Reading, Listening, Watching

[purplecat]

Reading: Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire. Seanan McGuire's name comes up a lot in my corner of the Internet so I thought I would give one of her books a try. It's another urban fantasy detective novel. Its main protagonist is a changeling rather than a wizard but otherwise it doesn't seem greatly different from the rest of the genre.

Listening: I have been struggling with the Machine Ethics podcast - mostly that it randomly won't actually play, but eventually decided that maybe the problem was only the early episodes and so skipped ahead to the point where it started interviewing people I had heard of and, in many cases, knew. I'm not sure I'm necessarily learning much but it is interesting hearing relevant people given space to talk.

Watching: We watched Aquaman. I was tempted to say it was "very linear" which was also my criticism of Wonder Woman, but I'm not sure that's exactly true. Both feel to me like they have a certain simplicity of story where MCU films tend to have more complexity but I'm struggling to place my finger on what exactly it is that gives me that feeling since plenty of the MCU films, particularly their origin stories, are quite linear in conception.

Comments

[isis]

I didn't manage to finish Rosemary and Rue. But I've bounced off everything I've since tried to read by McGuire, including under her various pen names, so I think it's just that her writing doesn't work for me.

[jesusandrew]

Re Seanan McGuire, it might be worth skimming through the subject matter of her different series to see if there's one that appeals to you. I found it easier to latch onto the InCryptid series, which is more "Buffy meets cryptozoology". The first volume of the Wayward Children novella series won a Hugo, so that may also be worth a look. (Always assuming you're interested in giving her a second chance, which is of course up to you.)

[purplecat]

Hmm... I'd say, of this one, that it seems like a rather more dangerous world that is often the case in Urban Fantasy (the worlds are often dangerous but this seems to contain more entrenched and arbitrary power differentials - though that possibly makes sense if you are talking fairies) and our protagonist is definitely more stubborn and difficult than I generally like in characters (but these are very common traits for noir-ish detectives). Overall though, I just don't really see anything that raises this particular urban fantasy novel over the many others in the space.

[purplecat]

I also have a vague project to read through the Hugo winners - though the status of this project is that I've read The Demolished Man and have They'd Rather be Right on my Amazon wish list so it could take me a while to get to McGuire's effort.

[hiddencait]

Seanan McGuire has legit risen to my top ten fave authors between her various series. The October Daye books are just BARELY my fave over the others, though admittedly ROSEMARY AND RUE is a tough starting book for the series considering it sets a very bleak stage for Toby to get her back into the Fae world. As the series progresses though, it gets more delightfully political and twisty turny plot wise, and for real the most recent book was a MASTERCLASS of hints and moments from the previous books turning into a massive payout by the end of that book. I'm super excited for the next one THE UNKINDEST TIDE as the main plot of that one has also been hinted at/foreshadowed off and on. Basically if you can get through the first book and get yourself into the second one, it will start to pick up and draw you deeper and deeper into the world in the best of ways, I think.

[purplecat]

I think it may be growing on me, though it's also moving away from the form of a detective novel - there's a mystery but Toby is putting most of her time into simply staying alive rather than actively investigating.