A Taste of Crimson by Marjorie M. Liu

[firecat]

This book is the second of the multi-author Crimson City series created by Liz Maverick. I listened to the unabridged audiobook, narrated by Rebecca Rogers.

In this urban paranormal romance, vampires and werewolves are barely tolerated second-class citizens in a city run by humans. They are negotiating an alliance, but it's difficult since they hate each other so much. A young werewolf -- the granddaughter of the Grand Dame Alpha, the leader of the werewolves -- and an outcast vampire executioner-for-hire are assigned to solve a series of vampire murders. They fall in love, which is forbidden by all the norms of both of their clans.

This is the first paranormal romance I've read (except for the Anita Blake series), and the first book by Liu. So I'm not sure how many of its quirks are quirks of the genre itself, vs. quirks of this author. I found it odd that the vampires heat up bags of blood in the microwave and buy sunblock at the local drugstore when they want to go out during the daytime. And that the werewolves obligingly chain themselves to the bedposts during the full moon so they won't rampage through the city killing everything in sight. (Who lets them out of their chains?) But these oddities didn't stop me from finding the book entertaining.

I like that money and class are part of the story, although I didn't think it was adequately explained why the vampire protagonist was poor. (In other words, I suspected him of being poor so the reader would like him.)

I was worried that I would find the romantic relationship awful, but I didn't - the characters are well matched and they treat each other as equals for the most part. I have a bit of an aversion to romances that turn around "We met each other 24 hours ago, but we are in True Love and Will Always Be Together No Matter What." But that's probably just how the genre works.

There's a subtle undercurrent of gender-play in the book, not only with the main protagonists (who are somewhat gender-reversed - she is more kickass and he is more gentle) but also with some other characters. It is nice to have a female protagonist who wears striped tights and has pink hair, instead of the traditional beautiful leggy blonde with boobs out to there.

( nitpicking and spoilers )

Folks who have read other Liu, do the books in her own series feel different to you than this one, which is set in another writer's series?

Walter Dean Myers, Nalo Hopkinson, Lavanya Sankaran

[glitter-femme.livejournal.com]

I seem to have moved from watching the community and adding everything that looks interesting to my library list, to counting and posting. Hi, everyone! There's no way I'm going to read fifty books total this year, even if my reading list is shaping up to be mostly authors of color, but I'll certainly keep track and be more conscious of who's getting my attention. And even so far, that's been awesome.

1. Walter Dean Myers, The Legend of Tarik
I read this because of a recommendation here (and here's another), and they do a far better job of it than I will at this hour. It's a classic fantasy quest novel, complete with mini-quests first to obtain the magical items that will help the hero on said quest; except that he's black, and African, and that colors everything about the story. His quest is to kill the warlord who killed his father and brother and had him sold into slavery, and that brings a lot of complexity and depth that kill-the-dragon-rescue-the-maiden novels don't often have. I agree with the previous reviewers that I thoroughly enjoyed this even though I'm kinda over the quest subgenre of fantasy at this point. And I'm as thrilled as annwfyn that the grief-stricken young woman who joins Tarik on his journey doesn't magically heal with a kiss.

2. Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads
This one is cross-posted from my blog on bisexuality and so is much longer. ( So let's just put it behind a cut, shall we? )

Other reviews on this community: here and here.

3. Lavanya Sankaran, The Red Carpet: Bangalore Stories
This one was also from a rec here.It's a beautiful collection of short stories set in Bangalore. The stories are somewhat linked by common characters, but only enough to show you that they're all happening in the same time period. They're quick, lovely stories. The overarching themes seem to be about how Bangalore's rapid modernization has set the traditional values of the older generation (and, to an extent, the poor) somewhat against the global sophistication of the city's new breed of young professionals, but the stories address everything from men taking credit for their female coworkers' work to the effect of a father's suicide on a family, a girl's contentious relationship with her ayah (nanny? Is that close enough?) to mothers matchmaking for their children. My favorite passage is from the thoughts of a chauffeur, appalled by his employers' lack of traditional values, who nonetheless finds himself sympathizing with her when her nagging mother-in-law turns out to be his father's old employer, whom he met in childhood and loathed:

Raju glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her eyes filling with uncontrollable tears. And though Mother-in-law Choudhary's words expressed his sentiments exactly, at that moment, all he wanted to say was: please don't be upset by that woman -- she's awful, I know, but she shrinks with time.

Humming Whispers, by Angela Johnson. 20.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

A touching YA novel about Sophy, a fourteen-year-old dancer, and her older sister Nicole, who is schizophrenic. Nicole's illness emerged when she was fourteen, and Sophy is terrified that she too will have her life swept away by mental illness.

Johnson's delicate touch with serious subjects is evident, but this novel doesn't reach the transcendant heights of The First Part Last (which I highly recommend); it's more of a well-characterized, well-written problem novel. Unusually for the genre, I didn't find it depressing, though now I'm not sure why since not only does Nicole not get cured or even have her illness better-managed, but someone else randomly suffers a stroke! I guess Johnson's genuine hope for better things and sense of ordinary joys shines through.

Click here to buy it from Amazon: Humming Whispers (Black Apples)

4-6: Sherman Alexie, Ntozake Shange

[hapex-legomena.livejournal.com]

Alexie, Sherman. Flight.

in short: Flight chronicles the (very literal) spiritual journey of a half-Indian boy, Zits, struggling through the foster care system.
( more )



Shange, Ntozake. for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf.

in short: A highly successful choreopoem from the '70s, Shange's most well-known work focuses on the lives, loves, and tragedies of Afican-American women.

( more )



Shange, Ntozake. nappy edges.

in short: When one opens nappy edges to the title page, a good thing to notice is that the title of this book of poetry is footnoted with a four line poem. Shange says about nappy edges:

the roots of your hair/ what
what turns back when we sweat, run,
make love, dance, get afraid, get
happy: the tell-tale sign of living/

which is a far more eloquent and concise summary of this book of poems than any I could give.

( more )

Mishima Yukio -- Confessions of a Mask

[jain]

3. Mishima Yukio, Confessions of a Mask

This felt like a very familiar book to me, as someone who's read a number of introspective, first-person narrations with gay main characters (though few of those included the sadomasochistic elements that characterize this book). Additionally, and to the lessening of my own enjoyment of the book, the ending was less a conclusion than it was a stopping point.

The depiction of Japan during WWII is perceptive and affecting, however, and the writing style very clean. While I think some of Mishima's later works are more brilliant, this is still a novel worth reading.

A reccomendation.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

A different booklist is a bookstore that features loads of very diverse reading material by poc.