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FMK #22: Yuletide Fandoms

...Let's just pretend today is Tuesday, okay?

Last week's poll was very close until the last minute, but Omnitopia Dawn edged into first for F at the last minute, just beating out The Android's Dream. The most K votes was Down And out In The Magic Kingdom, which I honestly did not expect! However it did not have a majority of K votes. The only one with a majority of K votes was Radio Freefall.

Reviews post for the ones I've read lately DEFINITELY coming later today, yes def.

This week's theme: Yuletide fandoms! (As measured by number of fics on AO3, because that was easier than trying to figure out what had actually had noms.)

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

Poll #18782 FMK #23: Yuletide Fandoms

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33

View Respondents

Diamond Star by Catherine Asaro (2010)

F
6 (50.0%)

M
2 (16.7%)

K
4 (33.3%)

Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold (2006)

F
12 (57.1%)

M
2 (9.5%)

K
7 (33.3%)

The King's Buccaneer by Raymond E.Feist (1994)

F
4 (36.4%)

M
3 (27.3%)

K
4 (36.4%)

An Acceptable Time by Medeleine L'Engle (1989)

F
11 (55.0%)

M
3 (15.0%)

K
6 (30.0%)

The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin (2001)

F
11 (61.1%)

M
6 (33.3%)

K
1 (5.6%)

The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine (2004)

F
10 (76.9%)

M
2 (15.4%)

K
1 (7.7%)

Gil'S All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez (2006)

F
2 (22.2%)

M
3 (33.3%)

K
4 (44.4%)

The Death of Sleep by Anne McCaffrey (1990)

F
5 (33.3%)

M
1 (6.7%)

K
9 (60.0%)

The Tower at Stony Wood by Patricia A. McKillip (2000)

F
7 (53.8%)

M
4 (30.8%)

K
2 (15.4%)

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley (1984)

F
11 (47.8%)

M
10 (43.5%)

K
2 (8.7%)

The Fortress of the Pearl by Michael Moorcock (1989)

F
2 (16.7%)

M
3 (25.0%)

K
7 (58.3%)

Warlock of the Witch World by Andre Norton (1967)

F
7 (63.6%)

M
3 (27.3%)

K
1 (9.1%)

Old Man's War by John Scalzi (2005)

F
10 (58.8%)

M
1 (5.9%)

K
6 (35.3%)

Kris Longknife: Intrepid by Mike Shepherd (1989)

F
2 (22.2%)

M
2 (22.2%)

K
5 (55.6%)

The Lost and the Lurking by Manly Wade Wellman (1981)

F
3 (30.0%)

M
4 (40.0%)

K
3 (30.0%)

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson (2012)

F
6 (46.2%)

M
4 (30.8%)

K
3 (23.1%)

Daughter of Witches by Patricia C. Wrede (1983)

F
12 (80.0%)

M
3 (20.0%)

K
0 (0.0%)

Dilvish, the Damned by Roger Zelazny (1982)

F
7 (53.8%)

M
2 (15.4%)

K
4 (30.8%)

Poll #18783 FMK #23a: Comics Yuletide Fandoms

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 29

View Respondents

Adventures of Tintin: The Castafiore Emerald, Flight 714, Tintin and the Picaros by Herge (various)

F
9 (64.3%)

M
5 (35.7%)

K
0 (0.0%)

Archie: His First 50 Years (Archie Comics)

F
3 (33.3%)

M
4 (44.4%)

K
2 (22.2%)

Asterix le Gaulois by Rene de Goscinny (1961)

F
13 (72.2%)

M
5 (27.8%)

K
0 (0.0%)

The Complete Persepolis by Marhane Satrapi (2000)

F
6 (28.6%)

M
14 (66.7%)

K
1 (4.8%)

Hellboy Vol. 3 by Mike Mignola (1998)

F
5 (55.6%)

M
2 (22.2%)

K
2 (22.2%)

Krazy & Ignatz: The Complete Sunday Strips 1916-1924 by George Herriman (1916-1924)

