Ending or Living By Paper and Research (April Reading)
The Big Meow (Diane Duane): Third novel about with the feline wizards responsible for Grand Central's worldgates. This time, they're on a consulting trip to mid-20th C Los Angeles. I was fairly "meh" about this one; the question of "defeated entropy incarnate twice, what next?" is answered with "lovecraftian horrors, of course. And time travel. Again."
Considering the worldbuilding already on tap - aliens friendly and otherwise; the Old Downside, Timeheart, and other implied more central realities whose conflicts might reflect in our own; Arhu's visionary powers, and the ever-expanding cast list - throwing in a menace from outside the Powers' reality-sheaf feels like adding a natural gas tap to a kitchen sink. It's neither necessary nor particularly useful. When writing Star Trek novels, Duane does clever worldbuilding fill-in (Naraht! The medical transporter, which makes so much sense!), so I'm frustrated she doesn't turn that knack for illuminating the corners to her original fiction. The hints of Laurel's tragedy felt like a really great answer to the worldbuilding question, "So how does the Lone Power warp wizards - or their actions - to Its ends, anyway?", for example. The sense of Los Angeles as earthquake country was also a detail that helped root me in the story, one I appreciated more than the feline "Romeo and Juliet" story, which seemed to be mostly stuck in to justify Rhiow's personal enactment of the theme. On a related note, I am torn between liking Helen Walks Softly on principle and thinking she needed her own novel, so she'd stop pulling my attention from the plot and series protagonists.
I'm not sure how much of my frustration is actually rooted in The Big Meow and how much is expectations I need to set aside. Duane is predictably entertaining, but also predictable. The LP's sudden yet inevitable betrayal was not a good moment for my reading experience. I also struggled with a recent realization that the series takes an ecumenical approach to wizardry, not an interfaith approach. The difference between one "right" interpretation, reached from different paths, and multiple valid interpretations from different paths may be subtle, but it's significant in a book whose major conflict is our protagonists allying with the devil they know against an otherness breaking in from the unknown dark.
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut): Inspired by Mor's pining for a karass in Among Others, I snagged this from a library shelf. What Mor seems to have missed is that the major karass of Cat's Cradle isn't necessarily harmonious nor bent on increasing the net joy in the world. Cat's Cradle is clever, but not particularly nice, particularly with respect to its female characters. For example, the woman who is repeatedly described as a sex symbol gets to make one significant decision in the novel, and that decision is to die with her people.
Wiki tells me "[Cat's Cradle] explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way." I'm starting to think that old satires make good reading for book discussion, but are rarely cheerful or uplifting. I don't like admire Vonnegut's thought-experiment on a moment in history, on the scientist as hero, on what people will do in the name of religion (or a religion-like cause), but I can admire its strengths.
Reread O Jerusalem (Laurie R. King), which has not aged terribly well.
Power skim of The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness) in preparation for reading the sequel, The Ask and the Answer. Knife was more violent than I remembered - not surprising, I read it from a Tiptree nominee perspective, and focused more on the feminism elements on the first read - and continues to descend into suffering and human brutality in Ask. I'm wishing for an editor to cut the trilogy down a bit; these books are long reads without much levity. How Ness plans to pull a happy ending out of the three-way war with the threatened co-option / destruction of the impending fourth party is beyond me.
It's tempting to complain about the false dichotomy of Prentiss vs Coyle, two violent and manipulative semi-dictators, vs real life, where there would probably be more factions (some equally violent, some hopefully not). However, I think that's my attempt to disguise fundamental discomfort with Todd and Viola's bewildered experiences with (and sometimes complicity in) torture, attempted genocide, terrorism, and vicious outbreak of patriarchy disguised as counter-terrorism behind quibbles. After 500 pages of unreliable narration, and all the above, I'm not sure I'm interested in reading the third book unless I get a spoiler suggesting someone in this mess figures out an ethical code. For example, Todd needs to turn down the Spackle-related man-pain in favor of growing the heck up. I also want him to read his mom's diary, which might help explain how the original colonists landed on a planet with native sapients and started a war right off. But I understand I might not get that. If the ethical maturity involved an end to Prentiss' Evil Overlord schtick, I would read on for that, as well. Ness is doing something interesting with the trilogy, but two-thirds of the way through I'm wondering if this ride is going where I want to follow.
Power reread of Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clarke), classic science fiction tale of the end of Earth. Very much a thought experiment; the characters seem to exist mostly to further Clarke's exploration of an End of Days idea.
A Midwife's Tale (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich): Nonfiction. A meticulous reconstruction of midwife Martha Ballard's life through her diaries. I didn't expect to find a post-Revolution Maine woman's life so interesting, but Ulrich lays out a fascinating puzzle. Her assembly of facts and fact-finding tools turns fragments of formal records, oral histories, and Ballard's diary entries into a sense of one Maine community at the end of the 18th C and the beginning of the 19th. Ulrich's agenda is to reclaim the legacy of women who worked tirelessly without leaving obvious marks on the world; their energy sustained people, rather than records. My exposure to Very absorbing in unexpected and welcome ways: I'd strongly recommended this to anyone interested in feminism.
I also reread Darkover novels in April and May. More about that later.
