What I've Read
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone – Finished for the book club - This rocks. I first read it in like 2017 and I had forgotten a lot of the plot, but it holds up and I really liked the mystery of thing.

Rescued by the Married Monster Hunters by Ennis Rook Bashe - I really was expecting this to have a bit more angst? It's actually quite sweet for a story where cannibal monsters lay their larva in people?  I'll definitely read more by this author, since it's good writing, but I think it could have used another editorial pass to smooth some parts out a bit. 

Fox in the Henhouse by Umei_no_Mai - https://archiveofourown.org/works/35239420 - Clone Wars au - Fox meets a Jedi best described as a horrible goose, and finds out about the mind control that a Sith has been using on him. Other high points: the food descriptions and Seire's alcohol preferences, the delicious poisons they compare Fox to, the idea of a senatorial walrus flattening assassins, the unrelenting horniness of clones towards people who can kick their asses, the Grievous smushed tin can solution, the brotherly oneupmanship, I just loved this fic. There are a bunch of other works with this Jedi OC, and I'm bookmarking a bunch of them. (This isn't quite novel length, but I enjoyed it enough to rec it!)

Kettle of Shig by PaxDuane https://archiveofourown.org/works/41957355 - Pre-Clone Wars story focused on two OC's who are, eventually, Jango Fett's parents. This is the first big thing I've read by PaxDuane and I'm going to go thru a lot of their backlog now. This is about the Fett family and Mandalore in the generation before Jango Fett is born and then orphaned - Jango's mom is an Vizsla OC who is the sister of Tor Vizsla, aka, the guy who kills Jango Fett's parents in the comics canon. Yeah. It's got the vibe of good Game of Thrones fic in terms of family and politics are the same thing. This is so precise and so painful and it feels so perfectly at the balance point of a disaster you can see a mile off but you can't do anything about it until it hits you. Just, all the little details of Tor being petty and self absorbed and choosing to hurt people, over and over again.... It's there so early. This was a wonderful portrait of a family where their politics and their interpersonal dynamics tie directly into each other. Super cute things: SPAR! Baby Jango! The togruta family history! The Billabas! The Jewishness of the Fetts! Also not quite novel length, but great.

Field Work by thosenearandfarwars (Restricted - let me know if you need an AO3 invite) - https://archiveofourown.org/works/43625916 - this is an adorable short fic in which Cody Fett is a Maori lesbian doing field work in the US grasslands, and Obi-Wan is the large animal vet running the annual buffalo round-up. It's a really charming meet-weird and comes with a great set of links for anyone interested in climate change, indigenous fire management, and grasslands habitat.


What I'm Reading:
Marae - https://archiveofourown.org/works/31072724
the weakness of falling in love by roquen https://archiveofourown.org/works/28464324 - The Untamed - Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén/Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo - The murder goblin gets his man after being barred from marriage.

Still reading (holdovers)
Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell - slightly on hold
Moby Dick by Herman Melville - Whale Weekly - new chapter in the inbox today (Extracts supplied by a sub-sub-librarian)
Carry On by Tamryn Eradani - on hold
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - Slowly


What I'll Read Next:

Gideon the Ninth - I now have conned two book clubs into reading this on the same timeline.

Over the holiday I'm doing some traveling and bringing NK Jemisin's The World We Make, Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and Susanna Clarke's Pirenesi with me for pleasure reading.

Library books in the house:
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife - Meg Elison
The Uncle's Story - Witi Ihimaera

Owned and need to read:California Bones, the Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Scum Villain's Self-saving System, Tom Stoppard, invention of love.

dorinda - Top 5 comfort movies? Or comfort reads, if you'd rather

Oh goodness. I don't know that I can rank these!

Pacific Rim - Truly wonderful chemistry between the leas, Guillermo del Toro can direct like anything, and it's a shockingly hopeful vision of the future.

Mamma Mia! - It's a musical where the stakes are subterranean and the music is super fun.

Muppet Christmas Carol - This is probably my favorite film. It's a musical, it's a shockingly accurate period piece, it's Michael Cane's favorite film.

