On Monday's outbound commute I finished the audiobook for Even Though I Knew the End. This is a supernatural/fantasy noir romance and it does pack a lot of all three of those things into its brief 4-hour runtime.
This book relies heavily on stock film noir tropes—the veteran down-and-out private (paranormal) investigator (here a lesbian, Helen, our protagonist) who drinks too much and is haunted by past mistakes, a mysterious and sexy female client with a unique case, and "just one last" job before the PI plans to quit and retire with a beloved romantic partner. I didn't find them overused—and seeing them reworked to queer and female characters was fun—but other readers may find them too worn out even here.
Because the book is so short, it moves along at a very rapid pace. The whole thing takes place over the course of two days—the final two days before Helen's soul debt is called due and she finally has to pay the price of her warlock bargain. In this way, any rush felt appropriate, since it fit both the size of the novel and the context of Helen's urgency to get this last job done before she has to pay up.
The characters weren't super developed, but again—4-hour runtime. They're a little stock character-y, but not total cardboard cut-outs. It was disappointing for me to see Helen make the same mistake at the end of the book that she did prior to the start, as if she hadn't really learned anything, but since the novel ends promptly after that, the story never has to reckon much with it.
I was relieved that Edith, Helen's girlfriend, wasn't just the damsel in distress/goal object for Helen, which I was a bit worried about in the beginning. Edith has secrets and goals of her own.
Overall, the book was fine, and it entertained me well enough for a few days. Nothing extraordinary here, but nothing objectionable either. I will say I think keeping it short worked best for this book—I think drawing it out might have only weakened it. A fun little twist on a typical noir novel.
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fffriday
Crossposted to
fffriday Latest commute audiobook: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. This novel is about a woman, Miri, whose wife is a marine biologist, and goes on a submarine expedition for work meant to last three weeks. Six months later, Leah's sub finally resurfaces, but she isn't the same person Miri remembers.
This is another WIN for online queer recs - I thoroughly enjoyed it. I may even buy a copy for myself. There is a horror element to this story—for Miri, our primary narrator, the horror of watching someone you love become something you don't recognize or understand—but mostly Our Wives Under the Sea is a meditation on grief and loss. It is so easy to transform this story into a metaphor for anyone with a loved one who is terminally ill, or missing, or otherwise there, but not there.
( Read more... )
My latest commute audiobook was A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson, a vampire novel that strides along at a brisk 5 hours run time. I have to admit upfront I did not have high hopes for this book. I somewhat warily added it to my TBR list, but I feared tired romantasy tropes that don't hit for me, and that the queerness which had landed it on my radar would turn out to be little more than additional titillation for a straight audience looking for a tale of decadence and indecency. I'm quite pleased to report neither of those concerns came to fruition!
As the title might suggest, there's a level of melodrama in this book you have to accept to enjoy the story. It reminded me in some ways of AMC's Interview with the Vampire in its shameless embrace of all those usual vampiric tropes and in the extravagances of its characters and its prose. Throughout the introduction, I was trying to decide if this was fun, or overwrought. I came down on the side of fun.
The cover bills it as a "vampire revenge story." The premise of The Lost Girls by Sonia Hartl is thus:
16-year-old Holly Liddell, in 1987, allowed the undead Elton to turn her into a vampire because he promised her an eternity together. Thirty years later he dumped her at a Quick Stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma and peeled out. Because Holly was turned at 16, she'll always be 16. While she's busy wallowing in this post-Elton, she's approached by two other girls with a similar story: Elton seduced them with promises of forever love, turned them into vampires, then dumped them when he got bored. And worse: he has his sights on a fourth girl. Reluctantly, Holly agrees to help Rose and Ida kill Elton--but developing feelings for Elton's new target wasn't part of the plan.
Honestly, I did not expect this book to be good, and it wasn't. It was entertaining enough. It will keep you busy if you have nothing else going on. Prose is mediocre, hamfisted where it tries to be poetic, and overexplains things to the reader. The plot moves so fast you rarely have time to take in where the characters are at before they're off to the next thing, and the characters themselves are very flat. Rose and Ida are basically interchangeable and I kept getting them mixed up because they really have no personality outside "the nice one" and "the bitchy one." Elton is comically awful with no redeeming or "human" side to him whatsoever, as are most of the protagonist's victims.
The novel feels very grounded in its publication year, down to a jarring and somewhat incorrect use of the term "gaslighting" by a teenager from 1987. I also cringed at the scene where the three main characters all explain their sexualities to each other. It felt very much like the author desperately grabbing for more representation points by saying "Look! Rose is bi too! Ida is asexual!" even though these things literally never matter within the story except for this one awkward scene.
There are some enjoyable things about it. I still like the idea of the plot even if it was poorly executed. The relationships formed within it and the focus on letting go of your past mistakes and forgiving yourself so you can move forward are nice. I did enjoy the subplot about Holly learning to let go of her anger at her neglectful mother, and the one where she confronts Mr. Stockard--who in her day, was an enthusiastic young high school teacher, but has become a burned out middle-aged man by the present time who's given up on his students.
( Read more... )
Crossposted from my main
16-year-old Holly Liddell, in 1987, allowed the undead Elton to turn her into a vampire because he promised her an eternity together. Thirty years later he dumped her at a Quick Stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma and peeled out. Because Holly was turned at 16, she'll always be 16. While she's busy wallowing in this post-Elton, she's approached by two other girls with a similar story: Elton seduced them with promises of forever love, turned them into vampires, then dumped them when he got bored. And worse: he has his sights on a fourth girl. Reluctantly, Holly agrees to help Rose and Ida kill Elton--but developing feelings for Elton's new target wasn't part of the plan.
Honestly, I did not expect this book to be good, and it wasn't. It was entertaining enough. It will keep you busy if you have nothing else going on. Prose is mediocre, hamfisted where it tries to be poetic, and overexplains things to the reader. The plot moves so fast you rarely have time to take in where the characters are at before they're off to the next thing, and the characters themselves are very flat. Rose and Ida are basically interchangeable and I kept getting them mixed up because they really have no personality outside "the nice one" and "the bitchy one." Elton is comically awful with no redeeming or "human" side to him whatsoever, as are most of the protagonist's victims.
The novel feels very grounded in its publication year, down to a jarring and somewhat incorrect use of the term "gaslighting" by a teenager from 1987. I also cringed at the scene where the three main characters all explain their sexualities to each other. It felt very much like the author desperately grabbing for more representation points by saying "Look! Rose is bi too! Ida is asexual!" even though these things literally never matter within the story except for this one awkward scene.
There are some enjoyable things about it. I still like the idea of the plot even if it was poorly executed. The relationships formed within it and the focus on letting go of your past mistakes and forgiving yourself so you can move forward are nice. I did enjoy the subplot about Holly learning to let go of her anger at her neglectful mother, and the one where she confronts Mr. Stockard--who in her day, was an enthusiastic young high school teacher, but has become a burned out middle-aged man by the present time who's given up on his students.
( Read more... )
Crossposted from my main
(Mostly copypasta from https://archangelbeth.dreamwidth.org/1085355.html -- but hopefully a review here would be more useful to the universe! O:> )
( A steampunk victorian supernatural romance with adventure. )
( A steampunk victorian supernatural romance with adventure. )
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chasethestars
chasethestars