Book reports

December 14, 2024

Two Serpents Rise

This was definitely good sort of political fiction and it was sort of on the nose about trying to make you think through specific ethical dilemmas but I think it succeeded at making me think so that was overall successful. Sometimes I thought the purple prose got a bit in the way. My number one complaint was that I didn't feel like Caleb's powers felt they like were adequately explained amidst worldbuilding that otherwise felt very specific and undertandable. So much of the plot and resolution ended up hinging on them and they just felt didn't really make sense to me. Also a truly terribly whitewashed cover (which ik is not on the author), but is sort of surprising given that the first book put a black woman on the cover no problem.

Foundation and Earth

The series kept me engaged enough throughout to finish it, and I did really enjoy kicking with the characters of Trevize and Pelorat for a couple books, but the ending wasn't very satisfying, and of course every book has some sort of bigotry or something it hinges on and the last one does get pretty extra distasteful with it.

December 7, 2024

Hawk (Dragaera)

It's interesting to get up to a point where the books are much more recent, but I think Brust keeps doing a good job keeping up with his continuity and tone and making interesting stories. This one was a really fun sort of heisty setup with a frustrating end, but it was meant to be frustrating I suppose. The Cawti stuff has gotten a lot better and overall sort of evened out and there was some really great Kragar in this book. I guess I'll be done with the Vlad Taltos books pretty soon now, and maybe go read some of the other books set in the Dragaera world.

Sleep No More (October Daye)

I think I have one more to go until I catch up. This one was interesting in its sort of shift in POV and a bonus of the setup was that it couldn't do the really annoying full recap at the beginning of the book. Once again, we teased the reveal that I have been waiting for but didn't actually reveal it. I don't feel like I am so super emotionally invested in these, though I enjoy them, but there was one Tybalt moment that really got me in this one that was just a standout.

November 23, 2024

Iorich, Tiassa (Dragaera)

I continue to just really like these books. I feel like by this point I was a little at the point where they were feeling a bit repetitive (my fault for bingeing honestly), but then right at that point Brust switches up the POV or narrative style and makes it fresh again. There were some "outtakes" at the end of Iorich that were really funny. And just lots of little lines throughout that made me chuckle. I also thought it was funny how he acknowledges at the beginning how he used fan timeline sites and the wiki to help his writing. He has built quite a tangled timeline at this point haha. We are finally getting a bit more on the framing mechanism of the book and I am wondering if it is going to go all the way to implying it;s just straight up Brust himself. Which honestly I think I would be fine with. They are goofy books and just masterfully so, I think. I also really appreciate the way that Vlad continues to come off as just some guy with realistic skills. I feel like people of his archetype can easily become a bit too competent but I enjoyed how he was constantly getting lost in the palace. Just because he is an assassin who's pretty trained at observation doesn't make him superhuman at observation of all sorts.

Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence)

This was pretty good. The worldbuilding reminded me a bit of the City of Gods series I read a while back on somebody's recommendation. There was also honestly quite a bit of Discworld vibes in there with the character of Abelard especially which I really enjoyed. The whole plot was a little on the nose, but I think we can probably use more on the nose revenge fantasies against rapist professors.

November 16, 20204

Be The Serpent, October Daye

This was quite a neat twist but I am going crazy waiting for the books to finally reveal that Marcia = Maryanne = Maeve. I am pretty certain about this now, given the developments of this book and it looks like we are finally getting there but I have thought that for the last 6-7 books. It's funny to me that the one October Daye book that actually ends on a cliffhanger I had out of the library without the next one also already ready to go. Looks like I have 2 left and then I have to wait around like a normal person.

Normal People, Sally Rooney

This one was also good, but I feel a lot more mixed up about how it ended than Conversations with Friends. I can't really tell how tragic it was meant to me, but to me it felt sort of gross and icky and quite depressing, the note that it ended on, which was rough. I do keep thinking about it though, and I think she is really good at capturing the depressing reality of the fact that you can never really know another person because you can never be inside their mind.

Jhegaala, Dzur (Dragaera)

These continue to be good. The narrative voice is just so delightful. I really enjoyed the ongoing meal description in Dzur. It made me hungry and it was such a nice luxurious use of language.

The Lies We Sing to the Sea>

This was recommended to me by my sibling. As I have mentioned before, I go into books set in the ancient world or inspired by the ancient world predisposed not to like them because I know too much and I guess I have a sceptic's/hater's spirit. I will say that the setting really fell down for me. I don't think it really succeeded at all at building an ancinet Greek ambiance/aesthetic/setting, but I know I have some higher standards there than most people. It was a pretty good story, I like that it committed to a tragedy sort of ending, and the 'maids' of Odysseus are definitely a piece of the story that calls out for adaptation.

November 9, 2024

Unbelievable Gwenpool 1-2

I read these on recommendation of my friend who is a big comics guy. I liked Gwen's pilot design in Howard the Duck where she looks like an adult I think overall more than I liked the chibi design the series ended up going with. It's a fun comic so far with an interesting premise and nice writing and pretty cute art. I will say, like all major company comics, I feel really aware all the time of how the story had to pass through a corporate editorial process and I think ultimately all Marvel/DC comics can really only go so far and can't hit as hard as indie stuff/stuff by one author. Maybe it's unfair and this is just how the aithors felt even without an editor, but I felt like the stuff about cops really showed what level of critique is acceptable in this sort of work. I'll never become a Marvel girlie but if the library manages to get in the rest of this run I will finish it.

Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney

As always with "literary fiction" I wasn't super sure about the style of this one when I started out, but I think it really won me over by the end. I still feel like the no quotation marks thing is sort of gimmicky I guess, but maybe that is more normal in the UK/other countries anyways? But this was a good exploration of the inside of a person's head and it had a sweet ending, I think. For me there was a bit of an issue with the MC being too relatable which left me sort of sunk into depression after reading it, but I guess that means it did a good job at something.

A Killing Frost, When Sorrows Come

I don't remember much to say about these besides that I continue to like watching the big plot develop and feel like finally we are racing towards an end? maybe? And yay for October finally getting married.

October 26, 2024

The Winter Long-The Unkindest Tide (October Daye 8-13)

SPOILERS: I thought that the Tybalt trauma stuff was interesting and 'fun', but after the one book it was in, I feel like there should have been a bit more about his recovery in the next book after. I also have been waiting for like 5+ books for them to figure out that Maria = Marianne, and it's driving me a little nuts. The longer they put it off though the more I realize whoever she actually is must be pretty big potatoes. I am thinking firstborn or honestly even literally Maeve. Her magic smacks of titania but if she is an agent of Eira or Titania herself or something I will be very sad and upset. All the Gillian stuff is craziness but I always like Luidaeg plots so that's nice, and I have been enjoying the novellas. I like in general how much the series can build on stuff that came a long time before, but I do wish it didn't feel the need to do such a full recap at the start of every book. But that's what I get for bingeing them.

Athyra, Orca, Dragon, Issola (Dragaera)

I really enjoyed the books not narrated by Vlad, though I'm not sure how I feel about the whole SPOILERS Sethra is Kiera thing. Neutral I guess. Dragon wasn'tt my absolute fave but some of the narration vibes were very Vimesy/Discworld which was fun. Issola I thought was very very good. Just overall very well written and well done and charming and wonderful and did a good job finally bringing some particular roosters home to roost. There was a blurb on the back of one of them comparing the tone of these to the Amber books and I must say, perhaps as a hot take, Brust does it wayy better than Zelazny.

Piranesi

I did like this, but I didn't LOVE it the way I feel a lot of its fans who mention it do. It was well written and the very end, like last paragraph, was quite lovely and emotional and I liked that. Definitely excelled in its tone and prose.

October 10, 2024

The Dispossessed

Last year or a couple years ago, I finally read The Left Hand of Darkness for the first time, I think after I worked through the Earthseas. It was quite good , but there were also plenty of things I found didn't age great (which is expected) and so like it wasn't really minblowingly good for me now. I was expecting the Dispossessed to be basically like that. It was not. This book was 100/10. No notes besides that my edition needed better copy-editing. It was incredibly moving and thought-provoking on a theoretical level, the main character was just so well constructed to make him so perfectly compelling, and the worldbuilding didn't come off as out of date or too much influenced by the philosophy at all. It was engaging I couldn't put it down and just at every moment really really wanted to keep reading it, even though the story didn't have what felt like a very traditional plot structure. Just a wonderful little masterpiece. And one that also happened to color the other things that I am reading at the same time (Taltos and Foundation) through the ways they deal with sociology, communist/anarchist theory, and long lasting human society.

Chimes at Midnight (October Daye)

One thing that's becoming a bit of a constant in this series is that I keep figuring out a lot of the reveals wayy in advance so I do have to spend a while just sort of waiting for Toby to get around to figuring things out herself. I'm glad it finally came out about Quentin's parentage, and I hope it doesn't take too many more books for October to figure out or stop denying that she was not born human. I am excited in general to see how the whole next stages of the plot develop tho. I always love more Luidaeg.

The Book of Taltos (Dragaera)

These were again quite fun to read but especially right after the dispossessed there were notes where I feel like things weren't handled so good (in Phoenix). The marital stuff got even more frustrating, and even though Vlad is doing some introspection every time he would say/think anything about his wife and her cause it was just so cringe. And I'm not sure how I feel about the whole communist theory is super valid but we won't be ready for it for thousands of years on this world. But like not wholly negative, just not sure how I feel, and interested to see how much more the world building we get in to in the next (last?) three books. Feels like the world has plenty to offer. And obviously Vlad's life is moving off in a different direction now.

Second Foundation

The premises were always kind of goofy but they just keep getting goofier. Despite objectively not really liking any of the premises, I have still been finding these fun to read so I think I will keep reading them and see how they develop. They do really pull you into wanting to know what is going to happen next.

