What I've been reading: Books No. 23-24

Book No. 23 was "The Galaxy Game" by Karen Lord. I really, really wanted to like this book, but I just kind of trudged through it, waiting for it to end. I read Lord's first novel, "Redemption in Indigo" and mostly liked it. I also met her at a convention and had her autograph her sci-fi novel "The Best of All Possible Worlds" and liked that one even better. I also think the author is a lovely person, and I like to support authors who are also just good people.  "Galaxy Game" is sorta-kinda a sequel to "Best of All Possible Worlds" because some of the major characters from the first one show up as supporting characters in this one. Rafi is the nephew of Grace Delarua, the main character in the first book. In the first book, she helps liberate Rafi and his mom and sister from their psychically-gifted but abusive father. In "Galaxy Game," we start with Rafi and his friends at an academy that trains young people with powerful psi abilities and tries to socialize them not to be abusive like Rafi's father. He isn't there for very long before he gets swept up in the machinations of the adults in his life, travels to several planets, helped by his friend Ntenman, and ends up playing "The Galaxy Game", a hugely popular game somewhat like soccer or American Football, except in three dimensions, that might just be a cover for the development of a new mode of galactic transportation. There were certainly things to like about this book, but it had a sprawling cast, and I had track of keeping track of all but a few. Rafi sees the individual pieces happening but doesn't see the overall big picture, and so, as a reader, I also had trouble figuring out how all the pieces fit together, except at the end. Lord has a big problem with huge exposition dumps, right at the beginning, especially. I don't want to discourage potential readers, because others might enjoy the book more than I did. But I was disappointed. I might read more by this author but probably not if it's a continuation of this series. I just didn't find it compelling.

Book No. 24 was "The Chapel of Ease", one of the Tufa novels by Alex Bledsoe. I adored the first Tufa book, "The Hum and the Shiver," and thought "Wisp of a Thing" and "Long Black Curl" were just as good, if not better than the first. This one, I had some issues with. I do appreciate Bledsoe including non-white characters and, in this book, several gay characters. But, I wish he'd had some more Beta readers who were POC and LGBT, because some of his attempts to introduce these elements, are, frankly, kind of clunky. He mentions a character's "pink hair falling into her Asian eyes." That made me want to groan. It wasn't necessary to add the word "Asian" especially since it's mentioned two more times in the next couple pages that she's Asian. Plus, we never know what kind of Asian. Chinese? Korean? We'll never know. I also appreciate a non-stereotypical male main character who is gay, but he mentions that he is gay so many times, it just feels false. That being said, even a WEAK Bledsoe novel is much better than many other urban fantasy author's BEST writing (*cough* Kim Harrison *cough*). On the positive side, I got sucked into this novel right away and it moves at a breathless pace. It concerns Matt, a Broadway actor in a play written by a transplanted Tufa named Ray. The play is set in Tufa territory and concerns a mystery at a "chapel of ease" there. When Ray dies unexpectedly right before the play opens, Matt takes Ray's ashes back to his family in the Tufa enclave of Needsville, TN, and while he is there, tries to solve the mystery at the heart of Ray's musical. Matt has many adventures and has his expectation about hill folk confirmed in some cases, but wildly overturned in other cases. There's also a romance. Despite its flaws, I did like this book and am eager to read the next ("Gather Her Round") in the Tufa series.


( The other books I've read so far this year: )