The Court Jester (1955) - If you have not seen this film, you have seen its impact on 'period' Hollywood movies for decades. It's also stunningly funny, incredibly well put together, and a delight.

In Other Lands by Sarah Reese Brennan -This book stars a sarcastic queer protagonist who falls in love too hard and can't really understand other people very well, and hurts people's feelings a fair amount. He finds love and acceptance and happiness anyways, without having to be a different person than he is, but while also understanding that he doesn't get to be a jerk to people because it's easy.

What I've Read
A soul that's born in cold and Rain/ knows sunlight by KillBothTwins - Part 2 of the Massive Machinery of Hope - This is a pretty nice continuation of the "Obi-Wan goes back in time as his youngers self and saves the Republic". A well told and competent story that handles the fixits with a deft hand and also allows Obi-Wan to heal, just a bit, and rely on his friends. As a story that addresses slavery and the Hutt crime syndicate, this hit a lot of the plot points I would really like to see addressed in the social rebuilding of the post-Republic GFFA.
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33144037

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey - Ohh, this was a great book to read in the middle of my Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch section on Westerns and masculinity. This is a semi-historical, semi-dystopian, very Western story about a young queer woman who escapes an unwanted marriage in a violently heteropatriarchal future-US by fleeing to a team of wandering librarians. The whole thing is just so young and tender and lifegiving - Esther gets time and space and queer elders to follow as she figures out how to imagine a future for herself that doesn't involve dying young or staying in the closet.  
Link: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/0df3f760-2c94-440b-9299-7ced9100027b

A Star to Steer By by dogmatix and norcumi - This is a very fun Stargate crossover with Star Wars that reimagines the Jedi as the benevolent version of Goa'uld (mind controlling parasite alien snakes who set themselves up as gods over primitive human populations around the galaxy.) This has a lot of great discussions where people who really, really want to be allies have to figure out how to handle the serious cultural and technological differences that arise when you're trying to do diplomacy across a galaxy. It's a softer version of the life of the clone troopers, and a more diplomatic hero-y version of the Stargate SG-1 team. It's ongoing but this first entry stops in a good place. 
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1441522

What I'm Reading: Still reading (holdovers)
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone - a re-read for the bookclub. I read this first in like 2016, and zoomed thru the whole of this series. I think it's funny and sharp and I'm enjoying the re-read of the whole series. 

Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell - I was supposed to read a chapter this week but between medical stuff and house guests, no go.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville - Whale Weekly - new chapter in the inbox today (Extracts supplied by a sub-sub-librarian)
Carry On by Tamryn Eradani - on hold
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - on hold


What I'll Read Next:

Gideon the Ninth - some lovely friends of mine are going to read this together and I have glommed on. I had tried before and got about halfway before life got in the way.

Library books in the house:
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera
Penric's Demon - LM Bujold
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife - Meg Elison
The Uncle's Story - Witi Ihimaera
NOS4A2 : a novel / Joe Hill. (My library did a thing where you borrow the book and the movie at the same time, and Scaredy Cats Horror videos did a video on it a while ago and I'm curious about both of them.)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nFFY8SStrg (spoilers))

Owned and need to read: NK Jemisin's The World We Make, Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, California Bones, the Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Rescued by the Married Monster Hunters by Ennis Rook Bashe, Scum Villain's Self-saving System, Tom Stoppard, invention of love. 

What I've Read
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by Dorothy Johnson - this short story was interestingly complicated - there's a fundamental ambiguity to the relationship between the male leads that doesn't seem really present in the movie. The scenes of Jimmy Stewart talking to excited crowds were, as I suspected, invented for the film - I think they profoundly change the way that the Ransom Foster character relates to the town and overwhelmingly act to legitimize him as a good person and community leader, in a way that the short story is much less clear about. Also, wow, Westerns are just 10000% about the era they are written in, not the era they are set in, and that's really kind of fun.

I've actually read a fair amount of fanfic that is too short to log for this project, so, well, here we are.

