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Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
The most recent book that I finished is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Though I'd been interested in it for years, I saw the movie first and had to make a comparison. Long story short, the book wins, since it goes into more detail with society of Nea So Copros and doesn't have that embarrassing yellowface problem.

I really like this book, even though I suspect it's a style over substance book. Having a deliberate and obvious structure and mixing half a dozen different writing styles will do that to a novel.

I'm open to a suggestion on which David Mitchell book to read next, though for now I will be picking up Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series.

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Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Gormenghast, by Mervyn Peake. It and its predecessor Titus Groan are lavishly written gothic melodramas about a crumbling castle ruled by rigid, pointless tradition, populated by people whose feelings are buried deep in caricature. They've been very satisfying reads; once I got used to the writing and got halfway through the first one, the pace picked up and I found it hard to stop thinking about them.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
I just finished Empire of the Worm today. It's a dark fantasy about a quasi-Roman empire almost being devastated by the reawakening of a dark, eldritch god. I kind of liked how it treated practice of religion as mutable, like in the real Roman empire, but otherwise it was all kind of underwhelming, and I'm not a fan of having to buy the two different halves of a novel separately.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
I just finished The Lord of the Rings, which has taken me most of the year to read. I didn't have the difficulties that a lot of people on this board have had with it, and what I've taken away from it is that this is a book that somehow manages to feel like the most epic, world-spanning thing ever and yet it still comes in at a length where it could be published in one volume (I got that one-volume edition on Kindle.). I don't see that a lot, especially not to the degree it's accomplished here. Well worth my time.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
A few days ago I got through Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos. I wasn't expecting much out of a Sad-Puppy-endorsed military scifi book, but this was surprisingly decent. It feels like an authentic depiction of military life (but in a future with rampant poverty that colonizing other planets has only exacerbated) that explains why someone would want to enlist and why they'd feel welcome there, without becoming too self-congratulatory about it. It has empathy for the people serving in the armed forces while expressing subtle cynicism about the rear end-covering circumstances in which they're used. My biggest problems are that I'm unsure of the ultimate point of the book (since it's the first in a series of at least four), and the 1st-person perspective leaves out some causes and explanations that I'd like to learn (How did the rioters in the Battle of Detroit get the hardware to kick the army's rear end?). If I didn't recently give myself a reading backlog for the Hugos, I'd move on to the next book without hesitation.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Taeke posted:

The one thing I truly love about the series is how it grew up along with its demographic. I was 10 or 11 when the first one came out, and it was cool how the characters and the books matured right along with me.

I have fond memories of Deathly Hallows' release date at when I was at college. I stayed at the bookstore from opening to closing time, reading through the book as fast as I could.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

HereComesEverybody posted:

Wrapping up The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, and man is it good. I'm coming off of a Sanderson novel, and it's been great to read some well-written fantasy (I like Sanderson's ideas, but his prose is lacking). Really, I just like everything Wolfe has done in this book, and I look forward to continuing with the series after a bit of a fantasy break.

The Book of the New Sun is the best blending of literary and genre fiction I've ever read. I really ought to reread it sometime so I can pick out some details I missed the first time around.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

I'm guessing that you need to have a good memory of the things that went on in Shadow of the Torturer because Severian will not do a good job remembering them for you.

SilkyP posted:

Thought I was the only one who read and liked this book! Wish I could tell you how any of the subsequent book are but I stopped after there.

I didn't. I ended up reading Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos sooner than I implied I would. It's basically more of the same, with the focus shifting from the ins and outs of military life in the future to how much more hosed humanity is in the wake of first contact with giant aliens who are virtually invincible and invading our colonies, and how much poo poo the grunts in the military can take from their commanders.

I also read The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins. I'm not sure how to classify this book; it's cosmic horror and urban fantasy, but doesn't really resemble the usual fare from either subgenre. The "magic," for lack of a better word, is really intriguing, and it isn't shown more than it needs to be, so it isn't made mundane by overexposure. At first I thought that the book suffered from the inclusion of characters from the mundane, real world, outside the conclave of adopted siblings privy to the true laws of reality, but the ending nailed the emotional core of the book and needed those elements to work, so I completely changed my mind. I do wonder, however, if I'd be okay with Father and Carolyn almost letting the world end if Rick and Morty hadn't already made me okay with that sort of plot point.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake.

