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must . . . stop . . .
Note to self: when you're reading a series of books and they start to annoy you to the point where you're dreading the next one, it's okay to stop reading them. *headdesk*
The books in question are Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandilands mystery novels, set during the 1920s and taking place variously in India, England, and France. I kept reading after the first one because there was a gay man in it, who was depicted somewhat sympathetically even though he turned out to be a crazy murderer. (Yes, I'm that easy sometimes.) But then in later books there was another maybe-queer man who was a killer if not quite the killer plotwise, and there was an honest-to-god Evil German Possibly-Nazi Lesbian, and there were a lot of women characters being vilified--by the narrative as well as other characters--for doing things that were okay if men did them. This culminated in a plot in which a woman's unkind, unfaithful husband murdered her lover in cold blood, but readers were apparently supposed to sympathize completely with the husband and think that the wife was a terrible person for hoping to get a little revenge! Also, the books set in India came across as kind of racist even though they were clearly meant to be not-racist.
Definitely time to put them down and read some fanfic instead. Fic in fandoms I don't really know, so I don't have to care too much. Stargate: Atlantis fits the bill perfectly--I know enough about the show to have a sense of who the characters are and what's going on, but that's all. And the fandom has had a lot of good writers. Off to search AO3.
The books in question are Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandilands mystery novels, set during the 1920s and taking place variously in India, England, and France. I kept reading after the first one because there was a gay man in it, who was depicted somewhat sympathetically even though he turned out to be a crazy murderer. (Yes, I'm that easy sometimes.) But then in later books there was another maybe-queer man who was a killer if not quite the killer plotwise, and there was an honest-to-god Evil German Possibly-Nazi Lesbian, and there were a lot of women characters being vilified--by the narrative as well as other characters--for doing things that were okay if men did them. This culminated in a plot in which a woman's unkind, unfaithful husband murdered her lover in cold blood, but readers were apparently supposed to sympathize completely with the husband and think that the wife was a terrible person for hoping to get a little revenge! Also, the books set in India came across as kind of racist even though they were clearly meant to be not-racist.
Definitely time to put them down and read some fanfic instead. Fic in fandoms I don't really know, so I don't have to care too much. Stargate: Atlantis fits the bill perfectly--I know enough about the show to have a sense of who the characters are and what's going on, but that's all. And the fandom has had a lot of good writers. Off to search AO3.