Recent (and Not So Recent) Reading
Stories of the Raksura, Volume One (Martha Wells) (2014): What the cover says: less than novel-length stories set in the world of Wells' Raksura novels. "The Falling World" is one of the adventures of Indigo Cloud court, some time after The Siren Seas. A party led by Jade is lost on a trading trip, and a rescue is lead by Moon and Stone. "The Tale of Indigo and Cloud" covers a kidnapping which shaped later relationships between the renamed Indigo Cloud court and Emerald Twilight. It's a pretty serious history story, but also a story about Raksuran politics, as shaped by Aeriat and Arbora psychology and biology. If you like that sort of worldbuilding detail, you'll really enjoy the story. "The Forest Boy" is a story about young Moon, from an outsider PoV, and also about the bitter fruits of jealousy, which I found surprisingly moving. Chime's transformation is covered in "Adaptation".
Saga, Volume 4 (Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples) (2014): I was a little over-excited for this, which wasn't helped by the plot of these issues. The tropes in play were not the tropes I love. The Robot Princess' death was Not My Thing. Seriously? Have a baby, die? This is not the Saga I am used to. (The dying part, yes. The dead mom thing, not so much.) Alanna's drug use was Not My Thing. And the final cliffhanger... I want to see how it plays out, but right now I'm kind of wallowing in "meh". Volume Five is still on the to-buy list, but it's been downgraded in urgency.
Finished a back-to-back reread of Leckie's Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword. AS is a middle novel, oh yes. I encourage readers to consider it in light of Cherryh's Foreigner series, where the narrator is not exactly unreliable, but questions the validity of his interpretations of everything in agonizing detail. There's this extrapolation from fiddly micro-events to the macro impact on the two-species planetary political scene. Breq is an unreliable narrator, with a trick of focusing on exactly what is in front of her and not cluing the reader into the wider context. Which is why it wasn't clear to me until I rammed through AJ and AS in quick succession is that her goals haven't changed a bit. Breq still wants to kill the Lord of the Radch. Let's take two quotes and extrapolate:
[Grandfather's] expression was unchanged, blank determination, but her voice broke slightly at that last. “And we are all of us only human. We can only forgive so much.”
“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place."
(Chapter 16)
"Do you understand, sir, that we’re both doing exactly what she wants?” She could only be Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch. “She sent us here to do exactly what we’re doing. Doesn’t it bother you, sir, that she took something she knew you wanted and used it to make you do what she wanted?”
“Sometimes it does,” I admitted. “But then I remember that what she wants isn’t terribly important to me.”
(Chapter 21)
There's been a number of interesting posts about the social justice aspects of the two (so far) novels. I think what's not been part of the conversation much is that Breq does not particularly care about social justice. About the Radchaai principles of propriety, justice, and benefit. Breq - Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen - cares only about doing right by her dead, and killing Anaander Mianaai, most thoroughly. If she's been claimed as a cousin, if she's been given honors and responsibilities by the Tyrant, well, the Tyrant has her own goals, and has played with fire in the past; Breq is not a fan of forgiveness and will turn the events of life to her goal. Which is, let us be clear, to destroy as much of Anaander Mianaai as possible. And Anaander Mianaai is helping with that goal, as her conflict with herself destroys bodies on both sides. Civil war: twice the friendly causalities!
Also note that claiming the role of an immediate family member of Translator Dlique might (or might not) trigger some reciprocal - if not friendly - gesture on the part of the Presger, if they show up. Remember the Presger? Excellent medical technology, mysterious unstoppable hand weapons? I wonder why an angry ex-ship might not mind forming a tie there. Cough.
Whatever the people around Breq want or hope or plan or think they know, Breq is still playing her cards very close. I think, if she is reaching out to the dissatisfied, she is reaching into the places where one or both factions of Mianaai might see a lever. If she is giving Tisarwat rope, it is enough rope for the Tyrant's lingering personality to manifest, where Breq can see what Mianaai might do. If she's shaking up the system, it's because she's been given the order to secure the system, and what better way than pulling all the strings the Tyrant would pull, before Mianaai has a chance.
That's my theory. I will be very curious to see if I am anywhere near right or completely off-base when the third novel, Ancillary Mercy, comes out in October.
Walk to the End of the World (Suzy McKee Charnas) (1974): One of those '70s dystopias where war and technology have destroyed the world, with cannibalism, and explicit descriptions of what happens to the bodies. I can see how the nuanced elucidation of the white males' racism and misogyny, alongside the institutionalized drug use (oh, the '70s) and casual homosexuality propelled this novel to a retrospective Tiptree, while being nauseated by the experience of reading about the horrific abuse of women, and did I mention the cannibalism?