F
2 (25.0%)

M
4 (50.0%)

K
2 (25.0%)

Mafalda vol. 8 by Quino (2002)

F
4 (57.1%)

M
1 (14.3%)

K
2 (28.6%)

Maison Ikkoku, Vol. 12 by Rumiko Takahashi (1999)

F
2 (22.2%)

M
3 (33.3%)

K
4 (44.4%)

Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman (2005)

F
11 (57.9%)

M
3 (15.8%)

K
5 (26.3%)

Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu (2016)

F
12 (70.6%)

M
4 (23.5%)

K
1 (5.9%)

New Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel (1990)

F
12 (57.1%)

M
8 (38.1%)

K
1 (4.8%)

Phonogram: The Singles Club by Kieron Gillen (2010)

F
8 (80.0%)

M
0 (0.0%)

K
2 (20.0%)

Saga Deluxe Edition Book Two by Brian K. Vaughan(2017)

F
10 (58.8%)

M
5 (29.4%)

K
2 (11.8%)

Tegami Bach, Vol. 2 by Hiroyuki Asada (2010)

F
3 (50.0%)

M
1 (16.7%)

K
2 (33.3%)

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I quite enjoyed Sharing Knife, but I think it'd drive you nuts. I don't like Scalzi's fiction basically at all.

Really enjoyed the Telling in a kind of gentle zen with occasional slaughter flashback. Keep hearing good things about Hero and Crown, so you can read and tell me how is.

That's, uh, good to know.

Le Guin does Zen With Occasional Slaughter very well, though!

I really hated the first volume of Saga. It squicked me several ways and badly enough that I still get anxious hearing people talk about it.

I tried a Kris Longknife book because someone told me it was like the Vorkosigan series. It wasn't. It also was very, very much not to my taste. My reaction can be summed up as 'Ick.'

For Wellman, the novels are actually not a good place to start. The Lost and the Lurking is a Silver John novel, yes? I would really recommend reading the associated short stories before reading any of the novels because they're more focused and do character development in ways that the novels don't (yes, the opposite of the normal for series). The short stories are very heavily grounded in specific songs and specific bits of folk magic while the novels lose that focus.

Dilvish the Damned is, if I recall correctly, a bunch of smushed together short stories that all feature the same character. It's not Zelazny's best, but I wouldn't call it his worst either. It's secondary world fantasy. There's a sequel novel called The Changing Land (which, being me, I found and read first). I can't remember how bad the sexism gets, but I can't imagine it's not there.

I liked the first few trades of Saga but then it started, well, killing characters too fast for me. So now I'm way behind.

Sadly I don't have any of the Silver John short stories! I've been looking for Silver John stories since I stumbled on some filk of it years ago, and that one's all I've ever managed to get my hands on.

That sounds about right for Dilvish. I've read most of Zelazny but never quite got around to that one, I guess.

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melannen - 2017-09-07 14:21 (UTC) - Expand

Scalzi's Old Man's War was the most Boy's Own SF for Boy SF Fans I'd read since someone strongarmed me into Heinlein.

...oh good, that sounds... like a thing. (Although I did really like most of Heinlein's Boys Own, as long as he didn't try to write any women in them.)

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ambyr - 2017-09-07 02:37 (UTC) - Expand

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melannen - 2017-09-07 14:21 (UTC) - Expand

I liked Beguilement, but it's very much a love it or hate it book. I think it skews too far into being primarily a romance for people who aren't actively into romance as a (or the) main plot line. There's also a large age gap with the hero in his 40s and the heroine in her teens.

I found the cultural clash interesting but also kind of unconvincing because it requires two cultures in the same space, one fighting terrible wars to keep the other from being slaughtered en masse and the other completely not noticing or asking questions about it even when many people die. I had some other world building problems with it, too. I liked the characters and the small interactions as long as I didn't look up and start seeing the cracks in probability.

I enjoyed the books, and the general theme of being the change you want to see in the world, but I agree with what you say about it.

