Reading Notes, Post #10
Apr. 23rd, 2022 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usedtobeljsSlammed with work, exhausted, allergies, blah blah...
But I wanted to collect my thoughts on the latest entries in the three mystery series (one Regency/Napoleonic era, one late Victorian, one contemporary-policier-with-magic) I follow. It's interesting that all three long-running series have done soft --or not so soft -- resets with each of the 2022 releases.
[Spoilers ahead for all three, but I'll put my thoughts under cuts.]
I enjoy Deanna Raybourn's series (despite 1st-person narration) about Veronica Speedwell, Victorian lepidopterist and illegitimate daughter of a British royal, and her detecting partner and love interest Stoker, taxidermist and semi-scientist and tattooed rebel of an aristocratic family. There has been a slow burn between Veronica and Stoker throughout the series, but they consummated the relationship a few books ago, and it's been ongoing.
One of the elements here was that Veronica has always disclaimed marriage for herself, and in the latest book The Impossible Impostor, we learn why -- she was "married" before, to a scoundrel who she thought died in the Krakatoa eruption but who turns back up in this book's mystery. Stoker, who has a thing about marriage and fidelity, can't deal with it, and takes himself off at the end of the book to work through his feelings. Note: Veronica is NOT married, because the scoundrel lied about getting a marriage license, and she finds that out at the end of the book.
I have no emotional investment in what happens in her series; I enjoy them, but I rarely reread (the sign of investment for me), and I'm fine with the shift in the main relationship. I can imagine that it's more of a problem for others who ship Veronica/Stoker more strongly. (Me? I love Tiberius, Stoker's brother. Not for Veronica, for me. :)) Nevertheless, it's a good, in-character way to complicate the relationship while still honoring it.
C.S. Harris has been writing the Sebastian St Cyr (Viscount Devlin) books for a while now; the 2022 release, When Blood Lies, is the 17th. She's a historian by training, and her Regency/Napoleonic-era mysteries are dense with real history and political machinations in London. I love them (once we get past the first few with a disappointing love interest) because of that grounding but also the central relationship of Sebastian and his wife Hero Jarvis, a bad-ass bluestocking daughter of a governmental fixer. Sebastian has a touch of superhero about him -- great night vision and all but preternatural hearing, a stone-cold assassin when he wants to be -- but he also knows that he's illegitimate, his long-absent mother having an affair when married to the aristocrat who has always claimed him, and her abandonment and his unknown father's identity have haunted him.
Harris's academic specialty was French history, not English, however, and in this new book she takes Sebastian and Hero across the Channel to Paris in March 1815 -- just as Napoleon escapes Elba. The central mystery involves the murder of Sebastian's mother, and it's SO interesting to get all the Parisian history I had no idea about. It also does nice things with character and relationship, with issues that will not be resolved for another book or two. I liked the way she's shaking up the series while retaining all the things I've enjoyed in previous books. I'm excited to read the next one.
I've really loved the Rivers of London books from the jump: stories of modern-day policing in a world touched by Newtonian magic, narrated by Constable -- now Detective Constable -- Peter Grant, a biracial man and a wizard. He is really no longer an apprentice, although he was for the first few books, taught by Detective Inspector Thomas Nightingale, THE Nightingale, a wizarding legend who (because of a shift in the world in the 60s, still unexplained) is over a hundred years old but looks 40-ish.
In the beginning, the books were strong on the Grant & Nightingale relationship, but as the world has expanded and Peter's grown into his power, it's become really the Adventures of Peter Grant and Others, with Nightingale gradually moving into the background. This is fine, but... but... and I'm not proud of this... my heart belongs to Thomas.
At the end of this most recent book, then, Nightingale tells Peter that he'll be retiring in a few years -- Aaronovitch's clear signal that the shift away from Nightingale's story is complete. I am not even remotely thrilled with this, and it's moved the Rivers of London books from auto-buy to maybe-when-I-get-around-to-them.
It's interesting to me how differently I respond to these change-ups in long-running series, but I am also pleased that after years adjacent to fandom, I can let series go if I want to. :)
What are you reading? Any series you've stopped reading?
But I wanted to collect my thoughts on the latest entries in the three mystery series (one Regency/Napoleonic era, one late Victorian, one contemporary-policier-with-magic) I follow. It's interesting that all three long-running series have done soft --or not so soft -- resets with each of the 2022 releases.
