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R&B does not stand for Radio & Books
I got rickrolled by the fucking radio today. Not cool, oldies station. Not cool at all.
*****
Even since I moved (did I mention that here? Oh, yeah, I moved into a sublet in a house in north Austin. It's super adorable, pictures will happen eventually), I've been reading like a fiend. My roommate has GoogleTV and lets me use it, so I have Netflix and internet streaming but no live TV, plus moving always reminds me of all my favorite books I haven't read in forever. So I reread a lot of things and a few new ones. My incredibly deep thoughts on the latter:
The Serpent Sea, by Martha Wells
I literally read the opening paragraph, LOL'd and said, "Oh Moon, I *missed* you". The lines were: "Moon had been consort to Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, for eleven days and nobody had tried to kill him yet. He thought it was going well so far." ♥
The mountain-trees really hit my treehouse obsession hard. I want one! (Oh, Swiss Family Robinson, you ruined me for actual houses forever.) But in all seriousness, I loved the sequence where they find and explore the colony. I was sitting outside and everything smelled green, and I could just see the forest spreading out in front of me with the branch platforms and tree-waterfalls and the green-lit hush.
...And the flying frogs. (also want one!) *g*
I'm not the only person who thought Moon had a tiny lust-crush on Shadow, right? All that commentary on his charisma and beauty was practically gushing, for Moon, especially since he was quietly freaking out at the same time. Oh, Moon. Your life is not like other people's lives. No one else saves the day by getting breathed in by a leviathan and bashing someone on the head with a kettle mid-deathmatch with your BAMF lady-love. ♥
This is probably just because I've been bookmarking old SGA fic, but I would love to see Moon and John Sheppard trapped in a room together. They wouldn't get along, precisely, but they would have a lot of emotional issues in common and it would be unintentionally, terribly, deeply hilarious. (also, John would be mad jealous of Moon's wings, y/y?)
On a more serious note, I did love Moon's character arc coming full circle in this one, coming to terms with being a leader and having a home where he can stay and a community that (mostly) accepts him. I loved every scene he had with Stone, and their fight. I would have liked more resolution on that, actually, but cannot imagine them willingly talking about it any more than they do in the book, bless their monosyllabic hearts. (also, for some reason I started picturing Stone's groundling form as David Carradine in this book and the mental image will not leave.) I'm intrigued to see more of Chime's story as he reconciles his transformation (which now that I think about it, was technically a genderswap, hah. Oh fandom, you ruin me for interacting with the rest of the world.) and matures a bit. His continued adorable friendship with Moon is good for that, and less cheerfully, Flower's death, which was an unpleasant shock. Martha continues to use magical rotting zombies in horrifyingly effective ways, and the worldbuilding continues to rock. *happy sigh* Basically, I enjoyed the heck out of it, and cannot wait to read the third book. (whoo, now officially titled The Siren Depths, coming January 2013!)
The Hunger Games Trilogy
I'm still working through my feelings and issues with this series. I did love it, in many ways. I blasted through the entire series in two days, and Katniss was complex and devious and tough, and I love me some gladiatorial deathmatchs, but.... Katniss became progressively more ill and isolated and *used* as the books went on, and though she fought for her agency, very little came of it. Her biggest personal victories were the tiniest of things, and usually undercut themselves: the berries, the visit to the hospital, getting immunity for the other victors. I don't know. There were some amazing analogies about class privilege and media culture, but it was so utterly bleak, and I didn't believe either Peeta or Gale really understood Katniss at all so I didn't buy the romance. The epilogue felt very pasted on and undeveloped (children? TWO of them? I don't buy it.)
Basically, I want to rewrite the last two books to be less crushingly depressing and mostly pointless. Yeah, you can argue that Collins is making a point about war and violence's effect on young people, but I already read Tomorrow When The War Began and you can make that point much better and with more subtlety. I wish that instead of going back in the arena in the second book, she had gone back as a mentor for the Quell. Instead of rinse-repeat only-one-can-survive angst and Katniss deciding to martyr herself *again* ARGH, we would have gotten huge insight into the Capital. Katniss would have learned a great deal about herself and how to use the media and Cinna (my favorite) probably would have survived, which would have set up the third book and her role as Mockingjay in a completely different way. Anyway. Yuletide request, maybe? We'll see.