I did really like that the world wasn't stuck in agrarian tech but was very obviously moving towards mechanization and industrial revolution.

Mmm. I'm okay with romance as the main plotline, but it has to be good romance. And the age gap thing is tricky to do well for me these days.

I love The Hero and the Crown but am not really objective about it. I'm glad I read it when I was the right age to love it forever.

A lot of people liked Old Man's War but I didn't. It had a good premise which didn't pursue ANY of its interesting implications and a really obnoxious scene where a cowardly moron advocates pacifism and is eaten by aliens for a cheap ha ha ha isn't pacifism stupid joke. Also, boring and forgettable.

I love the first three Time Trilogy books and like parts of the fourth. I hated An Acceptable Time.

I've never heard of The Death of Sleep and I thought I knew all McCaffrey's books, so I'm intrigued/scared by that one.

I enjoyed The Sharing Knife but I am the only person I know who did. It's a cozy curtainfic fantasy (despite some significant dark bits) with a backstory I hoped would be explored and wasn't. I think everyone but me absolutely hated the romance, which is a May-December one with the conventional gender roles. I'm not normally into that but I enjoyed it on its own merits.

Daughter of Witches is charming 80s fantasy. You will like it if you like that sort of thing.

The comics all look good! I've enjoyed all the ones I've read. I would hold off on reading Saga till it ends. After Brian K. Vaughn wrote not one but TWO of the most retroactively series-destroying endings of series I'd hitherto liked a lot, I now won't read anything by him till it's over and people can tell me if the ending trashes everything they liked along the way.

I liked the Sharing Knife series. As I said in my comment above, I got frustrated with the world building because I could see the cracks, but I loved the characters and all of the small moments.

If you haven't read it, I recommend the post-canon fic, Floodwaters of Change by KarenHunt. It's Sumac and Arkady making their report at Hickory Lake.

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rachelmanija - 2017-09-06 23:21 (UTC) - Expand

I liked the first three Time Trilogy books, didn't get through the fourth, and have just kind of gazed at that one on my shelf for a long time. ^_^

The Death of Sleep is one of the books that's set in the wider galaxy that Pern was settled from; iirc, it's part of a subseries with Sassinak/Planet Pirates and possibly the Dinosaur Planet books? I believe the MC is a Seivarden sort who got accidentally stuck in coldsleep for a long time or something like that, and gets referenced a few times as a legend in other books set in that galaxy.

I read Sassinak ages ago but have very little memory of it except that it was a competent space opera of its time. (I was really into her older space operas for awhile even after I gave up on Pern.)

I liked the rest of Lyra, although it's been probably fifteen years; Daughter of Witches just got sort of left behind, too. (That seems to be a theme on these...)

I liked the bits of Saga I read, and the art is great, but he really does a lot of killing people off. :/ I never really managed to get into Y The Last Man, though. Is Ex Machina the other one that betrayed you? I really want to like that one so I've been scared to start it.

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rmc28 - 2017-09-07 06:06 (UTC) - Expand

I have Diamond Star on my TBR shelves. Asaro's books also sometimes (often?) skew toward the romance end of things. Diamond Star is part of a large series called the Skolian Empire Series. Each book focuses on someone different, and there is (I think) a multi-generational timeline as well as multiple star spanning nations. I have found that many of those books of Asaro's that are most squarely science fiction would be marketable as romances.

Warlock of the Witch World is... How to put it? Like all Norton, parts of it are beyond thin in terms of things being explained. Ever. It's also the middle book in a set about three siblings. The series as a whole encompasses multiple universes and many cultures within each, but Norton's fallback explanation for most plot happenings is that something, usually more than one thing, ancient has roused and is trying to take over the world/bring back the old world/finish out some ancient battle.

The Wrede book is technically part of a series, but the books simply share a common world rather than having common characters or even (I think) a common time period. I haven't reread the book in many years, but I suspect there's a hefty of-its-time-ness to it. I think that, for Yuletide, it's more interesting for the things it implies rather than for the main plot.

