LRRC Week 10

Hot damn y'all, we're up to 20 books! Also, I only have a couple weeks left at the very exhausting job, which is excellent news!

#19: THE CALL OF CTHULU AND OTHER WEIRD STORIES by H.P. Lovecraft

Obligatory note about how Lovecraft was a racist xenophobe and that fact is reflected in his work (i.e. that the biggest thing to fear is in fact FOREIGNERS).

I got this from the library mostly as research - I'm currently writing a novel with cosmic horror elements, and I thought I might as well read the granddaddy of cosmic horror. And it was...fine? Like, it's one of those things where this may be where lots of more modern works went for inspiration, but then they ran with it and made it scarier and more interesting (also because horror has evolved a lot over time).

Also, Lovecraft uses the word "queer" SO MUCH. It's a word that already stands out to be due to, again, more modern usages of it, but god DAMN, it's multiple times a story! Learn some new words, man! (Yes, I know, he's dead.)

Anyway, it's cool to have a bit of a better understanding of the Cthulu mythos, but for my money, I'd rather check out more recent stuff. Speaking of which, The Magnus Archives is excellent, so there's my cosmic horror recommendation.

#20: AND I DARKEN by Kiersten White

This book is, at least in terms of premise, kind of wild. Like, at any given moment I didn't quite believe that I was reading what I was reading.

Basically, the premise is "what if Vlad the Impaler, but girl?"

Now, I don't know that much about Vlad the Impaler. Prior to reading this, the only things I really knew were a) the whole impaling thing and b) that for some reason he got all caught up in vampire stuff, at least as far as pop culture is concerned. This book definitely does not touch on the vampire thing, which makes sense, but was also a little bit distracting to me. How historically accurate is it? From some brief reading of Vlad the Impaler's wikipedia page, it seems like the answer is: kind of?

This book does legitimately kick ass, though. It's probably the first book I've read marketing itself as "like Game of Thrones" that has actually lived up, at least in part, to the politicking implied by that. The characters are flawed but sympathetic (and also based on real people, which, again, a little weird) and I was deeply invested in where the story was going.

I'd be interested to read a breakdown of the depiction of the Ottoman Empire and Islam in these books, particularly the handling of harems, which I feel tend to be the worst offenders for Orientalism in fiction. It felt fair enough to me, but also I'm a white girl who was raised Christian.

I did think that the portrayal of Radu as a gay man was interesting and decently well done. He does fall a little bit into the trope of the tragic gay, but this is only the first book of a trilogy, and it feels decently historically accurate. He meets some stereotypes, but ultimately I ended up really liking his character and his arc? Also [slight spoiler] he marries a lesbian so they can be allies which I liked a lot, true mlm/wlw solidarity.

NEXT WEEK'S AGENDA
#21: Docile by K.M. Szpara
#22: Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly