More Gay Fantasy. So much more
Apr. 6th, 2023 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quietStill on a reading kick but now I need to read for work and I think the Libby queue had calmed down so this might be it for a little while.
Stormhaven
Stormhaven came off hold just as I finished up the Sunbearer trials and instead of taking me 20 days to read like the previous book it took me two. The series continues to feed me with the Griffin whump. This episode takes place largely around an insane asylum, so Griffin spends most of this time fighting back panic attacks and getting dealt constant psychic damage. He has a small breakdown when admitting to some of the more explicit things that were done to him and then Whyborne gives him a nice long hug which was also nice. And he spends some time feeling like damaged goods and wondering out loud why Whyborne would ever stay with him. I'm also enjoying the fact that in relative terms he's somewhat underpowered, because Whyborne keeps on picking up more and more tricks out of his little spell book. This last one he solved the problem of a shitty cult by channeling the power of a god. And Griffin is still just a dude who's worried about Whyborne maybe turning into a god.
I love Whyborne too, in a completely different way. He has such a sweet attitude and while the balance of poor self esteem and actually being a badass is hard to hit I'd say the book still manages to hit it. And I'm still into the fact that he frequently has thoughts of violently cursing people and driving them insane when he's pissed off. This book has also given the strongest hints yet that Something is Up with his talent for magic. I think there was some suggestions previously that there was maybe some eldritch horror in the bloodline but this book all but confirmed it with his story of his grandpa, his mother's connection to the plot, and his chat with the scary god of the week.
Reforged
This one I was slow to take to. It has a very traditional fantasy Europe feel to it with a few slight changes. The worldbuilding was interesting to me. I don't know how much of it was novel and how much of it comes from the fandom for Chinese media, since the author cites danmei as an inspiration and I've never spent any time in that genre. The idea is that paladins earn their power through inbibing the elixir of long dead powerful creatures, and their armor is also derived from those creatures. The main hero is Prime Paladin and is the ex of his newly crowned king, and the plot is largely court intreague around who killed the king's family, who's trying to assassinate the king, and whether or not the king is going to be able to establish himself when most of the country thinks he's a worthless sack of shit.
The whole thing starts in media res and then backs up and explains everything which is part of why it took a bit for me to get into, but the relationship between the two leads did eventually suck me in. If something else from the author comes up on Libby I'll probably check it out.
Trailer Park Trickster
This is the first book I've read entirely via audio book. I'm not sure if the experience was enhanced by the fact that I didn't have to actively read all the boring parts, or if I didn't give the book a fair shake because I was half distracted through most of it. I can say that even though I wasn't paying too much attention through the majority of the book I never felt like I was confused as to what was happening, because it's slow, plot wise, spends a lot of time mulling over the inner thoughts of characters who are not having particularly complicated inner thoughts, and just sort of felt pretty repetitious. Some of the things that I didn't really like in the first book, including a lot of emotional telling without much showing, particularly on the part of the main character, and a central romance that didn't feel wholly convincing, were enhanced in this book.
I think Vincente and Adam maybe spend three pages together in the whole book. Vince is kind of out doing his own thing tagging along with the elves the whole time and that doesn't really have anything to do with what Adam is doing, which is trying to figure out why a warlock is stalking his family and who that warlock is. And the Vince side I found to be extra boring. He, spoilers ... is there basically to accidentally give a gun to Silver so Silver can shoot his dad. And again the whole idea of the elves being dangerous and scary is undercut by the fact that apparently you can just shoot them and they die. Like.. just do that then.
The messed up family relationships were kind of interesting on Adam's side. I felt it all could have been condensed into a short story though.
---
It occurred to me a while back that there's a decent market for gay fantasy out there now. Such books were around around before - our book club was never out of books to read in its decades-long existence - but nowadays it feels like it's everywhere and that's kind of nice. I don't know if I'm missing it but I can't seem to find the Sci Fi books so easily. Outside of Ocean's Echo I haven't seen any titles cross my path lately and it'd be nice to mix it up a bit. So if anyone has any recommendations for some good gay Sci-Fi, particularly of the space opera type, I'm all ears.
---
On the games front we've got a new hero coming soon for Overwatch. He's cute, a flirt, and a support. Here's his lore intro. His kit is also scary in the sense that the options for trolling teammates are endless. He's either going to be so niche that no one plays him, or somehow OP enough that he has a locked in spot. It'll be interesting to see which turns out to be true.
And my brother and I are giving it another go at playing Divinity 2 together. We've tried maybe 3 or 4 times now to get a co-op game going and have only ever made it as far as getting of the damn tutorial island before we get distracted with something else, or lose the time to play, and then we've forgotten what's going on and restart. This time we're going for a dual Lone Wolf approach, with the idea that it will be a more straightforward game if we aren't managing companions in addition to ourselves. So far we've been struggling with utility like CC and mobility because of this but maybe once we get going that will be fixed. We've also avoided the murder hobo behavior from our previous run by just being eager to get through the beginning content for the fourth time in a row and skipping a lot of stuff. I don't know how that's going to hurt the plot in the future but whatever. I'm playing Ifan and the brother is playing the possessed redhead. My Ifan is a "cleric" aka a necromancer I guess who is trying to be a nice guy so far. But he has managed to piss some soul off by shattering its urn when maybe it didn't want to, whoops.
