skygiants: Sheska from Fullmetal Alchemist with her head on a pile of books (ded from book)
Yuletide reveals!

It will probably not surprise many people to learn that I, a person with many swirling feelings about the Yiddish language and queer Judaism and complicated sibling relationships and problematic revolutions, wrote un mir zenen ale shvester, a Fiddler on the Roof fic for the 2018 Yiddish Folksbiene production. Way early in the Yuletide season, when [personal profile] sovay (with whom I saw the original production) asked if I'd happened to get this assignment, I joked that I could probably combine a bunch of [personal profile] reconditarmonia's fantastic prompts by writing lesbian Shprintze as a socialist journalist going back to Russia to write about the October Revolution and meeting her sisters there, but I wasn't going to do that because I absolutely didn't have time to go on the required Russian Revolution research dive before deadline .... well. Anyway. Here we are!

To Avoid Stagnation, The Romance Must Progress! is a pinch-hit I picked up for Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-Kun. As soon as I saw the prompt asking about how Sakura and Nozaki-kun finally get together I realized I'd had a fairly clear idea about this in my head since I first watched the anime in 2014 or so. So I sat down and wrote this out more or less in one night ... and then realized my recipient was also almost entirely caught up on the manga, which I had never actually read, and zoomed through 100 chapters of scanlations in a panic on December 31st to make sure that none of it outright contradicted anything I'd written. A nice last-minute 11-volume boost to my 2020 reading list! Anyway this was extremely fun to write and gave me an outlet for all the screwball energy that wasn't going into un mir zenen ale shvester.

For the first time in a couple years, I also managed to post a Yuletide treat, that which is worth waiting for. Back when people were posting their letters, which also happened to be square in the middle of my Queen's Thief spiral, I'd also written a couple of bits and pieces of a Kamet/Costis fic with the vague intention of bulking them out into something much longer and more thoughtful as a treat for [personal profile] lirazel's prompt later in the Yuletide cycle .... as it turned out, that did not happen! What did happen is that three hours or so before Yuletide go-live, after finally completing all edits to my two assignment fics (and reading 100 chapters of Nozaki-kun), I looked at my bits and pieces once again and decided I probably had just enough time to write the connecting tissue that would pull them together into something coherent. (I did not, however, have enough time to come up with a good title.)

Thank you to [personal profile] genarti, [personal profile] saramily, [personal profile] gramarye1971, and Roommate M for all the extremely useful and reassuring beta reads, and to everyone who sniped me repeatedly by writing such INCREDIBLE gifts that I have barely had any opportunity to read anything else in the collection yet because I just keep going back to the things that were written for me instead!
skygiants: Moril from the Dalemark Quartet playing the cwidder (composing hallelujah)
My experience of rereading the Queen's Thief series in preparation for the finale, Return of the Thief:

The Thief - I had forgotten how much I enjoy early Gen narration, this is really fun!
Queen of Attolia - Attolia's stonefacedly adversarial relationship with the gods is suddenly the most interesting part of the series for me
King of Attolia - I love Costis
Conspiracy of Kings - well, I'm glad to have reread this again for the thematic resonance and to remember plot threads that I'm fairly sure will come up again ... where is Costis
Thick as Thieves - friendship ended with Attolian royalty, Costis and Kamet are my best friends now

Return of the Thief; reactions, spoilers )
skygiants: Moril from the Dalemark Quartet playing the cwidder (composing hallelujah)
I have spent the last five days rereading through Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief books at the rate of one a day, and doing very little else!

If you've missed them, the long arc of the Queen's Thief series features the three warring alt!Grecian kingdoms of Sounis, Eddis and Attolia getting their act together to avoid being absorbed by an alt!Babylonian empire. The books are heavy on well-researched worldbuilding, political complexity, and third-act twists; they are light on divine influence, though the gods do have a plan and they would rather like the protagonists to stop whining about it. Books include:

The Thief: A magus, his two apprentices, a soldier and a thief go on a life-changing field trip to steal a divine king-making relic, and Megan Whalen Turner shows off her unreliable first-person narration.

The Queen of Attolia: All three kingdoms start a slapfight with each other while the series protagonist sulks in his room, except when he's stealing important political figures from other kingdoms. Megan Whalen Turner would like you to know she can dance deftly around significant information just as easily in omniscient third as she can in first.

The King of Attolia: A sweet, honest guardsman punches his king in the face, and proceeds to regret every single one of his life choices. Megan Whalen Turner's like "look, this time I'm using limited third and telling you EXACTLY what my protagonist thinks and believes at any given time, it's not MY fault he only knows like 20% of what's actually going on."

