X Never Marks the Spot

sholio recently talked about Dresden Files: War Cry, an original comic story (by Jim Butcher, so part of canon), and as she mentioned it features Harry & Thomas snarking at one another (it's set a bit after Dead Beat), I had to get it.

I've been reading the Dresden Files since about book 7 or 8, and while there's a lot of the series I enjoy, Harry & Thomas is - not necessary my favorite thing about it, but it's the part that gets my fangirl heart pumping. The only parts of the series I've reread more than once are with them. ( Some general spoilers for the series; spoilers for the comic specifically will be spoiler-tagged as well )

The bro (who just finished "Labyrinth" and came up giggling, "Miles is a furry!") describes the entire series thusly: "Unstoppable force meets immovable object - and then they have a kid."

(I've finished Memory and started on Komarr - if Memory isn't my very favorite then it's definitely in the top 3 or so...I have such a hard time picking favorites, would need to reread the series to decide, but yeah, I totally get why everyone loves Memory - so much <3!)

So when that list of SF books went around, I mentioned I'd never read Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books, upon which someone kindly (evilly) linked me to the free e-book versions. So I popped them on my Kindle and started reading. Really enjoyed Cordelia's stories (insanely awesome (awesomely insane) female character FTW!), and Cordelia & Aral's mature, incredibly supportive romance and relationship (het OTP FTW!) Then I started reading Warrior's Apprentice.

Then I told my brother to read them. And my roommate. And gnine (that was a week and a half ago. She's finishing Cryoburn as I write this. Have I ever mentioned my sister's marathoning abilities are unbelievable?)

I knew the series was award-winning scifi, and I knew it had to have good characters from the number of fangirls who liked it. I'd also heard tell of h/c (Bujold is totally an h/c fangirl, whether or not she would use the term herself. She's also a whumper - there's quite a bit of 'hmm, the plot seems to be slowing down - time to beat on the hero!' but there's some sweet moments as well.) What no one ever mentioned was how funny the books can be. Some of them moreso than others; the whole series is incredibly manic depressive (just like its hero) - bouncing between hilarious and tragic within a few pages. ...Which, I've come to realize, is pretty much my favorite kind of fiction (see Gintama!) (Not that the Vorkosigan books are parody; they're pretty straight action/hard scifi/mystery. But they keep making me unexpectedly laugh out loud. And that's definitely a good part of how hard I've fallen for them...)

I could go on about how much I adore Miles and his amazing ability to take absolutely anything and run with it (to infinity and beyond, to legend! Also bankruptcy!) and all the snowballing escapades this gift gets him into, and how much I love how he's maybe the only genre hero I've ever read with a really solid, functional, caring relationship with both his parents (so much love for Cordelia & Aral, I don't even. And I love how Miles is so completely their son, Aral's mastery of strategy and Cordelia's unstoppable will in one package seemingly too small to contain it). Not to mention all the Dendarii, and Gregor, and Ivan (Ivan! <333) - but I'm about halfway through Brothers in Arms and it was a terrible place to stop, so I'm going back to reading now.

But thank you, everyone who recced them - and if you haven't read them yet, definitely give them a go!

(Ah, also, I'm reading in chronological order, so please please please no spoilers for Brothers in Arms or even vague references to any books after - I'm pretty much unspoiled and am enjoying not having any clue what's going to happen to Miles next!)

Just read Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex - does anyone know this series? I got into them around the third book and rather inordinately love them. They're kids' lit - about the level of the middle Harry Potters - and are lightweight fluff, unabashed urban fantasy action-adventure romps ("Die Hard with fairies," according to the author); but had they existed when I was eleven they might've been my favorite books in the universe, and I can't help but enjoy the hell out of them now. Putting aside that I adore kids' books anyway, Artemis Fowl reads like Eoin Colfer's got a checklist of All of X-parrot's Buttons and is going down it one by one. We've got:

--A villain turned reluctant hero protagonist
--Who's also a twelfth-level-intellect-style ultra-supergenius (at 12 years old, no less)
--With a badass bodyguard/assistant/lackey who redefines loyalty (<333 Butler forever)

But wait, there's more! For no extra charge there's also:

--Male/female platonic friendship (okay, mostly platonic; and it's a credit to the relationships that I'm okay whichever way it turns out in the end)
--A bit of cute sibling dynamics
--A gang of misfits saving the world together on a regular basis

And that's just the set-up; once the plots get going there's plenty of h/c and presumed dead and friends saving one another. Plus there's nifty magic-science amalgamating and really stupid puns (Holly is an elven police officer, a member of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance - in other words, she's a LEPRecon.) As well as a few gags - see dwarven flatuence and pretty much anything else about dwarf physiology - that could only be appreciated by a ten-year-old boy (and/or a Gintama fan :P).

The Atlantis Complex was as much fun as the rest of the series, and continues the button-smash tradition by screwing with the hero's sanity, which plot I obviously hate so much that I can't stop writing it :P Supposedly the next book will be the last in the series (SIIIGH)...don't want it to end, but can't wait for it!

I was fanning before I knew what fanning was, long before I ever got online. In early high school, thanks to my town library's "YA*" paperback collection, I got into Star Trek (TOS, mostly) novels; they were my first exposure to fanfic, in particular the really gooey/sappy/smarmy/pre-slashy stuff that I'd always thought of as the "good bits" - usually a few paragraphs, at best a page or two of most books (except Lord of the Rings, which is crammed full of it). I used to keep a notebook noting the page numbers of my favorite bits. But in some of the Star Trek novels the yumminess (usually h/c) just went on and on - at least in the earlier novels; the later ones, not so much. But some of the first were most definitely written by fangirls - at the time I didn't know it; I just knew that what I was reading, while noticeably inferior in elements like plot and prose, was catering to certain tastes of mine more precisely than any book I'd read before.

* "YA" at my library apparently meant either "teen characters" or "sci-fi paperback". I think they got a sci-fi section later, but through my early teen years finding SF was a matter of browsing the unorganized paperback racks. Then I discovered 2nd-hand bookstores...

So it cracked me up when I was on Fanlore today and found that Killing Time was penned by a K/S writer who slipped what was in effect a pre-slash story past the Paramount censors by mysterious means. What gets me is that I remember this novel well - it's one of the dozen or so I bought for myself rather than just rereading the library's copy. I remember at the time of first reading it that I both adored it and thought it over the top in that ridiculous way that made me all deliciously squirmy (It involves a Romulan-made alternate time-line, in which, iffen I recall, the "golden-haired, golden-eyed" Kirk was an oft-abused drug-addict. And Spock was dreaming about him. Yeah.) Now I'm wondering if I actually read the original. Just checked and the copy I have now is the edited version, but I'm curious about the library's copy...

ETA: For my own reference: all the censored bits! (and maybe I'm hallucinating, but I swear I remember some of them...)

ETA2: And here we have a conversation about Kirk/Spock-y Star Trek novels! Should I be embarrassed or proud that almost every novel that's mentioned here is in my "dozen or so" collection? And that I want to reread them? (Nice to see Diane Duane getting credit, her take on the ST 'verse was awesome, love her aliens. --Zomg other folks like Dwellers in the Crucible! Which is really about a pair of female OCs who parallel Kirk & Spock...that being said, it is hands-down the most extreme h/c I have ever read between female chars. Am wanting to reread it just for that...(need to see Xena...))