Reading roundup
Real entry forthcoming -- L's birthday, new house stuff, work week. But for now, I felt like another book entry, so:
31. Ilona Andrews, Magic Bites (Kate Daniels #1) -- I've been hearing good things about this series ever since sarahtales/SRB talked about it (in a post about female protagonists, I think?), but coming across random books at the library. But after reading my first Edge book and enjoying it, I figured it was worth actually tracking down the first Kate Daniels book, and did. I'd been expecting something MORE -- something more different from the rest of the UF pack, I guess -- but for a first book it's definitely not bad, and I plan to read on -- I actually have the next two on request at my library right now (in "processing hold", whatever that means). Spoilers from here!
One of the things I'd been skeptical about was the post-apocalyptic magic/tech world, but that turned out to work OK for me. It's not my preferred form of the Unmasked World, but it was something different. I was even willing to buy the fairly info-dumpy explanation about why cars don't work when the magic is up and phones sometimes do (because people understand how cars work but not how phones work). The thing that turned out NOT to work for me was the science-speak when applied to magic, the m-scans and all that stuff. I'm not entirely sure why, but it just didn't feel "real" -- like, all that stuff about the mysterious yellow m-scan line, which they were eventually able to decompose into animal and magic influence that turned out to be the signature of the upir's offspring, something in the back of my mind kept going "science doesn't work that way", and there were several other moments that had the same effect. Which is annoying, because I'm all for forensic magic (it's one of the things I love about the Peter Grant books), but there it feels real and here it doesn't. Pity. And the words of magic is a concept that apparently doesn't really work for me in an urban fantasy setting, either.
But other aspects of the worldbuilding I do like. I quite like this take on vampires, mindless drones controlled by necromancers/the People, and the changes that happen to their bodies after death. The were-everything creatures are a slightly more interesting take than the standard werewolves I've been reading about, though the only category where the were-ness is interesting to me on a worldbuilding level are the rat-shifters who have to eat constantly. Oh, one detail I really like is Kate's living sword that dissolves tissues and needs to be fed bonemeal. The Atlanta setting is neat for being different, and I liked the southern touches, like the diner guy asking for gravy with Mexican food.
I thought I would have some more feelings/thoughts about the monster-of-the-book being a Slavic mythology creature, but I really don't. The upir just felt really, really generic -- raping and killing and eating corpses is just not very interesting. And the particular bad guy, Bono, was pretty boring as well. Also, it kept distracting me that I would've definitely spelled it "upyr" with a Y... (Also, the name of the journal, "Volshebstva e Kolduni", that really ought to be "i" rathen than "e". I'm assuming that this was a conscious choice/maybe an editor request, but it still annoys me.)
I am mightily sick of the were love interest, apparently. Which is my own fault, because I did just read a zillion Mercy Thompson books back-to-back. But just knowing that Curran was going to be the designated love interest -- not that I'd been spoiled for it, but the way they first meet makes it very clear -- made me way less interested in reading about him, even though he might be the sort of character I'd normally like, in a different role. *sigh* I'd actually liked the awkward, cross-purposes tentative first-date stuff between Kate and Crest more than all the by-the-numbers growling and posturing with Curran; pity that he was only there to be a red herring, because having a "normal" in the cast was actually kind of nice. (And speaking of red herrings, I actually had to leaf back and read through the previous pages again to figure out why everybody, Kate herself included, was apparently blaming Kate for jumping to the conclusion that Crest was the upir when, as far as I could tell, it was Curran who'd suggested it. Her only leap of logic was that there was an upir on the loose, which turned out to be true and is also much less of a leap of logic than figuring it was Crest. Now, OK, she didn't try to convince the others that it *wasn't* him, but it's not like she had anything like evidence, so I don't understand the logic of blaming her, certainly not unilaterally. I mean, Crest can be mad at her, sure, but Curran? Where does HE get off?)