I'm going to be writing a more in-depth evaluation on this book later, but for now I can say that I gave this book a shot and it still fell short of Titus Groan and Gormenghast. It's a fascinating, noble failure in concept that dragged in execution during the latter half even though it's a much shorter book. Peake tried to make this book as different from his first two as he could, and almost all of those changes turned out to have been for the worst. It's the Final Fantasy VIII of classic lit. I give it a 6/10, compared to the prior books' 8 and 9, respectively.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Jedit posted:

When you do, take into account that by the time he wrote Titus Alone Peake was in the early stages of Lewy dementia and would be completely debilitated within a couple of years.

I did, but I don't know how much that affected the book. It probably forced him to make the book much shorter that it should have been and kept him from fleshing out most of the new setting, but there are also some structural choices I don't like that I can't see being the result of a mental illness.

Also, I knew he had Parkinson's disease, but not dementia too. I'll have to edit that in.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Nakar posted:

I'd be interested to hear your take on it in full, at least. I found the first two books insufferable and the third moved faster but seemed like an entirely different series. Titus's characterization is particularly perplexing, but I'm not sure I ever had a firm handle on his personality in the first place beyond "doesn't like his position and the traditions of Gormenghast." The absence of Dr. Prunesquallor and Bellgrove, the only characters that felt consistently-realized -- and well, Flay, and I suppose an argument could be made that those characters are non-flat while others are for a reason -- probably didn't help. Muzzlehatch couldn't measure up. That said, I can't hold up any of the books as somehow vastly superior to the others and I have some idea of what Peake was intending and just couldn't pull off.

I'd maybe describe the entire series as a noble failure, albeit for different reasons in the first two books as in the last one. Knowing Peake's plans, the stylistic shifts may have been fully intentional, but they never culminated in anything due to his illness and death. Hope you can gather your thoughts on all of it eventually.

This is an index of every blog post I wrote about the series. The evaluation I mentioned is in the last link. In the other posts I describe how much I actually like Fuchsia, with her arc in the first book and how she and Titus supported each other in the second. I also found Steerpike to be an effective villain, if not a complex one. He's certainly more entertaining than Cheeta in Alone, who I absolutely hated to read about pretty much from the first pages she appears in.

I get why you hate the series. It's not for everyone, since it has the purplest prose I've ever seen in the book. But that prose, along with the exaggerated nature of the characters and the setting, made me feel like I was in an alien world even though these were human beings in a completely nonmagical castle, and I liked feeling that way. By the time that wore off, all of the set-up for Steerpike's game had happened, I familiarized myself with everyone involved, and I really wanted to see how that turned out.

You say that Titus Alone moved faster than the other books, but without the ensemble of Gormenghast and Steerpike's machinations driving everything along (except for the feud between Flay and Swelter, which culminated in one of my new favorite fight scenes from books), it feels like things are happening for almost no reason. The book also moves faster because the new settings (at least three of them!) feel disconnected and just aren't as fleshed out as Castle Gormenghast, and also because there are fewer key characters and more bit ones that don't matter.

This is what I mean when I say that almost every change in Titus Alone works worse than how the first two books worked instead. The only change that I really like is the shift to science fiction, which makes sense given that we are now being introduced to the opposite extreme from Gormenghast (and because both places are at such extremes I kind of believe that they wouldn't know of each other's existence). Again, the problem is that this is not explored to the extent that Gormenghast's absurd rituals are. It's neglected in favor of bringing up Titus's doubt in his past for the umpteenth time while barely advancing that doubt. I could go on, but I already did on my blog.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
I simultaneously finished The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe and Fire by Fire by Charles E. Stross. I expected Stross's book to be pulp action, and in spurts it was, but the main character is an investigator and a speaker far more often, especially in the last act when the plot turns into Master of Orion. As for Wolfe's book, reading it along with something else was a mistake (and maybe waiting so long to read it after I first finished Book of the New Sun). I'm gonna read it again later, because I understood maybe half of it, but I want to know more because I still love the tone and atmosphere.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Gertrude Perkins posted:

Slow Bullets, by Alastair Reynolds. The latest work by my favourite SF author. It's a "novella", though in this case it just means "200 pages instead of Reynolds's usual 500+". It's still a good, full story, with a starker and more desolate setting than I had expected from the opening scene. It's claustrophobic, and has the feel of a classic high-concept science fiction story, centred around the problem of how to go about rebuilding a civilisation. It's not my favourite of his, but less-good Alastair Reynolds is still better than a lot of things.

