User Profile

Otts

otts@books.theunseen.city

Joined 2 years ago

I read 10-12 novels a week in grad school and some heavy literary theory. No interest in non-fiction now, and mainly read sci-fi and fantasy. Using this account to track/share my reading from 2023 onward (and maybe backward, if my completionist tendencies kick in). On Mastodon @ottsatwork@artsio.com.

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Otts's books

Louise Penny: The beautiful mystery (2012, St. Martin's Minotaur) 4 stars

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness …

Enough with the sandalwood

4 stars

Yay, we’re not in Three Pines for this one. Kind of a relief actually. But my fatigue with Penny’s formula in this series continues: Gamache’s brown eyes, his quiet, still manner, the corny quips with Beauvoir. 🙄 And the constant questions posed by the narrator that indicate: You are reading a mystery. Just ICYMI. We get it, girl. The larger story creeps along, though, and I’m here for it. The monks too.

reviewed Last first snow by Max Gladstone (Craft sequence -- [4])

Max Gladstone: Last first snow (2015) 5 stars

"Forty years after the God Wars, Dresediel Lex bears the scars of liberation--especially in the …

Read. This. Book.

5 stars

Incredible. Gladstone has this ability to write palpably and ephemerally so you catch the meaning even as it slips away. But leaving you with enough so you’re not frustrated or confused. He takes something as grounded as community organizing for housing, the pressures of development and business interests, and wraps it in Craft (magic), wars with gods, and so much more. I’m re-reading this whole series.

Nathan Tavares: Welcome to Forever (Paperback, 2023, Titan Books Limited) 3 stars

Fox is a memory editor – one of the best – gifted with the skill …

Needs editing

3 stars

Great portrayal of a gay relationship in a future where memories can be edited. Ironically, Tavares needs an editor himself. Way too many ideas, overly complex with pacing issues.

There’s some larger plot to save the whole world that isn’t needed; just focusing on these men and how they keep coming back to each other no matter the amount of editing is enough. Much better than Tavares’ first novel.

Vajra Chandrasekera: The Saint of Bright Doors (Hardcover, 2023, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. …

Partly over my head, makes me want to learn more

4 stars

What an arresting premise. The opening is great too. And it goes in all sorts of unexpected directions. It drags a bit in places while operating in a context I know very little about: Sri Lankan history and Buddhism, by way of fantasy. I still found much of it engaging and learned of the author’s blog post on “Unbuddhism”that should be read once you’re done with this: vajra.me/2021/10/27/%e0%b6%85%e0%b6%b6%e0%b7%9e%e0%b6%af%e0%b7%8a%e0%b6%b0%e0%b6%9a%e0%b6%b8-unbuddhism/

Ann Dávila Cardinal: The Storyteller's Death (Paperback, 2022, Sourcebooks, Incorporated) 3 stars

Family secrets come out

3 stars

Set between Puerto Rico and New Jersey, Isla, our half-Boricua protagonist inherits a gift (or a curse?) from the cuentistas in her family: their stories play themselves out in front of her. Naturally, family secrets are unearthed. Lots and lots of them. Dávila Cardinal’s first adult novel, but it read like YA. There’s a flicker of something meaningful near the end, but it feels a little late.

Peng Shepherd: All This and More (Hardcover, 2024, HarperCollins Publishers) 1 star

From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Cartographers and The Book of M comes …

Gimmicky with an annoying lead

1 star

Terrible. I made myself finish. When I play videogames, I like to find the seams, explore, and test boundaries narratively and programmatically. That’s what kept me reading: to see how this choose-your-adventure format operated in terms of story and reader experience. There’s nothing but this gimmick. And a lead who’s obsessed with editing her life over and over until it’s perfect. Girl, go back to Instagram.

Nick Sousanis: Unflattening (GraphicNovel, 2015, Harvard University Press) 4 stars

The primacy of words over images has deep roots in Western culture. But what if …

Lots to teach about narrative and panel structure in comics

4 stars

Similar to Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” in its examination of visual thinking, what you can do by combining words and images. Sousanis’ panel structure is amazing. As a cartoonist, I learned a lot from that alone. A bit repetitive in places, and maybe longer than it should be, but an enjoyable example of what one can do with this medium.

reviewed Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse (The Sixth World, #2)

Rebecca Roanhorse: Storm of Locusts (2019, Gallery / Saga Press) 4 stars

It's been four weeks since the bloody showdown at Black Mesa, and Maggie Hoskie, Diné …

Lightning!

3 stars

Picks up after the first book and does everything a sequel’s supposed to: we go outside the walls of Dinétah, Maggie gets a badass lightning sword, encounters more tricksy gods and a more powerful adversary. Everything feels bigger. But it’s not as good as the first book. Still, a fascinating world with some good character progression.

reviewed Witchmark by C. L. Polk (Kingston Cycle)

C. L. Polk, C. L. Polk: Witchmark (Paperback, 2018, Tom Doherty Associates) 4 stars

In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, …

Gay for pay

1 star

‘Bout to start some shit: getting tired of non-gay men writing gay male characters. True: there’s a long history of slash, fan-fiction, yaoi, and really great gay stories written by non-gay men. True: not every gay man is hypersexual. But it’s starting to feel sanitized, even tokenizing, to have two hot men who are clearly interested in each other not get it on. Or fantasize, masturbate, get hard, or anything embodied.

Yes, we fought hard to not be defined by the sex we have. But many also fought hard to not be shamed for it either: the sluts, people living with HIV, and other “non-respectable” gays. I’m not asking for non-stop fucking (just this once)—it’s not a binary. Rather, more thinking around gay inclusion. What purpose does it serve, you as a non-gay man, writing these characters? What does the presence/absence of sex mean? Otherwise, it feels exploitative.