October 5, 2024

Foundation, Foundation and Empire

These are definitely most interesting for looking at the fifties imagining of the far future. I'm sure all out futuristic sci-fi will also prove goofy in a bit, but it's so wild to see a future world imagined without any digital infrastructure. Books are physical books that you plug into a thingy that projects them, messages are sleek capsules that open up to reveal an actual paper message. The focus on nuclear power is neat. Also all the social stuff. Everybody is constantly smoking cigars, and there are no women around anywhere really. The writing is pretty engaging and I like how as soon as the second book you get the inevitable payoff of something going wrong in a forseen and fore-ordained master plan. And also a woman doing stuff. The former was very refreshing after sitting through four or whatever wheel of time books and feeling like they would never get gutsy enough to actually surprise me. I think I will enjoy finishing the series.

The Book of Jhereg (Jhhereg, Yendi, Teckla)

These were really really good. They reminded me quite a bit of the Locke Lamorra books, and also a little bit like the Discworld Watch books, though the vibes are quite different. I will say that I think the biggest annoyance in these three was the handling of the love story of the second book. The book would have just been 100 times better if it had just showed the beginning of their love story without the whole dropping of "I love you" and "let's get married" after they have known each other for like two minutes. It also sort of lowered the stakes for me in the third book when they are having their issues cuz it's like it's no surprise she has "changed", I know you've been together for a while now but like you got married after a few weeks or something. I'm not entirely sure what I thought about all the stuff of the third book. Definitely left me pretty annoyed with the protag but like I thiiink that was a big part of the point.

September 28, 2024

System Collapse (Murderbot)

System Collapse, the most recent Murderbot: This wasn't my absolute favorite book of the whole series but it was still great and very emotionally indulgent like the rest. Now that I have read all of the ones that are out, I think I agree with the hype in general and probably rank these above the fantasy stuff by Wells that I have read, though I enjoyed all of those too. I was definitely really touched by the whole (SPOILERS) Murderbot recognizes that it is an author (as it has been the whole time in telling its story) and begins to explore being an artist. It really was a great culmination of all sorts of separate things - its attachment to media consumption, the ongoing project with dr. bharadwaj, the files it sent to three, and its narration and curation of its logs for us the reader throughout. And such an extra level of just triumph to beginning to accept that not only is it a person, but an artist who impacts people!! very sweet 😭

Ashes of Honor (October Daye)

I am always here for an indulgent romance tbh and so I really enjoyed this one gettin into it. Toby really needs to stop getting shot (I say, chiming in with the rest of her friends). But of course she cannot as proper noir detective protagonist (or "hero", as she says)

Witness for the Dead, the Grief of Stones

In keeping with this week's theme I guess, these were also very much pulp detective stories. They were interesting because even though at their heart they were pretty classic mysteries, they had multiple cases going at once in each book that I thought would all tie together in the end (in a sort of genre expectation way), but they actually didn't, in a literal sense at least. They reminded me of some of the later Elderlings books (which peri hasn't read yet) which really explore how societal homophobia can deeply influence people's lives. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about how all that came together though. I feel like in one sense it's super central, but it's also touched on in many cases really briefly and you're just left to sort of think on it, like especially how the whole reveal at the end of Witness happened so close to the very end of the book, though it gets a bit of brainspace in the next book too. I think I wish that both books were a little longer. And I hope she keeps writing them!

September 21, 2024

One Salt Sea (October Daye)

I had been waiting a mega long time for this book since the library's one copy was missing, but they finally bought a replacement so now I can forge ahead with this series. I continue to really enjoy the bigger overarching plot of the series and I like how this book continued to open up more mysteries about the world that I am excited to explore. It must be said that some parts of this book were extremely predictable, basically in that (SPOILERS) obviously Connor had to be removed as a love interest in order for the Tybalt love story to eventually develop so I had a pretty hard time feeling anything about their stable romance because as soon as it was stable he was immediately doomed to die but now that that's done with I can enjoy my angsty bad boy in peace, with due to respect to the sweet lad. I love that Toby cannot stop accumulating children. Also I want to fuck the Luidaeg so much it makes me look stupid. She is somehow so hot and only gets hotter and is just my type (intimidating weird milf/gilf).

Exordia

This book was insane. It felt like a synthesis of a lot of the other books I have been reading recently, but also better than most of them. Which makes sense because I loved the Baru Cormorants so much. There was an incredibly high percentage of technobabble, some of which I had to tune out, but still just such a good book (tho maybe it would annoy people who have more knowledge of astronomy or math or the military, I am unabe to judge how well he did). Incredibly incredibly brutal though, it will be weighing on my mind for a long time. Also made me believe that the final Baru Cormorant is probably still an idefinitely long way off. He said that he was having some burnout on all the horrific genocide research and getting this book out must have contributed...

September 14, 2024

Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot)

I enjoyed this as much as the others, though I think it took place before the novel and I kind of wish I had read it before the novel too. I had just been going in the order of the books listed on wikipedia. I only have one more book left which is a shame because I feel like I could read murderbots forever, I hope she just keeps on writing them.

The Dybbuk

My brother's hs will be putting it on this year and I saw it by chance on the shelves at the library and picked it up. There are some more of Ansky's sort stories and essays in the book along with it that I haven't read yet. Reading the play and the introduction made me very acutely aware of how little I know about so much Jewish folklore and how much of it has been lost and exterminated throughout the years across the world. Which is of course very depressing but it was also heartening to see the remarkable ethnographic work he had done and the play itself was a great read.

Shadow Rising (Wheel of Time)

I continue to go back and forth about whether I'll keep reading these. The plot continues to have some fun twists, but I am so fed up with how socially clueless all these otherwise smart characters are. And always in ways that are just about how men could never possibly understand women and women could never possibly be sensible about men etc. It's just exhausting.

Bloodchild

I think what I most enjoyed was the afterwords with each story. It really showed how Butler constructs her stories, long and short, as pretty specific thought experiments, and I think they read better through lens, though they read well regardless. They were each pretty fun stories though it is generally true that her plots get a little samey since she is so preoccupied with a series of very specific themes that she explores over and over (parasitism, symbiosis, free will). The stories in this collection did make me think a lot about human's relationships with domesticated animals. A lot of her stories are really about exploring what it would mean to be a domesticated animal.

The Goblin Emperor

This was a really fun book with elements of a lot of other stories I have liked a lot. The whole sort of foreign relative suddenly at court thing is very much like One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin, and the goblin and elf relations and some other stuff were also a lot like the dimension 20 campaign a Court of Fey and Flowers which Peri should watch some day. The language was such a treat, the characters really fun, and the politicking all fun enough for me to follow. The political philosophizing of it also reminded me a bit of the dandelion dynasty books and also the tensorate series, and I am interested to see what direction it will go in. The whole first book was sort of a lot of setup. Not in a bad way, but I'm not sure what will happen when things get bigger.

September 7, 2024

Fates and Furies

This book was extremely clever, I had a bunch of annoyances and reservations about the first half of the book and then in the second half it turned out that those were purposefully engineered for specific effect. A very interesting exploration of "genius" and of being the wife of a genius. And it super won my heart by having one part where a particular passage from Petronius that struck me a lot when I first read it struck the characters in the same way.

The North Woods

This book reminded me a lot of the Vaster Wilds, also by the author of Fates and Furies. I had some reservations about it at first, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about the supernatural element of the book, but over all I really enjoyed it. There were certain vignettes, like the Osgood letter and of course the painter and the poet, that I absolutely loved. The book was varied and well constructed and fun and beautiful and I can definitely recommend it. And of course I liked that it was set in MA as well.

August 31, 2024

Exit Strategy, Network Effect (Murderbot)

I did not book report last week, but I read the second and third Murderbots. This week I read the fourth, and the fifth which is the first novel, not novella. The novel was really really good. It really made good use of the extra space, I think, so it just felt like a major treat. These books are really indulgent in many ways, but also just really wonderful and fun. I keep thinking about how I have no idea why they are making a screen version though, and how it will go. It's always weird to try to adapt for a screen a book where the internal voice of the first person narrator is like.... the whole deal. The alien stuff in the fifth book reminded me quite a bit of A Memory Called Empire (or actually the sequel), but definitely more... "grounded", I think. The world building is so good overall, which is lots of fun after reading so many of her fantasy books, really watching her flex her skill in all different directions.

Life Class, Pat Barker

I also read Life Class by Pat Barker. This was a historical novel about british art students interrupted by WWI. I'm honestly not sure how I felt about this book. I didn't really like the first part, but I did get much more sucked in to the second part, and the first part really is a sort of setup for contrast before the war comes and changes everything. I found the gender relations in the book sort of grating, which was not what I expected since in the books of hers I have read (the trojan war ones) I was very happy with how she explored the women (which was her main focus in those ones). Maybe I just have less tolerance for something a little more historically close to me, or maybe I just didn't like this book as much.

August 10, 2024

Wheel of Time 2-3

A couple weeks ago I finished the second wheel of time book, but didn't report on it. This week I also finished the third. I am still in general enjoying these, but they already feel a bit drawn out and samey and I am only at 3 out of 14 or whatever. I am definitely going to take a break because I have a lot of other things to read right now. There was quite a bit of a surprise at the end of this book, which was cool, but it also made me think about how cool it would be if the books veered into major surprise-land. But I don't think that will happen. Then again, who knows!

Mare Internum

I read a paper copy of this webcomic. I didn't really know anything about it at all going in so it definitely immediately took my by surprise because it starts so much in the middle of things, psychologically speaking at least, and that middle of things is so heavy. As much as I am a paper comic truther, I could definitely see how the tension of the story was probably helped by it being released bit by bit online. It was pretty beautiful and a very tight story, especially for a webcomic. The characters were pretty masterful. I think it's rare to get a depiction of the sort of mental health stuff depicted that is that raw and realistic, which definitely made it pretty painful too. I was mildly annoyed by how much of the story is set in such poor lighting. Maybe it would be easier to parse on a screen with my brightness all the way up. It was mostly still very well composed but it was sometimes tricky to follow some of the dark panels.

July 20, 2024

The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time)

Definitely as expected so far this is pretty incredibly tropey. I guess it's hard to know exactly what of the tropes were really established by this series, though you can certainly see all the ways it is being lord of the rings. Some of the Aes Sedai stuff reminded me a lot of the Witcher witches though I think the Witcher does things a bit more fun. I did enjoy the prose well enough, and seeing as there are so many fuckin books I am interested to see how the plot evolves over the course of them because I feel like you can't fill that many books entirely with really predictable stuff but we shall see. I do like the characters mostly so far so they are a nice in.