Kate herself is, eh. A bit too much like the standard UF hero, with mysteries in her blood and no family left, tough loner scrabbling at the edge sort of deal. It's marginally more interesting to have a female protagonist like that than the typical noir male like Harry Dresden, but only marginally. The one character trait that stands out, and that I like so far, is Kate's hair-related vanity -- the way she envies Rowena's hair, and refuses to cut her braid. I do like her narrative voice, though, which is the main reason I intend to continue reading -- it makes for quick, fun reading even when I'm not too impressed with the worldbuilding or the story, and have not yet started caring about any of the characters.
There are some side characters I do find interesting, though. Ghastek the necromancer seems interesting, and Saiman the... whoever he is. So far, those are the two characters I would like to know more about. And maybe some flashbacks of Greg, who seemed interesting, too, in his brief appearances in Kate's memory. Oh, and I quite like the were-bear/Pack's executioner, Mahon. And there are some neat, funny touches, like the alpha-wolf being out of commission for the big battle because he tripped on some of his kid's Legos. I hope these people will be around more, and there will be more such moments, in the sequels.
Randomly, this appears to be my reading roundup for books that have taught me new words, mostly esoteric. For Kate, it's lympago. Go figure!
32. Emma Bull, Finder -- this is a Bordertown novel (which I didn't realize was a thing that existed, actually, though I've read a bunch of short stories set in Bordertown) which qwentoozla recommended for my "book more than 10 years old" square on the bingo. Thank you, Katie! I don't think I ever would've tracked down this book otherwise, and I definitely enjoyed it! Also, this is only the second Emma Bull book I've read, even though I really loved War for the Oaks and a short story of hers which was my introduction to the author ("Silver or Gold" in After the King, the anthology that was also my intro to Pratchett, via "Troll Bridge").
Anyway, this was a fun but odd read for me. I recently read a new anthology of Bordertown stories, but that was set very much in the present day. And I've read a number of the older Bordertown stories, but it was while the time they were set it was still very much the present, when I was in college. This was the first time I read an old Bordertown, and the datedness really showed. I didn't mind it in War for the Oaks, but something about Bordertown presupposes it has to be at the screaming edge of teen culture, and so all the herbal cigarettes and outdated fashions and all that stuff really stood out -- like watching Saved by the Bell reruns (the book was published in 1994). The thing that stood out the most was the use of "geek" as a synonym with "sideshow freak" -- that earned a double-take, because, whoa, it's been only 20 years, and how things have changed...
(Speaking of the setting, it was only reading this Bordertown book that made me realize that Bordertown is what Holly Black's Coldtown reminded me of, although it is both less interesting to me personally because urban elves >>> vampires, and less interesting overall because there are some very interesting politics around Coldtowns, with many people not having a choice about being there, which are absent with Bordertown. Also, between Bordertown and the Edge, I guess I'm really in the mood for those "liminal space between mundane modern world and ~Faerie" stories at the moment.) Spoilers from here, including the whodunit
Anyway, as for the actual book. Orient was OK -- not the most interesting protagonist/narrator, but I liked his awkward crush on Sunny Rico (and especially liked the way it's not resolved, even after they sleep with each other for comfort, but they continue to work together, and there's hope of some positive resolution). I had a really hard time getting past Tick-Tick's name (or worse yet, the way Orient calls her "the Ticker"), and so she never captured me as a character, and her death really only affected me inasmuch as it affected Orient (but there are some very poignant moments there, especially about how weird death is, like Orient buying 12 beer bottles instead of 6, because "After all, I'd probably be getting condolence callers. Oh, God, what a horrible, horrible thought."). I liked Sunny more, wanting to be a good cop because her father wasn't, and the way Orient and she work through their relationship from the resentful start to tentative partnership. As for side characters, I liked Linn, who cares about making his partner/best friend happy a lot more than he cares about justice or not going behind her back or putting a civilian in danger (this seems a very true-to-Elven-nature thing to me), and was happy he recovered. I also liked Vissa, Tick-Tick's brother from the Elflands, and it was his reactions to his sister's death and funeral that actually affected me emotionally in this book.
