My reading in the first half of the month was re-reading of large quantities of work by Cecilia Tan and P. Djèlí Clark, in preparation for Readercon panels. I didn’t make substantial notes on either panel, so I don’t have much to report here.
Fiction:
The Chicken Salad War by copperbadge is latest in the Shivadh series of romance novels; it doesn’t appear to be available in ebook yet. Simon LeFevre is chef to the royal family of Askazer-Shivadlakia and has been very lucky in romance if not in a long-term relationship. Then a new chef comes to town…and buys the last of the ricotta which had been pre-ordered by Simon. This was lowkey and fun, including the assortment of characters from previous volumes in the series.
Fanfiction:
I revisited a long (almost 700,000 words!) series of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels and stories I’d first read when they were relatively new in the 1990s, because they are now available online. “The Collection” Series by LRH Balzer starts from when Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin first meet and ends after the canonical series stopped, including complex and angstful backstory for both characters, crossovers with I Spy and the Girl from U.N.C.L.E., some paranormal and science fictional elements, captures and escapes, a cameo by Rudolf Nureyev, huddling for warmth, found family, and rather a lot of bullet and head injuries. This series has a personal meaning to me; while flipping through the first of the zines in this series, at a convention, I fell into conversation with someone who’d already read it. We ended up sitting and talking for some time after that as well, and chatted for the rest of the convention. We’re still good friends today.