Is it part of his Revelation Space universe, and would it make a good introduction to Reynolds' work as a whole? I might end up reading it as part of my Hugo Awards coverage, assuming Reynolds doesn't get it removed from the ballot this year.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

nachos posted:

Just finished The Three-Body Problem. Despite being "hard science fiction" it was a real page turner and I loved it. It's very much an ideas book though and I thought it lost steam as a story after the excellent first half. I'm satisfied with the conclusion and don't have any desire to continue with the sequels right now.

I feel you. I thought the best part of the book was the Ye Wenjie character stuff, and there's no way that's going to continue being as good as it is in the sequels.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Captain Hotbutt posted:

Slade House - David Mitchell

I didn't realize that this was a sequel/side story/franchisee of Mitchell's "The Bone Clocks", so having not read that book I was a little in the dark about things. The first few chapters were great and creepy and weird but then it started repeating itself too much. There's a big hollow thud of an exposition drop about 2/3rds into the book that killed any remaining momentum the book had. Other than a very creepy last paragraph or so, the ending wasn't earned. A reasonable enough read but not as great as it could have been.

Holy poo poo was I disappointed in this book. I had spent the whole year or two before Slade House's release reading all of Mitchell's previous books, and I still say that everything from Cloud Atlas to The Bone Clocks is a treasure. Then this book came out, and I saw author I valued for his ability to nail multiple different story types and subject matters from book to book, often within the same book, immediately revisit the mythos of his last book with a repetitive ghost story that ends with the promise of more of the same.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

AFewBricksShy posted:

I just finished seveNeves by Neil Stephenson.

The first 2/3 of the book were really good, but when it made it's way into the last third there was just too much explanation and not enough story, and a bit of a letdown on the ending. I liked it though.

Yeah, it should have been two separate books.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, an experience like reading an open, untreated wound. I really like the way the book is structured, and how interesting it makes the main character's life despite it being miserable from start to finish.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Indigo Paintbrush posted:

I just finished "Penric's Demon" by Lois McMaster Bujold . It is a novella in her Five Gods Universe (Fantasy) and it introduces Penric, a minor lord in the geographical equivalent of Switzerland who gains a demon and goes on an adventure. I liked how he had such a different way of thinking about demons than the norm and his kindness. I read this novella because Bujold came out with a second novella after this one - "Penric and the Shaman" which I am looking forward to reading next.

I'm really glad this is getting a direct sequel, because the biggest problem I had with the first one is that there's not a whole lot to it, outside of Penric and Desdemona getting to know each other and forming a strong bond.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
I'm of two minds about The Slow Regard of Silent Things. On one hand, I really liked the experience of reading a story with one character and no dialogue, and for the most part I think it pulled it off pretty well. Auri has such a peculiar system about how she thinks inanimate objects feel and how they should be placed that it seemed just as likely that she had schizotypal personality disorder as her being subtly magic. I actually started feeling for the things she projected emotions onto at some points. And then the ending (and afterword) hit me with some things that made me like it much less, chiefly the knowledge that I can't ignore that this is tied to The Kingkiller Chronicle, one of this subforum's biggest laughingstocks. I wish it was just its own thing, but them's the breaks.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
The Plot Against America is a great alternate history book that has two major strengths. First, it's presented as an autobiography, with Philip Roth imagining how his childhood would have gone if Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh had been elected president in 1940. Second, the consequences to the Lindbergh administration are subtle and insidious, and for much of the book a terrible person could argue that the Jews who fear the worst from his policies are only imagining things or wrapped up in a persecution fantasy. All of the people in Philip's family are well-realized enough that it's hard not to care when that family tears itself apart.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Jive One posted:

Finished Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles all in one sitting last night. Awesome and amazing and creepy in all the right ways. I had read a few of these stories before in a collection but reading them together in their correct order was a great experience.

