there's the shining ocean and there's old nick
It's Wednesday reading meme time:
What I've just finished
I finished up Kraken not long after I posted about it last week. I enjoyed it a lot, for all that I wasn't emotionally tangled up in it. It's super clever and wryly funny and it features a squidpocalypse cult and dudes who have fists for heads. I feel like Vardy's turn towards being evil was telegraphed - I never trusted him but I wasn't sure who he was really working for or why, but the Darwin figures making him crazy makes sense to me. So I would recommend it, if you don't mind a bit of a hefty read.
I also read The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne, which I thought had some excellent writing and ideas in it, but which I just didn't like. It's the story of two young women on similar journeys - both Mariama and Meena are on the run from something (something that is sadly obvious, in Meena's case. I'm not sure if I was supposed to know from the start or if it was supposed to be a mystery that she'd killed her girlfriend, but after I ruled out the idea that Meena had been sexually assaulted, having killed Mohini seemed like the only other thing that would send her off like that, though I guess you're supposed to think someone's after her at first? Before you realize she's mentally ill? Even though that happens pretty early on.) and they're heading from an old (unhappy & terrible in Mariama's case) life in India to what they hope will be a new start in Ethiopia. Their journeys take place at different times, but they intersect in obvious ways - I admit, I didn't call Mariama as Meena's mother until later, but that she was the girl who'd killed Mariama's parents was obvious as soon as she learned the term Semana Werk in the story.
There's some fascinating world-building happening here - inexorable climate change means that some parts of the world have started to be drowned and that energy as always is a crisis, and a company in India has managed to build a prototype of a solar array that runs from India to Africa and if it proves feasible, it will be replicated in other areas of the world. There's stories about people walking on the Trail, as it's known colloquially, and Meena decides that's what she's going to do. (Mariama is a young child when she makes her journey - she's found by some helpful truckers.)
There were a couple of issues for me with this book. as much as I wanted to empathize with Meena and Mariama, I found both of them pretty awful. I get that mental illness is terrible but they're both murderers because of jealousy and ugh. That's not really even a cool motive and it's *still* murder. Also, as much as I liked that same sex relationships weren't a big deal here, I hated that Byrne went with the cheating trans woman who is then killed by her jealous lover thing. Ugh could we not?
This also should come with a warning for non-graphic child abuse: Mariama, who is probably not more than 10, is masturbated by Yemana, the woman who is supposedly taking care of her. Mariama loves Yemana and offers herself up for this treatment, and it's from her POV so she sees it as a transcendental experience, but it made my skin crawl. Which I think it's supposed to? But I did not need to read about a trusted figure abusing a child that way. And there is also some gore I could have done without: Mariama performing a c-section on herself.
I also feel like Meena's sections suffered somewhat from what I was talking about yesterday. A lot of this book is stuck in her head while she's by herself, and she's a completely unreliable narrator, so you can't tell what's real and what's not, but it gets samey after a while. At least Mariama is interacting with her fellow travelers.
Anyway, I felt like the writing was much stronger in this than in A Madness of Angels, or maybe I just really wanted to know more about the Trail, because I kept reading, and it does contain some interesting world-building - I really wanted to know more about the politics and science of this world, and the other people who'd walked the Trail and who were living on the seasteads etc. and maybe I'm just unsympathetic etc. but yeah, that was basically my response.
I also reread Lords and Ladies and Men at Arms, which I enjoyed very much.
What I'm reading now
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss, which is the story of Alex Dumas, father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas. I basically read the prologue at lunch and then my bosses started calling my name so I am about five pages into it. But I'm sure I'll have a lot to say eventually!
What I'm reading next
Ha! I can answer this question for once! After I finish The Black Count, I plan to finally read The Three Musketeers, which I have never done before. So unless something else from my hold list at the library comes in, that's the plan.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/687207.html.
people have commented there.
What I've just finished
I finished up Kraken not long after I posted about it last week. I enjoyed it a lot, for all that I wasn't emotionally tangled up in it. It's super clever and wryly funny and it features a squidpocalypse cult and dudes who have fists for heads. I feel like Vardy's turn towards being evil was telegraphed - I never trusted him but I wasn't sure who he was really working for or why, but the Darwin figures making him crazy makes sense to me. So I would recommend it, if you don't mind a bit of a hefty read.
I also read The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne, which I thought had some excellent writing and ideas in it, but which I just didn't like. It's the story of two young women on similar journeys - both Mariama and Meena are on the run from something (something that is sadly obvious, in Meena's case. I'm not sure if I was supposed to know from the start or if it was supposed to be a mystery that she'd killed her girlfriend, but after I ruled out the idea that Meena had been sexually assaulted, having killed Mohini seemed like the only other thing that would send her off like that, though I guess you're supposed to think someone's after her at first? Before you realize she's mentally ill? Even though that happens pretty early on.) and they're heading from an old (unhappy & terrible in Mariama's case) life in India to what they hope will be a new start in Ethiopia. Their journeys take place at different times, but they intersect in obvious ways - I admit, I didn't call Mariama as Meena's mother until later, but that she was the girl who'd killed Mariama's parents was obvious as soon as she learned the term Semana Werk in the story.
There's some fascinating world-building happening here - inexorable climate change means that some parts of the world have started to be drowned and that energy as always is a crisis, and a company in India has managed to build a prototype of a solar array that runs from India to Africa and if it proves feasible, it will be replicated in other areas of the world. There's stories about people walking on the Trail, as it's known colloquially, and Meena decides that's what she's going to do. (Mariama is a young child when she makes her journey - she's found by some helpful truckers.)
There were a couple of issues for me with this book. as much as I wanted to empathize with Meena and Mariama, I found both of them pretty awful. I get that mental illness is terrible but they're both murderers because of jealousy and ugh. That's not really even a cool motive and it's *still* murder. Also, as much as I liked that same sex relationships weren't a big deal here, I hated that Byrne went with the cheating trans woman who is then killed by her jealous lover thing. Ugh could we not?
This also should come with a warning for non-graphic child abuse: Mariama, who is probably not more than 10, is masturbated by Yemana, the woman who is supposedly taking care of her. Mariama loves Yemana and offers herself up for this treatment, and it's from her POV so she sees it as a transcendental experience, but it made my skin crawl. Which I think it's supposed to? But I did not need to read about a trusted figure abusing a child that way. And there is also some gore I could have done without: Mariama performing a c-section on herself.
I also feel like Meena's sections suffered somewhat from what I was talking about yesterday. A lot of this book is stuck in her head while she's by herself, and she's a completely unreliable narrator, so you can't tell what's real and what's not, but it gets samey after a while. At least Mariama is interacting with her fellow travelers.
Anyway, I felt like the writing was much stronger in this than in A Madness of Angels, or maybe I just really wanted to know more about the Trail, because I kept reading, and it does contain some interesting world-building - I really wanted to know more about the politics and science of this world, and the other people who'd walked the Trail and who were living on the seasteads etc. and maybe I'm just unsympathetic etc. but yeah, that was basically my response.
I also reread Lords and Ladies and Men at Arms, which I enjoyed very much.
What I'm reading now
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss, which is the story of Alex Dumas, father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas. I basically read the prologue at lunch and then my bosses started calling my name so I am about five pages into it. But I'm sure I'll have a lot to say eventually!
What I'm reading next
Ha! I can answer this question for once! After I finish The Black Count, I plan to finally read The Three Musketeers, which I have never done before. So unless something else from my hold list at the library comes in, that's the plan.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/687207.html.
people have commented there.