User Profile

Wild Woila

wildwoila@wyrms.de

Joined 2 years, 7 months ago

I have #mecfs so I have a lot of time for reading, mostly #fantasy and #SciFi but I'm happy to dip into nearly anything.

Ratings: 1 star: I didn't like it 2 stars: it was okay 3 stars: I liked it 4 stars: I really liked it 5 stars: it was brilliant

This link opens in a pop-up window

Wild Woila's books

avatar for wildwoila Wild Woila boosted

reviewed She Commands Me and I Obey by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch, #0.6)

Ann Leckie: She Commands Me and I Obey (EBook, 2014, Strange Horizons)

Residents of Noage Itray could look up and see the ballcourt hanging ten miles overhead, …

She Commands Me and I Obey

This is a short story in the Ancillary universe that gives a small piece of Breq's history in the Itran Tetrarchy, which is alluded to in other books. These tetrarchs use a religious ball game (which seems an explicit reference to Mayan ball games) to determine who will be the next leader, with the opposing captain being executed.

I think this would be a pretty good short story in its own right about backroom politics mixing with religion. But, in my mind, it suffers from including Breq, who appears too large on the page and we learn too few details about. I came into this with expectations that this would fill in a piece of Breq's past, but the extra details we learn are incredibly scant. I wonder if this would have been more satisfying if it had been stretched out to a novella with an additional point of view …

Richard Flanagan: Question 7 (Paperback, 2024, Penguin)

Damn he can write!

An exploration of life & death, love & fate, encompassing everything from his family history to HG Wells and the development of the atomic bomb. Damn he can write! The description of his near-death experience is mesmerising. Didn't fully come together for me, but suspect it will benefit from a revisit.

reviewed Akarnae by Lynette Noni

Lynette Noni: Akarnae (Hardcover, 2020, Lost the Plot)

Fairly derivative YA fantasy

Fairly derivative YA fantasy: teenage girl crosses into a parallel world, where she becomes a fish-out-of-water at a school for talented students, and discovers she's the only one who can prevent the obliteration of humanity. Some ingrained patriarchy - why do female heroes always have to be hot? Totally needless. Nice enough but nothing special.

Fríða Ísberg: The Mark

Empathy or freedom?

An attempt to enforce empathic behaviour creates stark divisions at all levels of society. Very effectively conveys the ambiguous ethics and the entrenched positions taken by opposing sides. Strong parallels with toxic masculinity and vaccination.

avatar for wildwoila Wild Woila boosted

reviewed Red Rising by Pierce Brown (Red Rising Saga, #1)

Pierce Brown: Red Rising (Hardcover, 2014, Del Rey)

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of …

Is it a trope

Started this series literally cause it is sci-fi on mars and talking about class conflict. This first book follows some really tired trends in sci-fi, overdone by YA fiction, of a school for youth who are trained in conflict to prove themselves. but this isn't a YAF booked, there is copious amounts of blood, the politicking, and alliances are more complex. It was definitely a slow burn for me where by the end of this first book i was invested enough finish the series.

a sneak peak to book two is I like it much better so consider working though it. Definitely a space opera for those who despise them, so you have been warned.

avatar for wildwoila Wild Woila boosted

Review of 'Odyssey' on 'GoodReads'

This feels like a book that needs two distinct reviews.



First, Emily Wilson's translation, which is wonderful. Just as Heaney moved Beowulf from "worthy work" to a fun read, Wilson's made The Odyssey eminently readable, while keeping it a formally structured long poem and apparently sticking scrupulously to the pacing of the original Greek. I had started reading other translations of this work but never actually finished them, so I'm delighted that this one now exists. And the maps, introduction, footnotes and dramatis personae all helped me follow a work that's heavy on reference and allusion.