A Conspiracy of Kings: The heir to the kingdom of Sounis is like "I COULD sort out this civil war by becoming king OR I could do hard labor for the rest of my life and honestly the latter sounds more appealing?" Megan Whalen Turner returns to first person but is too busy examining questions of ethics around violence in the political sphere to put all that much effort into setting up twists.

This is the part that's spoilery for the first four books )

Anyway, yesterday I finally got to the point where I could read the just-published new book, Thick as Thieves. So this is the part that's spoilery for Thick as Thieves. )
skygiants: Moril from the Dalemark Quartet playing the cwidder (composing hallelujah)
[livejournal.com profile] genarti asked me for my top five favorite book covers! She gave me full reign to be ironic in my love, which is a privilege I will try not to abuse. At least 50% of these will also be rooted in fond nostalgia rather than any artistic merit, so . . . you are warned? I also stretch the definition of 'top five' a little, you are also warned.

Lots of images under the cut, obviously! )

What about you guys? Favorite covers? Notoriously terrible covers that you have braved to find the gold within? Or, alternately, covers that should justly have been a warning to you?
skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (queen's thief)
A few weeks ago I posted about the first part of my Great Queen's Thief reread. And then I reread The King of Attolia, which meant I FINALLY could read Conspiracy of Kings a;ljsdkfds.

Verdict: reread has confirmed for sure that The King of Attolia is still my all-time favorite! It is also the one that I can talk about in a non-spoilery fashion, so I'm going to do that first.

Basically, The King of Attolia is Megan Whalen Turner getting her Dorothy Dunnett on hardcore. The main POV character is Costis, a young and enormously honorable guard who opens up the book by punching his new king in the FACE. Because the king is a foreign JERKFACE who came in and forced himself on their SUPER HOT AND TERRIFYING queen and now thinks he can get all up in everybody's business, like, what the hell. And then instead of getting killed, or demoted, Costis has to face a fate worse than death: becoming the Jerk King's personal guardsman.

Needless to say, there's a whole lot going on behind the scenes that Costis doesn't know about; the whole thing is complicated and full of intrigue and really deftly done. (My favorite part is the bit where Costis is utterly and totally overcome by embarrassment at being in the same room as the king and queen showing affection to each other. IT'S LIKE WATCHING YOUR PARENTS MAKE OUT. >.<)

Aaaand now for the way spoilery first reaction part: Conspiracy of Kings! )
skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (queen's thief)
It has recently been pointed out to me that I have been exceedingly negligent and never formally posted about my love for Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series! This is because I read the first three books just before I started officially booklogging. But that is really no excuse. Fortunately I am currently in the middle of rereading the series in preparation for the new one, so I now have a perfect opportunity. :D

General Info and Recommendation Points: The series is set in an imaginary Mediterranean culture. Sounis and Attolia are wealthier kingdoms, with access to harbors and more extensive fieldlands and resources; the mountain kingdom of Eddis controls the pass between them. The kingdoms are threatened by a larger expansionist empire, and most of the politics are centered to one degree or another on the eventual need to resist that empire. The politics and worldbuilding and mythology ground the series, and are complicated and thoughtful and amazing. The characters likewise so!

In other news, Megan Whalen Turner has confessed to a love of Dorothy Dunnett and has included at least two references to Diana Wynne Jones novels in her books so far that I know of. Her books have the twists and politics and high angst value of Dunnett combined with the dry humor and valued sense of the ordinary and attention to small mundane details of DWJ. So basically what I am saying is they are my catnip.

The Thief (Without Spoilers): Gen made a (loud and public) bet that he could steal the king's seal. Then he actually did steal the king's seal. Then he languished in prison for a long time until the king's magus came along and recruited him for a top-secret mission: if he steals a mysterious item successfully, he gets to go free. On the surface, this is the simplest of the books, but all the seeds of the later political complexity are sown here. It's also amazing as a quest story for the attention it pays to small details - in Turner's books, people always need to remember to eat and comb their hair and make sure to wash their wounds in case they get re-infected. Also, Gen is a brilliant and unreliable narrator - and you know how I love characters who are unafraid to be justifiably whiny and cranky when occasion arises.

The Queen of Attolia (Without Spoilers): This book ramps up the politics, as a war breaks out between the three countries of Sounis, Eddis and Attolia. It's about making difficult political choices; it's about the different ways of being an independent and reigning queen in a non-equal society. The Queens of Eddis and Attolia come into sharp focus here, and are awesome. It's also about rebuilding your life after dramatic (and angsty) loss, but Dunnett readers can rest assured that no one actually goes blind from sheer angst. Okay, this part is a very minor spoiler. )

Coming soon (when I manage to acquire them): The King of Attolia and CONSPIRACY OF KINGS OMG.

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