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Books
Wolfgang Baur & Monte Cook: d20 Dark Matter
Forvandlinger: en fantasyantologi
This is an okay short story collection. There's nothing truly spectacular or genre renewing it, nor anything truly crappy, so. My favourite story was "Fortsættelse til et eventyr" by Lars Ahn Pedersen, which is a dark take on Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinderbox (which admittedly doesn't take that much to make dark). Apart from that, well, the stories are okay - there's several set in non-European-inspired fantasy settings and a couple of urban fantasy, and then there's a not-fantasy story about a guy who identifies as elf otherkin (specifically, Elfquest elf) and goes to a otherkin con and has a teary meltdown because a guy thinks he's gay and dares to hit on him (the protagonist apparently never bothered to actually read the comics with the bisexual elves, he just thought the elf guys looked big and strong and not-girly...) - so, yeah...
Mind you, one thing I really dislike about this anthology? The foreword - specifically, how the editor felt the need to not once, but twice go "fan fic is crap, except this specific derivative story - but all fanfic is bad, bad, horribly bad other than this story, which I selected for my anthology" (okay, that's not the exact words, but the meaning was pretty much this).
Neil Gaiman: Fortunately, the milk...
Jonathan L. Howard: Johannes Cabal the Detective
Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green: Spreadable Media: creating value and meaning in a networked culture
I wonder, has there been any studies done on fans and spreadable media and such in countries that is neither the US/UK/other places big enough to get everything nor more or less exotic third world countries. I mean, these books do tend a bit to leave the impression of a binary, except that's not the reality I see around me, you know?
Henrik Kastoft: På vikingetogt med Havhingsten: et krigsskib vender hjem
So, it's unlikely that I'll ever get firsthand experience of sailing a Viking ship, but this makes pretty decent research material. It's a first-hand account from one of the people who sailed the Sea Stallion of Glendalough from Roskilde to Dublin back in 2007. Apparently, sailing an open drakkar is not a fun experience, even in summer - oh, and either the experimental archaeologists hadn't figured out the right way to do it yet, or rudders have a habit of breaking - at sea. At least the Sea Stallion's did. Hmmm, maybe something to put in a fic some day.
M.D. Lachlan: Fenrir
Well, I liked this better than the first book, even if it's still not the sort of book I'd have expected a story featuring vikings and werewolves to be. The plot thickens nicely while the reincarnated heroes get to die all over again - also, there was Jehan, the very nice monk who gets kidnapped by Vikings and turns out to be the reincarnation of the great wolf Fenrir. So, yeah. You don't see giant, monstrous, cannibalistic wolves quoting Bible verses that often, do you?
Kaspar Colling Nielsen: Den danske borgerkrig 2018-24
I didn't particularly like this. It promises a story about how the financial crisis turns into a civil war, and it's there, sure, except - not really. Instead we get a man talking about his talking dog and a bunch of short stories, only some of which seem relevant. I suppose this is KCN's thing - take some huge science fiction thing as the center of the novel, then drape it with absurdist short stories. The critics and reviewers love them, but this science fiction fan is just going to stop reading any more from this author, I think...
J.D. Robb: Mord ist ihre Leidenschaft (Vengeance in Death)
I am ridiculously proud of having read this. I mean, yes, it's just a sf femikrimi, no big deal, but still - I stopped taking German after 1.G and haven't used it since and still, I managed to read this just fine, actually. Of course, it probably helped that it's a translation from English, and I really doubt the LIX number is that high, but still - I read it. Of course, my only reason for reading it in German had to do with liking this series well enough to keep reading, but not well enough to throw money at it, and for some reason, the Danish library system only had this volume in German - and my inner completist wouldn't just let me skip it. Ah well... (But I read it! It took forever, but still! Yay!)
Theodore Sturgeon: Venus plus X
I'm a bit in two minds about this book - on one hand, it's basically "feminism yay! down with the patriarchy! oh, and dogmatic religion is bad, too", admittedly not using any of those words, but that's the message, and for a book from 1960, that's not bad. Admittedly, a lot of the story is the usual "let's show you our utopia" nothing-actually-happens style plot that attempts at utopic literature far too often gets bogged down in. The end, though, annoys me - partly because the twist reveal that the hermaphroditic Ledom are not a new species of manking, but just surgically altered at birth and raised to think themselves a new species - well, yes, it's a twist, but science marched on in the sense that I'm sure we all know how that whole let's-apply-a-bit-of-surgery-and-assign-a-gender thing works (not always well or at all). Also, there's the bit were, when our up-until-that-moment-fairly-laidback-1960-era-protagonist learns this, he proceeds to spout homophobic nonsense. Admittedly, he's supposed to show that humanity is not yet ready for this utopia, so the author probably didn't share those views, but still. I could have managed without that.
Comics
Dan Abnett: The new Deadwardians
Loïc Dauvillier: L'attentat
Lars Kramhøft: Made Flesh
Margaux Motin: J'aurai adoré être ethnologue…
Mark Waid: Incorruptible vol. 4.
Mark Waid: Irredeemable vol. 10.
Maarten Vande Wiele: Paris
Total number of books and comics read this month: 17
Currently reading: The Cuckoo's Calling byJ.K. Rowling Robert Galbraith.
