Reading and watching roundup: Hugo novellas, Ms Marvel, Taskmaster NZ
Thank you for all the good wishes on the previous post! <3 My grandfather's surgery was pushed back, so there are no new developments so far, but I appreciate the good thoughts.
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Meanwhile, I managed to continue to read a few things -- half of the Hugo-nominated novellas:
4. Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race -- I've been meaning to check out Tchaikovsky for several years now -- several flisters are big fans, and I'm intrigued by his specialty being bugs. Intrigued enough that I actually checked out the first bug people book some time ago, but the writing wasn't grabbing me. And then I checked out something else, and didn't even crack it open. So having a Hugo homework reason to read him was very welcome. And I don't know if he's improved considerably as a writer since that first book I tried (he is incredibly prolific, so I could see that happening at a rapid pace), or if I like his sci-fi better, or if it being shorter form was part of the reason, but one way or another, I really liked this!
First of all, at some point I've turned into a person who really likes "looks like fantasy but is actually sci-fi" narratives (which I discovered with the Steerswoman books). This one, with the dual POVs of the person who realizes he's in a sci-fi story and the person who thinks of the same event in terms of demons and magic, reminded me a bit of Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, which was another Hugo novella discovery I loved (this was about space anthropology, that was about time travel). And that aspect of the story was highlighted here better than in anything else I've read, because of the highly parallel structure. There's even a (somewhat gimmicky) chapter where you get the same narrative from the POV of the anthropologist, who is talking about science and space travel, and the way the woman of the colony world hears it, about god-like beings and magical servants and ships traveling the night sky -- I don't know that having them literally side by side contributed more than the rest of the story, and it definitely was very annoying to read on a Kindle app on a small phone, but it was something different. My favorite part of that, though, was SPOILERS from here! that once the anthropologist was done revealing this great forbidden truth (forbidden because he's not supposed to interfere with the locals, just observe them), Lyn the local was just like, yeah, that's exactly how we tell this story, was there a point you were making? There were funny (in a bittersweet way, mostly) little touches like Nyr trying to explain the effects of radiation exposure from his self-defense systems being activated while the locals thought he was cursing the men who attacked him, and especially "I'm not a magician, but a wizard. Not a wizard, but a sorcerer, a magus" extended run. I also really liked the way he described depression to Lyn, and the need to face his emotions periodically without the shield of the DCS. One really neat thing about this aspect of the story was that it's not STATIC. Lyn eventually believes him that there is no magic, Esha learns enough from listening to Nyr talk to the broken-down mining robot that she can send it "home" carrying Nyr and Lyn -- and at the very end Nyr both comes down from his tower to join the locals AND thinks about taking Lyn on as an apprentice, merging the two sides.
The story is doing enough neat things on a high concept level that it could have skimped on characters and still bean a worthwhile story, but it doesn't. I got a strong sense of both Lynesse and Nyr, and I liked them both (Nyr especially, in his first-person POV), and even got a pretty good sense of Esha, and wanted all of them to survive. I was also, frankly, expecting the story to end with Lyn and Nyr becoming a couple, what with the way she reminded him so strongly of his lost love the Once Regent he had given the oath of aid to, that Lyn comes to call on him in the name of. And it's REALLY NEAT that the story does basically the opposite of that: Lyn thinks about the story of a princess who has to marry a wizard, who is unnatural and strange, and it never stops being anything other than an extremely unpleasant possibility that she would follow through on out of duty -- but Nyr realizes he has to stop seeing her as her ancestor queen, and the conclusion is not a love story but a story of fighting together, and the possibility of Lyn learning from him -- so much more unusual! And yet clearly they do come to care about each other a great deal, with the amount of trust each places in the other, and the lengths each is willing to go to in order to try to save the other's life. It was great!
The plot also worked for me, the journey and quest to defeat "the demon". It's funny, because the way in which the demon works, the physical manifestation of it, is actually quite similar to spoilers for The Expanse the protomolecule in Leviathan Wakes, but while I found all the protomolecule stuff boring and gross, a similar device worked much better for me here. For one thing, while we do get some descriptions of people and animals covered in "demon mark" patches and things that look like eyes and encounter horrifying masses of biomass fused together in unnatural ways, it didn't feel gratuitously gross, and didn't feel like the story was dwelling on that for the ick factor, so much as for the strangeness of the demon, as well as the horribleness of it taking over, highlighting the jeopardy Esha (and potentially the others) are in. Also, there is a neat non-gross aspect to the demon, the electromagnetic signal that Nyr thinks may in fact be the demon itself, and the fact that he can't understand what the demon "wants" even once he figures out that it's building relay receivers rather than absorbing territory -- that was a really neat touch! The description of the demon's strangeness, the way the signal behaves unlike any kind of normal EMF radiation, the way it seems to affect gravity, "something being unnaturally held into shape by pressure exerted along an axis I cannot perceive", and the creepy analogy of things lurking under the ice -- all that was nicely done and way, way more effective than hundreds of pages describing vomit zombies. I also liked the way the damaged robot was used in the climax and denouement of the story, and the way the satellite's anti-contamination protocol was foreshadowed several times and used by Nyr to destory the demon.
In addition to all those things, I appreciated various worldbuilding touches as well. Nyr's horns, which contain instruments and make him look profoundly inhuman. That the Coast-people's genetic modifications were not meant to become heritable and now they're their own race with blue freckles and various handy abilities. That Lannesite is pretty clearly a corruption of "Landing Site" and the royal emblem was once the logo of the shuttle that brought the original colonists down, and a logo of a brand of clothing became a funerary sign. I like the naming conventions and different ways names are treated between Lyn's people and Nyr's, and that even after several hundred years on the planet he doesn't quite get it, and the different attitudes about personal space. Oh, and I really liked the idea of the Dissociative Cognitive System, and the way it's used here -- the way it's a useful tool (which Lyn envies), but can't be used indefinitely, and the way it's used to good individual and interpersonal character effect. I don't think I've encountered a sci-fi thingy like that before, but I could see it be really handy! Oh, and the night of storytelling before they go to face the demon, while Nyr has the DCS down, was also a lovely scene, especially him asking to hear the stories people tell of him and Astresse.
And I really enjoyed the writing, too. Some quotes:
"That particular regret only slunk into sight after she'd done something her mother wouldn't approve of. To find it turn up ahead of schedule was profoundly inconvenient."
"I shouldn't interfere, but there is only a great vacant void where I would normally keep all the things I should do. There is only one driving purpose in the room and it is not mine."
"And you know how it is,you've got some device on which you depend for all manner of little tasks that, perhaps, once you could have done without but which is now entirely essential to your well-being. [...] The sense of aggrieved helplessness that, oh no, I'm going to have to get this fixed now, or I won't be able to do al the stuff I need to get done. [...] Well, that, basically, except the computer is you, the warning signs and fatal exception errors are you, and if it shuts down and won't reboot then that's all she wrote."
"They set us here to make exhaustive anthropological notes on the fall of every sparrow. But not to catch a single one of them. To know, but very emphatically not to care."
"And he feared, even if it was his lack of understanding he feared more than the demon itself."
"We will have no fire tonight, but we can have the things the firelight brings, when friends are together in a hard place. And perhaps that will help you feel other things, better things."
Nyr thinking: "[Lynesse] finally understands. Not Your sorcery wasn't strong enough but the far truer revelation, You have run out of toys."
"The air stank of rotting tin and soured gold."
5. Alix E Harrow, A Spindle Splintered -- OK, I now have enough of a sample size to draw my conclusions: I really enjoy Harrow's writing when she's writing fantasy set in the modern world, and I am meh at best when she's writing secondary world fantasy. This book made it really easy to tell, since it's got the Wizard of Oz/Narnia type of structure where a modern girl bamfs into a fairy tale.
Zinnia's voice was great -- I appreciated the anger and veneer of bravado and the geeky references and her folklore degree. Charm was great, with her Superman tattoo ("she has a tattoo on her shoulder of an adopted foreign baby who grew up to save the world again and again"), and I liked her relationship with Zinnia best of anything in this book, and their banter was lots of fun. I liked Zin's parents, too, especially the late-book revelations that her mom had been going easy on her in Settlers of Catan and her father cried so hard at Coco he was asked to leave the theater. Spoilers from here The detail of her mom "us[ing] up all her vacation days at work, rather than hoarding them for some looming medical emergency" especially got me.
But once she was in the fairy tale world, nothing interesting or original happened there. I mean, for Sleeping Beauty subversions, I'll take Harriet Hamsterbone any day. A lot of the reviews of this book I read mentioned that Primrose didn't really feel like much of a character, and I agree -- compared to how vibrant and specific Zinnia and Charm are, Primrose is just... not -- if I had to describe her, it would be "fairy tale princess but not a damsel in distress and also gay" -- she feels so much flatter than the other two. And the other three Sleeping Beauties Zinnia imports are barely even sketches. And there's nothing interesting about the subversion of Primrose's story: we had true love's kiss coming from a girl in a Disney movie by this point. TWICE. And cursed princess who turns into a fairy godmother of sorts is also something I've seen done before (e.g. in Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms books).
Anyway, it really felt like Harrow came up with a great framing story with Zin, and then didn't know what to frame with it.
Quotes:
"I wish briefly but passionately that I'd been zapped into a different storyline, maybe one of those '90s girl power fairy tale retellings with a rebellious princess who wears trousers and hates sewing. (I know they promoted a reductive vision of women's agency that privileged traditionally male-coded forms of power, but let's not pretend girls with swords don't get shit done.)
Zinnia, selling her world to Primrose: "There's... ice cream? Bet your world didn't have that. And dresses with pockets. Gay rights, at least some places. You wouldn't be a princess anymore, but you're hot and white and young, so you could be pretty much anything else you wanted."
Anyway, so I think I'm going to stick to Harrow's set-in-the-modern-world writing, since that seems to work for me pretty well.
Those were the two novellas I actually wanted to check out; the rest of the slate is -- well, I've given up on de Bodard, and Valente usually doesn't work for me, and reading McGuire is usually an exercise in frustration (and I was REALLY disappointed by the last Wayward Children book I read, Come Tumbling Down), and while I do, somewhat conflictedly, like Chambers's work, everything I've heard about Psalm for the Wild-Built suggested this was Chambers leaning in to all the aspects of her writing that I like least, so. But actually the McGuire book was more enjoyable for me than the last couple -- I'd probably put it second after Down Among the Sticks and Bones for the series, and reading sophia_sol's write-up elucidated that Valente's The Past is Red is an expansion of a short story I've previously read and enjoyed, so I think that's going to happen, too. I did dip into the Chambers and found it deeply boring at the start; not sure if I'll bother going back to it...
