Fiction
I got a great little iZombie story for Yuletide, in which Ravi accidentally becomes a zombie health blogger (not a zombie).
Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning: This is an ambitious book, trying to do a lot of things about philosophy, sex, gender, and the way that those things structure other aspects of our lives. In a future world in which people choose their affiliations, and the laws that apply to them, rather than having them determined by nationality, a theft of an important Who’s Who list threatens to destabilize power. The powerful therefore respond, in part by setting Mycroft Canner to investigate, including at the house where the list turned up-the house of the people who control the millions of aircars that get most of the world’s population from place to place. Canner is a Servicer-someone denied any identity or ability to do things without permission, subject to the commands of anyone who wants him to work for them-because before that, he was a murderer. And not just a murderer: a sadistic serial killer, who inflicted sexual violence on at least one of his victims (who’d loved him) before, during, and after her murder. For reasons that are hinted at, Canner is now apparently incapable of doing direct violence to anyone and at the beck and call of the most powerful people in their respective affiliations. There’s also a child who can make objects like his toy soldiers come to life, and a god, despite the fact that organized religion is illegal outside the Vatican and a reservation in Tibet. Like I said, this is an ambitious book; it was not for me, even before I knew that the narrator was a rapist who was still keeping significant secrets about his crimes.
Stephen King & Owen King, Sleeping Beauties: When all the women who fall asleep become cocooned in a mysterious substance and unwakeable without significant negative consequences, the fate of the world rests in the hands of a few people from a small town in Appalachia. (I know, I was surprised it wasn’t Maine too.) King the elder has always written about bad things happening to good and bad people alike, because that’s the nature of the universe, and he’s also always written about the violence men inflict on women and children, and how those children often grow up to repeat the same patterns. So this book very much feels like a Stephen King book. This time, probably for the same reasons as the Kings wrote this story, I found myself thinking a lot about how people who do good things can nonetheless be shitty people in their personal lives, and how people who are well-meaning can end up on very much the wrong side of a conflict. And how you’re not required to grade on a curve-a man who is by and large a good man doesn’t thereby become entitled to the love of the woman he wants, or of any woman. Anyway, the supernatural, in the form of one Eve Black, is never quite explained even as she induces two groups of men (and a couple of women running on adrenalin and hard drugs) to fight to the death over her safety, on the hope that the women will choose to return if she survives. It’s a surprisingly upbeat story, as the elder King’s work goes; here’s hoping he’s right about the terrible storm through which we are now passing.
April Daniels, Sovereign: Nemesis - Book Two: Danny is a full-fledged superhero, but she’s still struggling-with her parents, who are fighting her emancipation; with her friends, who aren’t always acting so friendly, and most of all with her anger, which makes her maybe a bit too fond of fighting. A new villain, working with transphobic Greywytch, might be enough to push her past the point of no return. The book is pretty explicit at showing how engaging in violence makes Danny feel better, but also endangers her friendships and ultimately her status as a hero.
Sharon Shinn & Molly Knox Ostertag, Shattered Warrior: I have a positive reaction to Ostertag’s graphics no matter what; Shinn adds a relatively standard but still powerful story, with a lot of wordless panels showing how daily life works to grind a person down and build her back up. In short: humans oppressed by humanoid overlords on a distant planet try to survive. Some fight back; some just try to go along; some fight each other. The protagonist, the last survivor of a once-powerful family, lives in her falling-down mansion-until unexpected visitors challenge her expectations and give her new reasons to do more than exist. Attempted and implied sexual assaults, but what’s shown are bruises (and a few explosions).
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning: This is an ambitious book, trying to do a lot of things about philosophy, sex, gender, and the way that those things structure other aspects of our lives. In a future world in which people choose their affiliations, and the laws that apply to them, rather than having them determined by nationality, a theft of an important Who’s Who list threatens to destabilize power. The powerful therefore respond, in part by setting Mycroft Canner to investigate, including at the house where the list turned up-the house of the people who control the millions of aircars that get most of the world’s population from place to place. Canner is a Servicer-someone denied any identity or ability to do things without permission, subject to the commands of anyone who wants him to work for them-because before that, he was a murderer. And not just a murderer: a sadistic serial killer, who inflicted sexual violence on at least one of his victims (who’d loved him) before, during, and after her murder. For reasons that are hinted at, Canner is now apparently incapable of doing direct violence to anyone and at the beck and call of the most powerful people in their respective affiliations. There’s also a child who can make objects like his toy soldiers come to life, and a god, despite the fact that organized religion is illegal outside the Vatican and a reservation in Tibet. Like I said, this is an ambitious book; it was not for me, even before I knew that the narrator was a rapist who was still keeping significant secrets about his crimes.
Stephen King & Owen King, Sleeping Beauties: When all the women who fall asleep become cocooned in a mysterious substance and unwakeable without significant negative consequences, the fate of the world rests in the hands of a few people from a small town in Appalachia. (I know, I was surprised it wasn’t Maine too.) King the elder has always written about bad things happening to good and bad people alike, because that’s the nature of the universe, and he’s also always written about the violence men inflict on women and children, and how those children often grow up to repeat the same patterns. So this book very much feels like a Stephen King book. This time, probably for the same reasons as the Kings wrote this story, I found myself thinking a lot about how people who do good things can nonetheless be shitty people in their personal lives, and how people who are well-meaning can end up on very much the wrong side of a conflict. And how you’re not required to grade on a curve-a man who is by and large a good man doesn’t thereby become entitled to the love of the woman he wants, or of any woman. Anyway, the supernatural, in the form of one Eve Black, is never quite explained even as she induces two groups of men (and a couple of women running on adrenalin and hard drugs) to fight to the death over her safety, on the hope that the women will choose to return if she survives. It’s a surprisingly upbeat story, as the elder King’s work goes; here’s hoping he’s right about the terrible storm through which we are now passing.
April Daniels, Sovereign: Nemesis - Book Two: Danny is a full-fledged superhero, but she’s still struggling-with her parents, who are fighting her emancipation; with her friends, who aren’t always acting so friendly, and most of all with her anger, which makes her maybe a bit too fond of fighting. A new villain, working with transphobic Greywytch, might be enough to push her past the point of no return. The book is pretty explicit at showing how engaging in violence makes Danny feel better, but also endangers her friendships and ultimately her status as a hero.
Sharon Shinn & Molly Knox Ostertag, Shattered Warrior: I have a positive reaction to Ostertag’s graphics no matter what; Shinn adds a relatively standard but still powerful story, with a lot of wordless panels showing how daily life works to grind a person down and build her back up. In short: humans oppressed by humanoid overlords on a distant planet try to survive. Some fight back; some just try to go along; some fight each other. The protagonist, the last survivor of a once-powerful family, lives in her falling-down mansion-until unexpected visitors challenge her expectations and give her new reasons to do more than exist. Attempted and implied sexual assaults, but what’s shown are bruises (and a few explosions).
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.