Recent reading

[luzula]

Malafrena by Ursula K. Le Guin
This is good solid Le Guin; you will enjoy it if that is the sort of thing you enjoy. Someone somewhere said that it was similar to The Dispossessed, and it does have things in common, mostly in that it's about a politically radical man and also about home/exile. The politics is different, though--The Dispossessed is anarchism/socialism, but this is nationalism/liberalism in the French Revolution sense. It's set in a fictional middle European country in the 1820's. Thankfully it's not all about the men but also passes the Bechdel test; one of my favorite bits was a female friendship. I did feel that the ending was not quite complete--there was one person whose POV we didn't get to see at the end, and I wanted to. Anyway, recommended.

The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones (#3 in the Dalemark Chronicles)
It took me some time to get into this, and as a whole it's probably my least favorite in the series so far. I didn't get the connection to the two previous books, and the characters didn't grab me as DWJ characters usually do. But I did like it after the middle when things come together, and then when it's tied to the other books.

Comments

[the_rck]

The Spellcoats was the third DWJ book I read (the first was Dogsbody. The second was Charmed Life) and the first one I read set in Dalemark. I actually ended up not liking the rest of Dalemark nearly as well as The Spellcoats. I suspect that it works better before the rest of the series. I didn't get so much into the characters as into the atmosphere which, as I recall, felt kind of mythic.

[luzula]

If I had to choose, Dogsbody is probably my favorite DWJ.

Yeah, The Spellcoats was quite different from the other Dalemark books, so liking it or not might depend on which book you come to first. But I did like it better in retrospect when we got the interpretation of the afterword.

[the_rck]

It's so interesting to see what people think of different DWJ books! I read Dogsbody in middle school and somehow didn't quite get it. I own a copy but haven't reread it since then, so I'm not sure what I would think now. I have it in my bedroom at the moment because I took fic prompts in January and someone asked me about a post-canon fic for the book.

My favorite DWJ is probably a toss up between Archer's Goon and The Homeward Bounders.

[luzula]

I loved Dogsbody as a kid and reread it a couple of years ago, and I think it stands up! I love how good she is at writing animals. I haven't read The Homeward Bounders, but I'm sure I'll get to it sometime in my DWJ reading.

[the_rck]

I really love The Homeward Bounders, but... Don't read it if you're starting out down. The ending is exactly what it needs to be, but it's not the sort of thing that leaves any readers laughing.