Book 13: Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian

Man, it's always a bummer when you hit the first book by an author you really like that just doesn't work for you. There's so much to like about this story, too, but it's a classic unsuccessful romance novel where the characters spend 90% of the book discussing all of the reasons why their love can never work and you're nodding along the whole time thinking 'yes, they really are in a pickle, how will they resolve this???' and then they get to the end and are like jk who cares about social mores and the realities of the world this story takes place in, love should be enough! And ugh.

The story centers on Robert Selby, the older brother of the beautiful Louisa, who goes to Alistair de Lacey, the Marquess of Pembroke, for assistance in the Ton. The reason he needs this assistance is because Robin is actually Charity Church, a female servant for the Selbys who assumed Robert's identity with his knowledge in order to attend Cambridge and then assumed his identity permanently when he died in order to prevent the estate from being entailed away from Louisa and leaving her destitute. So they're in London in order to find an acceptable match for Louisa.

Alistair is a very straight-laced Marquess who is only interested in restoring his family's good name and financial well-being after his father had long-running affairs and spent too much money too often. He's kind of a Darcy-esque figure who softens and learns valuable lessons about himself when he falls for Selby (whom he calls Robin), first when he thinks he's a man and then for a second time when she confesses that she's a woman. There are all sorts of misunderstandings about Alistair's intentions and the cousin whom Louisa and Charity prevented from inheriting by concealing Selby's death plus an ill-advised elopement attempt and all that, but the main conflict is how can Alistair and Selby aka Charity aka Robin be together given everything?

There are a bunch of different answers to that question that could theoretically work, but for me the one the book goes with doesn't at all. I'm glad that queer historical romances are expanding the idea of what a queer romance can be, and I'm here for happy endings for those characters and an examination of how people lived non-cisgender heterosexual lives back in the day. But the resolution here feels both so ahistorical and out of character for basically everyone in the book that it just reads like utter fantasy. I think a happy ending was possible for Robin and Alistair, but this one wasn't it.

Grade: C

Book 12: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

I read this graphic novel for my book club. It's got a story structure that I enjoy very much and is a good fit for the storytelling flexibility that graphic novels can provide: there are three separate yet connected stories that are being told in alternating chapters, and each of them is compelling on its own but come together in a satisfying way. The first story is a fable about the Monkey King, who loves dinner parties and is rejected from one for being a monkey. So he goes back to his kingdom and does everything he can not to be a monkey, to the point where his actions cause him to lose everything rather than gain everything and he must make a choice and all that.

The second story is the primary story, and it's the one that makes the book read the most like a memoir (which I think it is). It's about a Chinese-American boy named Jin Wang whose family moves from Chinatown in San Francisco to an unnamed very white suburb and struggles to find his way. He has one friend, a boy from Taiwan who blends in even less, and in middle school he develops a crush on a white girl.

The third story is about a white teenager named Danny who has a cousin who visits him from China every year. His cousin is a pretty dramatic and clearly satirical version of a Chinese caricature, and this third tale feels even less strictly realistic than the Monkey King fable.

I really enjoyed this book right up until the end, which didn't quite land for me. It felt very abrupt, and left a number of threads unresolved in ways that weakened the entire book for me. Jin Wang's experiences felt so true to life, and the details of being a child in the eighties in particular were so specific and grounding, that the ending was almost too metaphorical and didn't end up satisfying me as a result. The book as a whole is still worth reading, but I expected it to nail the ending after such a solid build up, and it didn't.

Grade: B 

Book 11: The Henchmen of Zenda by KJ Charles

I spent a lot of time while reading this book attempting to figure out exactly what it is. It's definitely fanfic, in that the story is based on another novel from the late 19th century (The Prisoner of Zenda) only told from a different perspective. But it's also a bit of a backstage comedy, because while the reader's focus is always on the characters and events that the narrator cares about, the "main" story is on the other side of the wall, so to speak. It's also a fanfic that doesn't expect or even require the reader to know the original story at all, the details of which are more or less hand-waved away. There's a bit of the novel The Princess Bride to it, in that the version of the story we're getting is told as being the "good parts" or at the very less the true account of what actually happened, with all the built-in commentary that how a story goes depends almost entirely on who's doing the telling.

So, the story here is that there are these henchmen, and from the outside they're all evil, but we learn through following the tale of Jasper Detchard that most of the henchmen are in fact evil but that he and Rupert von Hentzau in particular are not. They both work for Michael, a Duke and the brother of the future king of Ruritania, and Michael is in fact quite evil. However, both Jasper and Hentzau have other plans in play: Detchard is there at the request of Antoinette de Mauban, Michael's mistress and Detchard's longtime friend. Michael wants the throne, Antoinette wants to escape Michael and find her daughter, Detchard wants to help her do that and escape with his own life, and Hentzau's motives are unclear at the start of the story but are revealed over time. What is never unclear is his interest in Detchard sexually, and the developing relationship between the two of them is entertaining if not particularly passionate.