6. Seanan McGuire, Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children 6)-- it's not good, I don't think, but it's very readable. I do think it's really cool that McGuire is writing about an intersex protagonist as part of the Wayward Children cycle (Regan is AFAB but has XY chromosomes, which her parents tell her about when she asks them about not having started puberty yet). But it's still got the issues that bug me about McGuire's writing in these books, which is that he narrative and the POV character's thoughts and the other characters all say and do the things that Seanan McGuire wants them to say for pithy soundbiteness or rebuttal, and nothing feels like it's coming from a real person. The POV of Regan at 7, at the start, is so implausibly grown-up that it broke my suspension of disbelief entirely. Conversely, ten-year-old Regan, who, admittedly, has had a shock, trusts Laurel and in general acts with her as if she's a different character from the one who went through that formative experience of shunning Heather. It just makes no sense to me. The drama of her age cohort at that stage also felt older than I remember from when L was that age, but that could be a local thing. Ditto for the way the cliquishness of the school is -- I mean, girls were cliquy in my experience as a parent, too, but I had a hard time buying that people would shun Heather for years over Laurel excluding her; maybe small towns are different that way though. But you also have things that feel like just plain inconsistencies, like the first part of the first chapter talking about how grownups all forget about how vicious girls can be (uh, no? in my experience parents don't forget that?), and then only a couple of short chapters later you have Regan''s mother reflecting on her "playground dictatrix" (which feels more plausible, but contradictory to the earlier part). In a different book/series I would ascribe that to unreliable narrator POVs, but there is no POV in these books, there's only Seanan McGuire and a selection of mouthpieces. And the dialogue trips along from canned statement to canned statement, sounding unnatural, and that's a thing that sets my teeth on edge. I kept itching to mark up the margins with beta comments along the lines of "this statement doesn't follow" and "why would she say that?"
Writing issues aside, I actually found the book reasonably enjoyable, despite the weird pacing choice. It's I guess intentional weirdness -- the bulk of the book is taken up by Regan idyllically living among the centaurs and learning that she doesn't need to try to be "normal" (since she is very different from her centaur family) and finding useful work and generally growing up (I enjoyed learning about unicorn husbandry in particular; I don't think I've read any other books where unicorns were treated just like livestock), and then a brief interlude of (very stupid) danger, and more idyllic but even more primitive living in the forest. And then there's the last section, which dumps several twists into the narrative in rapid succession, and that part didn't work for me at all -- the explanation of what role the human "heroes" were playing, which was supposed to be a twist, just felt really dumb. I liked Gristle the kelpie a decent amount, and I could've been sold on the idea that even though Regan loves the centaurs and the Hooflands, they're not a utopian society, and dismiss other thinking beings as monsters -- if it had been, like, decently set up, or delivered any sort of pay-off. And I found the ending unsatisfying, not even because I wanted Regan to stay in the Hooflands or come back to Chicory like she promised, but just because, in terms of narrative arc, it didn't feel like it was delivering.
Oh, also, while I enjoyed Regan's time with the centaurs, I felt weird about the way she seemed to prefer them to her bio family -- because her bio family seemed, you know, equally supportive and loving, as far as I could see. Regan's insistence on conformity did not seem to have anything to do with her family but rather with her peers. Which, we live in a society, but also, the idyllic friendship with Chicory came about by virtue of her staying with a herd with only a single child, who until then had not interacted with other children at all -- we actually have no idea what groups of young fillies in a larger herd would be like. I just don't really understand what the message of this thing is, really/how its supported by the actual setup. (And I'm perfectly happy to read books without a Message, but the Wayward Children books are definitely Message books. Like the book says "It was an amazing change from home, where she was sometimes catered to but never really listened to about important decisions" -- but, like, I don't feel like we saw that at all, in her pre-door life, and in fact her mother left the decision of whether to go or not to go to school after the Big Conversation up to Regan. Maybe that's not on the level of choosing when to get presented to the Queen, but it is pretty similar in terms of letting Regan make decisions about what to do with herself.
Anyway, this was inoffensive-to-reasonably-pleasant.
Hugo roundup, novellas: Elder Race, A Spindle Splintered, Across the Green Grass Fields
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Ms Marvel finale -- OK, that was back to being very enjoyable! I found it very cute, even if everything felt a ittle too easy. SPOILERS I really liked the Khan family gossip undercutting Kamala's big announcement (and I like that she apologized for not telling them sooner) -- also, Aamir knowing because Yusuf had the conversation on speaker phone was hilarious. Lots of cute moments, like the way Kamala stopped automatically to wait for the light to change even though she was crossing the street in the air. I liked the scenes at the mosque, Sheikh Abdullah's Abraham Lincoln quote, the stupid hats he hands out to Bruno and Kamran; I do feel like the "mosque in America" thing was laying it on a bit thick, but not in a way that turned me off, just, didn't need to go that far. I liked that Zoe and Aamir joined in on the heist-y operation to get Kamran out of town (and that Zoe knew it was Kamala the whole time but kept her secret, and the way Kamala's animated drawings were used again in service of explaining the heist plan. Kamala as the community superhero, along with Tik-Tok testimonials, including from the kid she dropped, was cute, and everyone including the local cops blocking the way to her at the end was very "aww, let's hug him again" but I liked it. The fakeout with Nakia and her boyfriend was pretty funny, and I was happy to see Nakia and Kamala reconcile and them hanging out with Bruno, going for shwarma in Kamran's car. Very glad to have confirmation that Bruno is going to Caltech, too. And in general it was just nice to have Kamala back in Jersey City, in her community, with the rest of her family and with her long-time friend. Oh, nd the moment with the costume was of course very nice, and I like the costume look.
