have been unavoidably detained by the world

So, I knew The Raven Boys as some sort of YA series that like, was Popular On The Tumblrs. Based on vague internet osmosis, I had this idea of it being fantasy, and it had a canon gay boy couple. But no one in my circles was reading it and I've been, hmmm, less and less interested in YA as a genre ever recently, so it wasn't a temptation. There are lots of fandoms out there I don't want to explore, that's nothing new (or bad.)

But some point in the last few years, I read this essay by the author, Maggie Stiefvater, about how ebook downloading was literally ruining her income. Wait, wait, I can find it. HERE!

Ok, great, I read that essay. It went slightly viral on the tumblrs I was following. It had an influence on me, and I saw it reblogged again sometime in the last covid haze year.

And I thought. Hmmm. I don't generally* pirate books. In fact, during Covid, I had finally figured out my local city library ebook system, and I was inhaling ebooks, mostly KJ Charles romances, because the library near me is closed for construction and I'm trying really hard to budget. Libraries are still a way to support authors.

And even though I have been so-so interested in YA, I was interested in Maggie Stiefvater. She sounds clever and smart and passionate and I also knew she was one of those authors who quit social media (or at least tumblr) for her mental health. And you know, I'm trying to be off social media right now** so I was like, let's try out her series.

And the POINT of this post, the point is that OH NO I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AND I AM NOT IN THIS FANDOM AND NOR ARE ANY OF MY FRIENDS. So I guess I'll have to post about it here?

I'm actually listening to the audiobooks, which is great.

The audiobooks have so much about accents and the reader is really doing an excellent job embracing that. I don't know, if I was reading, if I would have put together upper-class Virginia accent, because media has, uh, certain Biases about Southern accents, but the second I heard the Will Patton speaking for Gansy I was like OH I KNOW THIS ONE. And so I get some connotations that would have been lost on me.

Really audiobooks mean I can listen while I commute, which has been essential because commuting is exhausting.

( Spoilers below, potentially? )

One disadvantage to audiobooks is the actions scenes. The end of book two had a lot of action and some of it was kind of, hmm, blurry? A little hard to track in audio format. But I figured out what happened well enough.

And Stiefvater apparently composed and and co-performed and co-arranged all the original music and you can't get that in a book! So on balance, worth it. On to book three, which has my favorite title.

____
*I'm not perfect. I've pirated some books that I already own, and a few I haven't. But not for years and years. Partly because of this essay, to be fair.
**MIXED SUCCESS.

Ok so a few years ago a friend of mine, H, recommended and lent me Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secretes of the Universe.

And I highly, highly recommend that book. I inhaled it the first time I read it and it's one of those books I don't reread very often because it's just beautiful and fragile and not a book I want to ruin by rereading too much.

Well, the sequel just came out (after a long, long wait) and I tried to be slow in reading it but I basically inhaled the whole book over the weekend. (THANKS, H, FOR SENDING ME A COPY WHEN I SAID I WAS TOO ANXIOUS TO BUY IT RIGHT NOW)

( Here there be incoherent spoilers and probably some very unfair criticism that I just need to get off my chest. )

To be clear, the book is amazing and highly, highly recommended. This is a duology that is likely to become a complicated classic and I think it deserves it.

( The fandom angle. )

So, right before the entire country shut down (ie, back in early 2020) a friend lent me her copy of The Cruel Prince by Holly Black and I inhaled it and then figured out how to borrow ebooks from my local library and inhaled the entire Folk of Air trilogy because my brain went more more more.

Which turned out great when a month later I was all set to take out books from the library digitally haha.

I bumped into that friend recently in the grocery store (masked, distanced, vaccinated) and she reminded me that I still had the book and we squeed a bit about the main ship and I went home and...reread the entire trilogy again, and I just finished the prequel The Darkest Part of the Forest and I'm eying the other Holly Black Faerie books.

(Sidebar: Holly Black keeps thanking Cassandra Clare in her notes and I keep being like. Oh wowwwww I don't even know to PROCESS this it's not that I think Cassandra Clare doesn't deserve friends for being a BNF bully but also what...what is happening...the streams are crossing...glitch)

Anyway, I find myself really loving these books. It's weird, because I'm kind of moving away from wanting teen protagonists; I'm getting tired of them in my general life? But these books are still grabbing me.

They basically embrace the dark interpretations of European fantasy; accidental horrible fairy contracts and changeling children and all sorts of stuff that tends to get sanded off in most modern fantasy and there's something enrapturing about that. The characters know that magic is dangerous and deadly and yet they want it anyway and you can really feel the pull of the magic on them (even though in real life I would move to the most non-magic place in the world and hide.) In order for the stories to happen, all the characters need to made bad and dangerous decisions but I get what's driving them to do that.

Anyway, it's weird, because I am craving so much more of these characters and their stories, but I'm only mildly interested in fanfiction. I'm always trying to decipher why some fandoms grab me and some don't and this one would have me with meta and fanart (I've browsed a bit of the fanart on tumblr, but can't find much meta really) but I've sort of skimmed the fic at best. I...think? It might be the flavor of the books that I love. There are fandoms where I don't care if the writer manages to capture the book flavor when they write fic, but this one I only want if they can walk the delicate line of accessible and unreal and I'm just not seeing it? I think. I'm still pondering, to be honest. I would love a nice gen rec list to browse around, but no luck so far.

Oh, and the main character in The Darkest Part of the Forest is clearly reading Feed by Mira Grant in the book and I was DELIGHTED to get that reference ♥

Remember that book I recommended last week? The one I might have started harassing friends to read? (Sorry! Sort of!)

1. The ebook on sale for $2.99 right now! In a DRM-free format! Go go go!

2. Because the sequel is coming NEXT WEEK! *fanflail*

(3. There is also a two-chapter preview on the Tor site, but you shouldn't read it before you read the first book. There are MAJOR SPOILERS pretty much immediately.)

( I have a lot of things I want to say about this book. )