Total number of books and comics read this year: 302
Wolfgang Baur & Monte Cook: d20 Dark Matter
Forvandlinger: en fantasyantologi
This is an okay short story collection. There's nothing truly spectacular or genre renewing it, nor anything truly crappy, so. My favourite story was "Fortsættelse til et eventyr" by Lars Ahn Pedersen, which is a dark take on Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinderbox (which admittedly doesn't take that much to make dark). Apart from that, well, the stories are okay - there's several set in non-European-inspired fantasy settings and a couple of urban fantasy, and then there's a not-fantasy story about a guy who identifies as elf otherkin (specifically, Elfquest elf) and goes to a otherkin con and has a teary meltdown because a guy thinks he's gay and dares to hit on him (the protagonist apparently never bothered to actually read the comics with the bisexual elves, he just thought the elf guys looked big and strong and not-girly...) - so, yeah...
Mind you, one thing I really dislike about this anthology? The foreword - specifically, how the editor felt the need to not once, but twice go "fan fic is crap, except this specific derivative story - but all fanfic is bad, bad, horribly bad other than this story, which I selected for my anthology" (okay, that's not the exact words, but the meaning was pretty much this).
Neil Gaiman: Fortunately, the milk...
Jonathan L. Howard: Johannes Cabal the Detective
Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green: Spreadable Media: creating value and meaning in a networked culture
I wonder, has there been any studies done on fans and spreadable media and such in countries that is neither the US/UK/other places big enough to get everything nor more or less exotic third world countries. I mean, these books do tend a bit to leave the impression of a binary, except that's not the reality I see around me, you know?
Henrik Kastoft: På vikingetogt med Havhingsten: et krigsskib vender hjem
So, it's unlikely that I'll ever get firsthand experience of sailing a Viking ship, but this makes pretty decent research material. It's a first-hand account from one of the people who sailed the Sea Stallion of Glendalough from Roskilde to Dublin back in 2007. Apparently, sailing an open drakkar is not a fun experience, even in summer - oh, and either the experimental archaeologists hadn't figured out the right way to do it yet, or rudders have a habit of breaking - at sea. At least the Sea Stallion's did. Hmmm, maybe something to put in a fic some day.
M.D. Lachlan: Fenrir
Well, I liked this better than the first book, even if it's still not the sort of book I'd have expected a story featuring vikings and werewolves to be. The plot thickens nicely while the reincarnated heroes get to die all over again - also, there was Jehan, the very nice monk who gets kidnapped by Vikings and turns out to be the reincarnation of the great wolf Fenrir. So, yeah. You don't see giant, monstrous, cannibalistic wolves quoting Bible verses that often, do you?
Kaspar Colling Nielsen: Den danske borgerkrig 2018-24
I didn't particularly like this. It promises a story about how the financial crisis turns into a civil war, and it's there, sure, except - not really. Instead we get a man talking about his talking dog and a bunch of short stories, only some of which seem relevant. I suppose this is KCN's thing - take some huge science fiction thing as the center of the novel, then drape it with absurdist short stories. The critics and reviewers love them, but this science fiction fan is just going to stop reading any more from this author, I think...
J.D. Robb: Mord ist ihre Leidenschaft (Vengeance in Death)
I am ridiculously proud of having read this. I mean, yes, it's just a sf femikrimi, no big deal, but still - I stopped taking German after 1.G and haven't used it since and still, I managed to read this just fine, actually. Of course, it probably helped that it's a translation from English, and I really doubt the LIX number is that high, but still - I read it. Of course, my only reason for reading it in German had to do with liking this series well enough to keep reading, but not well enough to throw money at it, and for some reason, the Danish library system only had this volume in German - and my inner completist wouldn't just let me skip it. Ah well... (But I read it! It took forever, but still! Yay!)
Theodore Sturgeon: Venus plus X
I'm a bit in two minds about this book - on one hand, it's basically "feminism yay! down with the patriarchy! oh, and dogmatic religion is bad, too", admittedly not using any of those words, but that's the message, and for a book from 1960, that's not bad. Admittedly, a lot of the story is the usual "let's show you our utopia" nothing-actually-happens style plot that attempts at utopic literature far too often gets bogged down in. The end, though, annoys me - partly because the twist reveal that the hermaphroditic Ledom are not a new species of manking, but just surgically altered at birth and raised to think themselves a new species - well, yes, it's a twist, but science marched on in the sense that I'm sure we all know how that whole let's-apply-a-bit-of-surgery-and-assign-a-gender thing works (not always well or at all). Also, there's the bit were, when our up-until-that-moment-fairly-laidback-1960-era-protagonist learns this, he proceeds to spout homophobic nonsense. Admittedly, he's supposed to show that humanity is not yet ready for this utopia, so the author probably didn't share those views, but still. I could have managed without that.
Comics
Dan Abnett: The new Deadwardians
Loïc Dauvillier: L'attentat
Lars Kramhøft: Made Flesh
Margaux Motin: J'aurai adoré être ethnologue…
Mark Waid: Incorruptible vol. 4.
Mark Waid: Irredeemable vol. 10.
Maarten Vande Wiele: Paris
Total number of books and comics read this month: 17
Currently reading: The Cuckoo's Calling by
Total number of books and comics read this year: 302
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