The badguys are pretty good for the kind of book this is -- I liked Hawthorn's arrogance beneath the fatherly concern ("he'd checked me out and decided I didn't know he was in it, so it wasn't necessary to kill me. It was almost comforting to know that we were dealing with someone who was at least that fastidious about his trail of bodies." "The snare of vanity" when Orient explains that he figured it out from the beer-bottle recapping), and was sorry that Toby the friendly cop turned out to be the one who'd drugged Orient, and the mastermind lady pretending she was fighting in self-defense felt apt, too. I also liked Malicorn the mad scientist, who really does seem to be distraught by the epidemic he'd unintentionally unleashed with his experimentation. Anyway, the plot worked for me, the mystery of chasing a drug distributor and the epidemic it sets off, so that once the plot hit in earnest, I read through the book fairly quickly.
Some quotes (more than usual, because the writing is really very good, or at least really the kind of writing I like):
Describing a hospital: "the relentless, bright light that bounced off surfaces that were easy to clean but hard, hard to look at. And the sounds, of people trying to hurry quietly, to talk of urgent things calmly, and to muffle the noise of pain as if it were a germ that could spread."
"What is likely is that someone with the knowledge and experience to use explosives wisely and well has, under pressure, used them sloppily and without regard for the wider consequences."
"My, you look lousy."
"But I feel terrible," I assured her.
"Guess that proves you can't tell by looking."
[This felt like such a Brustian exchange to me... Emma Bull and SKZB are friends and in the same writing group, so I wonder if he does have something to do with that exchange...]
"Oh, come on. You're not going to tell me that [somebody drugged his soup] never occurred to you?" [...]
"You bet. Every day. My god, of course it didn't. Where am I supposed to get all this practice at being paranoid?"
"I think he [Linn] was halfway between grateful and guilty, which is an unenviable piece of real estate."
"But I can prove it will work," she added.
"How?"
"By taking it until I'm changed and walking across the Border."
"And if you take it 'til you're dead, that'll prove it doesn't work, and much good it'll do you."
"No. That'll just prove it doesn't work on me."
We stared at each other again. Her grasp of the scientific method beat the hell out of mine, and her need to believe trumped that.
"This was her job -- her hard, nerve-wracking, intermittently sordid job. No high adventure."
Orient: "This is-- this is the part of the movie where the villain tells the hero everything, because he's going to kill him anyway. Except that I can't think of any more questions."
"You aren't the hero," Hawthorn said, rather kindly. "You're a pawn. And I really tried not to have to kill you."
"I wanted to do something, to renounce or embrace something, to make a sacrifice, to make a gesture. It was a dangerous moment."
And I learned a new word here too -- "excelsior", in the sense of wood shavings as packaging. And also learned that Emma Bull is from Torrance, CA. Huh. I associate her so strongly with Minneapolis, that it's weird to think of her as being from California...
33. Charles Yu, Sorry Please Thank You -- this was another recommendation from the Reading Bingo recs post a little while back, from a couple of different people, but ladymercury_10 was the first to mention it -- so, thank you! It was a very interesting read, even though some stories worked for me and some really didn't. But everything was interesting at least in concept if not in story, so I'm very glad to have read this anthology. Mostly non-spoilery -- can one even be spoilery for most of these stories?
On the whole, I think I really like the way Yu does, mmm, bleak wistfulness? optimistic bleakness? Not sure what to call it, but the first story ("Standard Loneliness Package") exemplified it, and I really liked it, and also liked the other that felt similar, "Open". But "Adult Contemporary" seemed to be playing with the same ideas but didn't work for me -- it just felt dull -- maybe it was the third-person narration that made the difference... And then there's "Sorry Please Thank You", which is just bleak witout the wistfulness or optimism, as you'd expect from a suicide note written on a bar napkin, but quite powerful. I do think the two most memorable stories bookend the collection, even if I enjoyed the funnier, lighter ones more.