[Spoilers ahead for all three, but I'll put my thoughts under cuts.]
I enjoy Deanna Raybourn's series (despite 1st-person narration) about Veronica Speedwell, Victorian lepidopterist and illegitimate daughter of a British royal, and her detecting partner and love interest Stoker, taxidermist and semi-scientist and tattooed rebel of an aristocratic family. There has been a slow burn between Veronica and Stoker throughout the series, but they consummated the relationship a few books ago, and it's been ongoing.
One of the elements here was that Veronica has always disclaimed marriage for herself, and in the latest book The Impossible Impostor, we learn why -- she was "married" before, to a scoundrel who she thought died in the Krakatoa eruption but who turns back up in this book's mystery. Stoker, who has a thing about marriage and fidelity, can't deal with it, and takes himself off at the end of the book to work through his feelings. Note: Veronica is NOT married, because the scoundrel lied about getting a marriage license, and she finds that out at the end of the book.
I have no emotional investment in what happens in her series; I enjoy them, but I rarely reread (the sign of investment for me), and I'm fine with the shift in the main relationship. I can imagine that it's more of a problem for others who ship Veronica/Stoker more strongly. (Me? I love Tiberius, Stoker's brother. Not for Veronica, for me. :)) Nevertheless, it's a good, in-character way to complicate the relationship while still honoring it.
C.S. Harris has been writing the Sebastian St Cyr (Viscount Devlin) books for a while now; the 2022 release, When Blood Lies, is the 17th. She's a historian by training, and her Regency/Napoleonic-era mysteries are dense with real history and political machinations in London. I love them (once we get past the first few with a disappointing love interest) because of that grounding but also the central relationship of Sebastian and his wife Hero Jarvis, a bad-ass bluestocking daughter of a governmental fixer. Sebastian has a touch of superhero about him -- great night vision and all but preternatural hearing, a stone-cold assassin when he wants to be -- but he also knows that he's illegitimate, his long-absent mother having an affair when married to the aristocrat who has always claimed him, and her abandonment and his unknown father's identity have haunted him.
Harris's academic specialty was French history, not English, however, and in this new book she takes Sebastian and Hero across the Channel to Paris in March 1815 -- just as Napoleon escapes Elba. The central mystery involves the murder of Sebastian's mother, and it's SO interesting to get all the Parisian history I had no idea about. It also does nice things with character and relationship, with issues that will not be resolved for another book or two. I liked the way she's shaking up the series while retaining all the things I've enjoyed in previous books. I'm excited to read the next one.
I've really loved the Rivers of London books from the jump: stories of modern-day policing in a world touched by Newtonian magic, narrated by Constable -- now Detective Constable -- Peter Grant, a biracial man and a wizard. He is really no longer an apprentice, although he was for the first few books, taught by Detective Inspector Thomas Nightingale, THE Nightingale, a wizarding legend who (because of a shift in the world in the 60s, still unexplained) is over a hundred years old but looks 40-ish.
In the beginning, the books were strong on the Grant & Nightingale relationship, but as the world has expanded and Peter's grown into his power, it's become really the Adventures of Peter Grant and Others, with Nightingale gradually moving into the background. This is fine, but... but... and I'm not proud of this... my heart belongs to Thomas.
At the end of this most recent book, then, Nightingale tells Peter that he'll be retiring in a few years -- Aaronovitch's clear signal that the shift away from Nightingale's story is complete. I am not even remotely thrilled with this, and it's moved the Rivers of London books from auto-buy to maybe-when-I-get-around-to-them.
It's interesting to me how differently I respond to these change-ups in long-running series, but I am also pleased that after years adjacent to fandom, I can let series go if I want to. :)
What are you reading? Any series you've stopped reading?
no subject
Date: 2022-04-23 03:17 pm (UTC)I said before that I drift along with Rivers of London when I take a fancy to reading one, which is what I usually do with series rather than specifically giving them up.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-24 10:21 am (UTC)All hugs!
no subject
Date: 2022-04-23 03:48 pm (UTC)I agree: rereading is the sign of investment for me, too. That's why I've read the entire Tales of The City series three(?) times.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-24 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-26 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-26 05:12 pm (UTC)