Akata Witch

I read the Binti books a while back and found them pretty overhyped and disappointing. I enjoyed Akata Witch a lot more though. In both cases, I feel like the places where she is weakest is sort of not being bold enough about just dropping you into the worldbuilding and letting you figure things out, instead of explaining everything in ways that really make the book feel extra middle grade. But in the case of this book that was a lot less of a problem, I think it benefitted from being set in the real world/urban fantasy vs. being like a whole new sci-fi setting that she feels the need to over explain. I thought all the characters were really fun, the worldbuilding was fun, and I got to see a bit more of what some of my favorite authors who blurb her see in her. Still very much YA level reading.

July 13, 2024

Moby Dick

I have finished Moby Dick. I really liked this book. It wasn't really anything like I expected. I think the biggest thing was that I didn't have any clue that it would be quite comic throughout. It's a really funny and satirical work and I think that's like the overall tone. Definitely the thing that makes it the most compelling is Ishmael's tone. He's such a supremely delightful and compelling fellow. Every time you get lulled a bit into the boredom of an encyclopedia passage, he adds some remark that makes me chuckle and you're reminded about the sort of goofy narrator behind the whole thing.

One sort of example of that I really liked was when he is talking about the measurements of the bones of a whale and says that he is taking them down right from where they are tattooed on his arm, seeing as that was the best way to keep the information safe in his travels, but he left off stray inches and such because he was reserving most of the rest of his body for a poem he was composing. It's moments like that that are delivered so straight but are also so sort of ridiculous and ironic that are just really delightful.

In a similar way, I really liked the underlying arc/motif of his relationship to foreign people. He starts of the book with this professed real fear of "savages" but he gets over it so dramatically and so quickly and is always so congenial in correcting himself that you wonder if really he ever had much of it at all, and then he's always referencing future wild travels of his, and always in the context of calling some foreign king or whaler or whatever his "friend". So you both get the general impression that he's an extra friendly fellow, and also this impression that his deep love of Queequeg totally changed his character.

There's a lot more to be said but I'll leave it at this here. But it gave me a lot to think about, was a good read, and is worth the hype, I think.

All Systems Red (Murderbot)

Even though the setting is very different, the voice of the POV was pretty in line with other characteristic Martha Wells narrators, and I have liked that in her previous books. It was a lot of fun. I did go in sort expecting and examining for an unreliable narrator but it was kind of nice and a chill read that it was pretty straightforward and what it said on the tin.

July 6, 2024

The Just City

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I got. The book involves Athena setting up an experimental version of the city of the republic with a bunch of people taken from throughout time. Mostly it's an exploration of freedom, misogyny, and consent. As always, with classical inspired things, I come in a little predisposed towards pickiness. My chief peeve on the classical side for this book probably even though they spend time talking explicitly a lot about what parts of Plato they are going to bend or ignore, they mention over and over again Homer as the everybody's model for what the gods are like. Maybe this was on purpose and was meant to be an unstated indictment of how far they were straying from some of Plato's edicts, but to me the banning of Homer in the just city is such a huge part of the republic that it was weird that they never had a throw away line or anything to mention that they decided that that was bad and they were going to keep homer.

Anyways, that aside, I really liked this book. I loooove socrates as a fictional character. I enjoyed him in the classical setting book that rainwalker suggested earlier, and I enjoyed him plenty in this book. There was a lot of really brutal exploration of on-screen rape but it was all handled really well and I think was a really interesting focus for the book. Left a lot of it incredibly depressing though.

On the not classics side of critique, I didn't really like the ending at all. I'm not sure how it could have ended better, but how it did was really abrupt. And even though there were a lot of the Apollo pov chapters that I ended up really liking, I found his narrative voice one of the weaker ones of the book (everybody was sort of weak next to simmea tbh) and so I felt the ending was extra weak for ending with him.

A Prayer for the Crown Shy (Monk and Robot)

It was very much like the first. cozy and meditative and very emotionally real with some fun sights along the way. I would love some more in that world but I think the two novellas is all there is?

June 29, 2024

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

I've had Monk and Robot on my list for a while and finally got around to it, after really enjoying the Wayfarer books. I felt that there was a really conspicuous lack of trans humans in the Wayfarer series, so it was really extra welcome to have a nonbinary main character. As everybody says, definitely a very cozy solarpunk story. The worldbuilding was all mostly expected to me, but I spend a ton of time in solarpunk spaces already, and it was executed plenty nicely. A really great pov character and a fun little story.

The Vaster Wilds

One of my professors suggested Lauren Groff to me as an author (I don't remember if he suggested a specific book), so I picked out this one to try. When I first opened it up and read the first page I didn't love the prose style but it super quickly sucked me in and was really apropriate actually. This book explores a slice of early colonial America through such an interesting character and such an interesting moment in her life. Really really good meditations on nature, colonialism, religion, gender, etc. all while being a gripping and sort of transcendent narrative. I don't read a lot of "literary fiction" and usually walk away with mixed feelings, but this one I really just enjoyed.

