SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Here's a topic for discussion of Vivian Shaw's Strange Practice.

The discussion is "scheduled" for Jun 17, but feel free to post whenever you like. Please use spoiler tags for any discussion of the book that goes beyond a basic "look and feel" from the first couple of chapters.

This should be a fun one. Enjoy!

This came in from the library earlier than expected. Just starting it now and am about 5 pages in and amused simply for this bit:

It was time to replace the handbag, too. The leather on this one was holding up but the lining was beginning to go, and Greta had limited patience regarding retrieval of items from the mysterious dimension behind the lining itself.

If the writing continues like this, I think I'll be happy.

Kristin B. wrote: "This came in from the library earlier than expected."

Hooray!

I'm listening to the audiobook and consulting the ebook for spellings of unusual names (surprisingly frequent so far). A couple of chapters in, and I like the warmth of Greta's supporting cast. I wonder what sort of creature Fastitocalon is--probably missing something there.

I started this today, intriguing so far. Any idea what time period it's supposed to be in? Contemporary? I'm in Ch. 3, so not very far yet, but I haven't noticed any mention of mobile phones, maybe I just missed it or it's coming up, but there are kebabs in London, so it's not too ancient, and there's a reference to WWII having been a long time ago, which doesn't really help that much. Thoughts?

I think cell phones are mentioned somewhere in there but could be conflating it with something else? The cover, Greta making house calls with a black medical bag, etc confuses things somewhat but I believe it's supposed to be roughly contemporary.

Cell phones are definitely in there. At one point someone uses one on a bus. So in the last couple decades at the very least.

Kristin B. wrote: "Cell phones are definitely in there. At one point someone uses one on a bus. So in the last couple decades at the very least."

Oops, yep, she just checked get phone for texts.

I SWEAR I did not mean to read this so quickly. I even kept putting it down because it was going SO FAST and I didn't want to be done reading it. I will definitely be reading the sequel. The only question is, do I wait for the ebook loan (I'm fifth in line.) or do I get really impatient and request the physical copy which is already available?

I loved all the characters, the unique traits of each species, the dialogue, the description of places and all the little details. I liked that the author kept making references to Greta's hair. It was such a defining characteristic and it was done in a way that wasn't repetitive but helped me envision her. This was done with a few of the characters and it made the story really vivid.

The pacing was quick and kept me invested the entire time and I ADORED the writing. (It reminded me in a few small ways of Good Omens) The last book I read was really heavy, and this was just the most perfect light action and adventure story peppered with humor and delightful friendships.

I tend to highlight when a passage is meaningful or really just amuses me. I'll throw some of my favorites here. Not really spoilers, but behind tags just in case.

6% (view spoiler)[ “I have faith in your ability to grovel convincingly,” Ruthven said. “Shall I go and make some more coffee?” “Yes,” she said. Both of them knew this wasn’t over. “Yes, do precisely that thing, and you will earn my everlasting fealty.” “I earned your everlasting fealty last time I drove you to the airport,” Ruthven said. “Or was it when I made you tiramisu a few weeks ago? I can’t keep track.” (hide spoiler)]

12%(view spoiler)[ he reflected dreamily that he’d never met a sanguivore quite so ineffably domestic, silver-screen looks and all. Ruthven ought to be wearing pearls and a frilly apron. Possibly with little bats on it. (hide spoiler)]

27%(view spoiler)[ “And I’m jolly glad Greta convinced me to come back to Castle Ruthven with her when she did. Given the damage that blade caused to Sir Francis, I expect it would do something just as comprehensively nasty to me. If we see any monk types I shall hide behind you and whimper.” (hide spoiler)]

41%(view spoiler)[“Being eyeballed by a thirty-foot-long snow-white snake tends to knock a lot of the insufferable out of angels.” and then the following “How does he turn into a snake in the first place? How does Ruthven change from sixty or seventy kilos of bipedal humanoid into a few grams of regrettably adorable bat?” Fastitocalon shrugged. “It’s not a meaningful question. I could go into the metaphysics, but you complain at me when I talk about sums.” (hide spoiler)]

55%(view spoiler)[ “You are not human,” she said at last, “but you are people. All of you. The ghouls, the mummies, the sanguivores, the weres, the banshees, the wights, the bogeys, everyone who comes to me for help, everyone who trusts me to provide it. You are all people, and you all deserve medical care, no matter what you do or have done, and you deserve to be able to seek and receive that care without putting yourselves in jeopardy. What I do is necessary, and while it isn’t in the slightest bit easy, it is also the thing I want to do more than anything else in the world.” (hide spoiler)]

