Soulless by Gail Carriger

Soulless by Gail Carriger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Victorian steampunk romance. Like you do.



One of those things I like as long as I don’t think about it too hard. It also probably helped to read it during a week as gut awful as this one (put it this way, when the best thing you can say is “well, it isn’t actually blood coming out of my eye, you need a do-over).



Aaanyway. This is a silly bit of fluff in a tinfoil steampunk wrapper. Vague stabs at a Heyer-like wit and style, with, uh, mixed results. Add a lot of anachronisms, a weirdly unsexy romance, and a vague sense that it’s all not quite as charming as it’s supposed to be, and you’ve got it. It was all saved by the heroine, who is practical to a fault, and then a little extra on top. And also the unusual attention to the romance as a two-sided apparatus, and how these two odd people actually fit together, rather than relying only on the groin shorthand (though there’s a lot of that, too).



…It was a really bad week.





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The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta

The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have finally figured out who Melina Marchetta reminds me of. It took me a while because it’s weird, but she reminds me of Sugar. No, really. I don’t read advice columns, but I often read that one. Which is fitting, since I don’t read many non-speculative young adult books, but I will read anything and everything Marchetta decides to write about. I think the commonality is – it’s hard to explain. My enduring image of them both is of two opened, waiting hands.



This book is relentlessly humane. It starts with Tom, drunk and stoned, taking a dive off a table and landing in the hospital, and also homeless. And then it’s about him and his family and the shattering loss they’re grieving. And trying to rebuild a relationship after an old betrayal. And a group of friends coming back together. It’s a healing book, you know? Where all the very worst things happened before the book started.



And it’s just so relentless. That’s how I felt, reading it, like it was coming through me in this gentle, unstoppable way. This book believes in every word that . . . the big stuff. That we’re all going to be okay. That we deserve to be, every one of us. That it takes time, and it’s hard work, but there is, you know. Hope.



That isn’t something I’ve managed to believe much for the past twelve months. Evidence to the contrary has been somewhat overwhelming. But this book made me. I had no choice about it.



It set me up for a couple hundred pages. And then it gave me a little tap, just the gentlest push, and tipped me over to tears with five words. And I am not what you’d call a crier.



I kind of want to punch her a little, you know? That hurt.



The words were “Yes. A thousand times yes,” by the way.





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Changeless by Gail Carriger

Changeless by Gail Carriger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Wait, I think I just got invested.



. . . Shit.





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