Reading Wrap-Up: October 2021

[justanorthernlight]

The only thing I read this month was Arrows of the Queen (Valdemar series #1) by Mercedes Lackey. It had been sitting half-finished on my to-be-read shelf for several years. It is very much a first novel and very much a novel of the '80s, but I honestly dig some of the cheesy and overdone tropes when I'm feeling down (young girl leaves her repressive and backwater home town/family and finds support and fulfillment in the big city as the Chosen One, etc.).

I really liked the beginning, but the back half dragged quite a bit, and I could have lived without the incredibly obviously foreshadowed dead lesbian. Valdemar is one of those series that is liked by a lot of people who like other stuff that I like, so I'm going to give the rest of the trilogy a chance.

I also got about halfway through Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee, and not quite halfway through my reread of The Two Towers. Up next I have another Star Wars comic and maybe some nonfiction.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I honestly think Lackey is best read when you're a 14 year old girl, so it's hard to separate my extremely fond memories of that trilogy from the deadly touch of the suck fairy.

I liked Dragon Pearl a lot though. I hope YHLee writes more.

[justanorthernlight]

Yeah, this definitely would have been right up my alley when I was 12, I'm kind of used to the slight letdown that comes with trying out other peoples' childhood nostalgia. Part of the reason I picked it up was that some of the newer Valdemar books were getting good reviews (and had excellently punny titles, like The Hills Have Spies.

I think the pacing was what was throwing me off Dragon Pearl, the main character is just tumbling from one high speed disaster to another. I loved the Machineries of Empire trilogy a lot, but it feels like he's trying to jam the same amount of worldbuilding into a much shorter single volume. (Also my attention span is completely shot right now, which isn't helping.)

[muccamukk]

I found with Dragon Pearl once she gets on the military space ship, it picks up. I was annoyed with how often she had to carry the idiot ball in the first maybe third or the story.

[justanorthernlight]

That's good to know, I'm at the part just after she leaves her aunt's gambling den and is attacked by pirates. It was also feeling a little like 1 moral lesson per chapter at that point.