The book does a pretty compelling job of explaining the actual motives for lots of things that happen in the original story which change how that story is perceived, even for those readers who don't actually know the original story. The one odd thing though is that I as a reader never actually cared what the result of the overall narrative would be, because Jasper clearly survives in this telling since he's the one writing it. It's another way in which it's obviously fanfic, except that it's also a story that doesn't expect anyone to know the original story, so as a result the actual plot to the story is more or less irrelevant. It's cleverly done, and I am somewhat curious about how the original novel told the story, but it never made me fully invested in the tale. I'm always here for gay hi jinx and adventures and things not being what they seem and all that, but I could never quite lose the feeling of being behind the scenes and not in the central narrative, which of course we're not, but it should feel like the main narrative to the characters themselves, at least. It felt like a story that was weighed down a bit too much by its own narrative framing, in the end. I was happy enough while reading it, but it never flowed on its own as a story, for me.

Grade: B  

Book 10: An Unsuitable Heir by K.J. Charles

This is the final book in the Sins of the Cities trilogy, following An Unseen Attraction and An Unnatural Vice. The first book in the series didn't work for me at all, but I enjoyed the second book a a lot. The third book split the difference of the two. Spoilers for the first two books ahead.

In An Unsuitable Heir, we finally meet the titular character, Pen Starling. He and his twin sister Greta are a pair of trapeze artists in a theatre troop, and as far as they know their mother was unmarried when they were born and the three of them were trapped in a terrible religious cult, essentially, until the twins escaped at age 14. They changed their last names and worked together to have a career flying and in general live the sort of bohemian artist life that looks very sexy from the outside but is actually quite fraught and unstable on the inside. The arc of the trilogy starts for them when Mark Braglewicz, a private inquiry agent, finds them because it turns out they're actually the oldest children of a dead earl, which means Pen stands to inherit a title and a whole bunch of money and property. And of course, they don't want it, both because they're trapeze artists and also because Pen is whatever the equivalent of genderqueer would be in that time period, and a future in which he would need to present as male publicly all the time feels unbearable to him.

Meanwhile, Mark is in a difficult spot, because he falls for Pen on first meeting and believes Pen when he tells Mark that he would never want inherit, but a. whether Pen wants it or not, he is legally a Lord, and b. there's a murderer out there determined to not let Pen and Greta inherit, which makes hiding away a bit complicated also. So he's trying to do the right thing, and also kind of making a mess of it, but eventually he and Pen fall in love and there manage to be enough twists and turns to both secure all of their futures while also allowing Pen to continue in his life.

I'm trying to figure out why the novel didn't end up feeling that satisfying to me. Part of it is that even though Pen is one of the central characters in the story, because his main motivation is to somehow avoid having something be true rather than taking action to do something, he ends up feeling oddly passive to me. Plus the story all comes together, but it's a mystery where the reader has been left so far in the dark that there's no way to anticipate any of the big surprises, but the smaller ones feel obvious. And there are a bunch of people from all three books of the trilogy involved, but they still feel quite disconnected from each other, and there are a few too many scenes of people explaining things rather than scenes showing us what happens. The POV doesn't always feel right.

I think this trilogy also suffers quite a bit in comparison with the author's Society of Gentlemen series, which has a similar sort of situation where all of our favorite characters are suddenly in a bind and the reader has no idea how they'll manage to escape but somehow they do and it's a DELIGHT. In that series the great escape is orchestrated and pulled off by the characters themselves. In this trilogy, a situation presents itself and Pen manages to take advantage of it at the last second, but it feels more like the writer figuring out a way to get themselves out of a corner than it does like something that would actually happen.

All of this also connects to one of my other issues with the book, which is that there are times when Pen's gender identity feels, to me, like it exists to provide the character with a Good Reason for why he's so opposed to being an Earl. I understand and believe that society wouldn't look kindly on these two trapeze artists who are suddenly elevated because it turns out their father was a bigamist and all that. But there's a very modern viewpoint from both Pen and Mark when they assert, with fairly limited effort, that of course it would be too much to expect Pen to live publicly as a man all the time. It ends up feeling both anachronistic and very unreasonable of the characters, which is a shitty way to feel about a character's (or person's) gender identity, but I kept thinking that the only reason there is to feel like Pen's refusal to be the Earl is at all understandable is because of his gender identity, which makes it feel like a plot point rather than who he is as a character.

It wasn't a bad book, and I definitely kept reading it because I wanted to know how it would all end up working out, but it didn't quite come together the way I was hoping it would.

Grade: B


  

Book 9: The Omega Learns a Lesson by Dessa Lux

This is a short story sequel to The Omega's Pack, and it’s basically exactly what I want from a short story in an existing romance series. There’s a conflict between the main pairing that’s real and fits into the overall narrative well, but it’s not a novel or even novella length conflict, and as a result this is the perfect bite sized treat for the reader.

Sam hasn't come home from the office in two nights, and Rusty needs to figure out what's wrong and how to get him to come back to the pack. He approaches the situation as basically a mission, and goes to the office ready to reassert his role as Sam's alpha, and to make sure that Sam knows he's loved and safe and secure. The story does a really good job of balancing the appeal of a wolf-style relationship, where words are unnecessary because emotions can be expressed through physical displays of dominance and submission and all that, with the reader's need to know that Sam and Rusty do actually want the same things, and that this is a functional situation for both of it. That can be a very tricky line to walk in this kind of story, and the author does a really nice job of grounding the relationship while also giving the reader the kind of over the top alpha/omega dynamic that you want in a story and universe like this. Sam is struggling on his own, so Rusty makes sure he knows he's not alone, and then he and his pack reassert their claim on Sam and everyone is happy again. The ideal lesson to learn, really.