57%(view spoiler)[ “Did you really drive ambulances in the Blitz?” “I really did.” The kettle boiled, and he got up to make the tea. “And I can speak four languages fluently and a fifth and sixth extremely badly, darn socks, and dance the tango, not to mention all the excitingly dangerous neck biting—and the bat thing. Do not ask me about the bat thing. I cannot, however, fly a helicopter, play the piano, or compose lyric poetry, and don’t ask me to keep houseplants alive. (hide spoiler)]

Okay. I think I'm done gushing for the moment. *goes away to hide after finishing another buddy read before it's even technically started.* oops :D

No worries, Kristin. I'm glad you enjoyed it so much you hurried to finish it. :) Hopefully you'll stick around as the rest of us catch up!

I'm on Ch. 6 or so. I really liked the scene around here where (view spoiler)[Greta was attacked by one of the monk dudes, and as soon as he sees her, Ruthven embraces her to soothe her fear. (hide spoiler)] So sweet and cozy! And I like the little group who is kind of gathering in his house.

I'm enjoying the sense of humor, too.

I will definitely be sticking around for the thread!

I am impatiently waiting for the sequel hold to come in, so I'll be delightedly checking in on what others think here. :)

The dynamics between the difference characters were so wonderful!

27%/Ch. 6: (view spoiler)["Really," Ruthven had said when the question of his nature had first (awkwardly) arisen, early in their acquaintance, "the easiest thing is to think of me as a large well-dressed mosquito..." (hide spoiler)]

I like this book's sense of humor.

ETA Ch. 8 (I don't think any of this is specifically spoiler-y but I'll mark parts of it): Fastitocalon's discussion of the afterlife and the roles of (view spoiler)[angels and demons (hide spoiler)] was interesting to me. The ghouls seem to be their own species, not a form of undead or whatever vampires might be, since there is a baby in the clan that Greta and Ruthven are helping out.

Yes! The wit is everything in this book!

Finished yesterday. This was so fun! Everyone was so sweet, it was just a pleasure to be in their company.

I particularly liked the deep, familial (NON-romantic) relationships Greta had with Fas and Ruthven.

I also loved how you get a feeling for what drives Greta as a physician, how she wants to help people that no one else wants to help.

I agree with you all, loving the humor and kindness!
ch 4
(view spoiler)[ i'm very tickled by a bunch of old fashioned supernatural bachelors trying to make each other ar home. aaaadorable. (hide spoiler)]

Glad you're enjoying it, Allison. :)

I'm a little ways past the halfway point now, and I'm not too sold on the mystery, but if this isn't gonna be a romance--and it seems not to be going there--there has to be some sort of plot, so this'll do. I'm enjoying the fantasy-medicine and somewhat wish there was more of it!

I am glad people are enjoying it; I did not. It was not outright bad, I think this brand of supernatural fantasy is just not my thing. I found the undead to be dull. I was put off by the unnecessary italicization of certain phrases in the first half of the book which really did not need to be emphasized. I thought that going from "several normal people have been murdered lately" and "a vampyre was attacked by a bunch of hooded monks with a bizarre weapon after they infected his room with garlic" to "These things must be connected!" was an awful stretch. And there was a big stretch in the mddle of the book where nothing happens.

I also don't know where Greta has been getting any of her meagre income from. It doesn't seem like any of her patients actually pay for services, unless it's in kind or barter, like with a bag of rats.

I think this book is very much on the "cozy mystery" side of things, which often has those blind spots, Marc! Definitely not for everyone--I know a lot of people like the "bang 'em up/shoot 'em up" action stories as their sort of fluffy reads. For me, the cozy is absolutely my "turn off brain, clap along" read.

But I'm still not halfway through, so we'll see if it keeps my interest!

I do agree with the italicized words. Her wife does it too. I have to think they converse like this and it's a fairly common thing for debut authors to feel they need to stress things more frequently than more experienced authors. I trust it's a quirk, not a style.

Marc, you are spot on with how much of a stretch it was to connect the attacks. And the finances definitely don't make sense. I can easily see how this would be a low rated book for anyone who doesn't already enjoy this type of story. :)

Since I'm listening to this in audio, I'm not noticing excessive italicization--the narrator isn't over the top with emphasizing words (imo).