*****
Even since I moved (did I mention that here? Oh, yeah, I moved into a sublet in a house in north Austin. It's super adorable, pictures will happen eventually), I've been reading like a fiend. My roommate has GoogleTV and lets me use it, so I have Netflix and internet streaming but no live TV, plus moving always reminds me of all my favorite books I haven't read in forever. So I reread a lot of things and a few new ones. My incredibly deep thoughts on the latter:
The Serpent Sea, by Martha Wells
I literally read the opening paragraph, LOL'd and said, "Oh Moon, I *missed* you". The lines were: "Moon had been consort to Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, for eleven days and nobody had tried to kill him yet. He thought it was going well so far." ♥
The mountain-trees really hit my treehouse obsession hard. I want one! (Oh, Swiss Family Robinson, you ruined me for actual houses forever.) But in all seriousness, I loved the sequence where they find and explore the colony. I was sitting outside and everything smelled green, and I could just see the forest spreading out in front of me with the branch platforms and tree-waterfalls and the green-lit hush.
...And the flying frogs. (also want one!) *g*
I'm not the only person who thought Moon had a tiny lust-crush on Shadow, right? All that commentary on his charisma and beauty was practically gushing, for Moon, especially since he was quietly freaking out at the same time. Oh, Moon. Your life is not like other people's lives. No one else saves the day by getting breathed in by a leviathan and bashing someone on the head with a kettle mid-deathmatch with your BAMF lady-love. ♥
This is probably just because I've been bookmarking old SGA fic, but I would love to see Moon and John Sheppard trapped in a room together. They wouldn't get along, precisely, but they would have a lot of emotional issues in common and it would be unintentionally, terribly, deeply hilarious. (also, John would be mad jealous of Moon's wings, y/y?)
On a more serious note, I did love Moon's character arc coming full circle in this one, coming to terms with being a leader and having a home where he can stay and a community that (mostly) accepts him. I loved every scene he had with Stone, and their fight. I would have liked more resolution on that, actually, but cannot imagine them willingly talking about it any more than they do in the book, bless their monosyllabic hearts. (also, for some reason I started picturing Stone's groundling form as David Carradine in this book and the mental image will not leave.) I'm intrigued to see more of Chime's story as he reconciles his transformation (which now that I think about it, was technically a genderswap, hah. Oh fandom, you ruin me for interacting with the rest of the world.) and matures a bit. His continued adorable friendship with Moon is good for that, and less cheerfully, Flower's death, which was an unpleasant shock. Martha continues to use magical rotting zombies in horrifyingly effective ways, and the worldbuilding continues to rock. *happy sigh* Basically, I enjoyed the heck out of it, and cannot wait to read the third book. (whoo, now officially titled The Siren Depths, coming January 2013!)
The Hunger Games Trilogy
I'm still working through my feelings and issues with this series. I did love it, in many ways. I blasted through the entire series in two days, and Katniss was complex and devious and tough, and I love me some gladiatorial deathmatchs, but.... Katniss became progressively more ill and isolated and *used* as the books went on, and though she fought for her agency, very little came of it. Her biggest personal victories were the tiniest of things, and usually undercut themselves: the berries, the visit to the hospital, getting immunity for the other victors. I don't know. There were some amazing analogies about class privilege and media culture, but it was so utterly bleak, and I didn't believe either Peeta or Gale really understood Katniss at all so I didn't buy the romance. The epilogue felt very pasted on and undeveloped (children? TWO of them? I don't buy it.)
Basically, I want to rewrite the last two books to be less crushingly depressing and mostly pointless. Yeah, you can argue that Collins is making a point about war and violence's effect on young people, but I already read Tomorrow When The War Began and you can make that point much better and with more subtlety. I wish that instead of going back in the arena in the second book, she had gone back as a mentor for the Quell. Instead of rinse-repeat only-one-can-survive angst and Katniss deciding to martyr herself *again* ARGH, we would have gotten huge insight into the Capital. Katniss would have learned a great deal about herself and how to use the media and Cinna (my favorite) probably would have survived, which would have set up the third book and her role as Mockingjay in a completely different way. Anyway. Yuletide request, maybe? We'll see.