I really like the feeling of that book, where you get some disparate short stories retrofitted into a longer narrative.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Shikantaza posted:

I just finished Slaughterhouse 5 by Vonnegut which was my first of his. Really enjoyed the writing style and will probably check out more of his stuff soon. I've heard Catch-22 is somewhat similar so I might give that a go also.

I remember Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus being great, but I'm just about the only person I've seen mention that book.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Robot Wendigo posted:

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

My first Mitchell novel, and I enjoyed it. The novel--actually a collection of novellas--tells the story of a woman's encounter with a group of supernatural humans over the course of her life. I thought Mitchell juggled the various perspectives and the overarching story thread very well. I also really liked the main character, so that didn't hurt, either.

Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet are all great books, too.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
I finished Dune just in time for a book club with my friends centered around that book. We had a lot of fun laughing at the book, particularly the emphasis on _____ within _____ within _____, "Ah-h-h-h-h," Count Fenring's speech habits, stuff from the miniseries and movie (the session sparked tangents within tangents within tangents, as someone put it), and how far-fetched ideas like the Bene Gesserit's ancestral memory were. In the end, though, we agreed that it was a good book, and that we should leave it at that and not read the sequels.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
World War Z by Max Brooks. There were a few sections with cliches that broke my suspension of disbelief, but for the most part this was a really intriguing series of what-if stories with more emotional weight than just being worldbuilding exercises. It sounds dumb to say this about a zombie book, but reading World War Z made me question where the human race is headed in the future, and how I should feel about the result. I also either picked a pretty good or pretty bad time to read it; I'm not sure which.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. It's a swell story about two mythological creatures in early 1900's New York City, trying to pass as human and finding solace in each other's company. I like how their experience parallels that of immigrants who came to America, and yet how they feel alienated even in the Jewish and Syrian communities that should be familiar to them. I also thought the Jinni's arc where he realizes that his fickle actions can have terrible consequences for himself and others was very well done.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. Comparisons to A Song of Ice and Fire are inevitable, but it does have an interesting contrast, since the structure makes me think Liu is deliberately trying to avoid the problems that GRRM has had since A Feast for Crows. The pace is much faster, with six hundred pages covering a period of about a decade, and while it shifts perspectives like ASoIaF, the lion's share of the focus is kept to the two main characters, with side characters' arcs kept to the periphery and often resolved earlier than expected. It doesn't have the highest highs of ASoIaF or its frustrating lows, and it has the texture of being a legend in the making instead of gritty realism, so it's not as brutal. Those of you who wanted to like ASoIaF but were disappointed at how it's turning out might enjoy The Grace of Kings.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre.

It's been a while since I've blown through a book this quickly. Kind of a ridiculous look at how grotesque and lovely life in small town America can get, which had me wavering at times between thinking "That's a bit much," and "Yeah, that's about right. gently caress these people," at first. It was effective at getting me angry and scared for the main character, who has enough people in his camp and makes enough stupid mistakes to keep this from being a completely one-sided persecution story. Pretty good overall.

Also, reading up on this book introduced me to Theodore Dalrymple, via his hyperbolic negative review of it, and how much of a pompous, moralizing, holier-than-thou dickhead he is.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici. I went into it not knowing much about the family aside from their patronage of the arts, and came out learning a lot about the political landscape of the Italian city-states in the 15th century. The book's treatment of its subject is mostly even-handed, acknowledging the pros and cons of life under Medici rulership, and the different interpretations of Lorenzo's own rule. The only exception is the treatment of the Pazzi conspiracy, where the author is understandably sympathetic to Lorenzo and antipathetic to the Pazzis and Pope Sixtus IV. I recommend reading up on this stuff, even if you don't use this book in particular.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Just finished The Night Gwen Stacy Died. It was kind of interesting to see how the characters get attached to the mythology of that old comic book story and how it affects their reckless actions in the story. That said, it's also based around a doomed romance that I never rooted for to begin with. "Gwen" comes off less like she's trying to escape the stifling confines of small town life and more like she ran away for kicks, while "Peter" is emotionally needy and off-putting because of his abandonment issues. The prose is pretty good at poetic imagery, and it's short enough not to overstay its welcome, but I can't really recommend it.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

funkybottoms posted:

You are about to get savaged, my friend.