(Tangentially, marijuana is not a hallucinogen. Unless the nuclear fallout caused some really interesting mutagenesis. Yes, it's a minor thing to notice, but the implication of hallucination-by-hash is the sort of detail that throws me out of the story.)
The worldbuilding is satisfyingly elaborate, while being right up there with The Handmaid's Tale for upsetting character-sanctioned sexual assault and related horrific human rights abuses. It's useful to read, as a complex well-executed story, and as part of the tradition of feminist science fiction, but it was full-on dystopia with barely the faintest spark of a better future.
The Wizard Hunters (Martha Wells) (2004): Fantasy novel, first in a trilogy.
Wells has this very direct approach to what could be very dark situations which can be extremely entertaining. Lots of snark in the middle of dramatic action sequences, lots of action relative to contemplation and internal cogitation, and this expectation that people can work together, even when they meet in the middle of a firefight. Or maybe that's especially when they meet mid-fight.
Case in point, our heroine Tremaine meets our hero Illias after being shipwrecked, while evading capture by the bad guys invading her homeland. This snowballs into an ensemble effort to rescue their imprisoned companions and attack the bad guys, while dealing with an undead villain and some hefty cultural differences on the merits of sorcerers. It's cheerful and optimistic and lives up to a fantastic opening line: It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court when someone banged on the door.
Contrary to this attention-catching beginning, Tremaine spends the rest of the book fighting for survival by all means necessary. Hence the final ensemble show-piece, a fantastic return and attack on the enemy base, with a jailbreak / prisoner release, well-foreshadowed infodump about one of the novel's magical McGuffins, and spectacular property damage to the enemy.
There's a whole lot of fun worldbuilding, showcasing the differences between Tremaine's home, war-torn Ile-Rien, and Illias' people the Syprians, who have a local god and the god's Chosen One to protect them from the local wizards, since their experience is that magic is synonymous with bad choice. There are also the bad guys, enigmatic Gardier, who are from... somewhere else. If Ile-Rien is in one world and the Syprians live in a second, I'm looking forward to finding out if the Gardier are from a different part of the Syprian world or an entirely new third world.
This is Wells in awesome compulsively readable mode. I had a vague idea I'd pause between The Wizard Hunters and its sequel, The Ships of Air, to read the earlier Ile-Rien novels I'd picked up at the library. Then I read the first chapter of the next novel online. And the second. And... as soon as I could, I went back to the library to check out The Ships of Air.
This entry cross-posted at http://ase.dreamwidth.org/647395.html, where there are
comments.
Saga, Volume 4 (Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples) (2014): I was a little over-excited for this, which wasn't helped by the plot of these issues. The tropes in play were not the tropes I love. The Robot Princess' death was Not My Thing. Seriously? Have a baby, die? This is not the Saga I am used to. (The dying part, yes. The dead mom thing, not so much.) Alanna's drug use was Not My Thing. And the final cliffhanger... I want to see how it plays out, but right now I'm kind of wallowing in "meh". Volume Five is still on the to-buy list, but it's been downgraded in urgency.
Finished a back-to-back reread of Leckie's Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword. AS is a middle novel, oh yes. I encourage readers to consider it in light of Cherryh's Foreigner series, where the narrator is not exactly unreliable, but questions the validity of his interpretations of everything in agonizing detail. There's this extrapolation from fiddly micro-events to the macro impact on the two-species planetary political scene. Breq is an unreliable narrator, with a trick of focusing on exactly what is in front of her and not cluing the reader into the wider context. Which is why it wasn't clear to me until I rammed through AJ and AS in quick succession is that her goals haven't changed a bit. Breq still wants to kill the Lord of the Radch. Let's take two quotes and extrapolate:
[Grandfather's] expression was unchanged, blank determination, but her voice broke slightly at that last. “And we are all of us only human. We can only forgive so much.”
“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place."
(Chapter 16)
"Do you understand, sir, that we’re both doing exactly what she wants?” She could only be Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch. “She sent us here to do exactly what we’re doing. Doesn’t it bother you, sir, that she took something she knew you wanted and used it to make you do what she wanted?”
“Sometimes it does,” I admitted. “But then I remember that what she wants isn’t terribly important to me.”