What I'm Reading: Still reading (holdovers)
A soul that's born in cold and Rain knows sunlight by KillBothTwins
Carry On by Tamryn Eradani
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell
Moby Dick by Herman Melville - Whale Weekly

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - I'm really enjoying this much more now that there is no deadline - there's a lot of episodic messiness for these characters. Swan running with the wolves and getting stuck in a pit is just, so deeply not part of the scifi genre of problems, that I'm adoring the weirdness of the book.


What I'll Read Next:


Library books in the house:
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera
Riot Baby - Rochi Onyeuchi
The Silence of the Wilting Skin - Tlotlo Tsamaase
Whispers Underground - Ben Aaronovitch
Penric's Demon - LM Bujold
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife - Meg Elison
The Uncle's Story - Witi Ihimaera


Owned and need to read: NK Jemisin's The World We Make, Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, California Bones, the Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Rescued by the Married Monster Hunters by Ennis Rook Bashe

runpunkrun - Top five things you like to have at/on hand (prompts compiled by and for resonant )


5. Lip balm - I am absolutely intolerant of dry skin, so I have lip balm on every surface near where I sit.
4. Full spectrum light - I live in New England, we need fake sunlight. 
3. Books - I have never read a single book at a time in my life - I always have a few in progress and I am notorious for forgetting which one I was reading last and starting a new one. 
2. Coffee - I drink far more tea these days, but man, I really love coffee and miss it. 
1. Notebook - I have no brain sticking. Uh. Memory. I have to write things down or add them to my calendar to make them stick in my head, so I have a notebook and do a stripped down version of bullet journaling to keep things from disappearing out of my head entirely. (For books, I have an app called Storygraph that I'm pleased with for keeping track of my upcoming reading.)

In an effort to do a little more on DW, I'm going to try and post daily during December! This idea is borrowed from resonant's annual December Daily meme, who gave permission to share their prompts - visit their posts if you want to see the evolving list and suggest prompts! -

Top five pairs of characters, cross-fandoms as needed, that need to sit down and have a conversation and share life experiences so that at least one of them can benefit from it. - Destina

5. I think Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean would be a fantastically absurd person to pair with any character from Our Flag Means Death, but especially Izzy Hands. "I'm in love with a pirate king who loves someone else and is changing in ways I can't follow" is a niche problem but a real one!

4. I think Murderbot and the Terminator would have nothing to say to each other except stories about stupid humans are and all the ways they try to get themselves killed, and that would keep them going for literal years.

3. I think both Thomas Barrow from Downton Abbey and Velasin from A Strange and Stubborn Endurance would have useful things to say to each other the trauma of being outed in a world that is wildly unkind about their sexualities, but Thomas would have to be in like, his mid-40s before he could unclench enough and Velasin's end situation is so much kinder than Thomas's ending that they would probably just end up sitting in polite silence and seething.

2. This is a weird one, but I kind of want Admiral Thrawn from Star Wars and Captain William Laurence from the Temeraire series to compare notes about working for corrupt governments and how to deal with that. Thrawn's much more in the spying and long term gamesmanship set, while Laurence is more about making noble but strategically unsound decisions. In either case, Dealing With Emperors could be a fun subclass.

1. Eugenides from the Queen's Thief series and Maya from The Goblin Emperor would have some really interesting viewpoints to share with each other about rule and culture and how to be cleverer than the people who would want to harm you. I would 100% see this as a mentor relationship with Eugenides going, "Well, is anyone going to parent this abandoned child who going to have ultimate power in a few years?" and not waiting for an answer.

Edit: Wow, something went wonky with the editing when I first posted that. I think I fixed it!

