Abandoned

So, having recently had major surgery, my reading chops aren't quite as burly as they normally are.

The practical result of this is that recently, I've started a handful of books, some of which I may continue on with and the two I'm going to talk about here are just going back to the library unread.

Try This: Travelling the Globe Without Leaving the Table by Danyelle Freeman, who apparently also resides at restaurantgirl.com, is not a good book.   She's a bit of a braggart, a bit of a know-it-all, and doesn't seem to be writing for any particular audience other than herself.   She has zero tolerance for anyone with eating preferences other than her own and it's possible that 'without leaving the table' is code for 'without developing any appreciation or knowledge of any cultures other than that of your own.'     I could go on, but I'm not even certain the book is worth my ire.

Soft Apocalypse by Will Jackson has a lovely premise, but just didn't grab me.   I should be all over this book, it's about the slow dissolution of society, the whimper instead of the bang, when the part that comes between pre and post-apocalyptic isn't flashy.  The main character isn't particularly likeable, but in a sort of uninteresting, hipster kind of way, and well, in most books, once they abuse or kill the puppy, it's time for us to part ways.     So on that breakup note, Soft Apocalypse, it's probably not you, it's me. But it might be a little bit you too.

Carrie Ryan and Lorelei Gilmore.

I love zombie novels.  I love them in pretty much any flavor, though all my true favorites involve the CDC and/or sinister government plot.

I like to think I loved zombie novels before it was trendy to love them.   I'm fascinated by the idea that zombies are the next thing after vampires to reflect social dread, that what was once scary was blood, and now what is scary is death, or becoming unpretty, or aging, or being powerless.  I'm certain there's all sorts of academic papers about what the shift in focus means, if it's a general aging of the world, or something about helplessness.  

It doesn't really matter when I got on board, I'm going to keep devouring the novels as long as it keeps me happy, and mull over the implications of young adult novels with protagonists who are the one bright spot of color, individuality, or fighting a system or systems.

Carrie Ryan's titles are, for lack of a better world, spectacular.  The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Dead-Tossed Waves and The Dark and Hollow Places.   I'm a sucker for them.   But, being young adult novels, they're also full of teenagers being in love, and being dreadful people because of it.   In a very age-appropriate way, and I'm certain 16 year old Kim wouldn't have dealt well with the prospect of having to choose between her one true love and the greater good.

We're watching Gilmore Girls while I'm in recovering, and we just finished season one, which includes a speech by Lorelei's father about sacrificing what one wants to do what is right.   In the show, that sentiment made me (as it was supposed to) angry and grrr.   Of course you don't marry someone because it is the right thing to do.  But as various Ryan characters bemoan loves that can never be, or how they awakened entire zombie hordes to save one person, I hand-wave and get annoyed that they don't seem to be grasping the concept of not being the most special snowflake.

choices

Thing I forgot the other day:  Mechanique's got echoes of Mieville's Remade.   With all sorts of complicated things going on about choice, and free will and societal/social restrictions.  

Which I either have a lot to say about, or absolutely nothing to say.    I'm choosing things to modify about my body, for values of choice that don't feel like choices at all.   Living with a high risk of cancer and constant surveillance or mastectomy.   Just like weird appendages and brass bones.

Intent

So, my lovely husband thinks I should begin a blog, entirely separate from my other social media outlets, for the purposes of talking about my Opinions, of which I have many.    Most of the subtext I'm mad about is gender-related, though being mad about just about everything is pretty solidly in my wheelhouse.

I'm reading Genevieve Valentine's Mechanique: a Tale of the Circus Tresaulti.   I thought her story in the vampire anthology Teeth was brilliant, I saw her books at Readercon and got this one from the library.   Now I've surfed on over to her website and see there are a lot of shorts available online, which I'll have to go through.  (Occasionally my completist urges lead me down rabbit holes.)

It's a post-apocalyptic steampunk circus.   It's not too far away from the aesthetic of Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band.   There are aerialists with hollow copper bones, and strongmen with mechanical arms.  The pivotal image is of a pair of wings, made out of gears and bone.  It's all about love, or maybe hate, or loyalty.

It's a story that it's easy to see the bones of (which is neither good nor bad).   The parenthetical asides, the building up of one particular character to fill a function to move the plot along, where the war fits into the world and into the story.