Book reports

Nay 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.