Deke Dangle RPF Anon

What I've Read

Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley - Audiobook with Katie Leung and George Weightman - Interesting vignettes but as a whole story, functionally kind of incomplete. Bradley talked about this book's origin as a piece of fanfic based on AMC's The Terror, which covers a fictionalization of the end of the doomed Franklin Expedition. (Fun Fact: I tried to read the book that the AMC series was based on, but truly hated it! Do not bother!) Bradley wrote pieces for her herself and her friends about how Graham Gore, time traveler scooped from death on the unforgiving arctic ice, would feel about modern UK life - and those bits shine. They feel fun and interesting and cared for. The main character of the novel, an unnamed government official who is strikingly similar to Bradley herself , is also a compelling look at a kind of person who might, in extremis, work at an amoral government agency that scoops people out of time to bolster Britain's fading national security.

The problem is, well, everything else. In a book that started with a thought experiment about how a particular man out of time might react to the modern day world, Bradley has plopped a fairly opaque government apparatus into the story to cover the whys and hows, and added time travel mechanics to make it all fit. But that's a lot of worldbuilding to commit to to just fill in the gaps of the story, and it feels like Bradley kind of just doesn't care too much about it.

Fanfic is all abou asking "What if...?" about a completed work, and I find myself thinking this book would also be great for fanfic - someone one would have fun filling in these gaps!

And Never Been Kissed by thehoyden, Twentysomething - Hockey RPF - I said last time I posted about this, it's a magnificently horny fic. I re-read this as part of my TheHoyden Renaisance where I was just diving back into fics from ten+ years ago , and this merits a re-read. My god, we were all so young and dumb and horny. Wonderful slow burn fic with truly the most desparately horny hockey loving teens I can imagine.

The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports by Michael Waters - I want to buy Waters a beer. This book tells a humanizing story of so many athletes in the 1930s, about how they were all just living their lives and working their hardest at their sports and then, wham! Fucking Nazis. Every time I thought, wow, I have hated the Nazis so much for so long, I cannot hate them more! Then this book showed me new gleaming heights of hating Nazis - distant beautiful peaks of hating Nazis that I have yet to climb. Because hating Nazis is based in loving that which they threaten, and Waters truly shows you people and a world that is worth loving. It's a wonderful book for showing you that the world is complex and weird and the past I took for granted was never the black and white of photographs. It really drove home just how much Nazis and fascism *took* from the world. I loved this book and burned thru it in about two days.

What I'm Reading
Drop of Corruption - Robert Jackson Bennett - The audiobook came and oooh , it's good, so I jumped in.
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky - static from last week
Deal with the Devil by Kit Roch - static - I need to read it for next Wed.

What I'll Read Next
Book Club books planned
Lent by Jo Walton
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
Space Opera ?
Monsters and Mainframes?
The Revolutionary Temper — Robert Darnton - Jo Walton talked about this in her July reading round up and I'm down

Personal life: I am back from my travels - family was seen, babies were hoisted, toddlers were obeyed, much delicious cheese was eaten! Pokemon Go was a definite add to the experience - I even decided it was worth it to me to throw $5 at it to get myself some more game functions, and I had a fun time using it on walks, and making friends with it was an unexpected plus!

It was not much of a reading holiday, tho, as you'll see.

What I Reading
Marrying Efficiency to Ideals by thehoyden -
Untamed/ Mo Dao Zu Shi - https://archiveofourown.org/works/66224968 - Have I sung the praises of thehoyden's writing? If not, I should. A really good author in a lot of fandoms, this piece of Untamed/ Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfic is self indulgent in the best ways - taking Meng Yao from canon, making a few minor circumstantial twists, and highlighting all the ways he could have been happy and wonderfully effective as the treasured spouse of a sect leader. I heartily enjoyed it.

King and Lionheart by the hoyden - Hockey RPF - https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010348#main - In fact, I liked the Untamed fic enough that I have been going back thru thehoyden's past work and re-reading my faves! This one is basically my gold standard for the Perfectly Arranged Marriage fic - Sidney Crosby, alleged hockey robot, agrees to marry Evgeni Malkin so that he can come and play hockey in the NHL and bounce on his Russian contract. It's sweet and slow and kind to both of them, showing Sid as the kind of focused person who would, in fact, marry someone for hockey and never regret it, and Geno as the kind of brave idiot who would do it and then feel just a bit bad about it. It's charming and long and full of smut and deeply sweet.

I have read some shorter works by thehoyden, but since I usually limit my reviews to the novel-length stuff I have read, I will simply mention Letters from the Northern Continent (DS9, Garak/Bashir post-canon epistolary fic) is wonderful and takes the canon and just... gently tips it to a better direction.

A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett - I have not read all of Pratchett's work, and that is on purpose. I am rationing it. This is the second in the Tiffany Aching books, and involves compassion towards you enemies, even the teenage girls who are dicks, even the deathless monsters that want to devour you and leave only your worst parts. Solid work.

What I'm Reading
And Never Been Kissed by thehoyden and twentysomething - this is the horniest piece of work I have ever read. It's simply staggeringly horny, monumentally horny - this fic's horniness is magnificent and impressive, sublte and illuminating. I am blessed and comforted by the horniness in this fic.

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky - reminds me that I never finished Derin Edala's Perfectly Normal Spaceship book. Nominee for a hugo, but I'm not far enough in to determine if it should win.

Deal with the Devil by Kit Roch - I can't put this book down fast enough. Book clubs sometimes must face that members have different tastes - this was suggested by a dear friend who likes to read books where the main characters are stalwartly good people who never hurt each other or do morally wrong things, even if they have a history that says they *absolutely should consider doing wrong things* because that is their ENTIRE career. But alas, this is an adventure without conflict. I will finish this book, I will allow it to pass over me, and in the end, only my 2 star review will remain.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley - this book seems to have started from the very fanficy idea of, what if one of the crew of the lost Arctic expedition on The Terror was found and brought to modern London? And that's a good premise for a short story! But the book is not fleshed out quite enough around it. I'm only 40% in, I'm having a reasoanble amount of fun, I might be swayed! Nominee for a Hugo, should not win.

What I'll Read Next
I'm coming to the end of this year's Hugos push, so I will try and read some of those books but I'm not going to push myself that much about it.

Book Club books planned
Lent by Jo Walton
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
Space Opera ?
Monsters and Mainframes?