Cruise booklogging
Dec. 21st, 2022 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kate_nepveuMy booklog needs a complete WordPress reinstall and possibly some more stuff as well, so in the meantime, I present: all the books I read on an 11-day Caribbean cruise.
1) A Restless Truth, Freya Marske. Set on an ocean liner! Lovely: fun, quick, great characters (I am especially fond of the one who's got all the skills to be awful but has emphatically committed herself, with all of her iron will, to be good) and excellent romantic dynamic.
2) Ocean's Echo, Everina Maxwell. The ocean is metaphorical, but it still counts. Rhymes well with the prior book in the main characters; nicely id-tastic relationship dynamic (we'll fake a soul-bond to keep from being forced to it). I got a smidge lost in the politics and reversals by the end but that may well have been my fault, and on the whole I enjoyed it immensely.
3) Moby Dick, Herman Melville. The ocean is literal and metaphorical! Yes, I read the whole thing. Though Ishmael's sentences take some concentration, this did not feel that long to me, honestly. I would like to say that the book's many non-white characters rise above being Noble Savages but I can't really convince myself of it. At least it wasn't being intentionally malicious, so I could shrug past it. And on the whole I enjoyed it quite a lot and look forward to rereading it more closely with Whale Weekly (which is quite busy at the moment as Ishmael gets ready to sail, but will settle down after that).
I was briefly disappointed that the mutiny that I seemed to have been promised did not materialize, but of course that's the point. And I personally believe that the whale does not die; certainly it doesn't on-screen, so I suppose you could think whatever you like, but again, I think it's the point that it doesn't.SPOILERS for Moby Dick
4) Dead Collections, Isaac Fellman. Decided I needed an emphatic break from the ocean theme, having gorged myself on it with Moby Dick. This is a short book (60k, so a novel by Hugo standards, but) that I respected more than liked. It's very tight and thematically-intertwined, but it almost seemed too much so to me.
5) Illuminations, T. Kingfisher. Her most recent middle-grade book. Enjoyable until the end when I abruptly wanted it to be a different genre, which is her second book in a row like that.
They should have burnt the Scarling rather than imprison it again, they're just carrying on the ancestor's sin. The characters or author could have come up with a way to save the crow, if that would have been a step too far for a kid's book.SPOILERS for Illuminations
6) The Border Keeper, Kerstin Hall. Another short one (54k). I reread something for a Yuletide beta that was kind of gently and numinously magical, and wanted something in the same vein. This fit the mood (though less on the gentle end) and was well-written and evocative, but maybe a little sparse, especially when I hit the end and went "wait, what?"
7) Travel Light, Naomi Mitchison. A true novella (37k). Just a lovely, unusual story about a girl that starts as a fairy tale and moves into historical times but stays with the same kind of considerations.
8) The Corn King and the Spring Queen, also Mitchison. My flight is being called so I'll just say that this is a brick (270k) but excellent historical/fantasy, really good at the mindsets of the characters, highly recommended.
Edit:
I finished the above on the first leg of our flights today, not technically on the cruise, so in that spirit I'll add in
9) The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo. Novella started on one flight and finished on other (I'm waiting for luggage now). A cleric and their talking bird hear the story of the title character, satisfyingly done, little tension (not a complaint).
You can do spoilers in comments by using HTML mode and using (details)(summary)cut text(/summary)(/details), only replace with pointy brackets.
+1 (thumbs-up, I see you, etc.)?
