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What I read -- July 2018

LHC#13: “Sorcerer to the Crown” by Zen Cho. It took me until about half-way through to connect with the characters. After that I quite enjoyed it.

“Cold Magic” by Kate Elliott. Ed was doing a re-read, so I picked it up. I guess I’m reading the series now… spoilers: Cat gets force-married on p. 80 and by page 150 is starting to like her random forced husband. Ick. But that wasn’t the direction things were going and it was a fun read.

“Cold Fire” by Kate Elliott. All three volumes of this series were around the house, and they’re library books so that wasn’t going to last, so here we are. I spent a lot of time wanting to slap the characters here. At least Cat has agency and the freedom to make bad sexual choices.

The situation didn’t change really for like 200 pages after Cat got to Expedition. It made me wish I was a faster reader (I don’t often wish this). It probably didn’t help that I read this section while sitting waiting a very long time for my number to be called at a government office.

I was thinking about why it rubbed me the wrong way so much and sort of realized that what she was doing with the relationship there is something I’m trying to do with a relationship that I’m writing (though with very different characters). So it made me think about what did and didn’t work for me and why. I felt like not only was Cat being really annoying, she was really unclear about her motivations.

But! I was at circus and I said something about wanting to make yam pudding. I don’t know why this came up. And it led to an interesting conversation with someone about KE, and Terry Pratchett, and Neil Gaiman, and Diana Wynne Jones. It’s neat to find like-minded people.

“Cold Steel” by Kate Elliott. If it hadn't been a library book with an ambiguous due date, I might have put it down in the Lutetia section and just... never picked it up again. I was so glad when Cat finally left the mage house there. I didn't find the Mansa particularly convincing towards the end of the book. 

But it did have a satisfying resolution. I liked where the characters ended up. And the yam pudding was very good. 
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