July Reading Update

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee

By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, "Dear Miss Sweetie." When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society's ills, but she's not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender. (Synopsis excerpt taken from Goodreads)

To begin July, I decided to read some library loans of books I've been meaning to get to for forever. There were mixed results, I guess. I started by reading the first 100 or so pages of The Downstairs Girl before I decided I wasn't going to finish it. I'd try Stacey Lee again, but I found the writing awkward and the execution of the premise surprisingly boring. I also found it really strange and off-putting that the main character was being set up for a romance with someone she's been secretly spying on for years? (For context, she's secretly living underneath the male lead's family's print shop, and there's a pipe or something that allows her to listen in on their conversations. She's been doing this for years, so she feels like she knows him, but they have NEVER ACTUALLY SPOKEN).

So yeah. Unfortunately, this was a miss for me.

 

The Stars Undying by Emery Robin

Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed not just the crown of their planet Szayet but the Pearl of its prophecy, a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet's god. Stripped of her birthright, Gracia flees the planet—just as Matheus Ceirran, Commander of the interstellar Empire of Ceiao, arrives in deadly pursuit with his volatile lieutenant, Anita. When Gracia and Ceirran's paths collide, Gracia sees an opportunity to win back her planet, her god, and her throne…if she can win the Commander and his right-hand officer over first.

This is a space opera inspired by the lives of Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Mark Anthony. It's brimming with politicking and intrigue and also a lot of ~implications. I liked the world and the politicking, but struggled a bit with the implications. Particularly in the first half of the book, the characters spend so much time implying things or almost-but-not-actually saying things that I sometimes had trouble following the arc of various scenes and conversations. This is arguably an intentional writing choice, since it eventually becomes clear that Gracia is telling her story to Anita, the only character of the main three without a POV. Anita, being part of these conversations, would already know the Implications at stake. But I don't! And I would have liked a little more help.

Additionally, Gracia is an unreliable narrator and periodically informs the reader that she's lied about various things. This was interesting in theory, but in practice I often found myself a little lost as to what the extent of her deception was. Again, maybe this was intentional - Gracia admits that she lies, but leaves the truth vague to keep the issue muddied, something like that. But as a reader, even if this was on purpose, I found it a bit frustrating.

So, overall a fascinating but flawed read. I'm not sure if I'll ever feel compelled to reread this one in the future, but I don't regret reading it at all and I would definitely recommend it if a space opera based on Caesar, Cleopatra, and Mark Anthony sounds interesting to you. I know very little about the actual historical events (besides the bare basics) and I was able to follow along just fine. There may have been some references (or again, implications) that were lost on me because of my lack of knowledge, but overall I don't think you need to be a Roman history buff to enjoy this book, just a space opera fan. 

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena's a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn't even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I. 

This is a compulsively readable contemporary thriller/satirical take on publishing, with a highly unlikable and unreliable narrator who is at every turn trying to defend and justify herself. I really enjoyed it, although I found the ending kind of out of place and odd. It felt tacked on to the rest of the story and arguably weakened the overall effect.

I think R.F. Kuang did an excellent job writing June as someone who is self-aware enough to anticipate the criticisms she'll get (for the most part) but not self-aware enough to care that her critics might have a point. June is constantly trying to convince the reader that she was justified, that we should like and support her, and I like how Kuang still lets the moments of dissonance and wrongness shine through the veneer of June's attempts to justify herself. I think the narrative voice in Yellowface is stronger than in Babel or The Poppy War - although, caveat, I haven't read past book one of the Poppy War trilogy, and don't intend to. I'll be interested to see if R.F. Kuang writes more books in first person in the future.

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, finds himself at odds with one of the most powerful ambassadors at court—the body-father of the queen's new child—in an altercation which results in his humiliation. To prove his loyalty to the queen, his sister, Kadou takes responsibility for the investigation of a break-in at one of their guilds, with the help of his newly appointed bodyguard, the coldly handsome Evemer, who seems to tolerate him at best. In Arasht, where princes can touch-taste precious metals with their fingers and myth runs side by side with history, counterfeiting is heresy, and the conspiracy they discover could cripple the kingdom’s financial standing and bring about its ruin.

Okay, I had SO much fun with this. Please disregard most of the part of the synopsis that's about the conspiracy. The conspiracy is as developed as it needs to be, more or less, but it is primarily a backdrop or a sandbox to facilitate the development of the relationship between Kadou and Evemer. This is a fantasy romance with a little bit of intrigue, not a mystery or a truly intrigue-focused story.

And that's fine! More than fine, even! More than anything, reading this book felt like reading a 100k slowburn on Archive of Our Own. And I must have read it at exactly the right time, because I loved it. I loved Evemer and all of his attempts to suppress and deflect his emotions; I liked Kadou and enjoyed the portrayal of his anxiety and his concerns about reciprocity with his bodyguards.

Do I have criticisms? Sure! Many of them can be tied into the fanfic-y feel of this book. Sometimes the dialogue felt a bit too modern, particularly when certain side characters were around. Certain scenes were obviously facilitated purely for self-indulgence (such as an extended scene where supporting character Tadek is quizzing Evemer on whether he's a virgin), but for the most part this story did a really good job of justifying its tropes. Did I giggle and kick my feet when Kadou and Evemer simply HAD to kiss in a dark alley so that no one would think they were there to investigate the counterfeiting conspiracy? Well, of course. I loved almost every self-indulgent minute of this self-indulgent book, and I even read the fanfic that Alexandra Rowland wrote (of this, their own book) and posted to AO3.

All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

And then I reread four books of the Murderbot Diaries. For the second time this year. Oops!

As for why I ended up rereading these books at this time, I would cite two main factors. One, I got one of my work friends to start the series, and hearing her thoughts on All Systems Red made me want to reread it. Two, I started reading A Court of Mist and Fury, and I procrastinated reading THAT bad book by reading these good books. 

If you don't know anything about the Murderbot Diaries, they're a series of novellas and novels following the adventures of Murderbot. Murderbot is basically a cyborg, although the in-fiction term is a "bot-human construct," and it was constructed to serve as a scary, inhuman, disposable security guard (SecUnit) for any humans or corporations who want to rent it out. It's also a rogue who has disabled its governor module, and it uses its free will to secretly watch a lot of media while continuing to pretend to be a regular SecUnit with a functioning governor module.

In All Systems Red, Murderbot is on contract with a survey team on a random planet and prepared for a typical boring survey job when things suddenly start getting weird and going wrong, starting with a big hostile alien lifeform popping out of the ground and trying to eat a couple members of the survey team. As glitches pile up, Murderbot and the survey team begin to suspect sabotage...and Murderbot's secret may be risked as they begin to investigate the truth.

Which is to say, the survey team is going to find out about Murderbot being rogue, and Murderbot is going to have to deal with that somehow.

I love the Murderbot Diaries. I read them for the first time in July and August of last year, and they quickly became favorites. Hence me reading the first four novellas three times each already. I'm also on a big Martha Wells kick in general. After I'm done suffering through ACOMAF, I may reward myself with the last book of the Raksura and maybe read my ARC of the upcoming Ile-Rien omnibus.