I’m a little more on top of things than last month — I’m only three days late! What a resounding blogging success I am.

Books Read:

1. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka: This had been on my to-read list for a while (possibly since it was published), and I’ve been keeping an eye out for it as I trawl used bookstores because that cover is gorgeous. Then I remembered libraries exist, and my hold finally came up! It was really interesting reading this after having read Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall last year, as they both deal with the Sri Lankan civil war, but it was also…so, so bleak. Beautifully written (I am a sucker for a second-person POV), but heartbreaking, and unflinching about the wide-flung web of trauma that imperialism inflicted (and is still inflicting) on Sri Lanka. It’s also a very darkly funny novel, a whirlwind of grotesque authorities and capricious ghosts, and a love story as well. I’m such a fan of stories where death is not the end, or even the middle, of the story, and there are just enough questions left by the end to keep me thinking about it, over a month later.

2. Grave Empire by Richard Swan: I absolutely adored the first trilogy set in this world, but Grave Empire was…hm. Well, it’s got a fantastic set-up (“hey guys we think something has gone Very Wrong in the afterlife”), and there are just enough hints to the previous trilogy to satisfy my love for those books, but the execution falls flat. There are several plot lines, all converging on the same point, but only one actually lives up to its horrifying premise. It feels…almost careless, without the depth of character work that I loved before, and while a lot happens, enough happens off-screen or unclearly — and not in a way that feels like purposeful ambiguity (now that’s a heck of a phrase). It’s still entertaining, but I admit to feeling disappointed.

3. The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones: Sadly, this trilogy has been giving me diminishing returns; his writing is as energetic and innovative as ever, but the stream-of-consciousness style leads to a lack of clarity — which I think the series needed more of, given the sheer weight of history involved. At one point, people are dying every paragraph, but it’s not clear who or what is killing them, or why, but the narrator is rambling about her boots as she witnesses this. Granted this may be about taste, but I do feel there should be some payoff and some level of plot-related answers, if only to give the remaining ambiguity more heft (there was a conversation about this in my writing group this morning)! Overall I liked this trilogy, but I’m still frustrated with the experience of reading it (and oh boy, did this book need to be tightened up).

4. House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky: A dark, gross, violent return to the world introduced in City of Last Chances, this was just…wonderful. I adored Yasnic’s reappearance (God is still an asshole), and the new cast of characters populating the field hospital are truly my favorite flavors of messed-up. The empire continues its relentless push across the world, decanting gods and magic users to power their weapons, absorbing everything along the way, using up the souls of their own soldiers in necromantic attacks on their enemies…but there is still room for resistance, and hope. Just a delightful read, and I have now officially read ten of his books! Out of like…twelve million. I’ll get there someday!

5. Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling: A very spooky, dread-soaked novella about a rich young woman attempting to navigate the fall of her city, local politics, and a new plague. Lots of great elements, but I think this should have been about forty pages longer to emphasize the central relationship. And to make all the blurbs about “sapphic horror” resemble the reality of the book a bit more. I just wanted to spend more time in this incredibly depressing, murderous world, but alas! Hopefully Starling plays on these themes a bit more in another book, or returns to this world in earnest.

6. Forget Me Not by Julie Soto: Generally speaking, I don’t care about weddings or contemporary romance, but this one grabbed me right away and did not let go. First-person narration can easily fall flat for me, if the narrators don’t have good voices, but Ama and Elliott were fun and breezy, grumpy and intense, respectively, and having them play off each other was delightful. The characters are smart, and doing their best to be kind, which I always appreciate, but their central conflict (this is, after all, a second-chance romance) is believable and so, so sad. Just a blur of humor and sweetness, which is what I needed, since I took a break from my last book of the month to read this one.

7. The Stone of Farewell by Tad Williams: I miss the days when epic fantasy took a whole book to get anywhere at all (though I love where fantasy is at now!), because it was only about halfway through the six hundred pages of this book that things really started to kick off. It’s Tolkien-esque fantasy, possibly the most Tolkien-esque fantasy other than Terry Brooks’s original Shannara books, which means a lot of discussion of honor, the value of peace, the celebration of people standing up to do what they can, even as the darkness approaches. Our protagonist, Simon, is still very much a teenage boy, without much besides luck and very helpful friends to move him along his quest (while other, more high-stakes quests are happening around him) — I read a post on Tumblr that said Simon’s big power-up at the end of the first novel led to him getting, at most, a +1 on some of his wisdom rolls, and that is the truth — but he’s so compelling, so sympathetic, and so real that I can’t help rooting for him. Or being very, very afraid about how all of this will end.

So, only seven books read this month…but most of them were 500+ pages, so I still read a lot.

Writing

Well! Writing happened. Sometimes.

I ended up going to stay at my parents’ for a week, which means no real writing happens (though I did indulge in writing some of a Jayvik-inspired fantasy romance in my morning pages while I was there); I try to look at the time there as crafting and reading focused, as recharging time for writing, but it’s frustrating to not make much progress.

I wrote 18,462 words this month, out of my goal of 20,000. Most of those words were on an alien romance novelette, which is on pause as I work up energy for the last big push to finish the first draft. Then there’s working up the energy for revising it, which is…probably why I haven’t pushed myself to finish it yet. Oops?

There’s just not a lot of energy around these days, where I am. I want to write! I want to finish things! I want to share things! But…I am easily made anxious, and the world is very good at making me anxious right now, and writing is always the first thing to fall apart when that happens.

So: goals for April? Reducing sources of anxiety. Creating simplicity. Staying off social media, getting good sleep. Morning pages every day. Writing, hopefully, at some point.

Being kind. Fighting back. Reading more, walking more. The days are warming up here in New England, and small, imperfect things are beginning to bloom. Maybe I will be one of them.