el dang started reading Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
SFFBookClub March
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Also eldang@weirder.earth
I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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el dang reviewed The Accidental Alchemist by Gigi Pandian
When Zoe Faust--herbalist, alchemist, and recent transplant to Portland, Oregon--begins unpacking her bags, she can't …
Fun, albeit flawed
3 stars
This was a fun light read, engaging enough to get me turning the pages and worrying that one of the characters I liked would turn out to be the culprit. But it was also sort of formulaic, and could really have done with an editor. The love interest was telegraphed about 15 times before the narrator admitted it, and several important details seemed to be introduced 3 times in 3 consecutive paragraphs.
el dang started reading The Accidental Alchemist by Gigi Pandian
When Zoe Faust--herbalist, alchemist, and recent transplant to Portland, Oregon--begins unpacking her bags, she can't …
This month's #SFFBookClub pick.
Took me a while to pick the Gogol back up because the antisemitism of "St. John's Eve" was so overwhelming. I'm glad I did though. "A May Night" is delightfully weird and I was actually able to enjoy it.
I may just skip Taras Bulba because I've heard that that's particularly hateful about both Jews and Turks, but it looks like I'll at least be able to enjoy the rest of the collection.
Content warning Four Hundred Souls (CW: slavery)
One chapter a day is definitely the right way for me to read this book. Each contributing author wrote either a single ~4-page chapter anchored to a 5-year timespan, or a poem to follow a block of 8 chapters (i.e. 40 years). It starts with the first documented landing of a cargo of enslaved Africans to the colonies that would later become the United States, so naturally the material is often grim. I felt like I knew a lot about the slave trade and its associated depredations before, but I'm still learning a lot about its depths as I read. Reading a chapter a day is giving me space to let each one sink in without becoming overwhelmed.
el dang reviewed A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark
Egypt, 1912. In Cairo, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between …
A Dead Djinn in Cairo review
5 stars
A lovely amuse bouche for Clark's steampunk Cairo stories, which has certainly left me wanting more of Fatma and of this world.
el dang started reading A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark
A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark
Egypt, 1912. In Cairo, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between the mortal and the (possibly) …
urgh, the first story in the Gogol compilation dropped enough casual antisemitism that I didn't really process what the story was about, and I haven't had the gumption to read the next one yet. I hope they're not all like this, because I would like to be less clueless about this author.
Content warning Dune ending spoilers
I forgot to mention in my review: the ending is absolutely atrocious. I can only think of one book (The Flea Palace) the ending of which has upset me more, and that one was basically "it was all a dream". But for Paul to follow up that crushing military victory with some mediaeval-Europe marriage-for-political-ascendancy bullshit just feels like the ultimate betrayal of the Fremen... not just on his part but also on Frank Herbert's.
el dang started reading Short Fiction by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
This is Standard Ebooks' collection of Gogol's shorter works. It appears to be a compilation …
Confusing listing, because Standard Ebooks seems to have made their own meta-compilation from various translations of Gogol's shorter works. Here's their page: standardebooks.org/ebooks/nikolai-gogol/short-fiction/claud-field_isabel-f-hapgood_vizetelly-and-company_george-tolstoy
el dang started reading Four Hundred Souls by Ibram X. Kendi
Christmas present! I think I might try reading one chapter a day.
Jade City is a 2017 fantasy novel by Fonda Lee. It won the World Fantasy …
The mobster-wuxia hybrid I never knew I needed (spoilers)
5 stars
I'm not usually all that excited about either really martial fantasy or mob stories, because both tend to rely on either very flatly good/evil dichotomies, or just telling the reader that one set of characters are the good ones and should be sympathised with.
At first, this book felt like it was going down that road, since our introduction to some of the core characters is them dispensing a lot of violence for profit, against some thieves who I found myself sympathising with. But by about 1/4 of the way I was getting reeled in by the Kauls' charm even as I was never convinced by their goodness. I think that ambiguity is one of the great strengths of Lee's writing. She could so easily have brought the world another set of Atreides/Skywalkers/Gandalf-and-the-hobbits, and instead we got some much more interesting, real and complex characters fighting a much smaller war. …
I'm not usually all that excited about either really martial fantasy or mob stories, because both tend to rely on either very flatly good/evil dichotomies, or just telling the reader that one set of characters are the good ones and should be sympathised with.
At first, this book felt like it was going down that road, since our introduction to some of the core characters is them dispensing a lot of violence for profit, against some thieves who I found myself sympathising with. But by about 1/4 of the way I was getting reeled in by the Kauls' charm even as I was never convinced by their goodness. I think that ambiguity is one of the great strengths of Lee's writing. She could so easily have brought the world another set of Atreides/Skywalkers/Gandalf-and-the-hobbits, and instead we got some much more interesting, real and complex characters fighting a much smaller war.
Along with that, Janloon feels like a living breathing city, the combination magic/technology/martial arts system strikes a good balance between epic powers and finite, human limitations, and the geopolitical background adds a little grounding without intruding too much.
Some criticisms: aesthetically I don't like magic systems being described as discrete Abilities--that can make a fight feel a bit like narration of a video game--and some of the world-building is a bit front-loaded. But overall I loved this book and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.
el dang reviewed The conference of the birds by Farīd al-Dīn Attār
Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the …
charming, to a point
3 stars
I was quite charmed by The Conference of the Birds for some time, but eventually it became rather repetitive. The basic theme is delightful: the hoopoe painstakingly convincing all the other birds to join it on a spiritual quest, which they keep making excuses to cover up their cowardice about. But I was hoping a work of this length would have more breadth of discussion, without which it starts to feel like the same argument over and over again.
el dang reviewed Dune by Frank Herbert
Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, …
Dune and the suck fairy (spoilers)
2 stars
Content warning spoilers, though, you know, it's a book older than me
I first read Dune when I was about 11 or 12, and I absolutely adored it. This year's movie was excellent, and it made me want to reread the book, albeit with trepidation from all the critiques I've heard as an adult.
Re-reading as an adult was kind of painful. The elements I liked were all still there, but there's so much about the book that is just horrible. A few:
- The intense homophobia, fatphobia and just outright fucking Puritan pleasure-negativity in the portrayal of Baron Harkonnen.
- The cartoonish evil of the Harkonnens, which seems intended to make the reader take the Atreides' side, but...
- The Atreides just being colonisers obsessed with their own position and legacy, but somehow the author wants us to see them as Teh Good Guyz because they're not the Harkonnens.
- Herbert's weird feudalism fixation while he's ostensibly writing about an amazing future.
- How deeply orientalist his portrayal of the Fremen is, when they're potentially his most interesting invention but he won't quite let them be.
I love the Fremen and the ideas about geoengineering the desert planet, but by the end they were just barely enough to keep me reading.
I don't think I've ever said this about any book before, but I strongly recommend just watching the movie and forgetting about the book.
I've kind of lost interest in Don Quixote. Any half dozen or so chapters are fun, but after that the joke gets very old very fast. I think I'll keep occasionally dropping in on the group read, but I'm not even bothering to read chapters for the weeks I miss because it's not like the story really advances.