The funny stories (with an undercurrent of some of the same bleakness) tended to work for me, too, like "Yeoman" (narrated by a redshirt, who, against expectations, gets a happily-ever-after courtesy of his pregnant wife), "Hero Absorbs Major Damage" (narrated by an RPG protagonist, in-game) and "First Person Shooter" (about a zombie lady shopping at !Walmart to get ready for a date and the store employee who sort of adopts her as a rolemodel).
On the other hand, the "alternate universe" stories were just plain boring to me, frankly, reminiscent of the sort of stuff my high school friend TK used to spout when he was trying to be all profound and/or witty. Stories that felt like that to me, though some did have the occasional fun/science-geeky quote, were "Inventory", "Note to Self", and I felt similarly about "The Book of Categories", though it plays with a different concept.
I'm concerned that How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is more like this kind of story, and that I therefore shouldn't bother with it. That was my initial reluctance over Yu's stuff, but maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Is the novel like that? Or more like the stories that I liked?
There are quite a few stories that are written in non-traditional narrative forms -- textbook chapter, operating instructions, annual report, and some of those worked for me a lot better than others. I grinned all the way through "Designer Emotion 67", delivered by a CEO addressing shareholders of PharmaLife Inc. -- it's really great on the corporatespeak, I loved the reference to the Millbrae campus (here in the Bay Area, right around where all the biotech firms are), and the CEO was so beautifully, chummily sleazy, he actually reminded me a bit of one of my former managers. "Troubleshooting" wasn't something that appealed to me the whole way through, but it had some sections which really, really worked for me, more on the level of a poem than a story. On the flip side, "Human for Beginners" felt like it was supposed to be non-standard-narration charming, but wasn't deep enough to actually *do* anything, and "The Book of Categories" can probably included in this category as well.
Some quotes:
"Those bits, the extras, the leftover slices of life were lopped off by the algorithm and smushed all together into a kind of reconstituted life slab, a life-loaf. Lunch meat made out of bits of boredom."
"It's like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do."
"We're corresponding. We are correspondents corresponding in our corresponding universes."
And I learned a new word from this one, too, "brane", which is a physics thing, string theory.
Now back to Cloud Atlas on the Kindle and SKZB's Dragon as my bedside reading.
31. Ilona Andrews, Magic Bites (Kate Daniels #1) -- I've been hearing good things about this series ever since sarahtales/SRB talked about it (in a post about female protagonists, I think?), but coming across random books at the library. But after reading my first Edge book and enjoying it, I figured it was worth actually tracking down the first Kate Daniels book, and did. I'd been expecting something MORE -- something more different from the rest of the UF pack, I guess -- but for a first book it's definitely not bad, and I plan to read on -- I actually have the next two on request at my library right now (in "processing hold", whatever that means). Spoilers from here!
One of the things I'd been skeptical about was the post-apocalyptic magic/tech world, but that turned out to work OK for me. It's not my preferred form of the Unmasked World, but it was something different. I was even willing to buy the fairly info-dumpy explanation about why cars don't work when the magic is up and phones sometimes do (because people understand how cars work but not how phones work). The thing that turned out NOT to work for me was the science-speak when applied to magic, the m-scans and all that stuff. I'm not entirely sure why, but it just didn't feel "real" -- like, all that stuff about the mysterious yellow m-scan line, which they were eventually able to decompose into animal and magic influence that turned out to be the signature of the upir's offspring, something in the back of my mind kept going "science doesn't work that way", and there were several other moments that had the same effect. Which is annoying, because I'm all for forensic magic (it's one of the things I love about the Peter Grant books), but there it feels real and here it doesn't. Pity. And the words of magic is a concept that apparently doesn't really work for me in an urban fantasy setting, either.
But other aspects of the worldbuilding I do like. I quite like this take on vampires, mindless drones controlled by necromancers/the People, and the changes that happen to their bodies after death. The were-everything creatures are a slightly more interesting take than the standard werewolves I've been reading about, though the only category where the were-ness is interesting to me on a worldbuilding level are the rat-shifters who have to eat constantly. Oh, one detail I really like is Kate's living sword that dissolves tissues and needs to be fed bonemeal. The Atlanta setting is neat for being different, and I liked the southern touches, like the diner guy asking for gravy with Mexican food.
