selves.

[isis]

The entire reason I plan to read it is that it was recommended by a friend after I gave a good review to The Bear and the Nightingale, which also draws on Russian and Eastern European mythology. I have also read mixed reviews of it!

[bironic]

Neat. There is some very cool stuff about the way the book is structured after fairy tales, especially repetition/variation in threes. We in book club wished we were more familiar with the specific folklore being played around with (and history, for that matter) to better appreciate what Valente was doing, but even some brief Googling helped enrich the experience.

[umadoshi]

Seanan McGuire is my favorite author, so reading this post made me really happy. ^_^ (If you read anything else of hers, I hope you like that too!)

[bironic]

Cool! I'm not generally a mystery reader, which may be why it took so long to give one of her books a try.

[umadoshi]

FWIW, most of her books don't really fall into the mystery camp; I'm not a mystery reader either, so I can't say for sure how far into that category her October Daye books fall. (Toby, the main character, is a PI, and there's a mystery element to at least some of the novels, but I feel like that's less true as the series progresses...which is just as well, since I don't think mysteries are Seanan's strength.)

Basically if her characters/the feel of her writing works for you, it might be worth poking around to see if any of her other series sound appealing. Each of her worlds focuses on different sorts of things, and among my friends who're also fans there's a HUGE range of opinion on which series is her best/their favorite. (Plus her Mira Grant books, which include my personal favorite series, are much different from the Seanan McGuire books.)

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