What I #AmReading – Faithful Place, Tana French

Faithful Place is a third time reread for me. I picked it up a couple weeks for two reasons. First, events in the life of me had conspired to make me feel excessively picky when it came to book-reading, and it was either read something I loved or don’t read anything at all. Second, French has another novel coming out in late July. It’s another Dublin Murder Squad novel, the protagonist is Scorcher Kennedy, and it’s called Broken Harbor.

The first time I read Faithful Place it was to find out what happened to a girl named Rosie Daly. For plot, in other words, and one of the things I love about French is she sets up developments I didn’t see coming, reveals that blow my mind and make perfect sense. She plays fair.

The second time, it was just to roll around in her beautiful writing style while seeing how she’d directed my attention to and yet not too close to the important stuff.

This time, though the novel was every bit as wonderful, it held no surprises. It was a bit like wearing a beloved and attractive garment that just isn’t new anymore. It was comfortable and satisfying, but a bit of the shine had come off. But it’s got me entirely psyched for Broken Harbor; Scorcher’s a pretty minor character in the previous book, and getting reacquainted with him before embarking on the new book has heightened my excitement.

Tick tick tick, Tana. I love what you do, and a book a year is awesome, but it’s nevertheless hard not to wish you wrote even faster.

Cover here:

And, as usual,
Previously read in 2012
BOOKS
1. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2. Among Others, by Jo Walton
3. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester
4. Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter
5. Kat, Incorrigible (Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson), by Stephanie Burgis
6. Remote, by Donn Cortez
7.The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet
8. one awesome draft novel by a dear friend
9. Property of A Lady, by Sarah Rayne
10. Hark! A Vagrant, by Kate Beaton
11. Black Blade Blues, by J.A. Pitts

Rereads
1. Faithful Place

Black Blade Blues by J.A. Pitts ( #amreading )

J.A. Pitts and I have been on panels together at events like Norwescon, but until recently I wouldn’t have said we really know each other. But all that’s changing: Tor is sending us to San Francisco for a Pride-themed reading at Borderlands Books on June 23rd at 3:00 p.m. Anyone from that general vicinity is emphatically invited… come one, come all! We promise fun.

Not surprisingly, the two of us decided to get better acquainted, which means I’ve just finished reading Black Blade Blues, the first book in his series about a newly-out lesbian who’s also a blacksmith. It’s set in the here and now. Sarah Beauhall is a sword-wielding member of the SCA (like me, she favors Doc Martens footwear*, though hers aren’t covered in flowers as far as I know) and she’s fallen for a lovely bard named Katie.

(*Here’s Sarah, with a boot showing, on a book cover:)

(Whereas here is the flavor of my Docs, but without grime)
If my boots were clean and new they'd look like this.... (for @sandraoldfield )

Okay! Tangents aside, I don’t want to share too much of the Black Blade story, because I hope some of you will pick it up for yourselves. But it all gets rolling when Sarah reforges a busted sword that turns out to be magical. Her fate gets entangled with that of the sword, and this leads her down a monster-packed and delightfully (if you’re me) violent road.

About a week before I began Black Blade Blues, another reader told me she’d been unhappy with it, and Sarah specifically, because she’s incredibly hung up. Her big non-monster conflict is with internalized homophobia; she’s from an uptight religious background, and hasn’t dealt with it. She hasn’t had a girlfriend before, certainly isn’t out.

That first big process of coming out happened, for me, a long time ago. But much as the world has improved since I was a twenty-something in love, there are plenty of queers coming out of rabidly homophobic homes and carrying all the baggage that brings. Do I actively seek out those stories? No, not really. Do I think this novel did a good job with the material? Yes, I really do. It’s a cool book.

But I’ve no idea how I’d have felt about the novel if I hadn’t been braced for that particular story element. Sarah’s catastrophic fucking up didn’t ring false for me, but I was always watching, to see if it would. This in a nutshell is why I’m spoilerphobic.

Anyway, I recommend BBB, and if you like it there are two more Sarah Beauhall books: Honeyed Words and the upcoming Forged in Fire, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens as she casts away some of that baggage and continues to get her warrior on.

And, as usual,
Previously read in 2012
BOOKS
1. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2. Among Others, by Jo Walton
3. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester
4. Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter
5. Kat, Incorrigible (Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson), by Stephanie Burgis
6. Remote, by Donn Cortez
7.The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet
8. one awesome draft novel by a dear friend
9. Property of A Lady, by Sarah Rayne
10. Hark! A Vagrant, by Kate Beaton
11. Black Blade Blues, by J.A. Pitts

Is Was #AmReading Caitlin Sweet – The Pattern Scars

Technically, that should be wasreading, but so it goes.

The Pattern Scars is black as pitch. It’s harsh, folks. And inventive, and beautifully written, and full of strength, sadness, beauty, and terror. It’s not a cozy bedtime story; it’s campfires in the haunted woods stuff. I really enjoyed it.

It’s also up for an Aurora. If you’re gonna vote, have a look at this book.

I had to reconstruct the books so far list of this year, because of the overall crazy-busy that’s been going on here, but I think this is all the novels. I’ll have a look for the short stories again soon and add them back in.


Previously read in 2012
BOOKS
1. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2. Among Others, by Jo Walton
3. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester
4. Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter
5. Kat, Incorrigible (Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson), by Stephanie Burgis
6. Remote, by Donn Cortez
6.The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet

And also I #amreading some things…

Many many things. I finished Remote awhile ago–as I am greedy, I found myself telling Donn Cortez I wished it had gone on longer–and I’ve joined Pinterest but haven’t really figured it out yet.
I’ve also read a novella James Patrick Kelly kindly sent me, “Men are Trouble“. This came about because I was writing an article about gender in SF and fantasy, and trying to remember the title of his short story, “Lovestory.” So, in that way we all have now I’d thrown a query out to the Twitternets and had an answer, from Jim himself, in 24 hours. We got to talking about gender and science fiction and he mentioned his other gender stuff, in particular this novella.
So. “Men are Trouble.” It’s a near-future hardboiled detective story. There are aliens in it, aliens who–it’s apparent early on–came to Earth to help humanity pull itself out of the environmental and economic hole we’re currently digging ourselves into. And who, as part of their tough love program, disappeared every single man in the world. Jim wanted to know what I thought, and I’m sure he’d be interested in your reaction, too.
What did I think? The obvious effect of removing the male sex from the population, in this story, certainly isn’t to disappear human conflict or power struggles. It brings a couple things into the light: intergenerational friction between women, and the aliens’ failure to understand that simply wiping out guys (and, presumably, transwomen) isn’t the answer. The story and the culture he creates is very true to human behavior.
It’s a terrific story, and I’m still thinking about it a week later.
I also couldn’t help but compare it to James Alan Gardner’s “A Clean Sweep with All the Trimmings,” which is also feminist in its sensibility and a hardboiled. And, just a little, to my favorite hardboiled ever, Nicola Griffith’s Aud series which opens with Blue Place. The trio makes me wonder what it is about the hard-boiled that makes it such a good lens for stories about gender inequality. Or are all genres equally good for this, and it’s just that I’ve been exposed to these three excellent examples.
Changing pace, I’ve moved on to Caitlin Sweet’s The Pattern Scars, which is lovely and dark and intriguing, and which is also on the Prix Aurora Ballot, by the way. It’s beautifully put together on a sentence-by-sentence level and is well worth close attention.