What I'm Reading Now

I haven't done one of these for awhile, mainly because much of my recent reading has gone toward reviews for the three science fiction magazines I am writing reviews for. If I'm reviewing things there, I usually don't review them here. (I think there was one exception?) Anyway, you can catch all of my reviews at Strange Horizons, IZ Digital, and Asimov's Science Fiction.

What else have I been reading?

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, Bringing up the Bodies, the Mirror and the Light

I read Mantel's Wolf Hall when it first came out, but I never got around to reading the sequels. The library had them both, so I took them both out. You probably know this, but they cover the life of Thomas Cromwell, the guy who saw to it that Thomas More was executed, among other things. The first one, which I reread before reading the sequels, is definitely the best. Bringing Up the Bodies is almost as good; but The Mirror and the Light was a slog. Or maybe I'd had too much Cromwell by then.

I would definitely recommend the first two, but only go for the third if you're a completist.

Freya Marske, A Marvelous Light and A Restless Truth

I re-read A Marvelous Light when I saw Marske was releasing the sequel. It holds up! Here, we have Edwardian England but with a secret cabal of magicians. The overarching plot for what I think will be a trilogy is that someone in the cabal is attempting to gain control of all the magic in England, or more specifically all the power that powers all the magic in England. There are three magic items, used to seal the transfer of power from the fairies to the magicians of England, and having those items will allow the bad guys to take control of that power. Our intrepid band of plucky heroes, only some of them magicians, are trying to find and hide the magic items before the bad guys do. The plot is fine, but the characters and the writing make these work. In the first, we had a M/M romance with hot sex, and in this one we have bisexual romance and hot sex. If graphic depictions of hot sex unnerve you, maybe avoid these? But I liked them.

Sarah Miller, Miss Spitfire

Sarah Miller wrote a couple other books I liked, one called Caroline, about the mother in the Little House books, and Marmee, about the mother in Little Women. This one is about Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's teacher, and perfectly readable. But Miller doesn't say anything in this one which I didn't already know, so I didn't enjoy it as much as the other two. 

Also, I didn't grow up loving books about Helen Keller the way I did the other two -- I didn't even see the iconic movie until recently, whereas I read and reread Little Women and the Little House books all through my childhood. (I once joked that everything I wrote was an imitation of Little Men, but I don't actually think that's true.) Anyway, if you love Helen Keller's story, you will probably enjoy this one.

Bel Meadows, Winterland

This is about a gymnast in the 1970s in Russia, and mainly about the abusive system for training young gymnasts. There's also a mystery involving a missing mother. The writing here is good, plus there's a lot of snow. Also, the details about how young gymnasts are trained is excellent. I really liked one place where Meadows has the mother (before she goes missing) warn the father about what will happen if they put their child into gymnastics as a serious contender -- the mother has been a world-class dancer, and warns the father that the child will always hurt, always be exhausted, always have her body policed, that she won't have a childhood or an education, just gymnastics. Then as we follow the child into her career as a young gymnast, yes, that's exactly what we see happen.

There's also some attention given to the labor camps, with one of the young gymnast's neighbors and mentors being a survivor of the camps.

If you're into gymnastics, you might like this one. I think Natasha Pulley did the labor camps story better in The Half-Life of Valery K, which I reviewed for an upcoming IZ issue, but Meadows also does it well.