But I have to say I didn't get on very well with the content. Some of it is delightful, from learning that Greeks have appreciated wine, olive oil and the sea for longer than much of the world's had written records, to all the descriptions that weren't about Odysseus himself. But there's a degree …

avatar for wildwoila Wild Woila boosted
Homer, Emily Wilson: The Odyssey (2017, Norton)

Vivid and accessible

An approachable version of The Odyssey in a plain and modern English. Wilson matches Homer line-for-line, but compresses each line to a 5-beat iambic pentameter. Her language is chiseled, sometimes to a fault. But it adds up to a surprisingly quick, enjoyable, and morally engaging read.

Homer's most vivid images really shine in this rendering: "He saw them fallen, all of them, so many; / lying in blood and dust, like fish hauled up / out of the dark-gray sea in fine-mesh nets; / tipped out upon the curving beach's sand, / they gasp for water from the salty sea. / The sun shines down and takes their life away. / So lay the suitors, heaped across each other."

The text avoids justifying or masking immoral or questionable acts and practices. The word "slave" is used frequently, rather than euphemisms. Sometimes the translation strikes a judgmental note, like when the …

Homer, Emily Wilson: The Odyssey (2017, Norton)

Easy flowing translation

Travel back in time for a little insight into the worldview & values of the ancient Greeks. Fickle meddlesome gods, male honour, rampant war and liberal violence, slavery & female subjugation. Easy flowing translation, though I sometimes lost the rhythm.

avatar for wildwoila Wild Woila boosted

reviewed A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2)

Robert Jackson Bennett: A Drop of Corruption (2025, Del Rey)

The eccentric detective Ana Dolabra matches wits with a seemingly omniscient adversary in this brilliant …

A Drop of Corruption

This book reminds me a lot of the second book in Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy. Both are set out in the hinterlands, with a different focus and locale than the first book, but crucially both are there to establish the thematic question for the series. Here, that question is around the human nature of kings and emperors, and the complicated human desire for them.

Unsurprisingly, this series continues to be solidly in the mystery genre despite being blended with kaiju fantasy worldbuilding. It opens with a locked room murder mystery (and a missing body), has a brilliant Moriarity-adjacent mastermind, and ends with a dramatic reveal. This was true in the first book as well, but I quite appreciate how the details and clues are meticulously laid out for the reader to spot; even when there is a "our investigator must go into a fugue state to find answers" …

reviewed The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club, #2)

Richard Osman: The Man Who Died Twice (2021, Penguin Books, Limited)

The stakes are higher but doesn't feel so fresh

More fun times with the crime-solving (& committing!) pensioners. The stakes are higher but doesn't feel so fresh. A bigger role for the inscrutable Bogdan is welcome. Laughs off some pretty substantial abuse of the justice system.

Bernard Cornwell: Enemy of God (The Arthur Books #2) (AudiobookFormat, 1997, Books on Tape, Inc.)

The continuing story of Arthur, the second in a trilogy which began with THE WINTER …

Hard, dirty & cynical

The Saxons threaten to overrun Briton; a search for a legendary artifact to bring back the Old Gods; a little blissful romance; Lancelot is a backstabbing, cowardly bastard; oaths, what are they good for? A touch more magic than in the first book, but just as hard, dirty & cynical.

Georgette Heyer: The Grand Sophy (Paperback, 1981, Jove)

When the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on business, he leaves …

More wit than romance

A irrepressible cousin comes to stay and causes a great upheaval, but between cunning plans and good luck it all works out neatly. More wit than romance, but it does that well.

Tsitsi Dangarembga: Nervous Conditions (Paperback, 1996, Seal Press (CA))

This is a book about the oppression of women by men.Men in a society have …

A familiar refrain in African literature

Becoming a familiar refrain in African literature: girl fights for education & freedom against patriarchy & colonialism. This one, set in pre-independence Zimbabwe, might be the original (?) and the best, with carefully crafted & evolving characters. Ends very suddenly, though.

Octavia E. Butler: Mind of my mind (1977, Doubleday)

this book is about the inner workings of a black woman born in 1947. her …

The god-like mutant Doro finally breeds his race of super-powered telepaths

The god-like mutant Doro finally breeds his race of super-powered telepaths. Can they hold it together, and can he tolerate them? Not much narrative tension or interesting characters, and not a lot happens.