The Wind Through the Keyhole is really good- did you read the Roland story in one of those Robert Silverberg Legends compilations?

For some reason I thought "The Little Sisters of Eluria" was kind of lacking when I read it a few years ago.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

VideoTapir posted:

There is no genre more tragic than alternate history. It has such potential, but it's such a corpus of garbage (mostly right-wing, libertarian, and racist; sometimes just ahistorical nonsense that undermines its own premise) that something being advertised as alternate history is enough to make me not bother. I mean we're talking about a not-poo poo:poo poo ratio somewhere around that of furry fiction.

I once read an alternate history anthology, and the only story I remember with clarity was a "what if China colonized America before Europe" deal. Their new nation was called the United Sandalwood Autocracies.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Astrognome posted:

The Library at Mount Char

Great dark modern fantasy with a terrible blurb on the back - I went in expecting young adult Harry Potter knock off, instead got people being murdered, resurrected so they could be murdered again, roasted alive, murdered harder...you get the idea. Built an interesting world while leaving it vague enough to not get in the reader's way with details that weren't as cool as you imagined. Would recommend, fairly quick read. 4/5.

The Library at Mount Char strikes a weird chord with me that has only ever been struck before by Rick and Morty.

Anisocoria Feldman posted:

I've finished the first two and just don't feel like I can go on with the series. As was stated, it's hard to determine how much of MZD's motivation is experimentation with the form vs. marketing/profit. I just can't justify plopping down $15 27 times. The characters and slowly-forming plot are mostly interesting and the graphical aspect is neat too. The Narcons in Book 1 were especially fascinating. Apparently Book 5 is the finale of "Season 1" and my pretentiousness limit has been breached so I'm likely done with it.

And yet I remain curious about what kind of story this is that Danielewski thinks it'll take 27 volumes to tell. As someone who was a pretty diehard House of Leaves fan in college but bounced off Only Revelutions pretty hard, how far would you say I'd get into it?

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu

When I first bought this short story collection, I was riding high from reading The Three Body Problem and wanted to read more of the author's work. Now that I've finished it, I'm not looking forward to reading The Dark Forest and Death's End anymore. So many stories in this book rely on high concept, character-light ideas and apocalypses that have no impact and just feel like sound and fury after the fourth or fifth one in quick succession. The most ridiculous story is one in which Liu inserts himself into the story, and writes himself and his friend causing the cyberpocalypse in a drunken stupor. Not every story in the collection is bad, but none of them have any subtlety at all. What a disappointment.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

I knew going into this that it wouldn't have what I liked most about the first book, but I thought this one worked well enough. It has some weird hangups and slow spots, like an homage to that lovely "Curse 5.0" story by the same author that doesn't affect the plot, or the hard science diversions into stuff like astrophysics while suspended animation technology passes without comment (because I don't think the author's interested in that field but the plot as it's structured can't work without that tech), or an overly idealized romance that feels too good to be true. And yes, the Osama bin Laden cameo is hilarious, especially in hindsight.

Still, it incorporates a few different tones without feeling like they should be in different books, the solution to the conflict makes sense and is well-hidden, and I have to give Liu props for resolving the trilogy's apparent conflict before the last book even starts. I barely have a clue what Death's End will be about, and I look forward to finding out later this month.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold

This wasn't my jam at all. It's a fantasy where things are breezy and lighthearted and the problem is easily solved with all the loose ends tied up. I don't find the ideas present in the world engaging, aside from the protagonist sharing his body with a demon in a cooperative partnership. I'm still hoping for something spectacular from Bujold, given her reputation, but this isn't it.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson

These are more like it. Both are excellent revisionist takes on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, tweaking perspective without breaking established lore in order to provide a very different experience from the rest of the mythos. I would recommend Vellitt Boe more, especially if you're not in a "kill whitey" mood, but both are great and well worth reading.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson

What happened to this guy's prose? It's super awkward, pretentious and melodramatic, and I snickered whenever modern swear words popped up. Near the end a mystical character who drives a hard bargain says "Now gently caress off," for instance. It's a shame, because the plot's pretty decent and I would have liked it alright if Wilson could use his words properly.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!