Crossroads

This was another "literary" novel recommended by my professor. Coincidentally, it also had a large portion of it engaging with native American groups and culture so it was a nice pairing with the above. I really liked the way that the different POV characters throughout the book got the chance to really misunderstand each other and then show you the misunderstanding, to tragic effect. It made it really frustrating in the end when you only get the perspective of a few of the characters on final events. At first this kind of annoyed me, but I think ultimately it's one of the (very clever) points: at the point you have been inside the other character's heads, and you are better positioned then anybody to try to do your best to figure out how they might be feeling about things, even though it's still ultimately a fruitless endeavor to try to understand somebody from the outside. I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did, but it was very good. I am still a speculative fiction girlie at the end of the day though.

Saga, vol. 11

I finally read/caught up on Saga a couple years ago when I moved here, and this is the volume that has come out in the mean time. Not much to say about it besides that I am very glad that Saga is updating again and that I will be able to read it as a finished product some day. And also that they should stop killing everybody off :(

June 22, 2024

American Gods

I don't know why it took me so long to read this one but it was nice to finally get around to it. I had heard some pretty mixed things but overall I really enjoyed it. Shadow is a really wonderfully compelling guy to ride around with for a while. The twist was well executed and the various dreamy sequences were really great.

Welcome to Night Vale

This was a fun read and it was nice to get a complete story from the world that I hadn't gotten to experience before. It definitely would have been better if I were listening to the audiobook, but I did my best to imagine Cecil's voice. I really really loved the characters featured in it. The prose reads identically to the podcast really, which wasn't 100% the best for a written novel but was fun.

The Buying of Lot 37

This was a pretty nostalgic read. It had a series of episode transcripts, with introductions by various writers and cast members to each one, and then also the transcript of one of the live shows at the end. The introductions and notes were really interesting. This was a whole nostalgia bomb in lots of ways, and reading about how far they felt they had come with the show in a book of episodes from almost 10 years ago now was pretty crazy. I remembered almost nothing of the actual episodes themselves, which lets me know that I could have a very fun time relistening to night vale from the start if ever I wanted to pick up that time intensive endeavor.

Alice Isn't Dead

I had listened to the first season of the podcast and enjoyed it, but in audio form it was a bit too creepy and disturbing for me so I ended up not finishing it. I'm glad I got to finish the story in book form, which doesn't have the same ability to give me the willies. On the other hand, it doesn't have the same strong impact in general that the audio format had. But it was still a very good story about America.

June 15, 2024

Gentleman Bastards (3 books)

These were definitely very Leverage, which is one of the things I was told about them. Lots of very fun schemes and shenanigans. The setting is fun, though I do feel like the author is a little extreme about loving to describe very creative and horrific bloodsports. Like there have been some extreme and horrific and wild bloodsports throughout human history but I feel like most settings don't have that many goin on at once. There is a lot of world's specialist little boy chosen one going on with Locke but it's set up well enough from the start so that's ok. Lots of very nice correspondences in settings also with the elderlings books when it comes to living in the ruins of an advanced magical group of predecessors whose names relate to Elder. Though it looks like with just one book to go they won't get really explained or explored the way they do in the elderlings books, but we shall see! A good fun series about satisfying thievery and I look forward to seeing how it ends.

Sabriel

I liked reading one of the "classics" of sff that wasn't absurdly ridiculously sexist, it was a nice change of pace from other books put in that classic category. The romance was definitely pretty shallow still, not a highlight of the book. But otherwise, I really enjoyed the characters and the worldbuilding and everything. It was really interesting to see the way the book accomplished in just one book the sort of story that you could also turn into a trilogy if you wanted. I think there is where the romance suffered, but everything else was done really well and I liked the self-contained aspects.

Fledgling

This was a very classic Octavia Butler book, a sci-fi thought experiment about freedom, coercion, humanity as a species, and symbiosis. It was a good read, not super depressing like some of her books are, and definitely made me muse, which feels like the main point often. The scale of the book ended up being way different than I expected. The bulk of it takes place over a couple nights, when I thought it might go much further, but it provided a good heart to the particular sort of philosophical questioning that was going on there.

The Sleeper and the Spindle

This was very enjoyable. The drop spindles were generally illustrated very well, but the entire concept of a spindle having a super sharp point for one end is on its own pretty patently ridiculous which is a personal peeve. But it was a great little twisted fairy tale.

June 8, 2024

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass

These I had read before at some point as a kid but never as an adult. They were pretty delightful, and the ancillary stuff like the little introductory poems, an editor's introduction to the author, and the author's postscripts were all really interesting. As an adult I could get a lot more of the jokes, but also mostly I knew enough to know how much I am missing in terms of the proper cultural references of the time that are being parodied. It made me want to get like a heavily annotated version with a commentary, maybe the classicist in me haha. Alice is such a wonderfully charming character and it's really such a perfect children's story. And the original illustrations are also wonderful.