I'm a couple hours from the end now and should be able to finish it on lunch breaks this week. The mystery is still kind of blah to me, but it's done well in showing us that Greta doesn't discriminate when it comes to medical care, even dealing with someone who'd otherwise be an enemy.

I really liked the quote from 55% that Kristin highlighted above.

Through Ch 15

(view spoiler)[ I am saddened, a bit. I was expecting a cozy mystery with a lot of paternal monsters who are charmingly anachronistic in their modes of speech and address, where slowly we learn about bigger issues and the matter is solved by medicine and kindness by our lead while the derring-do is handled by her protectors.

But the middle was a bit soggy for me? We had a lot of repeats, a lot less humor very many stress words and then the solving was a lot more haphazard than I wanted.

I'm also a little unsure about the religious component. Samael showing up all of the sudden was a bit of a stretch if we're keeping to this version of earth, with its rules for the material, and an Abrahamic understanding of God and angels.

It's a hell of a ramp up, and almost guarantees that the next several books will be filled with divine interventions, if we keep to the same escalation of dire consequence you need to keep a story like this interesting.

Gah! I just wanted a cozy!

(hide spoiler)]

I'm just about as far as you now, Allison. Yesterday evening was a good time to listen rather than read, so I made a couple hours' worth of progress.

On "cozy": when I think cozy, I think things turning out all right, and certainly not anywhere near this level of violence and death. So I guess it's more of a UF (unfortunately?).

Agreed on the pacing of the middle--it contributed to a feeling of languidness, and the audio narrator's somewhat flat narration made it something I could kind of peacefully vedge out to and not have to worry that I'd missed anything (there was also a decent amount of repetition). Looking at what I wrote there that doesn't sound very complimentary, but I did like it! Although I'm not sure if I'd have found it as soothing if I'd read it vs. listening. I have a copy of the ebook, so could try it in that format at some point.

On Ch. 15 specifically, it has the trope (view spoiler)["Fass died, Greta mourns, oh wait, he isn't dead after all?!" (hide spoiler)] I predicted the second part of that because (view spoiler)[right before he died, Fass called for Samael, and a scene or two later he showed up (hide spoiler)]. If I hadn't just read another book with the exact same trope in it, I would have been more okay with that, probably.

Yeah, the drama of that was essentially nonexistent for me, I was more confused about Sam.

End of book: (view spoiler)[ I did like it. I think it needed some polishing, and I wish it had picked--cozy mystery (in the sense of Murder She Wrote or Phrynne Fisher, violence and all but you know it's going to end well, the stakes aren't very high and the hapless investigator just so happens to have the correct skills to be useful.) or action-packed urban fantasy. I am not sure the blend was successful for me.

The characters, however, were. I loved Fass, Varney, Edward, the ghouls and Greta. I'd like to see them explored more, but I'd need convincing that the next book solved a lot of the first-book issues I had. (hide spoiler)]

And done! It was one of those weird ones where I can point out several flaws, but it still made a good enough impression for me to give it an above average rating. It's easy to see this one being divisive.

Speaking of the ending, there's yet another nit I could pick. Here and there, Greta makes moving speeches about how important her father's legacy is to her, and how she is dedicated to helping and caring for supernaturals in London. And those were great. (view spoiler)[But she spends very little time in her clinic over the course of the book, and once the mystery is solved, she effs off to Greece, leaving her practice behind for an undisclosed amount of time. (hide spoiler)]

Yeah, that got to me, too!

(view spoiler)[Same with Cranwell? Cranston? What was his name? How did he just...leave? lol

I'd have dearly loved if they'd all sheltered at her clinic instead of the Savoy, as a sign of how safe they all felt there, and a way for us to meet Dez and Anna in person, so to speak. I loved all the friends and different types of friendship, but as that was the interesting part to me, I wanted more! (hide spoiler)]

Oh, that's a good idea. It would have made that part of the book easier to reconcile with, for sure.

I decided to reread this in b&w form. Not the sort of thing that typically holds up well on a second go, but brain insisted that this is what it wanted to do, no exceptions, so here we are. :D

I like the writing style a lot. There are enough fillips and frills to make the prose interesting and fun, but not so many to make it twee or overblown. The overuse of italics is distracting in this format, y'all were right about that.

The characterization's a bit flat, but the coziness makes up for that. The scenes in Ruthven's place where people are just discussing things over tea & brandy were some of my favorites in the book and I'm glad there are a lot of them. :)