Megazver posted:

You mean, in comparison to the first one or in general? Because I thought the style worked in the first one.

I didn't know this was a sequel. I've only read "The Devil in America" prior to this, and that story's prose didn't bother me at all.

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

Great premise (children who have been to different magical escapist worlds and can't get back go to a school where they learn to move on), weighed down by more and more issues as I continued reading. First, there are times when it feels like the story is lecturing the reader directly, and it's a little on the nose. Second, this is not an anti-escapism story; everybody at the school wants to go back and would if they could, as it's implied that they found their doors in the first place because they didn't belong in their mundane lives. The story looks like it'll end with the main character, having bonded with some other children at the school, making the first steps to move on, but her moment of emotional growth summons the door offworld and she goes through it. In summary, a message that I'm sure goons will have no problem with at all. Then the novella keeps going with the first two chapters of an unnecessary prequel about two shitbag yuppie parents that contributed to the backstory of two supporting characters from the actual plot. Third, after that's over and done with, the author's bio goes on for three times as long as it needs to and I can almost see her straining to make herself as interesting and quirky as possible. She didn't need to do that! It's an uncannily similar experience to what I had with The Slow Regard of Silent Things: a hook that's made for me, goes on to finish with a bum note, then makes me annoyed at the author.

This Census-Taker by China Mieville

I loved Perdido Street Station and I enjoyed attending a lecture the author gave on the portrayal of race in fiction, so I went into this with high hopes and came out pretty loving disappointed. You could call this story "The Kid Whose Parents Wouldn't Explain poo poo to Him" and it'd be a better title, because the census-taker doesn't show up until it's almost over. Up until then there's a lot of imagery that, while nice to read, can't help but feel like it's treading water. It's not weird enough/too vague to hold my interest on its own, nor is the situation the kid is in bad enough to generate tension. Also, some parts of the novella switch between first-, second- and third-person for no reason that I can tell. I wish the question I asked at that lecture was about what Mieville was getting at with this whole story.

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Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

This one is kind of a mess. The first third is one of those really stark YA stories where children are mistreated by adults and they can only depend on themselves and each other. After a timeskip, the middle part is more slice of life, with the main characters' two-dimensional understanding of the world changed to that of twenty-something millenials', where the characters talk about personal stuff before the final act turns into a disaster movie. All of that coexists with both super-scientists and a magic school that seems directly inspired by Brakebills from The Magicians. What holds this weird, slapdash gumbo together is the very well-done relationship between the main characters; the two of them rely on each other more than anyone else, yet their differences cause relatable and believable emotional tension from them. Best of all, they actually talk their problems through and figure them out in a healthy way, which is more than I can say their dumbass colleagues. I would give this one a mild recommendation anyway, though not nearly as much as...

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

:perfect:

At least for me it is. This is the story of two people who were made as essentially slaves in an oppressive system, have escaped from it, and are trying to get used to having what could be considered a good life in a fascinating, comfortable sci-fi world. It alternates in time between the past experiences of a clone made to work in a factory, only to survive on her own for a while and eventually get off planet; and her friend in the present, a former ship's A.I. who has to pass as normal in a human-looking body (this is a better book than all of Ann Leckie's Ancillary trilogy, by the way). Like the Anders book, the character relationships are very strong, but unlike that book, there a lot of touches that I found fascinating, from the alien species that evolved to communicate emotion through colors instead of having a sense of hearing to little touches like the clone woman having a nostalgic fondness for a children's educational simulation series. The world feels very relatable, in that on the surface daily life is mundane but peppered with fascinating culture and nice people to socialize with, but it actually has systemic problems baked into it that make the protagonists' lives more tense than they should be (sweat shops in out of the way places we don't think about, certain people having much less rights than others). If I were to criticize one aspect of the book, it's that the culture is so in line with what real first-world culture is like right now (some chapters end with instant messenger conversations) that it'll probably feel dated in a few decades, and if we actually get to space with aliens I doubt the result will be like this. But who cares. This book's fantastic.

Solitair fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jul 16, 2017

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