Give me books, chocolate, & Spectra Soldiers!!!

What I’ve Read
Sunrise in the East by wroth_and_ruin – aka “that Hobbit/Pushing Daisies Sentinel/Guide AU crossover that nobody asked for and nobody wanted but you're getting anyway.” https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319923 – This is a fic where I really enjoyed each chapter on its own, but I feel like it did a better job setting up questions than answering them. I think the author got either bored or maybe intimidated One of the key ones is, why is Thranduil choosing Ned over an immortal life? A key element of this story is that elves are immortal, men are not, and sentinels do not outlive their guides. So, there’s a great chapter where Ned, transplanted from a world without elves, realizes the immortality that Thranduil is giving up and runs to tell him they can’t complete their bond (aka fuck) because Thranduil will literally die when Ned does. And well, instead they have a confrontation about how Thranduil is actually devastatingly horny for Ned, and the chapter ends. And yes, they do pick up the thread later, sort of, but without any of the actual weight behind it – Thranduil apologizes that Ned wasn’t told, Ned does not actually get into his concerns that he’s going to literally kill his immortal destined lover…. Like, I don’t necessarily want the trite answer that that Love Conquers Death or whatever – but I would like Ned, who lost both his parents while still a child, to point out – Thranduil would be leaving his son alone, and a king. Like. There are reasons why a person might do choose death over immortal life! But you should HAVE that conversation. Ultimately this fic, being a fanfic, works for me because it’s indulgent in several modes that I really enjoy, and I can forgive the plotty mistakes because of what it is.

What Manner of Man by St John Starling – What a fascinatingly strange book! Apparently this was written serially and with some plot points decided by polls on the author’s patreon – I think this explains some shifts in focus over the course of the book. There is much to recommend here – this book is erotica and mystery in the recovered letters and journal entries of a repressed gay Catholic priest who goes to a remote island to enact an exorcism at the request of … basically Dracula? The early book is full of sexual repression and yearning and erotic dreams that haunts and hound our dear young Father Victor Ardelian, and I really enjoyed the character’s internal tension between his sense of divine purpose and intense horniness. The first 70% of the book is great on this!

I found the ending did not live up to the promise of the early stages. Sadly, the book did not quite commit to making Creepy Island Dracula as terrible as original flavor, and the longing and the pining get wiped away as Father Ardelian undergoes a super speed conversion to secular humanism and rejects his religious up-bringing in favor of… a vampire? A strict accounting of the plot would probably make this book seem more coherent as a horror story but the erotic and religious focus of the first half of the book were most compelling to me, and they dropped off by the end of the book, where much of the plot of the book is carried forward in the point of view of characters who are perfectly nice but…, I didn’t spend a lot of time inside their minds as they unpick the tangled mess of their desires from their morals. I think this falls apart for me because the author (or perhaps the poll voters!) were not as compelled by process of slowly untwisting the knot of wanting to save the vampire’s soul from wanting to fuck him. Eh. It makes damn sense but it doesn’t compel me.

The Artist’s Way – Julie Cameron – finished it! Found it very helpful to build some self-care habits for my creative self, which has been quite good. As I stated in the past, I was doing this on Easy Mode on purpose, and I think I would like to revisit in a few months.

What I’m Reading
Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins – By god, this book is excellent to read immediately after the first one. About half of the book is just handling the fallout of the last book, and it’s awful and great.

Untamed – Anna Cowan – Came up in a Discord book group combo, I am about 10 pages in, Kit seems very rude and kind of fun, her sister’s marriage seems incomprehensible, the Duke is unclear!

A Strange and Stubborn Endurance – Foz Meadows. A re-read of a beloved book. I think that I had picked up Sunrise in the East after watching Hellboy II because I was finding the fanfic reminded me of a lot of “arranged marriage with cultural differences” fic that I had read in the Hobbit movie fandom. This book does some of that really really well, and grounds the stakes in personal relationships AND politics.

What I’ll Read Next
No Idea!