Grade: B

Book 8: Nor Iron Bars a Cage by Kaje Harper

This is one of those books that I've had for...years with little to no recollection of why, exactly, but I figured that now was the time to read it because why not.

It's set in a vaguely medieval world were sorcery and conjuring still happen, but most of the strength and lore of their magic has been lost. Our POV character is Lyon, who had been a sorcerer but then his former teacher got possessed by a wraith and then it spent months attempting to possess Lyon, until he burned off the brand on his wrist and managed to kill his teacher and the wraith in a massive fire. Fifteen years later, he's a translator and hermit who still suffers from nightmares and can't deal with being around too many people, living in a small village far away from everything. And our story begins when his closest childhood friend Tobin is sent to the village by the king to fetch this master translator on an urgent matter and discovers that Lyon is still alive.

After a bit of back and forth, Tobin manages to convince Lyon to come back with him, and the rest of the story is one part trauma recovery as Lyon attempts to reintegrate into the world and one part 'you need to do this magic thing to save the entire kingdom.' Lyon is absolutely deadset against ever communicating with something that isn't living again, after his experience with the wraith, and so when it turns out that the kingdom's survival depends upon mind-linking with a ghost, it becomes obvious to the reader far before it does to the characters that Lyon is going to overcome this trauma in order to save the world. Which is all fine, but there's not much tension or suspense there.

The same is true for Lyon and Tobin. They confirm that both of them are gay within the first chapter of their reunion, and for the rest of the book the only tension between them is whether Lyon will sufficiently recover from his trauma in order to be able to fully love, etc. But there's never any question that he will, because Tobin as a character is so grateful to have him back at all that whatever level of recovery Lyon reaches, Tobin will be happy to meet him there. Which on the one hand is lovely! Recovering from trauma doesn't mean suddenly behaving the way you did prior to the trauma again! But from a narrative standpoint it meant that there's very little there in the way of conflict within the main relationship of the book. 

All in all, I found this story a very readable one, and I did want to know how it would get to the ending that was never in doubt, but it wasn't quite developed enough as either a fantasy book or as a romance, for me.

Grade: B

Book 7: The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

This was one of those books where I knew nothing about it or the author, but I found the cover really compelling and it had a blurb from one of my favorite authors and I love fairy tale retellings and when contemporary urban fantasy works for me, it really works for me. So I gave it a shot, and it ended up being one of those books that I was uncertain about for the first 95% of it, but the final chapter somehow managed to pull it off.

Alice and her mother are basically a mother-teenage daughter version of Sam and Dean from Supernatural, constantly moving from place to place and never putting down roots. But instead of hunting demons, they’re running from them, of course. The demons or monsters or darkness seem to originate from Alice’s grandmother’s estate, the Hazel Wood, and as soon as something Very Bad happens to wherever they’re living, they pack up and flee for the next life. They’re also running from the legacy of Alice’s grandmother, who wrote one book of fairy tales and then became a hermit on her estate, a sort of old Hollywood Grey Gardens situation. The book of fairy tales is clearly also related to the darkness, because Alice’s mother forbids her from reading it or even having a copy, and there’s an obsessive internet fanbase devoted to both the book and the stories behind it. The novel starts with them in New York, where Alice’s mother has gotten married and so Alice has, rather than an evil stepmother, a fairly evil and rich stepfather and stepsister. But the story really starts when Alice's mother is kidnapped by the Hinterland, i.e. the setting of Alice's grandmother's book of fairy tales, and Alice needs to rely upon the help of her classmate Ellery, who's one of the internet superfans, to help her get to the Hazel Wood and figure all this out.

The book is set up to be a mystery, and it is, but it also exists in this weird world where things are clearly a bit bonkers in general and that’s not really commented upon. Alice isn't a real girl, and Alice's stepsister and stepfather aren't real in that way that exceedingly rich people aren't real, and Ellery also exists in that world of wealth, too. But the characters are supposed to believe that they don't live in a world where supernatural or fairy tale stuff really exist, and none of that actually makes any sense. The book has a tone and a place issue at times; it was very unclear to me just how off their universe is supposed to be from ours, and I found it a bit difficult to get invested in as a result. The revelation about who and what Alice is should be more of a shock, and instead it feels like it's the only thing that would actually make any sense, and I still didn't actually fully care about anyone because no one feels real.

Having said all that, I was surprised at how much the ending did actually affect me, given how neutral I had felt about the story for most of the book. I was prepared to be righteously grumpy about it, and then it managed to both wrap everything up very quickly, and do so in a way that felt satisfying and narratively correct, and there's something really lovely about discovering that the weird pacing of a book is intentional and pays off in the end, rather than it being a flaw that hadn't been corrected in the editing stage. Overall, I'm glad I read it.

Grade: B