On the less positive side: The stuff with Kamran worked less well for me, but I did like his dynamic with Bruno (kinda ship it, tbh). I also don't really enjoy the Department of Damage Conrol, either as antagonists or, like, in general. The CGI stuff is not my favorite and I thought the hard light battle was pretty silly. Oh, right, and I also thought the Ms Marvel name drop was a bit cheesy -- I really liked that there was a sweet scene with her father (since he missed out on the Pakistan bonding), but it seems a bit unlikely that Kamala would not know the meaning of her given name, you know? -- and if she did know it, I'm sure she would've noticed the connection to her favorite superhero.
Also, mutants, huh?
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I also finished watching Taskmaster NZ series 2: It was fun!
I enjoyed it on the whole, about on par with sort of middle-of-the-road series of the original taskmaster. David Correos remained my favorite, with Guy Montgomery ending up as second-favorite for me. I also liked Laura and Matt, and while Urzila remained my least favorite of the five, even she had her moments. I did miss Alex and Greg, though. Jeremy continued to contribute pretty much nothing to my enjoyment, and even Paul felt much more one-note than Alex. And their banter at the start is just... not good.
Random observations, in roughly chronological order:
- Laura, in her pink-on-pink outfit, David, with his Hawaiian shirt, and Guy, with his bucket hat, do totally look like they should be hosting a kids show, like they said in their first team task! And then the last team task actually was kind of that, and it (the puberty and history of NZ sock) was amazing XD Both the idea and the puppet props.
- In the "make a movie with the most characters" task, I was very amused that, while everyone went for wigs and such, David Correos provided voices for characters played by assorted inanimate objects with googly eyes pasted on. A man after my own heart! Also, for the fish-toss-while-naming-an-animal task, I was impressed he a) brought a color-printed roll of red-eyed tree frog facts and b) actually managed to debate himself into 3 points! (above otter and red panda. Which, Matt should've gone that route -- otters are VICIOUS, yo!) Also, I got to the diss track that I heard so many references to -- what got aired was actually not as bad as I'd imagined, but I think I recall Correos saying on the podcast that the full unexpunged version was way worse. Anyway, I thought the funniest part was actually David feeling guilty enough for the diss track that he brought Urzila and Matt some cookies XD (It's also been fun listening to what things rhyme and pun in a NZ accent that I wouldn't think of rhyming or being homonyms.)
- Wow, David's solo task with the shoelaces was "send Greg 150 cheeky texts" levels of work. I'm so glad David got 5 points for it. It was my favorite solo task to watch overall, because the shoelace maze was properly cinematic, and David has such great expressions, and Paul read a fairy tale to him as he worked, and then the others clapped and gave him shoes to demonstrate his newfound lace-untieing prowess at his request -- it was all very sweet. Also, I'm totally unsurpised David was the one who was picked for the solo task; he definitely seems like the one both most likely to stick with it for the duration and to have a really funny reaction when it became clear that he was the only one who'd had to do it.
- Matt is an interesting contestant! He sometimes has these really great out-of-the-box ideas, like deflating the giant ball to toss it into the kayak, but also tends to be the one to mess up by not reading the task properly, or cheating on the Weatabix castles. (Don't cheat on team tasks, people!)
- It was really fun watching Laura having the time of her life in the "grape escape" task. I also like that she color-coordinated with an all-gold outfit for the finale, in which she won the golden head.
- The festive song task was quite great. I actually didn't think Urzila's song was that bad, but what I really liked was her donating her two points to Matt, who would've been disqualified for using one of the forbidden words (also, LOL, no way would Greg let contestants self-govern like that XD). Laura's festive song about a laminator was very fun, but definitely Guy's was my favorite (although I do understand why Laura got 5 and he 4 from Jeremy -- she definitely had higher production value).
- Best stolen item is the BEST prize task! I really want to know where Guy nicked that medal from! And how Urzila obtained Paul's very sweet teddy bear. But Laura's take on the prize task was epic! (I was also amused that she did not try to steal Urzila's girlfriend because she respects her too much)
- Oh hey, the live studio task that CoC2 stole from NZ (except with "nothing or onions" instead of "bricks or balloons", which makes it TOTALLY random). This was either an easier version of the task, or Greg is better at this, or possibly just luckier, because David, Matt, and Urzila managed to fool Jeremy once, and David twice. And also, the nosehole painting studio task that showed up in in series 13, although they changed it up a bit, as this was a full-body portrait, and the painters were on the other side of the canvas.
- Conversely, I'm surprised that with all the prisoner's dilemma approaches it's taken, the original Taskmaster never had a task where one team member was sabotaging the rest of her team. Laura scattering and popping the balloons instead of helping was great fun to watch, but I'm glad she failed and her team still got their winning points (and she got zero). I also enjoyed that Guy agreed with her that he would do the same thing, and that she was right that David wouldn't have, and he was adorably scandalized -- but then (after they won anyway) apologized for being mad at her. Just the right amount of drama!