What I've Read

The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison - (Cemetaries of Amalo #2) This is the second novel focusing on Thara Celehar, who combines Father Brown with noir detective in a fantasy Victorian setting. This book will not make much sense without the previous two books in this universe, the wildly popular Goblin Emperor and the first book on Celehar's life, Witness for the Dead. I really enjoyed this novel - it's got an overarching plot around the murders of a noblewoman and a foundling child, but also combines moments of gentle episodes with other people who come to ask Celehar for help speaking to the dead on more mundane matters (like finding where a recently deceased baker hid his famous scone recipe before he died). The main plot is not quite as tight as the Witness for the Dead, but I am here for the smaller scale that allowed some of the personal relationships that Celehar created and sustained in the last novel to breathe. Addison, aka Sarah Monette, is a great writer and I would generally recommend this. I suspect from the ending, which wraps up some of the emotional threads of the books but not all, is leading to a third book ... and a quick check confirms that. (And also that there are two short stories in this series that I had no idea where there.) I don't suggest reading this book without reading the Goblin Emperor first, which does most of the heavy lifting on the worldbuilding.

Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera - This is from 1987, there was a film in 2002 which was when I heard of this. I really enjoyed this novel, which was not much like what I expected! Ihimaera has a really clear voice and while the novel does some explaining for a non-Maori audience, I had the feeling of being a bit slow on the mark at certain points - which I usually take to be the sign of a book written from a cultural perspective that's different enough from mine that the editors haven't totally Americanized it. Tho this book focuses on a child, Kahu, the great-granddaughter of a Maori tribal leader, Aripana, Kahu is not the main perspective. The narrator is Aripana's adult grandson, Kahu's uncle, who views his family and community with affection, respect, and occasional irony. In places, this is a hard read - Aripana is dismissive and unkind to his great-grandchild because she's not a boy and therefore, he thinks, not worthy of a leadership role. But the book makes a point that his viewpoint is countered from within the community. While there are White characters and culture in this book, there isn't a "Nice White Person" character to distract from the actual narrative. I do think Apipana had a really important drive for cultural preservation, which makes a strong case that Maori identity and worldview has a specific lens to view the world- losing that lens would be devastating to their community and culture, and Aripana's greatest efforts are focused on preserving it and passing it on to the younger generation. (Sidebar: I am nearly certain the narrator, Rawiri, is queer - he seems like he has a romance with a man that takes him to Papua New Guinea for a couple of years, tho nothing is explicit. Ihimaera is gay and I looked up an interview with him that alluded to his childhood having some commonalities with Kahu's. I was delighted to stumble across a queer writer when I wasn't expecting the family connection.) I thought this was a great book, I am glad my expectations about a blandly cute childhood story were challenged. I've ordered more books by Ihimaera from the library now.

I read a bunch of fic, but nothing even approaching the 50K mark so none of it really makes the cut.

What I'm Reading
Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell -For the Great Queer Supernatural ReWatch - on Chapter 6, and we are finally getting firmly into the realm of film Westerns, rather than novels. Chap 5 made me want to re-read Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville - Look. So, I kind of flopped out of Dracula Daily but I did sign up for Whale Weekly, where you read Moby Dick in the traditional order in the form of emails sent to your inbox. I'm here for the wild nonsense Ishmael is selling. It's already really goofy and I have too much history of the Essex to not enjoy the irony of the start.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - Book Club - This is slower going now. I thought that a Big Spoiler plot event that I had heard about would take place somewhere in the latter quarter of the book. Instead it took place in the front half, and I'm tied up with trying to figure out where the plot can go from here. When I have something I'm not super enthralled to read, I often like to have a spoiler or two to help me engage with the plot and keep momentum up.


What I'll Read Next

Library books in the house:
Maul: Lockdown - Joe Schreiber
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera
Riot Baby - Rochi Onyeuchi
The Silence of the Wilting Skin - Tlotlo Tsamaase
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon


Newly purchased: At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey (aka, Xiaq, a fic that started as a Check, Please! hockey webcomic fanfic starring Kent Parson and OMC)

Owned and need to read: Upright Women Wanted (Which I just randomly read a great essay by this author on being liberated from narratives of queer grief and death), NK Jemisin's The World We Make, Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, California Bones, the Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, Penric's Demon, True Colors by Karen Traviss

What I’ve Read
So, I have finished nothing that was traditionally published in the last week, but I have read a non-trival amount of fic, and worked thru a lot of books that I hadn’t actually had a chance to finish yet.
For the finished things, I’m trying to pull back into the format I used for recc’ing works, because if I preserve more info, then it’s easier to find things if they are later taken down

