Reading Wednesday
May. 14th, 2025 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell. Sometimes people ask me, Sabs, why do you keep reading books that you hate? When you encounter a phrase, like say, "allosexual virgins," in a passage set in a medieval fantasyland and you know you are not going to vote for this book to win the Hugo, why not DNF? Well, Dear Reader, it's so that I can rant about how Big Mad I got reading this and how it typifies why I nearly always despise cozy fiction and queernormative fantasy settings.
The basic premise is cool! What if a U-Haul lesbian was a parasitic monster that wanted to lay eggs in you. Give that to Terry Pratchett and he'd do something fun with it, and find an inventive way to a happy ending. Unfortunately he is dead and so is my blackhearted soul because despite laying on the charm thick, this was a didactic message book with a deeply fucked up message. Basically, Shesheshen, the monster, has this overwhelming reproductive urge that will kill her partner. She somehow believes that having your kids eat you is the most loving act you can do as a parent. Again! Interesting! Her mother has been killed by a monster hunter, who just happens to be the mother of the human love interest, Homily. Homily's entire family is abusive; her mother is manipulative, playing her children against each other and starting wars for no reason, and her younger sister has been slitting her throat repeatedly (wtf??? how does she survive that???) since she was a child.
You think it's going in a "humans are the real monsters" direction but no. Because it turns out that Homily's mother is actually Shesheshen's mother who has assumed a human form. Which doesn't mean, btw, that the siblings come around and realize they've been manipulated into abuse. No, they all need to die, including the one who's like, 8. Cozy!
The biggest complaint about this book that most people, myself included had, has to do with the therapyspeak that the characters use in a setting that hasn't invented therapy yet. Shesheshen starts out being one of those stand-ins for the autistic reader who just doesn't get how humans work, but she is 1) fully cognizant of family abuse dynamics and generational trauma, 2) has no problem fooling her girlfriend into thinking she's human despite being made out of goo and other people's bones, 3) knows all about consent culture circa 2015 Tumblr and it's very important to her, and 4) has a deep understanding of modern-day sexual orientations and gender identities, including being able to identify nonbinary people on sight without speaking to them.
But I guess hey. Asexual representation! Fat representation! Queer representation! Too bad the message is "your abusive family deserves death, sexuality is gross and weird, and no one in the world matters other than you and your love interest."
Also, I don't get the appeal of asexual romance personally, but I think one of the interesting points of tension that I've seen in some stories is the idea that it's a spectrum, and even if you find a fellow asexual (who just happens to be the first person you have ever met that you didn't eat for some reason), it's not a guarantee that they like the same romantic/sexual acts that you do. And that is a negotiation. Not here. They only like cuddling and holding hands and find kissing a disgusting act to have to "perform" for their past partners. Just lucky coincidence.
My big problem with cozy fantasy is that it often brings up these interesting and horrifying premises and then just refuses to deal with them at all. I can think of a million ways to resolve the plot of "my love will kill you" without both characters dying, but the author is just fundamentally uninterested in having any sort of internal or difficult conflict, and so she just. Finds another way to reproduce. And then it turns out the eggs can be disposed of in a way that only harms bad people and she never has to deal with her monstrous urges again. Okay.
The author seems like a nice enough guy online so I don't want to go off on main about how much I hated this book. That said. I'd rather read a man who writes lesbians for slightly fetishy reasons than one who does this wholesome uwu stuff. It somehow feels way more gross.
Okay glad that's expelled. Onwards.
Currently reading: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. This otoh avoids all the pitfalls you would expect in a story where the main character is guided by dreams and visions, and none of the characters around her disbelieve her. Largely because it's dreamy and literary and so embedded in Cree culture, so the conflict is not "are the dreams real? Is any of this happening to her?" but "did she abandon her family in the time of their greatest need."
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. This was a very hyped book that's also up for a Hugo, and I am liking it a lot more so far. The British government somehow gets time travel technology and experiments with it by dragging people who would have otherwise died in history (a member of the Franklin Expedition, a WWI soldier, a plague victim, and someone from the French Revolution) into the present day. Each "expat" is assigned to a "bridge," someone who can explain the modern world and help them assimilate. Our heroine is a Cambodian-British civil servant assigned to the Franklin Expedition guy, who falls in love with him. There's a lot about race and colonialism here, as well as the kind of baseline British bureaucracy satire that I tend to enjoy; this one is pretty good so far. Even though I'm annoyed b/c I started writing a story like this and thought the concept was too silly to continue.
