Book Review

Aug. 7th, 2025 01:29 pm
kenjari: (Christine de Pisan)
[personal profile] kenjari
Women of Ashdon
by Valerie Anand

This historical novel follows two women of the Whitmead family and their relationship with their manor house Ashdon and the political intrigues of their times. The first half of the novel takes place during the War of the Roses and concerns Susannah Whitmead. As a young woman, she falls in love with the young knight Giles Saville, but is instead married off to James Weston instead. He is kind and good and he and Susannah have a good relationship. But it is his house Ashdon Susannah truly comes to love. She manages to hold on to the house through two more marriages and her second husband's involvement in a treasunous plot. The second half of the book follows Christina, Susannah's grand-daughter during the Elizabethan era. Like her grandmother, Christina also makes a marriage of convenience in order to keep Ashdon. However, her marriage is tumultuous, mainly due to her overwhelming passion for the house. She keeps it, but at great cost.
I quite enjoyed this book, especially for the way it focused on the lives of more ordinary people living at some distance from the powerful and from major political events. Anand did a good job of showing how those historical events affected or involved regular people. I also liked the characters a great deal. Susannah was my favorite. She was a very strong, loving woman who earnestly worked for a good life for herself and her family. I felt a ;lot of sympathy for Christina, but found her frustrating. She just could never really understand the people around her or even herself and was also a bit impulsive. The two women are an interesting pair - they both had an attachment to Ashdon, but only one of them properly understood the assignment.

Book Review

Jul. 31st, 2025 08:01 pm
kenjari: (Default)
[personal profile] kenjari
Never Kiss a Duke
by Megan Frampton

This historical romance was reasonably enjoyable. Sebastian de la Silva has just discovered that, due to some previously unknown information, his parents' marriage was invalid and he is now illegitimate and thus no longer a duke. When one of his friends takes him to a new gambling den, he meets Ivy Holton, the establishment's proprietor. This encounter leads to Sebastian getting a job at Ivy's establishment, and they soon develop feelings for each other that are definitely not those of an employer and her employee.
This romance was pretty good, although it never quite took off. Sebastian is a very likable hero - handsome, kind, and just rakish enough to be interesting and alluring. He is earnestly determined to make his own way now that his circumstances have changed, and to figure out who he is without his title and status. He neither expects nor wants anyone to fix it for him. Ivy is also lovely - smart, clever, and devoted to her sister and staff. She has succeeded in making her own way in life but is still discovering what she really wants. It's a rather low-conflict romance, which I enjoy. However, I wish that the hurdles keeping them apart weren't so much just in their own heads - a set of assumptions about how such relationships go.

dreamless theater

Jul. 30th, 2025 08:57 am
fox: my left eye.  "ceci n'est pas une fox." (Default)
[personal profile] fox

Last night I put my phone down and closed my eyes at about 11:15, and the next time I saw the clock it was like 5:30 a.m. This is the first time in—I don't even know how long—that I haven't woken up at least once overnight for one of any number of reasons: Himself snoring; I'm too hot; I'm too cold; my pillows have disarranged themselves and now my neck hurts; I have to pee; a butterfly flapped its wings in Peoria.

It is the strangest well-rested feeling. I don't really know what to do with it.

Book Review

Jul. 28th, 2025 02:56 pm
kenjari: (Eowyn)
[personal profile] kenjari
Solaris
by Stanisław Lem

This classic sci-fi novel is told from the point of view of Kris Kelvin, a scientist who has just arrived on the planet Solaris to check on and join the team working out of station suspended above the ocean that covers most of the planet. Kris and the others are there to study this ocean, which appears to be a living and perhaps sentient thing. Upon arrival, Kris finds one of the scientists to be recently dead by his own hand and the other two in a very disturbed state. In addition, there are clearly people on the station other than the scientists, people who cannot possibly be there. Soon after his arrival, Kris encounters his own "visitor", his dead wife Rheya. The visitors seem to have been generated by the ocean, but it is not at all clear how or to what purpose. Over the course of several weeks, Kris tries to figure out what is going on. He reviews the decades of studies done on Solaris and contemplates the ocean and the temporary organic structures that arise from it. He engages in some experiments and investigations with the other two scientists. He lives with the new Rheya, feeling his love for her resurface in spite of the mystery of her and her presence.
Solaris is a very contemplative novel which does not give the reader any easy answers, or even any definitive answers at all. An air of mystery and bewilderment, with occasional dread, pervades the novel and it is very effective. Lem explores the processes and limits of human understanding, both of ourselves and the universe around us. The lack of answers or full resolution is thus fitting.
kiya: (headdesk)
[personal profile] kiya
I need to write some shit down so I can sort it all out.

Will add to it as I remember things I need to deal with so I can unload them from my brain.

Primarily of interest to me. )
kiya: (gaming)
[personal profile] kiya
Three lunatics and a paladin, once more.

Dramatis Personae:

Viepuck and Izgil, who have complicated magical theory shit going on
Celyn and Robin, who hit things and heal people

When we left off we had retrieved an evil sphere and yelled for help answering what to do with it.

So we sorted out what to do next. )

Book Review

Jul. 25th, 2025 11:14 pm
kenjari: (Default)
[personal profile] kenjari
Kiss of Snow
by Nalini Singh

This is the tenth Psy-Changeling novel and it features a romance that has been foreshadowed in a few of the previous books. Hawke is the leader of the SnowDancer wolf changelings. He is haunted by the tragedy that made him leader at a young age, and the belief that he lost his chance at a true mating years ago. Sienna is one of the small group of Psy who defected to the SnowDancer pack a few years ago. She has a rare, powerful, and potentially destructive ability that she fears will overwhelm her and lead to catastrophe. Hawke and Sienna are powerfully drawn to each other, yet resistant to that bond. Thus their relationship is very push and pull and full of tension. It takes a lot of will and for them to overcome their internal barriers, but when they do, they are perfect for each other. There's also a secondary romance plot involving Walker, one of the Psy, and Lara, the pack's healer. It's much more of a slow burn, gentle romance, which makes a nice contrast to Hawke and Sienna's story.
This one was well done and did a good job of tackling how people overcome their own internal barriers to let anther person in. However, Hawke and Sienna's relationship, while a good one that worked well for them, lacked a certain softness that I prefer in my romances. I preferred Walker and Lara's romance. Nonetheless, I did like seeing Hawke and Sienna finally get together after dancing around each other for a couple of books.

Book Review

Jul. 25th, 2025 03:51 pm
kenjari: (piano)
[personal profile] kenjari
The Cambridge Companion to Film Music
edited by Mervyn Cooke and Fiona Ford

This book of essays about film music was really interesting. One of its big strengths is the breadth of films and genres it covers: everything from animated family films to Japanese noir. Although the one caveat about that breadth, also my one main gripe about the book, is that it barely steps outside American and European film making. Even in the section entitled "Music in World Cinemas", three out of the five chapters are about films from central Europe. South American and African cinema are entirely absent.
I found the chapters about spaghetti westerns and Takemitsu's scores for three Shinoda films particularly illuminating in the ways they delve into how specific motives and instrumentations work with the narrative and visuals of the films. I also liked the chapters on music in horror and science fiction films and in noir films.

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