I loved this book. The protagonist, Doug, is like Bill and Ted's dumber, hotter friend, and he falls in love with an almost murderously antisocial, uptight, artsy queer guy, Stephen. The narrative is laugh-out-loud funny and teeters on the edge of farce, but is saved by having a really charming emotional core.
It breaks conventions that I wasn't aware could be broken. For example, Doug is not slow-by-common-measures-but wise-in-other-ways. He really is just dumb as a rock. He's also a lazy, cowardly, amoral, slutty slob. From that description, I should hate him (I'm judgemental like that). Yet he ended up being a really sympathetic character for me. Stephen is intellectual, anally neat, and interested is almost a
caricature of a east coast liberal, wishing that there was just more
injustice in his life to rail against and more angsty than a goth teen. He's also not someone I would normally find attractive, but I eventually appreciated him though Doug's eyes.
And Stephen really doesn't like Doug at first and is pretty mean to him. If it were a girl, I'd feel uncomfortable with having her be hot but so much dumber than the guy she loves, or having her be such a doormat that she take his abuse and never defends herself. But somehow since they're both guys, it doesn't feel misogynistic and just becomes a story about unconditional love.
For a while, I didn't know if I really wanted them to be together. I kept reading just to get to more funny bits, but I didn't at first see how it would work. I mean, if I met them in real life, I would be totally on Stephen's side in trying to dissuade Doug from pursuing/bothering him. They seem a horrible match. Completely different in every possible way, and not in the "he completes me" sense.
Also Doug starts out heterosexual. The "queer for you" trope has a bad reputation for a reason, but here it worked for me, because I could actually believe that Doug could go his whole went his whole life without questioning the default sexuality and then switch his assumptions without it bothering him all that much. He's as deep as a puddle.
The only thing I didn't love about the book was the climax. Although entertaining, there was just too much coincidence for me. YMMV.
Overall though, I'd recommend it. Plus, it's free on Kindle Unlimited, so there's that.
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Monday, March 5, 2012
Review: Peacemaker by Lindsay Buroker
As with the other installments of the Flash Gold Series, it's fun and action-filled. Apparently it's also longer than the other stories, but unfortunately Buroker doesn't really use that extra length to make noticeable progress on any of the main story arcs. Despite this, I recommend it as a fun read in a fun series.
Peacemaker, by Lindsay Buroker, is the third story in her Flash Gold series, a steam-punk adventure set in the Yukon gold rush. The protagonist is Kali, a half-Han/half-white female MacGuyver. She's clever and crotchety and brave and vulnerable. In the first book she becomes partners with Cedar, a sword-and-gun-wielding bounty hunter. He's mysterious and wise and fierce and a little crazy and socially awkward to complement her craziness and socially awkwardness. I love them both. Instead of novels, each installment in this series is a short story or novella, so the episodes are fairly light and fun, with larger arcs that carry over the stories and action that's solved with a mixture of derring do and improvised engineering.
In a lot of ways, this story was a good addition to the series. The the action was fun, the writing is good, the main characters are great, the inventions are inventive, and the setting is cool.
I have two beefs however.
The first is with the world building. Now, don't get me wrong. It's a rollicking setting with fun details. And she infuses enough richness to it that her steam punk world feels like it's own distinct place. The problem is that after three stories, it still feels a like a bubble setting. I don't have a real sense of how the world got to be the way it is or how it fits into the rest of the world, despite the fact that other places in the world are mentioned.
For example, there are a couple mentions of medicine men and native american witches who have some sort of magical powers (no real detail on that). But those people don't seem to be any different from real life medicine men and women accused of witches other than to give us flash gold. And other than that, there's no integration of magic into the rest of her world. That level of world-building was okay for the first story, because it's a short story and I don't want Buroker to spend so much time explaining the setting that it takes away from the story. But three stories in, we've gotten a chance to look around a bit, and it still feels like magic is just plopped into one place in her world and doesn't affect anything else. And that's just odd. I'd think that some people having magic powers would affect the world in a bunch of ways. Maybe regular people would be more superstitious or prejudiced against magic users or maybe magic users would occupy certain roles that aren't available in our world, or there would be a bunch of charlatans pretending to have power, or, I don't know, a bunch of possibilities. But about the only possibility I don't swallow is that you'd be able to change such a fundamental part of world (some people can do real magic) and the only difference is that now there's flash gold, which only Kali has.
