#no surprise that kj charles can write the *fuck* out of a mystery

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (7-13 Apr 2024)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 If This Is As Far As We Go (BeauRadley) - 124K, stucky no-powers AU - after a year of being phenomenal hookup buddies, bucky ends their arrangement & throws steve into a tailspin - slow burn, angsty, oblivious steve slowly realizing his true feelings, good supporting cast

😊 Bunt! Striking Out on Financial Aid (Ngozi Ukazu & Mad Rupert) - cute graphic novel about art students forming a softball team to exploit a financial aid loophole

😍 Death in the Spires (KJ Charles, author; Tom Lawrence, narrator) - historical murder mystery set in 1905 Oxford - another KJC absolute banger: incredible sense of place, fantastic characters, perfectly done 'whodunnit' tension and a HIGHLY SATISFACTORY resolution. Loved every word

💖💖 +76K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

The Man, the Myth, the Legend (sparklyslug) - Check Please!: gen, 2.9K - Holster's beatboxing skills brings all the a capella groups to the Haus - a short, fun, funny, outsider POV fic

Say it louder for the people in the back (redhook) - MCU: shrinkyclinks, 14K - reread, forever fave - sometimes you just get a yearning to reread the best glory hole fic ever written

In Focus (sparklyslug) - Check Please!: zimbits, 6K - Jack's photography eye knows what's up before his conscious brain does

Entering Orbit (museaway) - Star Trek AOS: spirk, 30K - good post-AOS canon-divergent fic where Jim goes home to Iowa to escape the press & Spock joins him

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Hot Ones - Conan O'Brien

QI - series S, ep 13

Game Changer - s6, e5 {Bingoception}

Um, Actually - s9, e4

D20: Fantasy High: Junior Year - "Dawn of Justice" (s21, e14)

D20: Adventuring Party - "We're Running on 200%" (s16, e14)

Death In Paradise - s11, e4-8; s12 e0-8, s13 e0-8

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Working - How to Be Both a Critic and a Creator

Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #10: Of the Reaching Green

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep10 "Of the Reaching Green"

Short Wave - How Climate Change And Physics Affect Baseball

Consider This from NPR - Bad Omens Or The Cycle of Nature? How The Ancient World Viewed Eclipses

⭐ Armchair Expert - Anna Kendrick [Rerelease from 1/9/23]

Today, Explained - Is college still worth it?

The Sporkful - Jewish Food Is More Than Matzoh Balls

WikiHole - BEYONCÉ (with Zoë Chao, Nat Faxon and Poppy Liu)

⭐ All Songs Considered - Songs to make you laugh, with 'Weird Al' Yankovic

In Defense of Fandom - Season 2 Episode 2: Putting my theory to the test

Dinner’s on Me - Orville Peck

⭐ Switched on Pop - Chasing old sounds: Djo's "End of Beginning" with Joe Keery

⭐ 99% Invisible #577 - The Society of Ambiance Makers and Elegant Persons

⭐ Vibe Check - A Special Conversation with Ada Limón

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Brown Mountain Lights

Short Wave - The Order Your Siblings Were Born in May Play a Role in Identity and Sexuality

⭐ Code Switch - How Frederick Douglass launched generations of Black and Irish solidarity

⭐ Decoder Ring - Can the “Bookazine” Save Magazines?

⭐ Imaginary Worlds - African Sci-Fi Looks to a Future Climate

Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #11: Promises Promises

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep11 "Promises Promises"

What Next: TBD - Does Google Suck Now?

Short Wave - What To Know About The New EPA Rule Limiting 'Forever Chemicals' In Tap Water

Code Switch - Reflecting on the legacy of O.J. Simpson

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Atlas Obscura Live: Two Places And A Lie

Dear Prudence - I Lost a Lot of Weight and Now I Enjoy Being a Mean Girl. Help!

It's Been a Minute - The car culture wars; plus, the problem with child stars

Endless Thread - RIP Lil Miquela

Shedunnit - You Probably Imagined It!

Armchair Expert - John Cena

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - [One Shot] A County Affair: Prologue

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

Presenting Bonnie Raitt

Lowrider Oldies

Huge House Anthems

Djo

Classic Soul BBQ

A LA SALA [Khruangbin] {2024}

Presenting Khruangbin

Happy Beats

'80s One-Hit Wonders

Feel-Good Classic Rock

[mmbookreviews]

Quick Takeaway: KJ Charles latest was a huge disappointment. I expected sexy fun. I got a PSA on being a dutiful boyfriend to your NB partner.

Genre and plot: This is the third in Charles’ Sins of the Cities trilogy, which is basically a three-volume sensation novel. Sensation novels were a 19thC genre characterized by secret babies, surprise bigamy, and over-the-top melodrama. Charles nailed the genre. I was able to make it through book 3 because I wanted to know how the assassination and conspiracy plot from the other two volumes turned out. The plotty parts did feel a bit rushed. I wonder if I would enjoy the three books more if I’d had them all available to read at once, since the plot fails to resolve in the first two, and all three overlap in time. Overall, this aspect was strong, though weaker than some of Charles’ others and weaker than a conventional historical mystery novel.

Technical: As always, Charles’ prose is miles above everyone else in this genre. There were neither misplaced commas nor infelicitous word choices in sex scenes.

Sex and romance: The prior two books revealed who the pairing would be in this one, and I loved the idea: The one-armed private detective, a gruff, blue collar, manly fellow we’d met several times before, plus the beautiful trapeze artist and secret aristocrat we’ve seen only from a distance. Book 1 of the trilogy was a bit issuefic-y for me and hit one of my biggest squicks, but not as hard as it might have. Book 2 I unexpectedly loved despite the heroes being least likely to appeal to me on paper. Book 3 I thought I would love the most. Instead, I found it twice as much like an unpleasant PSA, and the anticipation made that even more disappointing.