I thought I would have some more feelings/thoughts about the monster-of-the-book being a Slavic mythology creature, but I really don't. The upir just felt really, really generic -- raping and killing and eating corpses is just not very interesting. And the particular bad guy, Bono, was pretty boring as well. Also, it kept distracting me that I would've definitely spelled it "upyr" with a Y... (Also, the name of the journal, "Volshebstva e Kolduni", that really ought to be "i" rathen than "e". I'm assuming that this was a conscious choice/maybe an editor request, but it still annoys me.)
I am mightily sick of the were love interest, apparently. Which is my own fault, because I did just read a zillion Mercy Thompson books back-to-back. But just knowing that Curran was going to be the designated love interest -- not that I'd been spoiled for it, but the way they first meet makes it very clear -- made me way less interested in reading about him, even though he might be the sort of character I'd normally like, in a different role. *sigh* I'd actually liked the awkward, cross-purposes tentative first-date stuff between Kate and Crest more than all the by-the-numbers growling and posturing with Curran; pity that he was only there to be a red herring, because having a "normal" in the cast was actually kind of nice. (And speaking of red herrings, I actually had to leaf back and read through the previous pages again to figure out why everybody, Kate herself included, was apparently blaming Kate for jumping to the conclusion that Crest was the upir when, as far as I could tell, it was Curran who'd suggested it. Her only leap of logic was that there was an upir on the loose, which turned out to be true and is also much less of a leap of logic than figuring it was Crest. Now, OK, she didn't try to convince the others that it *wasn't* him, but it's not like she had anything like evidence, so I don't understand the logic of blaming her, certainly not unilaterally. I mean, Crest can be mad at her, sure, but Curran? Where does HE get off?)
Kate herself is, eh. A bit too much like the standard UF hero, with mysteries in her blood and no family left, tough loner scrabbling at the edge sort of deal. It's marginally more interesting to have a female protagonist like that than the typical noir male like Harry Dresden, but only marginally. The one character trait that stands out, and that I like so far, is Kate's hair-related vanity -- the way she envies Rowena's hair, and refuses to cut her braid. I do like her narrative voice, though, which is the main reason I intend to continue reading -- it makes for quick, fun reading even when I'm not too impressed with the worldbuilding or the story, and have not yet started caring about any of the characters.
There are some side characters I do find interesting, though. Ghastek the necromancer seems interesting, and Saiman the... whoever he is. So far, those are the two characters I would like to know more about. And maybe some flashbacks of Greg, who seemed interesting, too, in his brief appearances in Kate's memory. Oh, and I quite like the were-bear/Pack's executioner, Mahon. And there are some neat, funny touches, like the alpha-wolf being out of commission for the big battle because he tripped on some of his kid's Legos. I hope these people will be around more, and there will be more such moments, in the sequels.
Randomly, this appears to be my reading roundup for books that have taught me new words, mostly esoteric. For Kate, it's lympago. Go figure!
32. Emma Bull, Finder -- this is a Bordertown novel (which I didn't realize was a thing that existed, actually, though I've read a bunch of short stories set in Bordertown) which qwentoozla recommended for my "book more than 10 years old" square on the bingo. Thank you, Katie! I don't think I ever would've tracked down this book otherwise, and I definitely enjoyed it! Also, this is only the second Emma Bull book I've read, even though I really loved War for the Oaks and a short story of hers which was my introduction to the author ("Silver or Gold" in After the King, the anthology that was also my intro to Pratchett, via "Troll Bridge").
Anyway, this was a fun but odd read for me. I recently read a new anthology of Bordertown stories, but that was set very much in the present day. And I've read a number of the older Bordertown stories, but it was while the time they were set it was still very much the present, when I was in college. This was the first time I read an old Bordertown, and the datedness really showed. I didn't mind it in War for the Oaks, but something about Bordertown presupposes it has to be at the screaming edge of teen culture, and so all the herbal cigarettes and outdated fashions and all that stuff really stood out -- like watching Saved by the Bell reruns (the book was published in 1994). The thing that stood out the most was the use of "geek" as a synonym with "sideshow freak" -- that earned a double-take, because, whoa, it's been only 20 years, and how things have changed...
