lightreads

The Grief of Stones

3+/5. Sequel to Witness for the Dead. Our protagonist continues investigating small and large mysteries in his fantasy city, acquires an apprentice, and might even have an emotion.

Consider this an exercise in subjectivity. I thought the prequel was fine, but complained about how the protagonist was so emotionally locked down that he seemed to barely exist at times, and how there was only the most microscopic change to that, and it wasn’t satisfying. I picked this book up out of a sense of completionism, but at least in part expecting to wash my hands of the series.

And actually? This book is very similar to the first, except it landed much better this time. Granted, our protagonist is beginning to, in the tiniest ways, engage in his community, and he might even acknowledge that he has feelings once in a while, so there is an arc here. It’s just an incredibly slow one – there’s a point where something spiritually violent happens to him, and he is so incapable of talking about his own pain that what he says of it is brief and oblique to the point of throwing me out of the book in confusion about WTF had actually happened. So there’s still a lot of that. But I actually believe now that she’s going somewhere with this.

But it’s still quite a similar book, to be fair, and this time I liked it more. That’s how it is sometimes.

Content notes: All sorts of death and loss via the mysteries, including stillbirth, murder, suicide, betrayal, maternal mortality. Also sexual exploitation of minors.

The Angel of the Crows

3/5. Genderqueer Sherlock historical wingfic, subgenre angels, that eventually becomes Holmes canon wingfic, subgenre angels, also werewolves, vampires, hellhounds, and Jack-the-Ripper.

I care very little for Holmes-related everything, but did enjoy this to a point. That point comes when I start asking okay….but why does this cost $28 while nearly everyone else is posting theirs for free on the AO3? It should not be a surprise to anyone that there are multiple kinds of privilege at work in who gets to sell their fanfiction and who doesn't. AT least it’s a woman who gets to do it this time, which makes a nice change. And it's not like – hm. I always twitch a bit through these arguments, because it's not like getting paid is the same as selling out, and it's not like there's some automatic virtue in participating in the fanfic gift community, but it's hard to have these conversations about who gets paid without assigning a lot of moral valence to one path or another. (And don't even get me started on the tumblr contingent who think all art should be free always and being charged ever for anything they enjoy is class warfare. Lol okay, child, you institute a system where no artists get paid and then we can talk about class warfare).

But . . . I'm trying to put my finger on something here. There is something about the wall-to-wall indulgence of this book, how it is clearly stuffed full of all the loosely-related things the author likes at the expense of things like a through line and pacing, which makes it feel particularly like fanfic even when it isn't lifting scenes wholesale from Sherlock. And even when it isn't lifting scenes wholesale and is off sort of doing its own thing – which it does, a bit, with the Sherlock character in particular – it has a density of reference that goes past charming into something else. Like the almost entirely offscreen character named for a Sayers character. And there's something about the fanfictionness of this whole thing and the fact that it is for sale that turns the density of references from charming into . . . cliquish? More like in-jokes than easter eggs. A thing that keeps people out rather than a thing that invites them further in, because it costs $28. IDK.

So does this totally belong on the AO3? Yep. Does the author deserve to get paid for it? Sure. Do I have complicated feelings about the intersection of those facts? Yeah.