To give another example, Kali and other tinkerers can do all sorts of crazy engineering, but the world as a whole is not any different than our real world. It seems like there are a few crazy fun things inserted (we don't just have outlaw gangs riding horses, we have sky pirates riding zeppelins!), but it doesn't seem like it makes that much of a difference - it just adds flavor. And that also seems odd or inconsistent. Unless you posit something like that the crazy engineering ability is so recent that it hasn't had a chance to really change history yet, I would expect the world to be a bit more different than our real one. In particular, it seems like there are no changes to the culture or institutions or history or anything.
This isn't a huge problem with me because it's still a fun world and the story is meant to be fairly light-weight, but from reading her Emperor's Edge series, it's clear to me she has the ability to do more extensive and consistent world building, so that aspect of it is a bit of a disappointment. I'd love to see her really let loose on the premise.
Anyway.
The other beef I have is that it just doesn't feel like anything important happened in the story. Over all, it feels very much like an interstitial story, rather than a building block story. I don't always need a short story to move the the plot arcs forward. If it's an interstitial story in the middle of a bunch of novels, then I can just appreciate it as a nice little gift from the author to tide me over until the next major installment. But when the whole series is short stories, then I want each one to contribute to moving the things forward or else it feels like I'm being strung along a little bit. I want each story to be an important one that needs to be told in the overall context of the series.
The first story (Flash Gold) was important because it told the story of how Kali and Cedar met and started working together, as well as being the point where Kali learned she was being hunted. It was a solid beginning. The second one (Hunted) was important because it was the story of how they opened up to each other and started having a romantic relationship.
Now we're on the third one, and I feel like we have a few good possible threads for turning it into a significant point in Kali or Cedar's lives, but none of them went anywhere in this story. There's a little more about Kali and Cedar's back story, but none of the reveals significantly color our perception of them as characters, nor do they affect their relationship. The relationship between Kali and Cedar sort of had some tension that never got too tense and was easily resolved, and the relationship between them also didn't progress. I thought we might go somewhere with the introduction of Tadzi, but he just has a cameo. I thought maybe we'd get farther along with the Cudgel arc, but, other than knowing he's in the area (which we already knew) and that we now know that he knows about Cedar and Kali, nothing really happened there. There's the possibility for some emotional growth from Kali as she faces her Han past and deals with her issues from that, but no actual emotional growth happened. In the epilogue, she's a hero for the Han and the town and so it's possible that this will be will be important because it's the time when her relationship to the world changed, but that's not really explored either.
I don't know.
We get another installment, but I don't feel like it accomplished much. It's fun and frothy, but we're in the same place that we started. I'm still glad that I read the story because it's a cool adventure, and I'm still going to buy the next one when it comes out, but I hope that overall Buroker will balance this one out with a bit more depth or forward progress in the next installment. I'm afraid of this turning into an adventure-of-the-week style series where every installment has a new contraption, but is otherwise a rehash of the same basic plot and static relationships and characters and world. I'd rather a Buffy the Vampire Slayer approach where there may be monsters every week, but you want to see them all because they tell a story together that has significant plot movement, world-building, and character growth.
Peacemaker, by Lindsay Buroker, is the third story in her Flash Gold series, a steam-punk adventure set in the Yukon gold rush. The protagonist is Kali, a half-Han/half-white female MacGuyver. She's clever and crotchety and brave and vulnerable. In the first book she becomes partners with Cedar, a sword-and-gun-wielding bounty hunter. He's mysterious and wise and fierce and a little crazy and socially awkward to complement her craziness and socially awkwardness. I love them both. Instead of novels, each installment in this series is a short story or novella, so the episodes are fairly light and fun, with larger arcs that carry over the stories and action that's solved with a mixture of derring do and improvised engineering.
In a lot of ways, this story was a good addition to the series. The the action was fun, the writing is good, the main characters are great, the inventions are inventive, and the setting is cool.
I have two beefs however.
The first is with the world building. Now, don't get me wrong. It's a rollicking setting with fun details. And she infuses enough richness to it that her steam punk world feels like it's own distinct place. The problem is that after three stories, it still feels a like a bubble setting. I don't have a real sense of how the world got to be the way it is or how it fits into the rest of the world, despite the fact that other places in the world are mentioned.