For some reason YouTube doesn't have NZ series 1 (though I watched some "best of" type compilations), but I'm sure something will turn up eventually.
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Meanwhile, I managed to continue to read a few things -- half of the Hugo-nominated novellas:
4. Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race -- I've been meaning to check out Tchaikovsky for several years now -- several flisters are big fans, and I'm intrigued by his specialty being bugs. Intrigued enough that I actually checked out the first bug people book some time ago, but the writing wasn't grabbing me. And then I checked out something else, and didn't even crack it open. So having a Hugo homework reason to read him was very welcome. And I don't know if he's improved considerably as a writer since that first book I tried (he is incredibly prolific, so I could see that happening at a rapid pace), or if I like his sci-fi better, or if it being shorter form was part of the reason, but one way or another, I really liked this!
First of all, at some point I've turned into a person who really likes "looks like fantasy but is actually sci-fi" narratives (which I discovered with the Steerswoman books). This one, with the dual POVs of the person who realizes he's in a sci-fi story and the person who thinks of the same event in terms of demons and magic, reminded me a bit of Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, which was another Hugo novella discovery I loved (this was about space anthropology, that was about time travel). And that aspect of the story was highlighted here better than in anything else I've read, because of the highly parallel structure. There's even a (somewhat gimmicky) chapter where you get the same narrative from the POV of the anthropologist, who is talking about science and space travel, and the way the woman of the colony world hears it, about god-like beings and magical servants and ships traveling the night sky -- I don't know that having them literally side by side contributed more than the rest of the story, and it definitely was very annoying to read on a Kindle app on a small phone, but it was something different. My favorite part of that, though, was SPOILERS from here! that once the anthropologist was done revealing this great forbidden truth (forbidden because he's not supposed to interfere with the locals, just observe them), Lyn the local was just like, yeah, that's exactly how we tell this story, was there a point you were making? There were funny (in a bittersweet way, mostly) little touches like Nyr trying to explain the effects of radiation exposure from his self-defense systems being activated while the locals thought he was cursing the men who attacked him, and especially "I'm not a magician, but a wizard. Not a wizard, but a sorcerer, a magus" extended run. I also really liked the way he described depression to Lyn, and the need to face his emotions periodically without the shield of the DCS. One really neat thing about this aspect of the story was that it's not STATIC. Lyn eventually believes him that there is no magic, Esha learns enough from listening to Nyr talk to the broken-down mining robot that she can send it "home" carrying Nyr and Lyn -- and at the very end Nyr both comes down from his tower to join the locals AND thinks about taking Lyn on as an apprentice, merging the two sides.
The story is doing enough neat things on a high concept level that it could have skimped on characters and still bean a worthwhile story, but it doesn't. I got a strong sense of both Lynesse and Nyr, and I liked them both (Nyr especially, in his first-person POV), and even got a pretty good sense of Esha, and wanted all of them to survive. I was also, frankly, expecting the story to end with Lyn and Nyr becoming a couple, what with the way she reminded him so strongly of his lost love the Once Regent he had given the oath of aid to, that Lyn comes to call on him in the name of. And it's REALLY NEAT that the story does basically the opposite of that: Lyn thinks about the story of a princess who has to marry a wizard, who is unnatural and strange, and it never stops being anything other than an extremely unpleasant possibility that she would follow through on out of duty -- but Nyr realizes he has to stop seeing her as her ancestor queen, and the conclusion is not a love story but a story of fighting together, and the possibility of Lyn learning from him -- so much more unusual! And yet clearly they do come to care about each other a great deal, with the amount of trust each places in the other, and the lengths each is willing to go to in order to try to save the other's life. It was great!
The plot also worked for me, the journey and quest to defeat "the demon". It's funny, because the way in which the demon works, the physical manifestation of it, is actually quite similar to spoilers for The Expanse the protomolecule in Leviathan Wakes, but while I found all the protomolecule stuff boring and gross, a similar device worked much better for me here. For one thing, while we do get some descriptions of people and animals covered in "demon mark" patches and things that look like eyes and encounter horrifying masses of biomass fused together in unnatural ways, it didn't feel gratuitously gross, and didn't feel like the story was dwelling on that for the ick factor, so much as for the strangeness of the demon, as well as the horribleness of it taking over, highlighting the jeopardy Esha (and potentially the others) are in. Also, there is a neat non-gross aspect to the demon, the electromagnetic signal that Nyr thinks may in fact be the demon itself, and the fact that he can't understand what the demon "wants" even once he figures out that it's building relay receivers rather than absorbing territory -- that was a really neat touch! The description of the demon's strangeness, the way the signal behaves unlike any kind of normal EMF radiation, the way it seems to affect gravity, "something being unnaturally held into shape by pressure exerted along an axis I cannot perceive", and the creepy analogy of things lurking under the ice -- all that was nicely done and way, way more effective than hundreds of pages describing vomit zombies. I also liked the way the damaged robot was used in the climax and denouement of the story, and the way the satellite's anti-contamination protocol was foreshadowed several times and used by Nyr to destory the demon.
