Reading Wednesday
Nov. 25th, 2020 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: His Magical Pet, Rachel Manija Brown, Laurie French, and Layla Lawlor (ed.).
This was fun! I liked the f/f one more, and I'm trying to pin down why. I think it's because the characters in that seemed a bit more fully developed, whereas this was like, "he's hot, he's also hot, whoops now they're in love." The standout to me was Tate Hallaway's story about supervillains adopting a cat, and I'm not just saying that because she's my friend and a rad person. But that was the only one where I really got a sense of personality from the characters. Also it was funny as fuck.
But in general I enjoyed it. Like Her Magical Pet, it's exactly what it says on the package, and I'm here for that.
(Also! Apologies for a lack of clarity on who the editors were on the last few posts: Apparently all three of them edited both books, which was not super clear from the Amazon listing that I googled.)
Currently reading: The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside.armiphlage was lovely and sent me a copy, correcting deducing that it was, as the kids say, My Jam.
Whooooo boy I have never wanted to edit a book so badly in my life* but also I'm really into it??? And because I'm really into it, I want it to be more polished than it is.
It's about a post-apocalyptic America overrun by zombies and vampires, and oh yeah there are fascists and communists and anarchists fighting it out. Into the fray are our two heroines, both trans lesbians: Mags, a political commissar from the communist-run region, and Jules, a recent defect from the fascists. They get word of a stash of exciting tech in the Citadel, a.k.a. Washington, DC, and travel across a ravaged America to get to it before the Nazis do.
The author knows her shit. She's apparently a former soldier and a former white supremacist and is now a Wobbly, and both the military stuff and the political stuff ring true, with a level of detail I generally don't expect from genre fiction. No coy The Rebellion(TM) fights for Freedom(TM) here, but actual, nuanced debates about economic and government structures. She even references my favourite meme. Most genre writers—and dystopian writers are among the worst—get politics and the military wrong, and granted I don't know much about the latter, but she definitely gets the former right and makes the latter sound right.
But it's a mess. I think it must have been self-published because I don't think a publisher would have looked at a first novel the size of a cinder block and said, "cool, let's do it." It could be about half as long. For example, we get the story of Mags slitting a fascist's throat twice in two chapters. Yes, it's a cool story, but we don't need it twice. It's things like that, which a half-decent copy editor would fix, that make me grudgingly accept the trad publishing industry, gatekeepers and all, even though no publisher has offered me a book deal goddamn it.
Speaking of my book, her writing has a lot of the problems that I see in my own. I think every anarchist or anarchist-adjacent writer really, really wants to do a Spanish Civil War story without the tragic ending. But. It does not make sense for American Nazis to be speaking German. It doesn't make sense for Appalachian Communists to structure themselves as soviets. I think you can absolutely do an American-based dystopian fascists vs. communists and anarchists story, but I need to see homegrown versions of the ideology. There is some excellent worldbuilding around the role of religion, but with all the historical detail, I'm not sure why future America adopted those specific political forms. I say this with love because I wrote and abandoned a novel that was almost exactly this. She also does the thing that I do where you switch POVs during the chapter, and in commercial fiction you really shouldn't, but I get it.
My other critique is there is an awful lot of "sugars" and "hons." I know that's how people in the South speak and the author is from the South, but it grates in print. I'm also not super into love at first sight (or, at least, sex within 24 hours and love within 48 hours). This may be a me thing, as it was also an issue for me in the last book I read, so clearly lots of people do like that and I'm the giant weirdo who has made my lead couple angst about each other for 180,000 words and counting.
Anyway. All of this is not to say that I'm not enjoying it, because I absolutely am. But like, comrade author, for your next book, drop me an email, okay? We can make it stronger together.
* My life = my life since I read Gideon the Ninth and badly wanted to edit that too.
This was fun! I liked the f/f one more, and I'm trying to pin down why. I think it's because the characters in that seemed a bit more fully developed, whereas this was like, "he's hot, he's also hot, whoops now they're in love." The standout to me was Tate Hallaway's story about supervillains adopting a cat, and I'm not just saying that because she's my friend and a rad person. But that was the only one where I really got a sense of personality from the characters. Also it was funny as fuck.
But in general I enjoyed it. Like Her Magical Pet, it's exactly what it says on the package, and I'm here for that.
(Also! Apologies for a lack of clarity on who the editors were on the last few posts: Apparently all three of them edited both books, which was not super clear from the Amazon listing that I googled.)
Currently reading: The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside.
armiphlage was lovely and sent me a copy, correcting deducing that it was, as the kids say, My Jam.Whooooo boy I have never wanted to edit a book so badly in my life* but also I'm really into it??? And because I'm really into it, I want it to be more polished than it is.
It's about a post-apocalyptic America overrun by zombies and vampires, and oh yeah there are fascists and communists and anarchists fighting it out. Into the fray are our two heroines, both trans lesbians: Mags, a political commissar from the communist-run region, and Jules, a recent defect from the fascists. They get word of a stash of exciting tech in the Citadel, a.k.a. Washington, DC, and travel across a ravaged America to get to it before the Nazis do.