For example, there are a couple mentions of medicine men and native american witches who have some sort of magical powers (no real detail on that). But those people don't seem to be any different from real life medicine men and women accused of witches other than to give us flash gold. And other than that, there's no integration of magic into the rest of her world. That level of world-building was okay for the first story, because it's a short story and I don't want Buroker to spend so much time explaining the setting that it takes away from the story. But three stories in, we've gotten a chance to look around a bit, and it still feels like magic is just plopped into one place in her world and doesn't affect anything else. And that's just odd. I'd think that some people having magic powers would affect the world in a bunch of ways. Maybe regular people would be more superstitious or prejudiced against magic users or maybe magic users would occupy certain roles that aren't available in our world, or there would be a bunch of charlatans pretending to have power, or, I don't know, a bunch of possibilities. But about the only possibility I don't swallow is that you'd be able to change such a fundamental part of world (some people can do real magic) and the only difference is that now there's flash gold, which only Kali has.
To give another example, Kali and other tinkerers can do all sorts of crazy engineering, but the world as a whole is not any different than our real world. It seems like there are a few crazy fun things inserted (we don't just have outlaw gangs riding horses, we have sky pirates riding zeppelins!), but it doesn't seem like it makes that much of a difference - it just adds flavor. And that also seems odd or inconsistent. Unless you posit something like that the crazy engineering ability is so recent that it hasn't had a chance to really change history yet, I would expect the world to be a bit more different than our real one. In particular, it seems like there are no changes to the culture or institutions or history or anything.
This isn't a huge problem with me because it's still a fun world and the story is meant to be fairly light-weight, but from reading her Emperor's Edge series, it's clear to me she has the ability to do more extensive and consistent world building, so that aspect of it is a bit of a disappointment. I'd love to see her really let loose on the premise.
Anyway.
The other beef I have is that it just doesn't feel like anything important happened in the story. Over all, it feels very much like an interstitial story, rather than a building block story. I don't always need a short story to move the the plot arcs forward. If it's an interstitial story in the middle of a bunch of novels, then I can just appreciate it as a nice little gift from the author to tide me over until the next major installment. But when the whole series is short stories, then I want each one to contribute to moving the things forward or else it feels like I'm being strung along a little bit. I want each story to be an important one that needs to be told in the overall context of the series.
The first story (Flash Gold) was important because it told the story of how Kali and Cedar met and started working together, as well as being the point where Kali learned she was being hunted. It was a solid beginning. The second one (Hunted) was important because it was the story of how they opened up to each other and started having a romantic relationship.
Now we're on the third one, and I feel like we have a few good possible threads for turning it into a significant point in Kali or Cedar's lives, but none of them went anywhere in this story. There's a little more about Kali and Cedar's back story, but none of the reveals significantly color our perception of them as characters, nor do they affect their relationship. The relationship between Kali and Cedar sort of had some tension that never got too tense and was easily resolved, and the relationship between them also didn't progress. I thought we might go somewhere with the introduction of Tadzi, but he just has a cameo. I thought maybe we'd get farther along with the Cudgel arc, but, other than knowing he's in the area (which we already knew) and that we now know that he knows about Cedar and Kali, nothing really happened there. There's the possibility for some emotional growth from Kali as she faces her Han past and deals with her issues from that, but no actual emotional growth happened. In the epilogue, she's a hero for the Han and the town and so it's possible that this will be will be important because it's the time when her relationship to the world changed, but that's not really explored either.
I don't know.
We get another installment, but I don't feel like it accomplished much. It's fun and frothy, but we're in the same place that we started. I'm still glad that I read the story because it's a cool adventure, and I'm still going to buy the next one when it comes out, but I hope that overall Buroker will balance this one out with a bit more depth or forward progress in the next installment. I'm afraid of this turning into an adventure-of-the-week style series where every installment has a new contraption, but is otherwise a rehash of the same basic plot and static relationships and characters and world. I'd rather a Buffy the Vampire Slayer approach where there may be monsters every week, but you want to see them all because they tell a story together that has significant plot movement, world-building, and character growth.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Hidden
This is a nice urban fantasy novella that blends family with pack dynamics and investigative action. It's surprisingly approachable for readers new to the Otherworld series. Series fans will really enjoy seeing the next milestones for Elena - getting to know her twins and seeing part of her transition to alpha.