In addition to all those things, I appreciated various worldbuilding touches as well. Nyr's horns, which contain instruments and make him look profoundly inhuman. That the Coast-people's genetic modifications were not meant to become heritable and now they're their own race with blue freckles and various handy abilities. That Lannesite is pretty clearly a corruption of "Landing Site" and the royal emblem was once the logo of the shuttle that brought the original colonists down, and a logo of a brand of clothing became a funerary sign. I like the naming conventions and different ways names are treated between Lyn's people and Nyr's, and that even after several hundred years on the planet he doesn't quite get it, and the different attitudes about personal space. Oh, and I really liked the idea of the Dissociative Cognitive System, and the way it's used here -- the way it's a useful tool (which Lyn envies), but can't be used indefinitely, and the way it's used to good individual and interpersonal character effect. I don't think I've encountered a sci-fi thingy like that before, but I could see it be really handy! Oh, and the night of storytelling before they go to face the demon, while Nyr has the DCS down, was also a lovely scene, especially him asking to hear the stories people tell of him and Astresse.
And I really enjoyed the writing, too. Some quotes:
"That particular regret only slunk into sight after she'd done something her mother wouldn't approve of. To find it turn up ahead of schedule was profoundly inconvenient."
"I shouldn't interfere, but there is only a great vacant void where I would normally keep all the things I should do. There is only one driving purpose in the room and it is not mine."
"And you know how it is,you've got some device on which you depend for all manner of little tasks that, perhaps, once you could have done without but which is now entirely essential to your well-being. [...] The sense of aggrieved helplessness that, oh no, I'm going to have to get this fixed now, or I won't be able to do al the stuff I need to get done. [...] Well, that, basically, except the computer is you, the warning signs and fatal exception errors are you, and if it shuts down and won't reboot then that's all she wrote."
"They set us here to make exhaustive anthropological notes on the fall of every sparrow. But not to catch a single one of them. To know, but very emphatically not to care."
"And he feared, even if it was his lack of understanding he feared more than the demon itself."
"We will have no fire tonight, but we can have the things the firelight brings, when friends are together in a hard place. And perhaps that will help you feel other things, better things."
Nyr thinking: "[Lynesse] finally understands. Not Your sorcery wasn't strong enough but the far truer revelation, You have run out of toys."
"The air stank of rotting tin and soured gold."
5. Alix E Harrow, A Spindle Splintered -- OK, I now have enough of a sample size to draw my conclusions: I really enjoy Harrow's writing when she's writing fantasy set in the modern world, and I am meh at best when she's writing secondary world fantasy. This book made it really easy to tell, since it's got the Wizard of Oz/Narnia type of structure where a modern girl bamfs into a fairy tale.
Zinnia's voice was great -- I appreciated the anger and veneer of bravado and the geeky references and her folklore degree. Charm was great, with her Superman tattoo ("she has a tattoo on her shoulder of an adopted foreign baby who grew up to save the world again and again"), and I liked her relationship with Zinnia best of anything in this book, and their banter was lots of fun. I liked Zin's parents, too, especially the late-book revelations that her mom had been going easy on her in Settlers of Catan and her father cried so hard at Coco he was asked to leave the theater. Spoilers from here The detail of her mom "us[ing] up all her vacation days at work, rather than hoarding them for some looming medical emergency" especially got me.
But once she was in the fairy tale world, nothing interesting or original happened there. I mean, for Sleeping Beauty subversions, I'll take Harriet Hamsterbone any day. A lot of the reviews of this book I read mentioned that Primrose didn't really feel like much of a character, and I agree -- compared to how vibrant and specific Zinnia and Charm are, Primrose is just... not -- if I had to describe her, it would be "fairy tale princess but not a damsel in distress and also gay" -- she feels so much flatter than the other two. And the other three Sleeping Beauties Zinnia imports are barely even sketches. And there's nothing interesting about the subversion of Primrose's story: we had true love's kiss coming from a girl in a Disney movie by this point. TWICE. And cursed princess who turns into a fairy godmother of sorts is also something I've seen done before (e.g. in Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms books).
Anyway, it really felt like Harrow came up with a great framing story with Zin, and then didn't know what to frame with it.
Quotes:
"I wish briefly but passionately that I'd been zapped into a different storyline, maybe one of those '90s girl power fairy tale retellings with a rebellious princess who wears trousers and hates sewing. (I know they promoted a reductive vision of women's agency that privileged traditionally male-coded forms of power, but let's not pretend girls with swords don't get shit done.)
Zinnia, selling her world to Primrose: "There's... ice cream? Bet your world didn't have that. And dresses with pockets. Gay rights, at least some places. You wouldn't be a princess anymore, but you're hot and white and young, so you could be pretty much anything else you wanted."
Anyway, so I think I'm going to stick to Harrow's set-in-the-modern-world writing, since that seems to work for me pretty well.
Those were the two novellas I actually wanted to check out; the rest of the slate is -- well, I've given up on de Bodard, and Valente usually doesn't work for me, and reading McGuire is usually an exercise in frustration (and I was REALLY disappointed by the last Wayward Children book I read, Come Tumbling Down), and while I do, somewhat conflictedly, like Chambers's work, everything I've heard about Psalm for the Wild-Built suggested this was Chambers leaning in to all the aspects of her writing that I like least, so. But actually the McGuire book was more enjoyable for me than the last couple -- I'd probably put it second after Down Among the Sticks and Bones for the series, and reading sophia_sol's write-up elucidated that Valente's The Past is Red is an expansion of a short story I've previously read and enjoyed, so I think that's going to happen, too. I did dip into the Chambers and found it deeply boring at the start; not sure if I'll bother going back to it...