Stormhaven
Stormhaven came off hold just as I finished up the Sunbearer trials and instead of taking me 20 days to read like the previous book it took me two. The series continues to feed me with the Griffin whump. This episode takes place largely around an insane asylum, so Griffin spends most of this time fighting back panic attacks and getting dealt constant psychic damage. He has a small breakdown when admitting to some of the more explicit things that were done to him and then Whyborne gives him a nice long hug which was also nice. And he spends some time feeling like damaged goods and wondering out loud why Whyborne would ever stay with him. I'm also enjoying the fact that in relative terms he's somewhat underpowered, because Whyborne keeps on picking up more and more tricks out of his little spell book. This last one he solved the problem of a shitty cult by channeling the power of a god. And Griffin is still just a dude who's worried about Whyborne maybe turning into a god.
I love Whyborne too, in a completely different way. He has such a sweet attitude and while the balance of poor self esteem and actually being a badass is hard to hit I'd say the book still manages to hit it. And I'm still into the fact that he frequently has thoughts of violently cursing people and driving them insane when he's pissed off. This book has also given the strongest hints yet that Something is Up with his talent for magic. I think there was some suggestions previously that there was maybe some eldritch horror in the bloodline but this book all but confirmed it with his story of his grandpa, his mother's connection to the plot, and his chat with the scary god of the week.
Reforged
This one I was slow to take to. It has a very traditional fantasy Europe feel to it with a few slight changes. The worldbuilding was interesting to me. I don't know how much of it was novel and how much of it comes from the fandom for Chinese media, since the author cites danmei as an inspiration and I've never spent any time in that genre. The idea is that paladins earn their power through inbibing the elixir of long dead powerful creatures, and their armor is also derived from those creatures. The main hero is Prime Paladin and is the ex of his newly crowned king, and the plot is largely court intreague around who killed the king's family, who's trying to assassinate the king, and whether or not the king is going to be able to establish himself when most of the country thinks he's a worthless sack of shit.
The whole thing starts in media res and then backs up and explains everything which is part of why it took a bit for me to get into, but the relationship between the two leads did eventually suck me in. If something else from the author comes up on Libby I'll probably check it out.
Trailer Park Trickster
This is the first book I've read entirely via audio book. I'm not sure if the experience was enhanced by the fact that I didn't have to actively read all the boring parts, or if I didn't give the book a fair shake because I was half distracted through most of it. I can say that even though I wasn't paying too much attention through the majority of the book I never felt like I was confused as to what was happening, because it's slow, plot wise, spends a lot of time mulling over the inner thoughts of characters who are not having particularly complicated inner thoughts, and just sort of felt pretty repetitious. Some of the things that I didn't really like in the first book, including a lot of emotional telling without much showing, particularly on the part of the main character, and a central romance that didn't feel wholly convincing, were enhanced in this book.
I think Vincente and Adam maybe spend three pages together in the whole book. Vince is kind of out doing his own thing tagging along with the elves the whole time and that doesn't really have anything to do with what Adam is doing, which is trying to figure out why a warlock is stalking his family and who that warlock is. And the Vince side I found to be extra boring. He, spoilers ... is there basically to accidentally give a gun to Silver so Silver can shoot his dad. And again the whole idea of the elves being dangerous and scary is undercut by the fact that apparently you can just shoot them and they die. Like.. just do that then.
The messed up family relationships were kind of interesting on Adam's side. I felt it all could have been condensed into a short story though.
---
It occurred to me a while back that there's a decent market for gay fantasy out there now. Such books were around around before - our book club was never out of books to read in its decades-long existence - but nowadays it feels like it's everywhere and that's kind of nice. I don't know if I'm missing it but I can't seem to find the Sci Fi books so easily. Outside of Ocean's Echo I haven't seen any titles cross my path lately and it'd be nice to mix it up a bit. So if anyone has any recommendations for some good gay Sci-Fi, particularly of the space opera type, I'm all ears.
---
On the games front we've got a new hero coming soon for Overwatch. He's cute, a flirt, and a support. Here's his lore intro. His kit is also scary in the sense that the options for trolling teammates are endless. He's either going to be so niche that no one plays him, or somehow OP enough that he has a locked in spot. It'll be interesting to see which turns out to be true.
And my brother and I are giving it another go at playing Divinity 2 together. We've tried maybe 3 or 4 times now to get a co-op game going and have only ever made it as far as getting of the damn tutorial island before we get distracted with something else, or lose the time to play, and then we've forgotten what's going on and restart. This time we're going for a dual Lone Wolf approach, with the idea that it will be a more straightforward game if we aren't managing companions in addition to ourselves. So far we've been struggling with utility like CC and mobility because of this but maybe once we get going that will be fixed. We've also avoided the murder hobo behavior from our previous run by just being eager to get through the beginning content for the fourth time in a row and skipping a lot of stuff. I don't know how that's going to hurt the plot in the future but whatever. I'm playing Ifan and the brother is playing the possessed redhead. My Ifan is a "cleric" aka a necromancer I guess who is trying to be a nice guy so far. But he has managed to piss some soul off by shattering its urn when maybe it didn't want to, whoops.
no subject
Date: 2023-04-07 07:53 pm (UTC)