It either wasn’t mentioned or I didn’t remember how Mark got his disability. I assumed that it was from an accident, but in this book, he talks about growing up with his congenital lack of a limb. I found that part interesting. There’s a touch of vulnerability about it in the romance parts, but it isn’t dwelt on extensively. I liked that Mark was completely comfortable with himself but that this didn’t automatically mean he couldn’t be nervous about how someone else would react, nor did Pen with his own unusual identity instantly know how to react to Mark’s disability.

Pen is nonbinary. In the past, I’ve appreciated Charles’ commitment to including characters other than the cis, white, able-bodied 100% gay 5eva men who make up most historical m/m romance casts. This was not one of those times. I appreciate that she talked to actual nonbinary people and did a lot of research, but she got things a little too realistic for me in the sense that Pen is profoundly uncomfortable with his body, and this is dwelt on. Characters who hate their bodies, even if only in some ways on some days, are an absolute NOPE for me in a sex scene or a romance. A nonbinary character who laughs in the face of gender norms would be hot to me. A character who has to disguise themselves but is perfectly at ease while doing so despite knowing they’re something else inside is very hot to me. A character who starts out somewhat uncomfortable and gets over it is fine. A character who is going to continue to be uncomfortable in their own skin is extremely unhot to me. The major plot conflict hinges on Pen’s crippling dysphoria if he’s forced to present as male all the time, so this topic came up again and again.

But what really ruined this book for me was that it has my #1 most hated squick: “I love you so much that my needs don’t matter.”

Mark more than once contemplates his new understanding of Pen’s special needs and how he’d like to blow him or fuck him or whatever, but if Pen never wants his dick touched again because he’s having dysphoria issues, that will be okay because ~love~ and ~it’s special when it’s youuuu~.

Barf forever.

I’m sure someone will yell at me for that opinion. This may be realistic and sensitive to the needs of nonbinary readers, but it didn’t work for me, and it makes me wonder if I should take Charles off of my automatic to-buy list. Combined with her extratextual comments, I get the sense that this may be a continuing trend in her writing. It’s the same trope as the Perfect Boyfriend from so many fanfics who puts his life on hold for 10 years while someone recovers from their serious depression and mental illness: A nice fantasy if you identify with the character being waited for and waited on. A horrible nightmare for me since I always identify with the other, I Have No Needs Because You’re Special, support system character. I’m sure people will be offended and point out the parts of the book where Mark’s needs are mentioned or we see that he really enjoys whatever sex they’re having, but those felt like lipservice to me. The part that felt genuine was Pen giving Mark lectures about What it Means to be NB. Those felt straight out of a tumblrite’s mouth. Modern. Realistic. Not something I want to encounter in a romance novel and not something I felt fit the tone of a historical sensation novel either.

I ended up liking Pen’s sister way more than him, and I felt sorry for her having to put up with him. The narration tells us that she’s the sensible but pessimistic and cynical one, while he’s this little ray of sunshine who lives in the moment. I would probably like the sensible character more than the one who lives in the moment, but I can appreciate that contrast, and a sunny character is a welcome foil to an eeyore. In practice, the sister seemed both sensible and passionate, while Pen seemed to be in a bad mood for the entire book save one or two scenes. He was grumpy, terrified, and impractical, and he wasn’t even funny. I never got a clear picture of the ‘before’ state with his positive qualities on display. It felt like a Mary Sue who deserves everyone’s support and attention, whether they’re the romantic lead or anyone else in the vicinity.

Maybe it’s because Pen is uncomfortable with his body, but I didn’t get a palpable sense of lust from this book. Even in the last sex scene, I didn’t get a real sense of them having the hots for each other. It all felt anemic, like it was being told rather than shown, though that may have been my cumulative YUCK factor from the rest of the book talking. And this is despite the fact that Mark is getting fucked by a cock for the first time (hot!), and they’re talking about his past experiences with pegging (hot!!!), and Pen is feeling reassured because ladies can have cocks too and all that (also hot). On paper, this should all work for me, but it just didn’t. I felt like the author was trying to avoid fetishizing and went so far in the other direction that all of the fun fantasy went away.

The anemic blandness was present in other parts of the book as well. Sensation novels are known for their ludicrous levels of melodrama, and this trilogy has many moments that should be like that on paper. At the end of book 2, Mark betrays Pen. The same scene happens half way through book 3, after we’ve had time to see them get to know each other and fall in love, making it all the more devastating... Theoretically. Both of them have huge, dramatic, angsty reactions. Except we barely see Mark’s reaction, and Pen forgives him five seconds after he shows up again. I get that Pen is still reeling from the attempt on his own life, but if this were a proper sensation novel, Mark would hear that Pen had died for real and would rush to the site where he’d get on his knees in the pouring rain and howl about how it was all his fault or something equally ridiculous. The fact that Mark is so stable, sensible, and self-contained makes this sort of thing even more delightful to contemplate. He has told us that this is the first time he’s been in love and had more than a pleasant, bland reaction to another person. But the author sure as hell never showed us, not in a dramatic way and not in a quiet way either. Instead, we got instant forgiveness and very little conflict. The conspiracy plot wrapped up in five seconds via a book 2 character showing up with some evidence, so it’s not like that was taking up the time either.

I expected a meal. I got a stale snack and a lecture.