6. Seanan McGuire, Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children 6)-- it's not good, I don't think, but it's very readable. I do think it's really cool that McGuire is writing about an intersex protagonist as part of the Wayward Children cycle (Regan is AFAB but has XY chromosomes, which her parents tell her about when she asks them about not having started puberty yet). But it's still got the issues that bug me about McGuire's writing in these books, which is that he narrative and the POV character's thoughts and the other characters all say and do the things that Seanan McGuire wants them to say for pithy soundbiteness or rebuttal, and nothing feels like it's coming from a real person. The POV of Regan at 7, at the start, is so implausibly grown-up that it broke my suspension of disbelief entirely. Conversely, ten-year-old Regan, who, admittedly, has had a shock, trusts Laurel and in general acts with her as if she's a different character from the one who went through that formative experience of shunning Heather. It just makes no sense to me. The drama of her age cohort at that stage also felt older than I remember from when L was that age, but that could be a local thing. Ditto for the way the cliquishness of the school is -- I mean, girls were cliquy in my experience as a parent, too, but I had a hard time buying that people would shun Heather for years over Laurel excluding her; maybe small towns are different that way though. But you also have things that feel like just plain inconsistencies, like the first part of the first chapter talking about how grownups all forget about how vicious girls can be (uh, no? in my experience parents don't forget that?), and then only a couple of short chapters later you have Regan''s mother reflecting on her "playground dictatrix" (which feels more plausible, but contradictory to the earlier part). In a different book/series I would ascribe that to unreliable narrator POVs, but there is no POV in these books, there's only Seanan McGuire and a selection of mouthpieces. And the dialogue trips along from canned statement to canned statement, sounding unnatural, and that's a thing that sets my teeth on edge. I kept itching to mark up the margins with beta comments along the lines of "this statement doesn't follow" and "why would she say that?"
Writing issues aside, I actually found the book reasonably enjoyable, despite the weird pacing choice. It's I guess intentional weirdness -- the bulk of the book is taken up by Regan idyllically living among the centaurs and learning that she doesn't need to try to be "normal" (since she is very different from her centaur family) and finding useful work and generally growing up (I enjoyed learning about unicorn husbandry in particular; I don't think I've read any other books where unicorns were treated just like livestock), and then a brief interlude of (very stupid) danger, and more idyllic but even more primitive living in the forest. And then there's the last section, which dumps several twists into the narrative in rapid succession, and that part didn't work for me at all -- the explanation of what role the human "heroes" were playing, which was supposed to be a twist, just felt really dumb. I liked Gristle the kelpie a decent amount, and I could've been sold on the idea that even though Regan loves the centaurs and the Hooflands, they're not a utopian society, and dismiss other thinking beings as monsters -- if it had been, like, decently set up, or delivered any sort of pay-off. And I found the ending unsatisfying, not even because I wanted Regan to stay in the Hooflands or come back to Chicory like she promised, but just because, in terms of narrative arc, it didn't feel like it was delivering.
Oh, also, while I enjoyed Regan's time with the centaurs, I felt weird about the way she seemed to prefer them to her bio family -- because her bio family seemed, you know, equally supportive and loving, as far as I could see. Regan's insistence on conformity did not seem to have anything to do with her family but rather with her peers. Which, we live in a society, but also, the idyllic friendship with Chicory came about by virtue of her staying with a herd with only a single child, who until then had not interacted with other children at all -- we actually have no idea what groups of young fillies in a larger herd would be like. I just don't really understand what the message of this thing is, really/how its supported by the actual setup. (And I'm perfectly happy to read books without a Message, but the Wayward Children books are definitely Message books. Like the book says "It was an amazing change from home, where she was sometimes catered to but never really listened to about important decisions" -- but, like, I don't feel like we saw that at all, in her pre-door life, and in fact her mother left the decision of whether to go or not to go to school after the Big Conversation up to Regan. Maybe that's not on the level of choosing when to get presented to the Queen, but it is pretty similar in terms of letting Regan make decisions about what to do with herself.
Anyway, this was inoffensive-to-reasonably-pleasant.
Hugo roundup, novellas: Elder Race, A Spindle Splintered, Across the Green Grass Fields
*
Ms Marvel finale -- OK, that was back to being very enjoyable! I found it very cute, even if everything felt a ittle too easy. SPOILERS I really liked the Khan family gossip undercutting Kamala's big announcement (and I like that she apologized for not telling them sooner) -- also, Aamir knowing because Yusuf had the conversation on speaker phone was hilarious. Lots of cute moments, like the way Kamala stopped automatically to wait for the light to change even though she was crossing the street in the air. I liked the scenes at the mosque, Sheikh Abdullah's Abraham Lincoln quote, the stupid hats he hands out to Bruno and Kamran; I do feel like the "mosque in America" thing was laying it on a bit thick, but not in a way that turned me off, just, didn't need to go that far. I liked that Zoe and Aamir joined in on the heist-y operation to get Kamran out of town (and that Zoe knew it was Kamala the whole time but kept her secret, and the way Kamala's animated drawings were used again in service of explaining the heist plan. Kamala as the community superhero, along with Tik-Tok testimonials, including from the kid she dropped, was cute, and everyone including the local cops blocking the way to her at the end was very "aww, let's hug him again" but I liked it. The fakeout with Nakia and her boyfriend was pretty funny, and I was happy to see Nakia and Kamala reconcile and them hanging out with Bruno, going for shwarma in Kamran's car. Very glad to have confirmation that Bruno is going to Caltech, too. And in general it was just nice to have Kamala back in Jersey City, in her community, with the rest of her family and with her long-time friend. Oh, nd the moment with the costume was of course very nice, and I like the costume look.