Numbers game: 7 total finished. 4 new, 3 reread; 6 fiction, 1 nonfiction.
This entry cross-posted at http://ase.dreamwidth.org/559658.html, where there are
comments.
Considering the worldbuilding already on tap - aliens friendly and otherwise; the Old Downside, Timeheart, and other implied more central realities whose conflicts might reflect in our own; Arhu's visionary powers, and the ever-expanding cast list - throwing in a menace from outside the Powers' reality-sheaf feels like adding a natural gas tap to a kitchen sink. It's neither necessary nor particularly useful. When writing Star Trek novels, Duane does clever worldbuilding fill-in (Naraht! The medical transporter, which makes so much sense!), so I'm frustrated she doesn't turn that knack for illuminating the corners to her original fiction. The hints of Laurel's tragedy felt like a really great answer to the worldbuilding question, "So how does the Lone Power warp wizards - or their actions - to Its ends, anyway?", for example. The sense of Los Angeles as earthquake country was also a detail that helped root me in the story, one I appreciated more than the feline "Romeo and Juliet" story, which seemed to be mostly stuck in to justify Rhiow's personal enactment of the theme. On a related note, I am torn between liking Helen Walks Softly on principle and thinking she needed her own novel, so she'd stop pulling my attention from the plot and series protagonists.
I'm not sure how much of my frustration is actually rooted in The Big Meow and how much is expectations I need to set aside. Duane is predictably entertaining, but also predictable. The LP's sudden yet inevitable betrayal was not a good moment for my reading experience. I also struggled with a recent realization that the series takes an ecumenical approach to wizardry, not an interfaith approach. The difference between one "right" interpretation, reached from different paths, and multiple valid interpretations from different paths may be subtle, but it's significant in a book whose major conflict is our protagonists allying with the devil they know against an otherness breaking in from the unknown dark.
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut): Inspired by Mor's pining for a karass in Among Others, I snagged this from a library shelf. What Mor seems to have missed is that the major karass of Cat's Cradle isn't necessarily harmonious nor bent on increasing the net joy in the world. Cat's Cradle is clever, but not particularly nice, particularly with respect to its female characters. For example, the woman who is repeatedly described as a sex symbol gets to make one significant decision in the novel, and that decision is to die with her people.
Wiki tells me "[Cat's Cradle] explores issues of science, technology, and religion, satirizing the arms race and many other targets along the way." I'm starting to think that old satires make good reading for book discussion, but are rarely cheerful or uplifting. I don't like admire Vonnegut's thought-experiment on a moment in history, on the scientist as hero, on what people will do in the name of religion (or a religion-like cause), but I can admire its strengths.
Reread O Jerusalem (Laurie R. King), which has not aged terribly well.
Power skim of The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness) in preparation for reading the sequel, The Ask and the Answer. Knife was more violent than I remembered - not surprising, I read it from a Tiptree nominee perspective, and focused more on the feminism elements on the first read - and continues to descend into suffering and human brutality in Ask. I'm wishing for an editor to cut the trilogy down a bit; these books are long reads without much levity. How Ness plans to pull a happy ending out of the three-way war with the threatened co-option / destruction of the impending fourth party is beyond me.
It's tempting to complain about the false dichotomy of Prentiss vs Coyle, two violent and manipulative semi-dictators, vs real life, where there would probably be more factions (some equally violent, some hopefully not). However, I think that's my attempt to disguise fundamental discomfort with Todd and Viola's bewildered experiences with (and sometimes complicity in) torture, attempted genocide, terrorism, and vicious outbreak of patriarchy disguised as counter-terrorism behind quibbles. After 500 pages of unreliable narration, and all the above, I'm not sure I'm interested in reading the third book unless I get a spoiler suggesting someone in this mess figures out an ethical code. For example, Todd needs to turn down the Spackle-related man-pain in favor of growing the heck up. I also want him to read his mom's diary, which might help explain how the original colonists landed on a planet with native sapients and started a war right off. But I understand I might not get that. If the ethical maturity involved an end to Prentiss' Evil Overlord schtick, I would read on for that, as well. Ness is doing something interesting with the trilogy, but two-thirds of the way through I'm wondering if this ride is going where I want to follow.
Power reread of Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clarke), classic science fiction tale of the end of Earth. Very much a thought experiment; the characters seem to exist mostly to further Clarke's exploration of an End of Days idea.
A Midwife's Tale (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich): Nonfiction. A meticulous reconstruction of midwife Martha Ballard's life through her diaries. I didn't expect to find a post-Revolution Maine woman's life so interesting, but Ulrich lays out a fascinating puzzle. Her assembly of facts and fact-finding tools turns fragments of formal records, oral histories, and Ballard's diary entries into a sense of one Maine community at the end of the 18th C and the beginning of the 19th. Ulrich's agenda is to reclaim the legacy of women who worked tirelessly without leaving obvious marks on the world; their energy sustained people, rather than records. My exposure to Very absorbing in unexpected and welcome ways: I'd strongly recommended this to anyone interested in feminism.
I also reread Darkover novels in April and May. More about that later.
Numbers game: 7 total finished. 4 new, 3 reread; 6 fiction, 1 nonfiction.
This entry cross-posted at http://ase.dreamwidth.org/559658.html, where there are
comments.