2025/098: Maurice — E M Forster

Jun. 25th, 2025 07:20 am
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2025/098: Maurice — E M Forster
He had gone outside his class, and it served him right. [loc. 2758]

A classic of LGBT+ literature, read for a 'published posthumously' challenge -- I managed to find an affordable Kindle edition. Splendid prose, intriguingly detached/omniscient narration, and appalling social tension.Read more... )

2025/097: Endling — Maria Reva

Jun. 24th, 2025 08:37 am
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2025/097: Endling — Maria Reva
"Wasn't your novel originally going to be about a marriage agency in Ukraine?"
"Null and void... I was writing about a so-called invasion of bachelors to Ukraine, and then an actual invasion happened. Even in peacetime I felt queasy writing right into not one but two Ukrainian tropes, 'mail-order brides' and topless protesters. To continue now seems unforgiveable." [loc. 1457]

The first half of Endling is the story of Yeva, a malacologist ('despite its inclusion of mollusks without backbones') who's determined to save endangered snail species. It hasn't gone well: she is down to one living specimen, Lefty, whose shell coils the opposite way to others of his species. (Yeva, similarly, coils the other way: she's asexual, though she has a passionate friendship with a conservationist.) Lefty is an endling, the last of his variant. Perhaps Yeva is too.

To finance her mobile lab, Yeva works for Romeo Meets Yulia, an agency that does 'romance tours' for Western men. Read more... )

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2025/096: Stateless — Elizabeth Wein
...turning your back on your family, I knew, wasn’t nearly as terrifying as turning your back on an entire nation. [loc. 3643]

Stella North is the only female contestant in Europe's first ever youth air race. It's 1937, and the European powers are desperately trying to avert war: 'No one who fought here twenty years ago and survived wanted to see their sons come of age and go straight out to fight another war'. Meanwhile, the young men who are Stella's (male) competitors seem to be obsessed with the war records of their instructors and chaperones. She's especially vexed by the French pilot, Tony Roberts, who strongly resembles the German pilot, Sebastian Rainer. Tony flew in Spain, during the Civil War: Sebastian has never heard of Guernica.

Read more... )
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2025/095: Night and Day in Misery — Catriona Ward
...she understands, now, that she has not been alone these eight years, not really. She carries all that she is, and has been, within her. Stella gasps with the mercy and the cruelty of it all. [loc. 405]

Short story, part of Amazon's 'Shivers' collection: read because Catriona Ward is a favourite author and it's too long since her last novel.

Stella is visiting the motel where her husband Frank and son Sam stayed eight years ago, the night before they died when Frank's car crashed off a suspension bridge and into a river. Sam would be ten now. Stella's life has frozen: she's estranged from her mother (who advised her to leave Frank) and finds it hard to connect with her sister Dina. She blames herself for Frank and Sam's death, and just wants to be with Sam again. She writes a farewell letter and falls asleep: but dreams...

Too short, but very atmospheric: I listened to the audiobook, which was read slightly too dramatically for my taste, but still good. The prose is lovely and the story, though simple, feels organic and rounded.

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2025/094: Return of the Thief — Megan Whalen Turner
Nahuseresh tells me I am not king. We’ll see if he really prefers the Thief. [loc. 3700]

Series finale, and it really delivers.Read more... )

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2025/093: Thick as Thieves — Megan Whalen Turner
There is freedom in this life and there is power, and I was ambitious for the latter. [p. 15]

Kamet is a slave, albeit an expensive and efficient one: he is secretary to Nahuseresh, the erstwhile Medean ambassador to Attolia. Disgraced by the failure of the mission to Attolia the year before, Nahuseresh has returned to court in Ianna-Ir, hoping for a new post. Unfortunately his latest request has not been granted -- and the court is a dangerous place for a man out of favour.Read more... )

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2025/092: A Conspiracy of Kings — Megan Whalen Turner
All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung. [p. 79]

Sophos, the heir to the kingdom of Sounis, was one of Eugenides' companions in The Thief. He doesn't especially want to be king, though he'd quite like to marry the Queen of Eddis. But suddenly catastrophe strikes, Sophos loses everything, and Sounis is under threat. In order to save his country from civil war, he has first to save himself.

Read more... )
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2025/091: The King of Attolia — Megan Whalen Turner
... what he had taken for the roughness of sleep was the king’s accent. While half asleep, he had spoken with an Eddisian accent, which was only to be expected, but Costis had never heard it before, nor had anyone he knew. Awake, the king sounded like an Attolian. It made Costis wonder what else the king could hide so well that no one even thought to look for it.[p. 219]

Eugenides has become King of Attolia, but is not well-received by the courtiers and soldiers of the city. They believe he's a barbarian who forced the Queen to marry him, and who has not consummated the marriage. (There is a rude song about this.) They put snakes in his bed and sand in his food: they regard him as helpless and inept.

But this is not his story -- or, rather, not his narrative. It's the story of Costis Ormentiedes, a young soldier in the King's Guard, who we first see trying to compose a letter to his father after having punched the King in the face.

Read more... )
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