(Speaking of the setting, it was only reading this Bordertown book that made me realize that Bordertown is what Holly Black's Coldtown reminded me of, although it is both less interesting to me personally because urban elves >>> vampires, and less interesting overall because there are some very interesting politics around Coldtowns, with many people not having a choice about being there, which are absent with Bordertown. Also, between Bordertown and the Edge, I guess I'm really in the mood for those "liminal space between mundane modern world and ~Faerie" stories at the moment.) Spoilers from here, including the whodunit
Anyway, as for the actual book. Orient was OK -- not the most interesting protagonist/narrator, but I liked his awkward crush on Sunny Rico (and especially liked the way it's not resolved, even after they sleep with each other for comfort, but they continue to work together, and there's hope of some positive resolution). I had a really hard time getting past Tick-Tick's name (or worse yet, the way Orient calls her "the Ticker"), and so she never captured me as a character, and her death really only affected me inasmuch as it affected Orient (but there are some very poignant moments there, especially about how weird death is, like Orient buying 12 beer bottles instead of 6, because "After all, I'd probably be getting condolence callers. Oh, God, what a horrible, horrible thought."). I liked Sunny more, wanting to be a good cop because her father wasn't, and the way Orient and she work through their relationship from the resentful start to tentative partnership. As for side characters, I liked Linn, who cares about making his partner/best friend happy a lot more than he cares about justice or not going behind her back or putting a civilian in danger (this seems a very true-to-Elven-nature thing to me), and was happy he recovered. I also liked Vissa, Tick-Tick's brother from the Elflands, and it was his reactions to his sister's death and funeral that actually affected me emotionally in this book.
The badguys are pretty good for the kind of book this is -- I liked Hawthorn's arrogance beneath the fatherly concern ("he'd checked me out and decided I didn't know he was in it, so it wasn't necessary to kill me. It was almost comforting to know that we were dealing with someone who was at least that fastidious about his trail of bodies." "The snare of vanity" when Orient explains that he figured it out from the beer-bottle recapping), and was sorry that Toby the friendly cop turned out to be the one who'd drugged Orient, and the mastermind lady pretending she was fighting in self-defense felt apt, too. I also liked Malicorn the mad scientist, who really does seem to be distraught by the epidemic he'd unintentionally unleashed with his experimentation. Anyway, the plot worked for me, the mystery of chasing a drug distributor and the epidemic it sets off, so that once the plot hit in earnest, I read through the book fairly quickly.
Some quotes (more than usual, because the writing is really very good, or at least really the kind of writing I like):
Describing a hospital: "the relentless, bright light that bounced off surfaces that were easy to clean but hard, hard to look at. And the sounds, of people trying to hurry quietly, to talk of urgent things calmly, and to muffle the noise of pain as if it were a germ that could spread."
"What is likely is that someone with the knowledge and experience to use explosives wisely and well has, under pressure, used them sloppily and without regard for the wider consequences."
"My, you look lousy."
"But I feel terrible," I assured her.
"Guess that proves you can't tell by looking."
[This felt like such a Brustian exchange to me... Emma Bull and SKZB are friends and in the same writing group, so I wonder if he does have something to do with that exchange...]
"Oh, come on. You're not going to tell me that [somebody drugged his soup] never occurred to you?" [...]
"You bet. Every day. My god, of course it didn't. Where am I supposed to get all this practice at being paranoid?"
"I think he [Linn] was halfway between grateful and guilty, which is an unenviable piece of real estate."
"But I can prove it will work," she added.
"How?"
"By taking it until I'm changed and walking across the Border."
"And if you take it 'til you're dead, that'll prove it doesn't work, and much good it'll do you."
"No. That'll just prove it doesn't work on me."
We stared at each other again. Her grasp of the scientific method beat the hell out of mine, and her need to believe trumped that.