The basic premise is cool! What if a U-Haul lesbian was a parasitic monster that wanted to lay eggs in you. Give that to Terry Pratchett and he'd do something fun with it, and find an inventive way to a happy ending. Unfortunately he is dead and so is my blackhearted soul because despite laying on the charm thick, this was a didactic message book with a deeply fucked up message. Basically, Shesheshen, the monster, has this overwhelming reproductive urge that will kill her partner. She somehow believes that having your kids eat you is the most loving act you can do as a parent. Again! Interesting! Her mother has been killed by a monster hunter, who just happens to be the mother of the human love interest, Homily. Homily's entire family is abusive; her mother is manipulative, playing her children against each other and starting wars for no reason, and her younger sister has been slitting her throat repeatedly (wtf??? how does she survive that???) since she was a child.
You think it's going in a "humans are the real monsters" direction but no. Because it turns out that Homily's mother is actually Shesheshen's mother who has assumed a human form. Which doesn't mean, btw, that the siblings come around and realize they've been manipulated into abuse. No, they all need to die, including the one who's like, 8. Cozy!
The biggest complaint about this book that most people, myself included had, has to do with the therapyspeak that the characters use in a setting that hasn't invented therapy yet. Shesheshen starts out being one of those stand-ins for the autistic reader who just doesn't get how humans work, but she is 1) fully cognizant of family abuse dynamics and generational trauma, 2) has no problem fooling her girlfriend into thinking she's human despite being made out of goo and other people's bones, 3) knows all about consent culture circa 2015 Tumblr and it's very important to her, and 4) has a deep understanding of modern-day sexual orientations and gender identities, including being able to identify nonbinary people on sight without speaking to them.
But I guess hey. Asexual representation! Fat representation! Queer representation! Too bad the message is "your abusive family deserves death, sexuality is gross and weird, and no one in the world matters other than you and your love interest."
Also, I don't get the appeal of asexual romance personally, but I think one of the interesting points of tension that I've seen in some stories is the idea that it's a spectrum, and even if you find a fellow asexual (who just happens to be the first person you have ever met that you didn't eat for some reason), it's not a guarantee that they like the same romantic/sexual acts that you do. And that is a negotiation. Not here. They only like cuddling and holding hands and find kissing a disgusting act to have to "perform" for their past partners. Just lucky coincidence.
My big problem with cozy fantasy is that it often brings up these interesting and horrifying premises and then just refuses to deal with them at all. I can think of a million ways to resolve the plot of "my love will kill you" without both characters dying, but the author is just fundamentally uninterested in having any sort of internal or difficult conflict, and so she just. Finds another way to reproduce. And then it turns out the eggs can be disposed of in a way that only harms bad people and she never has to deal with her monstrous urges again. Okay.
The author seems like a nice enough guy online so I don't want to go off on main about how much I hated this book. That said. I'd rather read a man who writes lesbians for slightly fetishy reasons than one who does this wholesome uwu stuff. It somehow feels way more gross.
Okay glad that's expelled. Onwards.
Currently reading: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. This otoh avoids all the pitfalls you would expect in a story where the main character is guided by dreams and visions, and none of the characters around her disbelieve her. Largely because it's dreamy and literary and so embedded in Cree culture, so the conflict is not "are the dreams real? Is any of this happening to her?" but "did she abandon her family in the time of their greatest need."