The Martian

I had seen the movie before, though it was a while ago, and from what I remember at least the movie and book seem to be very close to each other and have much the same vibes. The book was basically exactly what I expected and lots of fun. The prose isn't like the most perfect but I think it always made up for it in engagingness. It's a simple story told right. Reminded me a lot of whoever it was who was talking a few days ago here about the appeal of apocalyptic survival stories. Very satisfying to read. Also reminded me a lot of Wolf 359 which Peri recently listened through, and the podcast Midnight Burger which I have been listening to at her suggestion. Not close similarities, just some fun space shenanigans and characters with similar vibes.

Rabbit Redux

I liked this better than the first, or I liked the story that they both built together better than just the first, at least. It certainly made me think a lot, but still not really my usual cup of tea.

June 1, 2024

Forest Mage, Renegade Magic (Soldier Son)

I finished the Soldier's Son trilogy. I am having a lot of feelings about this one. Like her other books, there was extreme depths of misery that were incredibly hard to read through. But as before, the deepest depths only lasted so long and so I could manage to make it through them. There were some moments that were really resonant for me. While I am and have always been (so far) very skinny and white, and so I don't have to deal with the sort of constant judgement over my appearance that the mc has to deal with, I also lived through a plague that changed my body in (seemingly) permanent ways that I have not been able to come to peace with.

A lot of the books really dwelled in the fact that in real world political and war situations there are sometimes just no good answers and no way to end the conflict. It's pretty depressing to be stuck there because it's so real, but it's also nice to see the reality so well captured in the fiction and explored. The ending of this series was sort of a mixed bag. You get as much triumph as there is to get and thing were cleverly worked out in a lot of ways, but also one of the major sort of triumphs is one that rings really hollow, I think. The whole series is one where it was really hard to feel comfortable rooting for any "side" of things, and eventually one side sort of gets his wish but you have had so long to see the ways in which it's really not a good thing, even though it makes the protagonist in the end fulfilled and happy.

There were lots of resonances and shared beats with moments from the elderlings series. Hobb definitely has certain things she likes to explore. but the overall vibes were somehow a lot grimmer, I think.

May 25, 2024

Shaman's Crossing (Soldier Son)

Robin Hobb continues to be amazing at several things. One is her world building in general. In the Elderlings books, she moved between several different settings in the same world and really did a great job portraying very different cultures even within one world. So here in a totally new world again she creates something very unique though still in her style of interrogating specific aspects of society. Which is the other thing. In the elderlings books, especially the Bingtown/Rainwilds ones, she did such an amazing job of examining how misogyny and homophobia deeply influence every part of existence in a way that feels both just very realistic and also very ... I guess "educational." In this book she again portrays misogyny really well and offers a masterclass in how to depict women in a way that interrogates misogyny while using a (very misogynist) man as the POV character. And she does the same thing with fatphobia, really illustrating the specific ways it interferes with a fat person's life on every level.

Separate from those things, this book also has really good twists that change everything in a moment and make it hard to tell where things are going, but in a fun way. Definitely interested in seeing how things progress after the ending of the first book, which didn't at all go how I expected.

The Women of Troy

This is the sequel to Silence of the Girls which I read a long time ago. It covers a lot of the same sort of mythological material as Natalie Haynes One Thousand Ships which I read recently and really disliked. Barker I really liked. Definitely if you are going to pick one (feminist) retelling of the Iliad and its aftermath, her two books are the ones I would recommend. I'll check out some of her nearer historical fiction soon too, I think. I see that later this year she has a third book coming out in this series as well which I am excited to read.

Rabbit, Run

A professor of mine recommended Rabbit Redux, another book in the series, but I think this is the first one (I think they are non linear?) I didn't like it all that much. It felt very typical of a "literary" novel and the style to me mostly felt sort of pretentious. And the main character is so horrible in so many ways which is like fine and the point but wasn't always super interesting to me. It did get better by the end and I think I will read Rabbit Redux since that was the one recommended, but not the rest of them.

May 18, 2024

Infernal Devices, A Darkling Plain

I finished the Mortal Engines/Hungry Cities series. It's been forever since I've read a YA series so maybe this is not actually true, but this one was pretty shocking to me in a lot of the stuff it covered. It had a couple moments in the later books where I had that "wow this is so miserable" so hard I almost didn't want to keep going. But in the end it brought it in for a pretty rad ending. Really great consistent world building and really impressively harsh characterization, even if it was such a downer. Quite the steampunk dystopia.

Tales From Watership Down

This was very pleasing. Watership Down also shines in its worldbuilding, which was most of what was on display since there wasn't so much plot, though a lot of the short stories were strung together as much more of a novella. There was one story had that a bit of eco-preachiness which was fine but stood out slightly compared to everything else.

May 11, 2024

A Desolation Called Peace

This is the sequel to A Memory Called Empire. It was just as good as the first book, and I really enjoyed getting to hear the POV of Eight Antidote and Three Seagrass. The gay sex was also a nice treat. I continue to really love how this author writes about love and friendship. Really emotionally resonant. There was definitely plenty of room left for more books so it will be interesting to see if she writes more!

May 4, 2024

Chronicles of Amber 6-10

In the end I did end up reading all of the Amber books so that is something. I never really got deeply emotionally invested, they weren't making me cry or anything, but the worldbuilding was neat enough and there were lots of interesting plot twists throughout.

