Tag Archives: G.L. Carriger

The 5th Gender

Book Review of The 5th Gender (Tinkered Stars Mystery), by G.L. Carriger

I ordered a signed paperback copy of The 5th Gender, by G. L. Carriger from Borderland Books.

Description from Goodreads:

A species that has no word for murder, has a murderer aboard their spaceship. 

ALIEN 

Tristol lives in exile. But he’s built a life for himself aboard a human space station. He’s even begun to understand the complex nuances of human courting rituals. 

Detective Hastion is finally flirting back! 

MURDER 

Except that Tristol’s beloved space station is unexpectedly contacted by the galoi – a xenophobic species with five genders, purple skin, and serious attitude. They need the help of a human detective because there’s a murderer aboard their spaceship. Murder is so rare, the galoi don’t even have a word for it. 

Tristol knows this because he is galoi. 

ROMANCE 

Which means that he and Detective Hastion are on the case… together.


Review:

I was super excited for this book. Carriger is one of my favorite authors and I thought this sounded like a very sweet MM sci-fi romance (one of my favorite genres). And it is. The problem is that it seems to depend far too heavily on being cute and feel-good and no where near enough on world building, character development and plot (not something I ever expected to say about a Carriger book). 

The love is basically instant, in that the characters are supposed to have been attracted to each other for a while. But all it took was one single conversation for them to go from distant but attracted to ‘lets move in together.’ So, I see no reason for this conversation not to have happened at any point in their past. The mystery is very easy to solve and, in todays (American) political climate, notably pointed. And I was disappointed to find that Carriger created a race with 5 distinct genders, but Tris was so recognizably feminized and then contrasted against Drey’s manly-madness. I feel like the premise promised to challenge gender stereotypes, but instead presented them un-interrogated. 

As always however, the writing is sharp and easy to read. Carriger’s trademark wit and humor are in abundance and the heroes are very likable. Maybe if my hopes hadn’t been so high to begin with I wouldn’t have been so disappointed at the end. It’s not a bad book by any means, just not as great as I had hoped. 

What I read on my June vacation

I’ve just come home from a week and a half road trip to visit my family. My husband, children and I spent a week in Florida and then three days in Tennessee. This enabled me to see my mom and her husband, my sister and her family and my aunt and uncle, which 100% of my immediate family. (My in-laws visit us in just under two weeks. So by the end of the summer I’ll have seen everyone.)

As you can imagine, it was was a busy ten days. But there was quite a bit of driving involved, so my Kindle got a good workout and I accomplished a decent bit of reading. I managed internet access once and went ahead and wrote several reviews. They were for the books I’d read on the fourteen hour drive from Missouri to Florida and then in the first half of the week there. They were: Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet, The Library, the Witch and The Warder, Uncommon Grounds, and Revenge of the BloodslingerFeel free to check them out.

After that one crack at a computer, I didn’t get to update the blog at all. Rural Tennessee is beautiful, but it’s not great for speedy internet service. In the time away from modern technology I read Marine Biology, Thornfruit, Knight of Ocean Avenue and The Moonling Prince. Plus one that I didn’t finish (no one should ever write in first person present tense).

Rather than go through and write another four review posts, I thought I’d go ahead and review the four I haven’t yet done all in one go. Though I don’t plan to make them particularly detailed.

My husband jokes that I have ‘waitress brain,’ meaning I can remember a million details about something for a short amount of time. For example, when I waited tables during university, I could take the order of an eight-top (including substitutions) and never write anything down. But if you asked me two seconds after I put the order in what they wanted, I couldn’t tell you. I only remembered for as long as I needed to.

I’m a bit the same for books. I remember all the details until I write the review and then poof, they’re gone. And if I don’t write a review right away, they fade. We’re in the fading now. Sorry, but that’s just the reality of reading books back to back and THEN trying to review them.

Be that as it may, I do want to review them. So, here we go.


Marine Biology, by G. L. Carriger

This was cute and fluffy. Very much in line with the rest of the series. I just love Carriger’s sense of humor. Being a novella, it’s short of depth though.

 

 

 

 


Thornfruit, by Felicia Davin

I recall really liking the characters, the world and the storyline. But also feeling like a lot of things happened too conveniently and not enough really wrapped up by the end. Having said that, I really wanted to know more. I’ll be looking for the next book. Plus, I love the cover. So pretty.

 

 


Knight of Ocean Avenue, by Tara Lain

This one was another one designed to be cute and fluffy, and it was. But I  had a lot of problems with the presentation. One of the characters is effeminate and he’s called girly several times. Which might be alright if girly wasn’t synonymous with bad in the context used. Similarly, Billy, who is just discovering he’s gay, keeps saying how much better men are (in sex). As a woman, I have no problem with him preferring men, but I don’t know why it has to be phrased as men being better all around. Lastly, problems were repeatedly presented and then miraculously solved, such that the happily ever after felt too easy. So, it was just so-so for me.


The Moonling Prince, by Wendy Rathbone

Meh. Not bad all around, but not much to it either. I liked both of the characters, though I thought Arulu’s character inconsistent. Not to mention he spent 20 years in debilitating pain and seemed to have no resulting mental trauma. Additionally, I really would have liked to see the relationship develop more. The writing was pretty though.

 

 


So, there you go, four more books read and off my kindle. I’m halfway through another one that I started on the drive home, this afternoon. But I’ll give it it’s own post when the time comes.

The Sumage Solution

Book Review of The Sumage Solution (San Andreas Shifters #1), by G. L. Carriger

I purchased a copy of The Sumage Solution, by G. L. Carriger.

Description from Goodreads:
NYT bestseller Gail Carriger, writing as G. L. Carriger, presents an offbeat gay romance in which a sexy werewolf with a white knight complex meets a bad boy mage with an attitude problem. Sparks (and other things) fly.

Max fails everything – magic, relationships, life. So he works for DURPS (the DMV for supernatural creatures) as a sumage, cleaning up other mages’ messes. The job sucks and he’s in no mood to cope with redneck biker werewolves. Unfortunately, there’s something oddly appealing about the huge, muscled Beta visiting his office for processing.

Bryan AKA Biff (yeah, he knows) is gay but he’s not out. There’s a good chance Max might be reason enough to leave the closet, if he can only get the man to go on a date. Everyone knows werewolves hate mages, but Bryan is determined to prove everyone wrong, even the mage in question.

Review:
I really quite enjoyed this. True, I thought some of the humor—fizzy jizz, spicy cum, etc—crossed the line into stupid-funny and made me roll my eyes and cringe, instead of laugh. And the endless banter sounded exactly the same, regardless of which two characters were actually bantering, which kind of sucked. But for the vast majority of the book I was thrilled. Bryan is one of the sweetest shifter leads I’ve read in a while and Max was a good pairing for him.

I’ve not read the prequel, but I was able to follow the plot and world easily. It does seem a well developed world, though it’s just barely laid out here. I was left with a few questions, but not enough to be dissatisfied at the end.

There were a few editing mishaps. Maximilian, who goes by Max was named Mac on more than one occasion, for example. (Yeah, X and C are next to one another on the keyboard.) But it is pretty clean.

All in all, I was pleased. I’m always a little wary when M/F authors cross over into LGBTQ+ stories. But in the Carriger books I’ve read, she always had strong, positive queer characters anyhow, so she made this transition well. I’ll be looking forward to more of The San Andreas Shifters.