Squee!
These comments will be spoiler-free, since I know many people don't have this book yet. Also, I just finished it around 10:30 pm last night, so my intellectual thoughts have not had time to settle in and make sense. But that's isn't the important part. This is the important part:
Squee! Bounce!
Umm. What else? Well, go buy this. It's a hardcover. Buy it anyway. I said so.
There is Angst. There is Felix, Big Gay Angsty Crazy Guy. There is Mildmay, Sweet Scarred Angsty Cursed Guy. I followed their travails with bated breath. There is the fabulous city of Mélusine with its spires and rooftops and castle and red-light districts and havens of magic. There is pain and suffering and betrayal and people finding each other. The people are complex. They grow and change and sometimes you're not sure what's true and what's hallucination. There's a world.
I tried to make it last. Alas, the book ended. But this book is good enough to read over again.
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oracne- oracne - Victoria Janssen
- Victoria Janssen
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I just had Giovanni's Room order me a copy. If I like it (very likely based on Sarah's other work), I'll handsell it to all the patrons and staff.
There are straight people in it, too--it just happens one of the main characters is gay.
It seems like the vast majority of queer fantasy, at least with gay male characters, are female. I'd hazard 80%.
The question I have always wondered is this because the publishers are only receiving good quality work from women or because the editors like the characterization women do of gay men better than that of gay male writers'
Nightrunner books are Lynn Flewelling, who wrote THE BONE DOLL'S TWIN--did you ever read that? It was cool and I think you might like it.
If you do read it, have the second one at hand, because there's a cliffhanger ending. (I might still have these--will check.)
Which is not a bad think.
Also, for the list, Herewiss & Freelorn, my favorite fictional couple--Diane Duane's Door Into books. One every damn decade, if we need it or not.
I've wondered if the mainstream speculative publishing industry still tends to think of its audience as primarily male, and believes that:
males aren't as likely to read female authors
males are more likely to object to queer elements in their spec fiction
female readers are more likely to read female authors
female readers will be more accepting (if not in fact eager for) more queer elements
and therefore it might be easier for female authors to successfully publish more textually queer material?
I am sure that's a shocker.
It sounds great even without that character though!
Incidentally, remembered potluck on 30th I promised to attend--are you and the sturgeon going?
I like them already!
Also, I read the prologue in June, when