"This was her job -- her hard, nerve-wracking, intermittently sordid job. No high adventure."
Orient: "This is-- this is the part of the movie where the villain tells the hero everything, because he's going to kill him anyway. Except that I can't think of any more questions."
"You aren't the hero," Hawthorn said, rather kindly. "You're a pawn. And I really tried not to have to kill you."
"I wanted to do something, to renounce or embrace something, to make a sacrifice, to make a gesture. It was a dangerous moment."
And I learned a new word here too -- "excelsior", in the sense of wood shavings as packaging. And also learned that Emma Bull is from Torrance, CA. Huh. I associate her so strongly with Minneapolis, that it's weird to think of her as being from California...
33. Charles Yu, Sorry Please Thank You -- this was another recommendation from the Reading Bingo recs post a little while back, from a couple of different people, but ladymercury_10 was the first to mention it -- so, thank you! It was a very interesting read, even though some stories worked for me and some really didn't. But everything was interesting at least in concept if not in story, so I'm very glad to have read this anthology. Mostly non-spoilery -- can one even be spoilery for most of these stories?
On the whole, I think I really like the way Yu does, mmm, bleak wistfulness? optimistic bleakness? Not sure what to call it, but the first story ("Standard Loneliness Package") exemplified it, and I really liked it, and also liked the other that felt similar, "Open". But "Adult Contemporary" seemed to be playing with the same ideas but didn't work for me -- it just felt dull -- maybe it was the third-person narration that made the difference... And then there's "Sorry Please Thank You", which is just bleak witout the wistfulness or optimism, as you'd expect from a suicide note written on a bar napkin, but quite powerful. I do think the two most memorable stories bookend the collection, even if I enjoyed the funnier, lighter ones more.
The funny stories (with an undercurrent of some of the same bleakness) tended to work for me, too, like "Yeoman" (narrated by a redshirt, who, against expectations, gets a happily-ever-after courtesy of his pregnant wife), "Hero Absorbs Major Damage" (narrated by an RPG protagonist, in-game) and "First Person Shooter" (about a zombie lady shopping at !Walmart to get ready for a date and the store employee who sort of adopts her as a rolemodel).
On the other hand, the "alternate universe" stories were just plain boring to me, frankly, reminiscent of the sort of stuff my high school friend TK used to spout when he was trying to be all profound and/or witty. Stories that felt like that to me, though some did have the occasional fun/science-geeky quote, were "Inventory", "Note to Self", and I felt similarly about "The Book of Categories", though it plays with a different concept.
I'm concerned that How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is more like this kind of story, and that I therefore shouldn't bother with it. That was my initial reluctance over Yu's stuff, but maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Is the novel like that? Or more like the stories that I liked?
There are quite a few stories that are written in non-traditional narrative forms -- textbook chapter, operating instructions, annual report, and some of those worked for me a lot better than others. I grinned all the way through "Designer Emotion 67", delivered by a CEO addressing shareholders of PharmaLife Inc. -- it's really great on the corporatespeak, I loved the reference to the Millbrae campus (here in the Bay Area, right around where all the biotech firms are), and the CEO was so beautifully, chummily sleazy, he actually reminded me a bit of one of my former managers. "Troubleshooting" wasn't something that appealed to me the whole way through, but it had some sections which really, really worked for me, more on the level of a poem than a story. On the flip side, "Human for Beginners" felt like it was supposed to be non-standard-narration charming, but wasn't deep enough to actually *do* anything, and "The Book of Categories" can probably included in this category as well.
Some quotes:
"Those bits, the extras, the leftover slices of life were lopped off by the algorithm and smushed all together into a kind of reconstituted life slab, a life-loaf. Lunch meat made out of bits of boredom."
"It's like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do."
"We're corresponding. We are correspondents corresponding in our corresponding universes."
And I learned a new word from this one, too, "brane", which is a physics thing, string theory.
Now back to Cloud Atlas on the Kindle and SKZB's Dragon as my bedside reading.