Hidden, by Kelly Armstrong, was a nice read. I've read most of the Otherworld series, and they're really uneven for me. Elena POV books (of which this is one) are my favorites so factor that into your evaluation.
The Otherworld is our contemporary world with a modest amount of paranormal-acy. There's only one werewolf pack of about a dozen members in North America. Other than that, there are scattered non-pack werewolves, called mutts, that aren't allowed to settle down in one place. There are other paranormal races, but they don't factor into this story and aren't really powerful in this world. Elena Michaels is the only female werewolf, and she's been chosen to replace the current alpha.
Hidden, by Kelly Armstrong, was a nice read. I've read most of the Otherworld series, and they're really uneven for me. Elena POV books (of which this is one) are my favorites so factor that into your evaluation.
The Otherworld is our contemporary world with a modest amount of paranormal-acy. There's only one werewolf pack of about a dozen members in North America. Other than that, there are scattered non-pack werewolves, called mutts, that aren't allowed to settle down in one place. There are other paranormal races, but they don't factor into this story and aren't really powerful in this world. Elena Michaels is the only female werewolf, and she's been chosen to replace the current alpha.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Zero Sight and Zero Sum
Summary: Holy cow, these books were great! The premise sounds like a typical intrepid-hero-attends-a-magic-academy that clutters YA. But it's YA in the same way that Ender's Game is - which is to say that it magnificently transcends the age of the protagonist. And the voice is a lot more Harry Dresden than Harry Potter. I can't recommend them enough.
Zero Sight and Zero Sum, by B. Justin Shier, are the first and second books in the Zero Sight Series respectively. They're set in a broken-down, near-future America. Dieter Resnick, the protagonist, is a young man with a single purpose - getting the hell out of his current life and into something better. His master plan involves keeping his head down, getting an academic scholarship to an Ivy, and living happily ever after somewhere far away from the gangs and poverty and abuse of his current life.
The first part of his plan hits a snag when he gets in a fight with higher stakes than he hoped for, and things take an unexpected turn. If you've read much in the genre, you have some idea where things are headed in the first book, but you won't care because the journey is fantastic. The second book tops the first - fleshing out secondary characters and starting them on their own arcs, having more unexpected twists, and really turning up the slow-burn love triangle. It's a better crafted story in general, although the first one was very good to begin with.
This series came out of nowhere for me. Zero Sight is Shier's debut novel, and it was dang good. So good, that I didn't have the patience to write a review before starting the second one. Part of that rush to read the next book was the ending though - it feels like the book is the first half of a two-part novel rather than the first novel in a series. The second book's ending is more successful, although I'll still be waiting with bated breath until he releases the third book.
It's a series that doesn't condescend. He's telling the story of a brilliant, honorable, and driven young man in a richly detailed world and emotionally complex circumstances. This first person POV gives us the chance to be inside one of my new favorite minds, but you can't sleepwalk through it. Not that you want to - it's a gripping read.
Zero Sight and Zero Sum, by B. Justin Shier, are the first and second books in the Zero Sight Series respectively. They're set in a broken-down, near-future America. Dieter Resnick, the protagonist, is a young man with a single purpose - getting the hell out of his current life and into something better. His master plan involves keeping his head down, getting an academic scholarship to an Ivy, and living happily ever after somewhere far away from the gangs and poverty and abuse of his current life.
The first part of his plan hits a snag when he gets in a fight with higher stakes than he hoped for, and things take an unexpected turn. If you've read much in the genre, you have some idea where things are headed in the first book, but you won't care because the journey is fantastic. The second book tops the first - fleshing out secondary characters and starting them on their own arcs, having more unexpected twists, and really turning up the slow-burn love triangle. It's a better crafted story in general, although the first one was very good to begin with.
This series came out of nowhere for me. Zero Sight is Shier's debut novel, and it was dang good. So good, that I didn't have the patience to write a review before starting the second one. Part of that rush to read the next book was the ending though - it feels like the book is the first half of a two-part novel rather than the first novel in a series. The second book's ending is more successful, although I'll still be waiting with bated breath until he releases the third book.
It's a series that doesn't condescend. He's telling the story of a brilliant, honorable, and driven young man in a richly detailed world and emotionally complex circumstances. This first person POV gives us the chance to be inside one of my new favorite minds, but you can't sleepwalk through it. Not that you want to - it's a gripping read.
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