(Chapter 21)
There's been a number of interesting posts about the social justice aspects of the two (so far) novels. I think what's not been part of the conversation much is that Breq does not particularly care about social justice. About the Radchaai principles of propriety, justice, and benefit. Breq - Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen - cares only about doing right by her dead, and killing Anaander Mianaai, most thoroughly. If she's been claimed as a cousin, if she's been given honors and responsibilities by the Tyrant, well, the Tyrant has her own goals, and has played with fire in the past; Breq is not a fan of forgiveness and will turn the events of life to her goal. Which is, let us be clear, to destroy as much of Anaander Mianaai as possible. And Anaander Mianaai is helping with that goal, as her conflict with herself destroys bodies on both sides. Civil war: twice the friendly causalities!
Also note that claiming the role of an immediate family member of Translator Dlique might (or might not) trigger some reciprocal - if not friendly - gesture on the part of the Presger, if they show up. Remember the Presger? Excellent medical technology, mysterious unstoppable hand weapons? I wonder why an angry ex-ship might not mind forming a tie there. Cough.
Whatever the people around Breq want or hope or plan or think they know, Breq is still playing her cards very close. I think, if she is reaching out to the dissatisfied, she is reaching into the places where one or both factions of Mianaai might see a lever. If she is giving Tisarwat rope, it is enough rope for the Tyrant's lingering personality to manifest, where Breq can see what Mianaai might do. If she's shaking up the system, it's because she's been given the order to secure the system, and what better way than pulling all the strings the Tyrant would pull, before Mianaai has a chance.
That's my theory. I will be very curious to see if I am anywhere near right or completely off-base when the third novel, Ancillary Mercy, comes out in October.
Walk to the End of the World (Suzy McKee Charnas) (1974): One of those '70s dystopias where war and technology have destroyed the world, with cannibalism, and explicit descriptions of what happens to the bodies. I can see how the nuanced elucidation of the white males' racism and misogyny, alongside the institutionalized drug use (oh, the '70s) and casual homosexuality propelled this novel to a retrospective Tiptree, while being nauseated by the experience of reading about the horrific abuse of women, and did I mention the cannibalism?
(Tangentially, marijuana is not a hallucinogen. Unless the nuclear fallout caused some really interesting mutagenesis. Yes, it's a minor thing to notice, but the implication of hallucination-by-hash is the sort of detail that throws me out of the story.)
The worldbuilding is satisfyingly elaborate, while being right up there with The Handmaid's Tale for upsetting character-sanctioned sexual assault and related horrific human rights abuses. It's useful to read, as a complex well-executed story, and as part of the tradition of feminist science fiction, but it was full-on dystopia with barely the faintest spark of a better future.
The Wizard Hunters (Martha Wells) (2004): Fantasy novel, first in a trilogy.
Wells has this very direct approach to what could be very dark situations which can be extremely entertaining. Lots of snark in the middle of dramatic action sequences, lots of action relative to contemplation and internal cogitation, and this expectation that people can work together, even when they meet in the middle of a firefight. Or maybe that's especially when they meet mid-fight.
Case in point, our heroine Tremaine meets our hero Illias after being shipwrecked, while evading capture by the bad guys invading her homeland. This snowballs into an ensemble effort to rescue their imprisoned companions and attack the bad guys, while dealing with an undead villain and some hefty cultural differences on the merits of sorcerers. It's cheerful and optimistic and lives up to a fantastic opening line: It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court when someone banged on the door.
Contrary to this attention-catching beginning, Tremaine spends the rest of the book fighting for survival by all means necessary. Hence the final ensemble show-piece, a fantastic return and attack on the enemy base, with a jailbreak / prisoner release, well-foreshadowed infodump about one of the novel's magical McGuffins, and spectacular property damage to the enemy.
There's a whole lot of fun worldbuilding, showcasing the differences between Tremaine's home, war-torn Ile-Rien, and Illias' people the Syprians, who have a local god and the god's Chosen One to protect them from the local wizards, since their experience is that magic is synonymous with bad choice. There are also the bad guys, enigmatic Gardier, who are from... somewhere else. If Ile-Rien is in one world and the Syprians live in a second, I'm looking forward to finding out if the Gardier are from a different part of the Syprian world or an entirely new third world.
This is Wells in awesome compulsively readable mode. I had a vague idea I'd pause between The Wizard Hunters and its sequel, The Ships of Air, to read the earlier Ile-Rien novels I'd picked up at the library. Then I read the first chapter of the next novel online. And the second. And... as soon as I could, I went back to the library to check out The Ships of Air.
This entry cross-posted at http://ase.dreamwidth.org/647395.html, where there are
comments.