One-to-two sentence reviews

[snarp]

The Smoke Thief, by Shana Abe

There needs to be an online directory of all the paranormals that confuse "Stockholm's Syndrome" with "romance."

Tea With the Black Dragon, by RA MacAvoy

I envy the alternate universe where this book beat out Anita Blake as the template for paranormal romances. There are still problems with the Orientalist stereotypes over there, but the heroes have good manners and want to be nice, the heroines have a sense of proportion and are sometimes over the age of thirty, they all have lives and appreciate tea and don't flip out over misunderstandings, and the stupid and heroic things they do are in-character and adorable.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by NK Jemisin

If you've been reading a lot of paranormals with gross power dynamics, then this book wants to mess with your head.

Comments

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

It has been a loooooong time since I read Tea With the Black Dragon, but I remember liking it quite a lot.

I picked up The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms on a rec, but when the protagonist encountered a person leading around a god on a leash in the first chapter, I was all in.

[snarp]

1) It is excellent! Go re-read it!

2) I preferred the thing about Sieh and the sun.

[rydra_wong]

If you've been reading a lot of paranormals with gross power dynamics, then this book wants to mess with your head.

AHAHAHAHAyes.

[snarp]

It points the tropes that annoy me in weird directions! It makes me very happy.

[meganbmoore]

Abe is like that.

[snarp]

I kinda actually had to put the book down mid-way through because it was ticking me off too much? I was seriously sitting there thinking that she should wait until the Adorable Urchin grew up and get together with him, which is normally a plot which I try very hard to avoid.

[meganbmoore]

Will their daughter do?

(I actually read her first 2 books recently, but the writeup is trapped on Rue. She works better in the medieval setting, but it doesn't help a lot.)

[gloss]

There needs to be an online directory of all the paranormals that confuse "Stockholm's Syndrome" with "romance."
FOR THE WIN

[snarp]

There would be a bunch of writers for whom you could just list everything they ever wrote.

[chomiji]

The tech aspects of Tea with the Black Dragon haven't aged well, but the story itself has - I still enjoy re-reading it from time to time. Try to find her The Grey Horse: a pukha, strong female characters, romance, and Irish politics in the 19th century.

[snarp]

I will look for it! I was okay with the tech stuff in Tea, except that I kept expecting it to have more significance than it did.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

Ditto recommendation of The Grey Horse. Also look for the Damiano trilogy. It's been just about as long since I read those -- which was not too long after they came out, so, late 80s or so -- but I remember liking them too.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Hmm, now I kind of want to read that second one.

[snarp]

Do it! It's good!