I didn't like Marvel 1602, but I almost never like anything Gaiman has written, and a lot of other people really enjoy his stuff, so... I don't feel like I can judge that one.

The sequel to 1602 by Greg Pak was way better than the original. It had native americans in speaking roles! REVOLUTIONARY!

Marry on Feist, since even though it's been a while since I read him, I remember his stuff fondly. However, iirc, that book isn't the first of a series, so idk how it would go to start from there.

Kill on the Gaiman. It wasn't very good, caveat on that I'm just generally bad at reading comics and aren't the target audience.

edit: okay, that bujold is the first of the sharing knife. Kill it hard. Basically every time I tried to review it nearer to when I read it, I descended into cursing.

Edited 2017-09-07 00:32 (UTC)

Asaro has this curious habit of taking cliched tropes and applying science then playing them as straight as possible. I alternate between annoyance and greatest thing ever with her books. Diamond Star was the first one I read so I can attest to it being accessible if you haven't read any of her other works but it's very much a ymmv series.

An Acceptable Time isn't as much of my interior landscape as L'Engle's earlier work because of when it was published but I really liked it. I used to do a L'Engle reread every few years (Kairos & Chronos and some of the connecters). I should do that again.

I find Gail Carson Levine & my tastes don't mesh. I've read most of her work and either find it annoying or not memorable.

I remember really liking The Hero & the Crown but I haven't read it in many many years so I remember nothing concrete about it.

I read Old Man's War before I went meh on Scalzi. I have him linked with Doctorow in my head, which may be a disservice. He writes good SF but I've never found him as earth-shattering as others do.

Manly Wade Wellman is one of those pulp authors I read with permission to roll my eyes. He held up better for me than Burroughs or some of the others and I was enough of a fan to buy the fancy editions that came out about 10 years ago. I do agree that you probably want to read the short stories first if you can get your hands on them.

Patricia C. Wrede was one of my favorite writers of the 80s and Daughter of Witches is one of her earliest works. I haven't reread it in a while and I should probably dig it out to see if it stood the test of time.

Dilvish, the Damned is not a favorite Zelazny, but it's Zelazny and with 2-3 exceptions I'd rec any of his books.

I didn't like An Acceptable Time as a novel or as a continuation of Poly O'Keefe's story, but I wouldn't have left any of the Kairos and Chronos books unread.

I know I read An Acceptable Time, but I can't remember anything that happened in it which isn't usually a good sign
I remember what the cover looks like, but that's it.

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birke - 2017-09-07 16:49 (UTC) - Expand

How you feel about Marvel: 1602 will depend entirely on how fond you are and knowledgeable you are about Marvel's general universe and back catalog. It does not stand on its own at all; the point is that the characters are all versions of other Marvel characters and you can see the effects on their personalities and choices that being in a different time period would produce. If you recognize these people and the events that are being referred to, it's a very interesting and well-developed AU that really does use the ways people thought differently back then. If you have no idea who anybody is, it is thin, meandering, and confusing beyond words. You should probably base your decision about reading it on how likely you think you are to get the in-jokes.

Basically, the main thing I know about Marvel's back catalog *is* the in-jokes (i.e., I hang out in the vicinity of the fandom but have read relatively few actual comics.)

From what I have heard about 1602, though, I suspect I will wildly disagree with Gaiman about many of his AU choices.

I didn't vote because I don't have opinions on most of these books, but like many other people commenting, I too find Scalzi's fiction too bro-ish (even if his blog is pretty entertaining), and am wary of BKV's ability to write endings that don't suck (among other things, I'm still reeling from the end of Ex Machina which retroactively ruined the characters for me, so, there's that).

BKV writes things that I really ought to like and then... goes the wrong direction, it seems like. :/

King's Buccaneer is the second in a miniseries, which is itself part of a larger series, so I would only recommend reading it if you've read the books that come before it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Riftwar_Cycle

Tegami Bachi and Maison Ikkoku are also not going to make any sense if you haven't read the preceeding volumes.