Title: The Legend Of Liob by Killbothtwins
Fandom: Star Wars Clone Wars
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38656698
Length:19K
Summary: The Republic sends a combat photographer to be attached to the 212th until further notice, citing the need for a morale boost. The clones make up a fake clone, citing the absolute fact that it is very funny. Somehow, these two things save the galaxy.
Why I love it: I love Cody’s point of view on this fic, as he tries desperately to reign in the nonsense that several thousand bored soldiers get into while playing a joke on their newly assigned war correspondent.  I love the original character’s general willingness to do what she can to help the clones out and use public opinion to help them. The troopers of the 212th are having some fun in the middle of some of the worst possible things that could happen to a person, and it is truly hilarious. This is just a very fun fix it fic!

Title: Triumvirate by celinamarniss
Fandom: Star Wars ex-canonical pre-disney works by Timothy Zahn
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1494842
Length: 77K
Summary: (Mine) Mara Jade and Prince Luke Skywalker of Naboo are given as concubines to Admiral Thrawn. Surprisingly, this works out well.
Why I love it: Welp, I did not expect a threesome where Thrawn the meat in a Luke and Mara sandwich, but, hello, we are here. It’s a bit kinky, a bit dark, a bit sweet, a bit of an AU

Title: Seeking Shelter By sphagnum
Fandom: Original work
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15648981
Length: 7k
Summary: Guns down, gentlemen. Oscar protocol. The betas lowered their rifles instantly, pointing them at the ground in front of Max instead of his chest. Max took a deeper breath in, his tension easing a bit as he moved past the part of the plan where he might just get shot dead before he had a chance to try to bargain. It had always been a risk; it had just seemed like a better death than slow starvation.
Why I love it: I unrepentantly adore writing where characters are operating thru a hard language barrier. In this case, one character has a form of fictional virus-induced aphasia and it’s really well written and interesting to see the world thru his eyes while also getting the dialogue of the people around him.

What I’m Reading:
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - book club, descriptive heavy but interesting. Someone I love who typically has deeply different reading tastes than me truly hated this book, and I took that as the recommendation that it usually is.

Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell - Reading for the Great Queer Supernatural Rewatch - we’re thinking about westerns and masculinity! And how that genre of work says things about The American West as a setting and what it means for the kind of masculinity that the characters of Supernatural are dealing with. Related to the third chapter, we also watched Stagecoach (1938) which had some fascinating elements to it in terms of writing and an ensemble cast. (It was the first movie in which I found John Wayne to be charming and a good actor - I normally get deeply grossed out by him!) The racism in Stagecoach felt generic, by which I mean, it’s an inherent part of the genre and cannot be removed, but was also not pointed or with a lot of motivation behind it. Racism as wallpaper. Had a nice long discussion with a friend of how that compared to the John Carter of Mars novels that they’re currently reading, which really wants to pound into your head that the Martians cannot actually feel love and are terrible people who deserve to be conquered. Compared to Stagecoach, where Geronimo is a boogeyman and the Apaches are portrayed with all the inhumane violence of a twister, the John Carter novels are far less palatable to us. But I have a sneaking sense that Stagecoach’s racism has a longer tail because as a viewer of the film, you have to accept The Bargain that a Western movie is making in order to get any pleasure from it.

Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir by Jeremy Barlow - a bit spare. I recall that this was a means to publish plots that had been cut short by the end of the Clone Wars cartoon, and it’s a got a little bit of that feeling - I keep thinking that this would be better with performances behind the characters.

Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell - continues great! I'm about halfway thru and the main couple, who started the novel by trying to pull off scam to fake a mental bond that would put one of them permanently in control of the other, are now in a situation where the power dynamic has swapped! The whole thing is running on a basis of trust, admiration for each other's deeply different skill sets, and a solid basis of unacknowledged lust, so it's pretty much catnip.