The author knows her shit. She's apparently a former soldier and a former white supremacist and is now a Wobbly, and both the military stuff and the political stuff ring true, with a level of detail I generally don't expect from genre fiction. No coy The Rebellion(TM) fights for Freedom(TM) here, but actual, nuanced debates about economic and government structures. She even references my favourite meme. Most genre writers—and dystopian writers are among the worst—get politics and the military wrong, and granted I don't know much about the latter, but she definitely gets the former right and makes the latter sound right.
But it's a mess. I think it must have been self-published because I don't think a publisher would have looked at a first novel the size of a cinder block and said, "cool, let's do it." It could be about half as long. For example, we get the story of Mags slitting a fascist's throat twice in two chapters. Yes, it's a cool story, but we don't need it twice. It's things like that, which a half-decent copy editor would fix, that make me grudgingly accept the trad publishing industry, gatekeepers and all, even though no publisher has offered me a book deal goddamn it.
Speaking of my book, her writing has a lot of the problems that I see in my own. I think every anarchist or anarchist-adjacent writer really, really wants to do a Spanish Civil War story without the tragic ending. But. It does not make sense for American Nazis to be speaking German. It doesn't make sense for Appalachian Communists to structure themselves as soviets. I think you can absolutely do an American-based dystopian fascists vs. communists and anarchists story, but I need to see homegrown versions of the ideology. There is some excellent worldbuilding around the role of religion, but with all the historical detail, I'm not sure why future America adopted those specific political forms. I say this with love because I wrote and abandoned a novel that was almost exactly this. She also does the thing that I do where you switch POVs during the chapter, and in commercial fiction you really shouldn't, but I get it.
My other critique is there is an awful lot of "sugars" and "hons." I know that's how people in the South speak and the author is from the South, but it grates in print. I'm also not super into love at first sight (or, at least, sex within 24 hours and love within 48 hours). This may be a me thing, as it was also an issue for me in the last book I read, so clearly lots of people do like that and I'm the giant weirdo who has made my lead couple angst about each other for 180,000 words and counting.
Anyway. All of this is not to say that I'm not enjoying it, because I absolutely am. But like, comrade author, for your next book, drop me an email, okay? We can make it stronger together.
* My life = my life since I read Gideon the Ninth and badly wanted to edit that too.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-25 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-25 11:53 pm (UTC)This is going to be a big reveal of how much of a nerd I am but we're in an awesome Star Trek RPG together. She's also active here on DW. We have never actually met IRL but maybe one day!
no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 12:47 am (UTC)> But like, comrade author, for your next book, drop me an email, okay? We can make it stronger together.
Why are co-author/editor pairs not more of a thing.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 01:09 am (UTC)Who's the other one? I feel like this is one of those books I'm going to want to talk about a lot, as it has a lot of really amazing things in it but it fails in ways that I find interesting.
Why are co-author/editor pairs not more of a thing.
They are in fandom. In publishing, your publisher gets to choose your editors, and most cheap out these days (which may correlate to the increasing number of novels I read where I end up screaming that they need another editorial pass). Substantive editing in particular seems to have fallen by the wayside. But generally speaking, a publisher isn't going to take a manuscript that hasn't been heavily polished.
I know for a fact that my novel, which still needs some pretty heavy revisions, would not be anywhere near coherent were it not for
no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 06:07 am (UTC)We all need someone to decrypt our minds this way...
no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 05:11 pm (UTC)Oh I missed this question. I couldn't remember who it was but I was wondering if it hadn't just been you mentioning it elsewhere so I circled my feeds, but couldn't find the answer again. So it was probably from Twitter or Tumblr, and good luck to me finding the exact post. :P
Lack of editing
Date: 2020-11-26 01:26 am (UTC)You're not alone--I don't like insta-love, either. Or insta-sex. Unless I'm reading erotica, in which case I'm OK with compressing the timeline. I know it's a lot of work to develop a relationship, but I think it's more satisfying to read about people slowly coming together.
Re: Lack of editing
Date: 2020-11-26 01:45 am (UTC)I adore a slow burn, or relationships that change over time, or established relationships that transform over the course of a story. I'm fine with insta-sex, but I'd prefer to see insta-sex followed by an awkward morning after where people question their feelings and then get to know each other to see if they can bring the emotional intimacy to where the sexual intimacy was.
But. Mine has 180,000 words and they have not hugged. I've gotten Complaints. There's probably a happy medium.
Re: Lack of editing
Date: 2020-11-26 06:23 am (UTC)So as I mentioned elsewhere I'm in the latter part of DS9 for the first time and Odo and Kira have finally gotten together. I'm genuinely surprised that the series got it done! At this point I was set on the unrequited love bit and that was just how it was, like Dax and the Doctor never getting together...
Re: Lack of editing
Date: 2020-11-26 12:37 pm (UTC)Re: Lack of editing
Date: 2020-12-01 02:19 am (UTC)Re: Lack of editing
Date: 2020-12-01 11:45 am (UTC)(20-something years in this case, but they're people with regular human lifespans.)
no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-26 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 02:12 am (UTC)I mean, this is the basis of a lot of male-male relationships. We’re superficial that way.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 02:13 am (UTC)