Edited 2017-09-07 06:54 (UTC)

It is extremely unlikely that I will ever care enough to read all of Riftwar but it seems like an important enough series that it might be worth reading one just for the flavor?

Somehow I have the second and third volumes of Tegami Bachi but not the first. I'm pretty good at coming in on the middle of things, but yeah, iirc I got very lost very early on when I tried to start with the second one before.

Maison Ikkoku was the first manga I ever owned, though! I picked up a few of the trades back in the mid-'90s. I never had more than two in a row, though. 12 is the earliest one that I have and haven't read.

Edited 2017-09-07 14:01 (UTC)

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torachan - 2017-09-07 16:40 (UTC) - Expand

I really like Tintin but I am not sure I would like it if I hadn't first read them as a small kid and not noticed the racism.

Asterix is great but the first one isn't the best. The series really found its feet a bit further in. And a lot of the layers depend on the translation being really good or having a good understanding of French and France in the 1960 and 1970s if you read the original. Three years of French in school and one year in college did not get me to a level where I could read it in French, even though my main motivation for taking French in the first place was being able to read French comics in the original (never got there, sadly). I mean they are funny on the surface level without this, but I got really more out of them when I read an annotated edition with cultural and translation footnotes.

I had one of the later ones (Asterix and the Roman Agent) in English when I was a kid, and really liked it! I have no idea how many of the jokes I got, though.

I now have the first few in both English and French; my French is just good enough that I can poke slowly through a kid-aimed comic or picture book and have a fairly good idea of what's going on, so I figured I'd read them in parallel.

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ratcreature - 2017-09-07 14:17 (UTC) - Expand

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the_rck - 2017-09-09 17:55 (UTC) - Expand

I loved Two Princesses of Bamarre as a kid, have no idea how it would read as an adult!

The Hero and the Crown is a good book but imo just doesn't have that spark to make it really work - there are parts that I do really love but I don't love the totality of it. But obviously mileage varies on this one as I know of multiple people who ADORE this book.

I thought I'd read The Death of Sleep, but I just checked Wikipedia's bibliography list and compared summaries, and I think I'm thinking of Restoree. I would firmly disrecommend Restoree, but I'm spitefully leaving my answer on The Death of Sleep as 'Kill' even though I afaicr haven't read it.

I mainly remember Restoree as being a book that I got brand new that fell to pieces during my first reading of it due to the binding glue being bad. I didn't think it was terrible, but I can't have been more than fifteen, and I never felt a need to reread it.

I wonder if anyone's written their dissertation on an analysis of rape and romance tropes in McCaffrey's work?

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vass - 2017-09-09 19:36 (UTC) - Expand

I read and enjoyed several of Feist's Midkemia books, then hit the Serpentwar subseries and gave up. (The prologue of the first book was interesting! The rest of the series was about different characters that I failed utterly to care about, possibly because I resented them for not being nomadic lizard-aliens like the prologue characters.) I'm pretty sure that The King's Buccaneer wasn't one of the ones I read, so I voted M out of a vague continuing fondness for the series.

I loved The Hero and the Crown as a kid, and liked The Two Princesses of Bamarre, although not as much. I remember An Acceptable Time as extremely mediocre.

I enjoyed The Tower at Stony Wood a great deal, although I thought the language wasn't quite as pretty as later McKillip. The Telling isn't one of my favorites by Le Guin, but I've read it several times, so.

I read 1602 in the library as a teenager, and didn't like it very much; then again, my Marvel knowledge at the time was pretty closely focused Claremont's X-Men, with a touch of Spider-Man. So mostly I thought there wasn't enough of the X-Men in it, and most of them were the wrong ones.

Edited (spelling) 2017-09-09 20:05 (UTC)

It kind of blows my mind as a French person that you haven't read Astérix, hahaha.

Also, you should absolutely read Persepolis, it's great.

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