Thing the first and MOST IMPORTANT: I WILL LOVE genarti FOREVER AND EVER, and THIS IS WHY.

(Okay, there are in fact COUNTLESS reasons why, but Fullmetal Alchemist ANGST BINGO CARDS are high up there on that list! No spoilers, MUCH HILARITY.)

Thing the second: in_the_blue tagged me for a meme!

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people.

"But the kai el'Sol had spoken.

Jevri attended them, boy and girl; Jevri made clear - to the wife, not the husband - that the boy's welfare and sanity depended on her ability to keep him still. Jevri was wise, and although Marakas had acknowledged that fact from the first day they had met, he found it a surprise and a blessing to be so often reacquainted with the knowledge.

As for himself, he was given leave to draw his sword."

- Michelle West, The Riven Shield

(Oh, Michelle West. I am very fond of your books, but this passage does not really show off your deathless prose. It does show off your fondness for Ridiculous Fantasy Names, however. My favorite is how the commanders of the army are named Valedan kai di'Leonne, Ellora AKalakar . . . and Bruce Allen.)

I am not tagging five people. Instead I will say, if you have a book near you right now and you are reading this, just do it! I have an insatiable curiosity about what people are reading.

Thing the third: shoroko tagged me for another meme!

Rules: List seven eight songs (birdseyeview added one) you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your fall (winter?). Post these instructions in your LJ along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to. (Still not tagging people. But do it if you want!)

This is a long one and so I am putting it ( under a cut. )

Thing the fourth: no seriously, I'm still expiring of joy over the bingo cards.

First things first: while I kind of suck at remembering birthdays in general (seriously, I will disappoint - in fact I just remembered a good friend whose birthday was four days ago that I forgot! BECAUSE I SUCK) there is one person's birthday that I always remember! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, cupenny! You and me know why this day is worthy of fireworks, and it's not because of some dude who failed to blow up Parliament. :D


Secondly: booklogging! I just finished The Shining Court, the third book in Michelle West's Sun Sword series, and I think it is my favorite so far. If The Uncrowned King centered on AU Fantasy Olympics, The Shining Court takes as its centerpiece AU Fantasy Mardi Gras. Demons are planning to do SOMETHING EVIL on the festival night involving cursed masks and the Winter Queen and worlds meeting and a crazy mage and honestly I was kind of confused as to what exactly their diabolical plan was and how Our Heroes thwarted it, but that's okay, because at least I could get that the characters were busy being awesome! ( More specific thoughts and vague spoilers! ) The books still have their flaws, but their strengths are still very much their strengths, and moreso in this volume, where even more than before pretty much everything revolves around women and their relationships with other women, and the obvious and subtle ways that they hold power.

And, speaking of, I have a question for you guys! Okay, so we know that many characters in fiction are motivated by revenge. For female characters, I feel like that revenge tends to be for either personal trauma (assault, often sexual) or for dead dudes - husbands, fathers, sons. And dudes are always going around swearing revenge for their dead girlfriends or wives, but they're just as often avenging fathers and brothers and BFF-buddies, too. I could be wrong, but I feel like it's rare for women to be motivated by revenge for other women. Diora from these books is one very strong example; if I remember correctly Gelis in the House of Niccolo series is another, though I haven't gotten up to her books yet so I might be wrong. But those are about the only two I can think of - can you guys think of any other examples of women who are acting to avenge other women? Are there a million and I'm just crazy?

Michelle West's The Broken Crown is the first book in The Sun Sword, A Big Fat Fantasy Series. Cons: it has severalt of the flaws common to the Big Fat Fantasy Series. Pros: it has some merits that are not at all common to the Big Fat Fantasy Series. Also, said series is actually completed!

The flaws: First of all, there are a lot of characters. They have a lot of names. Many of these names are very similar. A lot of them involve the classic Fantasy Novel Apostraphes. I had a lot of trouble remembering who was Amara and who was Amaya and who belonged to the one region but had a noble last name that had nothing to do with that region but was unfortunately similar to the noble last name from the other region. Also, the author has the bad habit of often taking time to remind the reader of events that happened right in the previous chapter. Those are not the things I was confused about! And much of the book is pretty clearly setup for Dramatic Things That Will Happen Later In the Series, and the first hundred pages are setup for the setup with characters that we will never see again, which is why it took me a hundred and fifty or two hundred pages to get into the book at all.

The merits: The thing that makes this really stand out from other Big Fat Fantasy Series that I have read is how much of the plot is spurred by, and centered around, relationships among women. And I don't just mean the kind of badass sword-slinging women that you get in most fantasy sagas these days. Most of the plot in this book takes place in a very strict and regulated society where the standard family unit is 1 nobleman::1 head wife::small harem of secondary wives/concubines - and instead of being fetish-y and creepy, as these setups often can be, the book really focuses on the bonds that grow up between the women of the household, how they form intense relationships and a community that is as or more important than their relationship with their husband, and how despite not being recognized as having any authority they can wield power in a number of subtle ways. Also, though there is sort of a destiny thing going on, it is all about choices! Many times choices that women make that quite often do not have anything to do with who they will sleep with! Which is, overall, kind of awesome. I am sure that some would accuse Diora, the main character, of being a Mary Sue - seeing as she is the most beautiful woman in the country and also possessed of secret magic powers! - but I really like her relationships with other women and her difficult decisions and the ways in which she manages to manipulate her status. And the author does a very good job of showing a society that is completely different from ours, and involves a lot of things that we would consider terrible injustices, without vilifying it. By which I mean that there aren't any people running around with suspiciously modern sensibilities all out of tune with their cultures going 'this is all wrong! FREEEEDOM!' as happens in so many fantasy and historical novels.

Which is not to say that there are not ass-kicking women also - there are many different kinds of strong ladies involved in the plot. The more overtly ass-kicking ones live in a different culture that is not as much focused on in this book, although I suspect it will be in later books in the series, and many of them are also very cool and strong and interesting authority figures also. (And one of the protagonists reminds me a lot of varadia's X-23.)

So basically, though I have not yet fallen passionately in love with the series, I am definitely interested enough, and admiring enough of a lot of what the author is trying to do, that I will be reading more. Once I overcome the minor dilemma that neither local library system has the second book. NYPL, for once you have failed me!