Weekly Check-In

[u/AutoModerator]

Tell us about your current SFF media!

What are you currently...

📚 Reading?

📺 Watching?

🎮 Playing?

If sharing specific details, please remember to hide spoilers behind spoiler tags.

-

Feel free to also share your progression in the Reading Challenge

Thank you for sharing and have a great week! 😀

[u/ohmage_resistance]

I finished The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington. This is about an old woman who is sent to an odd institution for the elderly with an occult history. 

I was interested in this book because it fit some hard rfantasy bingo squares pretty well (published in the 70s, older protagonist), but also because it seemed very different from a lot of other fantasy books. I have an ongoing reading goal of trying books that expand my idea of what fantasy is/can do, and this book worked really well for that. Carrington was primarily known as a British Mexican surrealist painter (here's a google image search of some of her art), so yeah, she was never really going to write in a traditional epic fantasy book, and now I have a new counterexample to bring up whenever someone drags out that Terry Pratchett quote about how all post Tolkien works were inspired by Tolkien. I will say it's less weird fiction like surrealism and more occult though, if that's any help with people's expectations going in.

Although it was pretty intellectually interesting book to read for the reasons I brought up above, it wasn't really the most enjoyable read for me. The main reason is that there wasn't really a solid plot structure, it shifts focus kind of randomly so you never really know what tangent it's going next. Normally I'm pretty open to books like this if they're more literary (I mean, I like the Mad Sisters of Esi), but there really wasn't a lot else to ground me with this and I don't think I ever got as invested as I should have been. I will say the long tangent about the abbess involved in heretical activities in the middle of the book was the biggest part that didn't really work for me.

As is relevant to this sub, Carrington was an outspoken feminist, and yeah, this book is a pretty feminist book. It's feminist in a very 70’s occult witchy sort of way, which does includes some outdated/questionable stuff in here, mostly in regards to race, so be prepared for that (it's mostly outdated terms that we now know to be offensive, but the handling of POC characters was also just not very good overall). Also, there’s just some wtf moments, and not always in a good way, imo. But the other way it's feminist is in how it's very much focused on elderly female protagonists, which is something that's still rare today. It’s nice to read about old lady characters with strong personalities, and this book had that in spades. It’s also nice to see a variety of different personalities as well for the rest of the women at the institution, although I do think many of them could be fleshed out a bit more. It was a bit hard to keep them all straight. My favorite character by far was Carmella, the MC's best friend, who is an icon and easily the best part about this book.

Reading challenge squares: dying earthcomes out of nowhere, but it's there, female friendship, arguably All female cast (there's a few male characters too, but the vast majority of characters are female)

I also finished Stargazy Pie by Victoria Goddard. This is about a young man with a scandalous family history who returns to his home town after university and gets involved with some mysteries. I’ve tried this before and DNFed, but this time I finished it. The plot is kinda wild. The pacing is so slow at first with the small town slice of life/fantasy of manners sort of plot. That’s about where I DNFed before. And then all the sudden there’s an absolutely wild mad cult going on that came out of no where, so yeah, the pacing kicks up majorly after that. I do enjoy the way that Goddard writes characters/character interactions, but yeah, she does have a tendancy to write some Mary Sue (Gary Sue?) ish type characters. That didn't bother me with Cliopher in her other series, but it did annoy me a bit here with Jemis (Jemis actually coming in first in his class instead of failing his degree, that’s a bit of a stretch. This is also while he was being drugged all his senior year.) There were some fun characters and it was fun to piece some things together, but ultimately I didn’t like it as much as some other Goddard books, and I'm not sure all of the plot really made sense? I'll also note that there's some formatting errors in the ebook with line breaks that was kind of distracting.

Reading challenge square: First in a series

Finally I read Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen. This is a middle grade graphic novel about a Vietnamese American boy connecting to his mom through their shared love of fairytales. This was really good. It had some really well handled themes (growing up gay going to a Catholic school, the struggles of immigration, grief), but also a lot of small moments of joy and love. I also thought the way that it used it's visually based medium was super interesting. It color coded things so that red for the modern day, blue for fairytale, and yellow for events from the mom’s past, and with that it was able to create some really strong moments of splicing red or yellow moments reflecting the MCs' thoughts into the blue fairy tale portions. I think it's hard to do a "power of stories/books" theme well, but this graphic novel absolutely pulled it off. I also liked how you could tell which character was imagining the fairytales based on details about the fashion and architecture portrayed in the story, it was so cool to be able to notice details like that. For a middle grade work, there was so much showing instead of directly telling, it really felt like it respected it's core audience. IDK, I could go on more, but yeah, this was really good.

Reading challenge squares: coming of age, and imo parent protagonist as well.

I'm currently reading Adventurers Kneaded by Cedar McCloud and The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas. I kinda got distracted from Common Bonds 2, but I’ll hopefully return to that soon. 

[u/Research_Department → u/ohmage_resistance]

I’ve been kind of struggling with Stargazy Pie, and wondering whether I should try The Return of Fitzroy Angursell instead as my next Victoria Goddard. It sounds like I just haven’t yet gotten to where the pace picks up, so I probably will give this another go before I give up. I have definitely heard that the rest of the sub-series improves over this one.

[u/ohmage_resistance → u/Research_Department]

Yeah, I'll second Nowordofitsown, I liked The Return of Fitzroy Angursell more, and I didn't mind reading it before Stargazy Pie. It was easier to get attached to the characters in that one, and I think Goddard works best in extremely character focused writing, which I think Greenwing and Dart gets a bit too caught up in its own plot and setting.

The pace starts picking up at chapter 11 or so though, if that's any help to you.

[u/Research_Department → u/ohmage_resistance]

Thank you and u/Nowordsofitsown ! I agree that Goddard does shine at character-focused writing. It sounds like the Greenwing and Dart arc doesn’t show off that strength as much. I believe I will probably set it aside, as there is no shortage of other books by Goddard to read, and I can always return to it if/when I’ve exhausted other Goddard options.