What I’ll Read Next

Library books in the house
Maul: Lockdown - Joe Schreiber
The Whale Rider -Witi Ihimaera
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera
Riot Baby - Rochi Onyeuchi
The Silence of the Wilting Skin - Tlotlo Tsamaase
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon

Recently purchased and need to read: NK Jemisin's The World We Make, Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, California Bones

Newly purchased: Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk - this apparently started life as a Destiel fic and I didn’t know that and I have Polk $11 for the good of the fandom collective even before I got into the book

Also newly purchased - To Seek and to Find by Tamryn Eradani - I found this on a list of books that had started their lives as Supernatural fanfic and I bought it almost as an act of solidarity - I’m hopeful that it’s good, but if it’s not, it’s still only $5.

Own but reminding myself - Penric's Demon! Get on that! Fansplaining podcast just described it as Venom but in the middle ages, good god, ride that like you stole it. 

What I've Read
- Omega Required - Dessa Lux (aka, fanfic writer Dira Sudis) - Werewolf Omegaverse m/m arranged marriage romance novel- I bought this in 2018, read 25% of it and then never picked it up again. I finished it this week and I found the main couple really quite charming.  Beau wants to be a werewolf doctor to humans, Rory ran away from home at 16 with an older man who promised to take good care of him and has some major trauma around sex. It's careful to show Rory's recovery, tho it's a romance novel so he's improving on a pretty brisk pace. Beau is used taking care of only himself and not asking for help so he makes some fairly stupid (but very in-character!) mistakes around his new job. The resolution is sweet and generally hits the points that think a thoughtful romance ought to. I am probably going to read other things Dira has written - this series has a couple of other books, and this is hitting a self-indulgent spot for me.

Wife to the Marines: A Military Reverse Harem Romance by Krista Wolf (reverse harem het romance, straight woman with three straight men) - Well, this book had some great elements? The sex was fun, the character dynamics were a bit spare (perfectly fine for this genre) but what was there felt engaging, the plot was brisk and both acknowledged the silly elements but made them feel emotionally true to the female lead's internal life. I finished it and at the low price of $1, I feel like I got my money's worth. I have definitely paid more for worse. 

But, oh man, I am too queer for this book. I am just too dang queer for this book. I literally picked this up because I was curious about the reverse harem romance sub-genre (aka, straight woman with multiple male partners, yay!) and wow, this is just - like, do gay people exist in this world? Do ace people? Polyamory is briefly mentioned but not actually engaged with at all, so functionally, nah. Because I just cannot imagine a world where queer people exist and these men are making the life choices they are making about committed relationships to other men, and having sex with the same woman in a committed relationship, and then like, just not talking about the fact that you are in a queer poly relationship. It's just, like, the most hetero and monogamous take possible on a very queer, very poly relationship. It's almost as if it's a het romance where the dude just happens to have three bodies? It's so fucking weird to see a book go so far out of its way to frame this as hetero brothers-in-arms who love each other? Like, the intense military friendship that is actually a romance in disguise is literally a gay cliche - this one is ours, straight people. 

Also, massive trigger warnings for eating disorders shit (the woman is a trainer and runs a youtube channel where she makes sad tasteless healthfood, constantly breaks food into good or bad categories, calorie counting, talks in detail about the weight loss plans of her clients, none of it needed) and also, uh, military kink?  using the American invasion of Afghanistan as a neutral-to-justified backdrop for a personal vendetta? (Dudes, is it gay to avenge the death of your boyfriend's brother under the cover of a legitimate Marine mission while you lie to him and keep him out of the loop, safe at home with your other shared boyfriend and girlfriend?) This was a compellingly written novel full of sympathetic depictions of people who I would not ever want to have a drink with!

 

What I'm Reading

A Taste of Gold and Iron - Alexandra Rowlan - A re-read for my book club. So sweet, so queer, so fun. 

Thrawn: Treason - Timothy Zahn - Getting fun and brisk with this one! 55% in. 

Hunting Towards Heartstill - Blackkat - Star Wars Clone Wars Cartoon au - marriage of convenience, fake marriage, Mace Windu/Cody - Slowing down because we're crash landed on an abandoned Sith planet and I'm watching Mace be annoyed at Anakin and, well, he's very annoying! I'm going to try and buckle down and get some more under my belt so that I can actually just get past this part. I got stuck here last time too.