On the less positive side: The stuff with Kamran worked less well for me, but I did like his dynamic with Bruno (kinda ship it, tbh). I also don't really enjoy the Department of Damage Conrol, either as antagonists or, like, in general. The CGI stuff is not my favorite and I thought the hard light battle was pretty silly. Oh, right, and I also thought the Ms Marvel name drop was a bit cheesy -- I really liked that there was a sweet scene with her father (since he missed out on the Pakistan bonding), but it seems a bit unlikely that Kamala would not know the meaning of her given name, you know? -- and if she did know it, I'm sure she would've noticed the connection to her favorite superhero.
Also, mutants, huh?
**
I also finished watching Taskmaster NZ series 2: It was fun!
I enjoyed it on the whole, about on par with sort of middle-of-the-road series of the original taskmaster. David Correos remained my favorite, with Guy Montgomery ending up as second-favorite for me. I also liked Laura and Matt, and while Urzila remained my least favorite of the five, even she had her moments. I did miss Alex and Greg, though. Jeremy continued to contribute pretty much nothing to my enjoyment, and even Paul felt much more one-note than Alex. And their banter at the start is just... not good.
Random observations, in roughly chronological order:
- Laura, in her pink-on-pink outfit, David, with his Hawaiian shirt, and Guy, with his bucket hat, do totally look like they should be hosting a kids show, like they said in their first team task! And then the last team task actually was kind of that, and it (the puberty and history of NZ sock) was amazing XD Both the idea and the puppet props.
- In the "make a movie with the most characters" task, I was very amused that, while everyone went for wigs and such, David Correos provided voices for characters played by assorted inanimate objects with googly eyes pasted on. A man after my own heart! Also, for the fish-toss-while-naming-an-animal task, I was impressed he a) brought a color-printed roll of red-eyed tree frog facts and b) actually managed to debate himself into 3 points! (above otter and red panda. Which, Matt should've gone that route -- otters are VICIOUS, yo!) Also, I got to the diss track that I heard so many references to -- what got aired was actually not as bad as I'd imagined, but I think I recall Correos saying on the podcast that the full unexpunged version was way worse. Anyway, I thought the funniest part was actually David feeling guilty enough for the diss track that he brought Urzila and Matt some cookies XD (It's also been fun listening to what things rhyme and pun in a NZ accent that I wouldn't think of rhyming or being homonyms.)
- Wow, David's solo task with the shoelaces was "send Greg 150 cheeky texts" levels of work. I'm so glad David got 5 points for it. It was my favorite solo task to watch overall, because the shoelace maze was properly cinematic, and David has such great expressions, and Paul read a fairy tale to him as he worked, and then the others clapped and gave him shoes to demonstrate his newfound lace-untieing prowess at his request -- it was all very sweet. Also, I'm totally unsurpised David was the one who was picked for the solo task; he definitely seems like the one both most likely to stick with it for the duration and to have a really funny reaction when it became clear that he was the only one who'd had to do it.
- Matt is an interesting contestant! He sometimes has these really great out-of-the-box ideas, like deflating the giant ball to toss it into the kayak, but also tends to be the one to mess up by not reading the task properly, or cheating on the Weatabix castles. (Don't cheat on team tasks, people!)
- It was really fun watching Laura having the time of her life in the "grape escape" task. I also like that she color-coordinated with an all-gold outfit for the finale, in which she won the golden head.
- The festive song task was quite great. I actually didn't think Urzila's song was that bad, but what I really liked was her donating her two points to Matt, who would've been disqualified for using one of the forbidden words (also, LOL, no way would Greg let contestants self-govern like that XD). Laura's festive song about a laminator was very fun, but definitely Guy's was my favorite (although I do understand why Laura got 5 and he 4 from Jeremy -- she definitely had higher production value).
- Best stolen item is the BEST prize task! I really want to know where Guy nicked that medal from! And how Urzila obtained Paul's very sweet teddy bear. But Laura's take on the prize task was epic! (I was also amused that she did not try to steal Urzila's girlfriend because she respects her too much)
- Oh hey, the live studio task that CoC2 stole from NZ (except with "nothing or onions" instead of "bricks or balloons", which makes it TOTALLY random). This was either an easier version of the task, or Greg is better at this, or possibly just luckier, because David, Matt, and Urzila managed to fool Jeremy once, and David twice. And also, the nosehole painting studio task that showed up in in series 13, although they changed it up a bit, as this was a full-body portrait, and the painters were on the other side of the canvas.
- Conversely, I'm surprised that with all the prisoner's dilemma approaches it's taken, the original Taskmaster never had a task where one team member was sabotaging the rest of her team. Laura scattering and popping the balloons instead of helping was great fun to watch, but I'm glad she failed and her team still got their winning points (and she got zero). I also enjoyed that Guy agreed with her that he would do the same thing, and that she was right that David wouldn't have, and he was adorably scandalized -- but then (after they won anyway) apologized for being mad at her. Just the right amount of drama!
For some reason YouTube doesn't have NZ series 1 (though I watched some "best of" type compilations), but I'm sure something will turn up eventually.