Random, but with thinking so much about hockey, I keep remembering this:

I used to do figure skating. My only interaction with ice hockey at all growing up was away teams showing up to the rink and just staring at me, or on very rare occasions starting to enter the ice before my coach chased them off. They were not scheduled to have the ice yet, but the coaches would try to get us to leave anyway and the boys wanted me out of the way. They were very entitled, and very confused why some kid in a pale purple leotard was in the way of important things, like them. The coaches would go on about the poor boys having come all this way in a van and needing to get on the ice already to perform their best that night, but they did not have the ice until four.

I guess all the bluster and entitlement worked at other rinks, but it did not fly at the Dorothy Hamill Skating Rink. They were not actually the main focus and that was very confusing for them. Dorothy Hamill - if that name isn't familiar to you - was a figure skating legend who helped raise the profile of the whole sport in the US. At the time she was a household name, and in the county she was from a bit more than that. I never met her, but the rink's focus was not hockey. It's just where the local high school games where held. It was just very much the wrong place to try to pull that, and in retrospect it's kinda funny.

I was never any good. I was part of a program to make figure skating more of an accessible thing, something people could do like any sport, rather than only done with a competitive focus. I could (sometimes) do the thing where you are skating forward and then you do a thing and land on one foot going backwards. My brain thinks these are called reversals, but googling it that doesn't seem to be the term. That's just what my coach called them. I didn't do it terribly long. When I was selected to be in a showcase showing what the non-competitive 'started too late' kids could do, my parents didn't seem to realize that it was like an actual show. They pulled me one week before the show, which was really shitty because not only was the coaching I got heavily subsidized and nearly free, but I got extra private coaching for the show and the program books had already been printed. My parents just didn't take it seriously when I said I was going to be in a show. When they realized I wasn't kidding, suddenly no more skating. Still glad I got a chance to do it. Having access to a program like that was pretty nice. I never followed figure skating after that. I do not know the terms for jumps. I trained for months for a thing I never got to do, and I guess that put me off wanting to watch it.

I'd love to get a chance to skate again, but I'd probably be a mess. The whole no longer having a sense of balance might be an issue even just for going around in circles. But hey, my local rink here in Portland is also associated with a famous figure skater. Tonya Harding was famous for different reasons, tho.

I've finished Game Changers by Rachel Reid. No, not just the book called Game Changer, tho whole series which is called Game Changers. Getting through the whole series that fast is fine, probably. Anyway, tl:dr whole series review is that the books are of very uneven quality. Some people say to skip book 1, and I can see that. It's a bit more fluffy than some of the other books and some of her later writing is much better. But to me book 4 is just confusingly bad, and that can be skipped easily. The Ilya and Shane books (2 and 6) are fantastic and I also really, really liked 3 and 5.

One thing the writer really excels at is having a distinct feel to her characters. For example, most of them have reasons to be anxious with all the pressures they face, but that manifests in different ways in each character. How it feels to them, if they try to ignore it, how they handle it, etc.

The TV series will be based on book 2, Heated Rivalry, which is about Shane and Ilya. But book 6, Long Game, continues to story of Shane and Ilya and is excellent. It also wraps up the series very well, even though it wasn't the intended ending. The author has scrapped book 7 because it wasn't working, but honestly 6 feels like a great series finale. Maybe 1 or 2 scenes more would have been ideal, but the book pays off a lot of stuff and feels satisfying.

The quality of the writing varies a lot over the series, and also each book has a different dynamic. I am very glad I read it, but I think for anyone reading this series there are going to be books that don't click with as much.

Anyway, the individual books.

Book 1 - Game Changer: When I saw the blurb I was like 'oh, it's this book'. I remember this creating a splash when it came out. In spaces I was in, people were pushing this book hard. No matter what you asked for, people rushed in with this recc. There was a point where I really wanted people to shut up about this book. But, that probably says more about the spaces I was in than the book or the fandom.

It's the coffee shop AU trope, but as original fiction. ( Read more... )

Book 2 - I already talked about Heated Rivalry here

Book 3 - Tough Guy: This was very interesting as it dipped into the darker side of hockey as a business and also the impact of hockey injuries. ( major spoilers )

Book 4 - Common Goal: This is about a retiring goalie and a much younger character who is a friend of the couple from the first book. ( Spoilers )

Book 5 - Role Model: This book is about someone who was caught up in the toxic side of hockey culture. Again, bringing in some real stuff. The MC starts out spiraling because his best friend was accused of sexual assault and he has reason to believe the women. His life had just collapsed in a dozen ways. He gets traded and his new team has an openly gay social media manager who is lively, sweet and loves to bake. I really liked this one and how things developed between them.

Sidenote: I think it's fine to just read the Shane and Ilya books, but Role Model does leads into the last book in some interesting ways. A chunk of both books overlap timewise and the MC from this book is on Ilya's team. I really enjoying getting the additional perspective on things.

Book 6 - Long Game - Time to see how Shane and Ilya are doing. Shane and Ilya are such great characters. They are really in a different and have been stuck watching other couples come out and able to love openly and get married and by truthful to their friends. Lots of amazing call backs to the first book and building on things that happened in it. ( Read more... )

Because I had a big cleaning day, I finally finished the audiobook I was on.

* Blood Trail by Tanya Huff - Choices were made by the author. ( Spoilers )

* Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid - This is actually the second book in a series called Game Changers. I'd heard that it can be read as a standalone so I did, but then I found out that book 6 in the series continues their story. To understand book 6, you need to have read 2, 3 and 5 so... yeah, take stand-alone claims with a grain of salt. I expect that the show will include some of the plot of 6. Also, I want to be able to look at Heated Rivalry tags and fan spaces, and those will likely have talk of the pairing's full story. So yeah, should have stuck to my 'read series in order' policy.

You know how romantasy and some other romance books have such a rep for being just smut, and then when people try them they get confused that it is mostly plot? This is the opposite situation. How the hell are they going to adapt this? Most of the character arc progression happen during the sex scenes. Also, Ilya has trouble expressing himself in English so he mostly expresses himself, or tries to, by touch. There's not a ton of dialogue. I doubled checked like five times that this is the right book. Adapting this is going to have some challenges. That's part of why I suspect that the series will include material from other books like book 6.

The book was fantastic, and I'd never have touched this sub-genre if it wasn't for the upcoming show. ( Spoilers )