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. This was a very hyped book that's also up for a Hugo, and I am liking it a lot more so far. The British government somehow gets time travel technology and experiments with it by dragging people who would have otherwise died in history (a member of the Franklin Expedition, a WWI soldier, a plague victim, and someone from the French Revolution) into the present day. Each "expat" is assigned to a "bridge," someone who can explain the modern world and help them assimilate. Our heroine is a Cambodian-British civil servant assigned to the Franklin Expedition guy, who falls in love with him. There's a lot about race and colonialism here, as well as the kind of baseline British bureaucracy satire that I tend to enjoy; this one is pretty good so far. Even though I'm annoyed b/c I started writing a story like this and thought the concept was too silly to continue.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-14 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-14 11:57 pm (UTC)I guess a large part of my hatred of cozy is also that no one outside of the main couple or found family ever seems to matter in these books. To the point where a mother (not the child's real mother but at this point everyone thinks she is) is demonized for mourning the death of her 8-year-old.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-14 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 12:08 am (UTC)But also without the monster! A pile of bones and goo with impeccably human social cuing and a relatably human desire to protect their partner sounds logistically sort of gloopy but not actually that alien! So you don't get either half of that compound noun really!
To the point where a mother (not the child's real mother but at this point everyone thinks she is) is demonized for mourning the death of her 8-year-old.
I find that extraordinarily offputting, both as a narrative decision and a barometer of how the audience is assumed to feel about killing kids.
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Date: 2025-05-15 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 12:09 am (UTC)I was expecting it to be Tor, but fair.
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Date: 2025-05-15 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 12:15 am (UTC)I was just trying to edit my previous comment to allow for grotesque/black comedy, but this novel did not sound as though it was operating in that kind of universe, although it might have been better had it been.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 12:25 am (UTC)You're welcome! I am not especially oriented toward romances and I really would have read an entire book of theirs. The material is much more emotionally unusual than the other half of the plot, digs much more deeply into its world, all that good stuff.
[edit] This conversation inspired me to read the sequel and I recommend it also; it is much more coherently structured and has fewer cultural negotiations but more lesbians.
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Date: 2025-05-15 12:30 am (UTC)I'm sorry it was so totally tonally off.
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Date: 2025-05-15 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 07:21 am (UTC)Despite the fact that it's from the POV of a monster who would have zero idea of "allosexual" or "asexual" as concepts even if they were concepts that plausibly existed in this medieval fantasyland anyway, and would have no way of knowing which of the virgins were allosexual anyway (or even that they're virgins, unless the monster-ness comes with some virginity-detecting magical powers).
*muffled screaming*
And! It makes it make even less sense! If the point of the line is (I'm guessing here) that shes surprised that her first kiss does not involve the lightning strike/fever rush she's heard described, then throwing in "allosexual" undermines that because it implies she has an understanding of asexuality which would make her fully aware of why some people might not experience that.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 11:21 am (UTC)The uncharitable explanation is that DAW fired all their editors.
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Date: 2025-05-15 11:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 12:47 pm (UTC)That'd be reasonable (if incompatible with the implications elsewhere that she's super old). But given the paranoid "ensure this can't possibly be interpreted as aphobic no matter how much bad faith that would require" reflex, you'd think the author would be more wary about even the potential to be seen as having a Problematic Age Gap!
ETA: let alone an underage Inhuman Monster.
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Date: 2025-05-15 12:49 pm (UTC)Ironically, I know of various ace writers who are EXTREMELY into monsterfucking, on the grounds that sex is weird and freaky anyway so if you're going to explore it in fiction, might as well have tentacles!
I guess a large part of my hatred of cozy is also that no one outside of the main couple or found family ever seems to matter in these books.
Yeah, this is why I tend to have a (perhaps unfair) bias against things labelled "cozy." The "cozy" often seems to exist only for the people within the charmed circle.
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Date: 2025-05-15 04:40 pm (UTC)Oh, also! Once you've finished it and are safe from spoilers, there's another Wizards vs Lesbians ep with Vajra Chandrasekera talking about The Ministry of Time (in keeping with their new thing of having authors they've covered on to talk about other people's books).
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Date: 2025-05-15 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-15 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-16 04:07 am (UTC)I feel like my ability to define "cozy" in a non-judgmental fashion was damaged by encountering the concept of the cozy catastrophe before the cozy mystery and the former was definitely not a recommendation. (I still find it a useful term.)
no subject
Date: 2025-05-16 10:53 am (UTC)See I thought cozy [insert term here] would be like cozy mysteries, which I do like, but everything cozy outside of the mystery genre that I encounter seems to be annoying as shit.
(Wait, does On the Beach count as cozy catastrophe? Does When the Wind Blows?)