Exhalation

This is a collection of sci fi short stories by Ted Chiang. These were really really good. I wasn't sure what to expect, since it was a rec from a friend I hadn't taken recs from before and I don't read all that much straight sci-fi (I keep saying that but maybe it's not true any more?) but each story was really unique and really special. Some of them were quite long, as far as short stories go, and really built up fantastic worlds. Omphalos was a favorite I think, but I liked them all.

A Memory Called Empire

This was recommended to me by splendidemendax here on neocities, big thanks for that! This was a really fantastic novel. In its meditations on colonialism and imperialism it had a lot that was similar to Baru Cormorant. Even though it's a futuristic sci-fi space opera set in an Aztec inspired imperial core, it is maybe one of the best books I have ever read about the Roman empire and about Greek and Latin literature and intertextuality. It definitely left room for more books in the same universe but idk if there will be any (or already are?). Definitely recommend.

April 27, 2024

The Hand of Oberon, The Courts of Chaos (Amber)

It turns out where I stopped reading earlier this week was a few pages away from the end of a book and a major reveal and it did draw me in a little. The first five make one complete story, more or less. Still not my favorite, but I enjoyed it well enough. I have started the next one which is from a different character's POV and I am enjoying him slightly more.

I don't read a lot of YA, but I enjoyed these and probably would have super loved them at the target age too. They were a weird mix between like a lighter read given the style and the sweetness of some of the characters, but then not at all that because they are extremely horrific and dark, and also way more "nobody's safe" than a lot of other YA. The worldbuilding really is delightful and excellent and the author commits really hard in a lot of specific ways. And the plot really keeps you on your toes. I cannot really predict where the series will end up.

April 24, 2024

A second book report this week, courtesy of Pesach.

Assassin's Fate (Elderlings)

I finished the final book of the Realm of The Elderlings. I believe that makes something like 18 fat books. Some reflections on the massive saga as a whole. First my eternal thanks to Slacking for the recommendation. This set of series is absolutely one of the best things I have ever read in my life, and for anybody who can make the commitment of the massive endeavor I highly recommend it. Robin Hobb throughout has the amazing gift of both constructing a sequence of outcomes that was in many ways totally inevitable from a storytelling and plot perspective, but at the same time endlessly surprising. One of the most enjoyable and remarkable ways this happened was the way that certain characters or events wouldn't read as particularly monumental when they were first introduced, but grew to become the most important thing in (especially) Fitz's life. This so mirrors the way that real life develops and leads to the sort of pleasant building surprise that you can only gain when you have a massive series that covers decades and watches particular characters grow old.

The ending was everything that it always had to be but I didn't see the exact mechanic of it coming at all until it did, and then so much of it was extra resonant and perfect. The way that the entire final trilogy wove together all the previous characters and settings from the previous series was both incredibly wonderful and intensely heartbreaking at times. Even though there is a strong tendency for "happy endings" throughout the saga, Hobb also doesn't shy away from showing how nobody's life ends once they are off screen, and things can always be broken apart again later. The structure of the series and the progression she built are so fitting for the worldbuilding within it that is all concerned with the wheel of fate, with the inevitable and the things that change it. I did a lot of sobbing. I could say so much about this series, but I avoid spoilers here, and for now I will just sit with it. Such a beautiful journey. Fitz and the Fool, I will miss you more than anything and I am so glad to have met you!

How to Fracture a Fairy Tale, The Emerald Circus (Jane Yolen collections)

Yolen is a bit hit or miss for me. There were good stories and less good ones. I really loved her as a kid, and I think she's not quite as good as an adult, or just not as consistent. But lots of great humor and some of the stories really took me in. Where she loses me, it's mostly just because I find her manipulations of old stories a tiny bit on the nose.

Chronicles of Amber 1-3 (Roger Zelazny)

It reminds me sort of of the Elric of Melniboe stories. Same kind of structure and vibes, but really not as good. Maybe not good enough to make even a completionist like me finish them, we'll see. Just a sort of pervasiveness of this very male vintage sci-fi style and the tone and prose is not quite compelling enough to keep me there. I picked it off the shelfs because it was a massive omnibus and I knew it would last me through the holiday. It has drawn me in more as I kept reading, at least. And not toooo many women have offered their tits immediately to the protag, just a couple.

Stone Fruit, Lee Lai

This was a graphic novel that I really enjoyed. The art style is really wonderful, and it's a sweet wistful little story. About queer loneliness and the adventure and love of and for small children.

April 20, 2024

Late Eclipses (October Daye)

The romance continues to be juicy, and I really like that now we've dived more deeply into the overarching plot of the series and the worldbuilding. Lots of big revelations in this book.

Fool's Assassin, Fool's Quest (Elderlings)

These books have caused me some classic Robin Hobb exquisite pain. They went in a direction I really didn't expect, and also the way that the world has responded to the events of the last series is also really fresh and unexpected and interesting. But also painful in many ways. The core relationship of this whole saga continues to be the best one there has ever been and every delicious gratuitous trope is indulged in (but not in like, a tropey way. Just she is giving everythinnng).These are so good I read an hour after shabbat had ended to finish the second one. Passover starts Monday so I will finish the final one then and be very very sad to see it over.