Stay With Me, Go Places - cac0daemonia-  https://archiveofourown.org/works/39540420 - "After months of living a quiet, peaceful life on Ryloth, Waxer and Boil must don their armor again. What begins as a rescue operation in conjunction with a bounty hunter becomes a journey that the Force itself seems to have a hand in." - I am really enjoying this ongoing series, the Reconstruction Corps AU, which posits that a fairly minor change in the Clone Wars plot around the clones control chips allowed the Jedi to stop Darth Sideous and save the galaxy and allow clones like Waxer and Boil to retire to little backwaters and build themselves a community. 

What I'll Read Next

2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson - Book club pick, long one, too! Bought it since we're probably splitting it up over six weeks
 
Library books:
Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield
Maul: Lockdown - Joe Schreiber 
The Whale Rider -Witi Ihimaera 
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera 
Riot Baby - Rochi Onyeuchi
The Silence of the Wilting Skin - Tlotlo Tsamaase 
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon

Libby: 
Truth of the Divine - Lindsay Ellis
Devil House - John Darnelle 
 

What I've Read
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik - Oh, this is how you end a trilogy. This books took the relationships and themes and even the monsters that have followed the main character from the very first book, and hunted them all down to pull the last thematic dregs from their depths. I didn't quite cry when I found out what really happened to Orion, but man, it hurt. It hurt so good. El Higgins will always live in my heart. 

Mutually-Assured Destruction by Sineala -  Bucky/Tony 616 Marvel comics in the 1960s - Identity porn! 1960's Tony Stark is Iron Man and nobody knows. So when the Winter Soldier comes out of the Soviet Union to ask to join the Avengers on the condition that he doesn't ever tell anyone his name or reveal his face, even to Captain America.... Tony thinks, oh, maybe we could be friends? Maybe I can be a little bit myself with this one? And things snowball from there. This is a great fic by an author that loves the 1960s comics version of the Avengers, and honestly, the tone fits those comics so well. This fic was slipping into a warm bath - angsty just in measure to the comfort. I was following updates from Sineala's Patreon while she was writing it and I was so glad to see if come out!


Fic Rec based on Scholomance series: If you want a smaller, single person version of the themes in The Scholomance Trilogy, I heartily recommend two other works by Astolat (aka, Naomi Novik in her fic writing persona) -
-Heal Thyself a Draco post-canon character study about what damage using Dark Magic does to a person, and what it takes for Draco to really come out of it the other side. (Technically Harry/Draco, but only towards the end, well after Draco has done the work of fixing himself.)    
-Victory Condition: A Tranformers fic in which Megatron and Optimus Prime have to actually talk thru their world views, and Optimus Prime has to face that the Golden Age he remembered was built on the suffering of people he didn't see. (Honestly, I kind of recommended The Scholomance series to someone based on the idea that El Higgins is a Megatron with a bit more support and Orion the human is pretty clearly based on Orion Pax aka Optimus Prime, but with some complicated history.) 

Honorable mentions to fic that didn't quite make the novel-length cut: Don’t be afraid. by spqr -Star Wars, Anakin/Obi-Wan, ages reversed. I... I find this pairing normally not for me, and I am aware that this is working on me because I love fic where a traumatized character is confronted with love and care, and well, this did the job. 

What I'm Reading

Homeworld Elegy - Ashcroft Writes - Star Wars AU - Obi-Wan/ Cad Bane - 138K words -Once I got some momentum on this fic, I'm just flying thru it. I'm in a section that creates a whole history for Cad Bane and Duros and their world and his childhood romance with a friend, and I'm like, I thought this was just a mean blue man in a big hat, and now you are making my feel emotions??? It's just working for me really well. 

Two Old Women by Velma Wallis - I'm just not finishing this very quickly, dunno why. The voice just feels like listening to someone telling a story. 

What I'll Read Next:

Library books are on hold for this week because I'm going to be traveling, unless I get finished with them before I go.