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Entry tags:
Fiction
Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here: The conceit is that the indie kids (the Buffys, Bellas, and other special teens) are having their own world-ending/saving drama, while the narrator Michael (who suffers from an anxiety disorder/OCD) and his sisters and friends are just living their own lives, largely ignorant of the forces threatening the town but occasionally threatened by them anyway. Each chapter summarizes what’s going on with the indie kids, then turns to the dramatis personae of this particular story, which does feature a half-god best friend, but most of his issues are about leaving his single father home alone when he goes to college and about finding a nice boy to date. It was well-executed, so if the idea appeals, it’s worth checking out.
Max Gladstone, Ruin of Angels: Another novel in the Craft sequence, focusing on Kai Pohala and her estranged sister Ley, as well as Tara Abernathy. There’s a heist that attempts to take advantage of/revenge for the way Agdel Lex has been broken into different cities occupying overlapping space time, one of which is illegal to visit. There’s some magical investment stuff that is sort of a parody of SF startup culture (guys in plaid and beards talking about disrupting magic by connecting individual souls with individual creations), and a plan described as “sheer elegance in its simplicity,” which made me wonder if Gladstone was playing a little too close to the edge. And the plot depends a lot on people not telling each other things; Kai and Ley had enough estrangement that it kind of made sense for them, but then it happened again and again, and while Gladstone gave a coherent reason each time, it started to feel contrived. But I enjoyed the book, as usual.
Leigh Bardugo, Wonder Woman: Warbringer: Not movieverse. This Diana has never left Themyscira, until (in our time) she rescues a young girl who turns out to be a Warbringer, destined to throw the world into full-scale war. She can be killed—or, maybe, she can be cured, if Diana is strong enough. There are charming and talented sidekicks, as well as a handsome older brother who Diana meets cute, which is to say she knocks him down. It’s fun.
Andy Weir, Artemis: Jazz is a young woman of Saudi heritage who was mostly raised on the moon by her observant Muslim father. She had a falling-out with him and is now living on her own, nonobservant in every possible way, trying to earn enough money for a comfortable existence—mostly by smuggling in high-value goods to sell to the people of Artemis, a development run by a Nigerian state/corporate partnership. When she’s offered a million slugs—a fortune—to do a small sabotage job, little does she know that it will lead to life-altering and life-threatening feats of criminal engineering, requiring her to use every relationship she has as well as her genius-level intelligence to survive. I don’t know if it will strike the same nerve as The Martian, but there’s the same mix of engineering challenges and occasional teamwork; if you wanted to learn about welding in a vacuum, you can here. Jazz seemed tilted towards the hard-boiled noir type, and she’s definitely a geek boy’s fantasy of a hot, smart woman who’s also in need of the love of a good geeky man, but she got to be the protagonist/hero and so I was ok with that. (I’m looking at you, Ready Player One.) I really appreciated the moment she’s in a physical fight with another woman and, when they realize that the bubble they’re in is in danger, they both stop trying to kill each other and switch over to survival/cooperation mode—like real people should and probably would, unlike movie characters.
Max Gladstone, Ruin of Angels: Another novel in the Craft sequence, focusing on Kai Pohala and her estranged sister Ley, as well as Tara Abernathy. There’s a heist that attempts to take advantage of/revenge for the way Agdel Lex has been broken into different cities occupying overlapping space time, one of which is illegal to visit. There’s some magical investment stuff that is sort of a parody of SF startup culture (guys in plaid and beards talking about disrupting magic by connecting individual souls with individual creations), and a plan described as “sheer elegance in its simplicity,” which made me wonder if Gladstone was playing a little too close to the edge. And the plot depends a lot on people not telling each other things; Kai and Ley had enough estrangement that it kind of made sense for them, but then it happened again and again, and while Gladstone gave a coherent reason each time, it started to feel contrived. But I enjoyed the book, as usual.
Leigh Bardugo, Wonder Woman: Warbringer: Not movieverse. This Diana has never left Themyscira, until (in our time) she rescues a young girl who turns out to be a Warbringer, destined to throw the world into full-scale war. She can be killed—or, maybe, she can be cured, if Diana is strong enough. There are charming and talented sidekicks, as well as a handsome older brother who Diana meets cute, which is to say she knocks him down. It’s fun.
Andy Weir, Artemis: Jazz is a young woman of Saudi heritage who was mostly raised on the moon by her observant Muslim father. She had a falling-out with him and is now living on her own, nonobservant in every possible way, trying to earn enough money for a comfortable existence—mostly by smuggling in high-value goods to sell to the people of Artemis, a development run by a Nigerian state/corporate partnership. When she’s offered a million slugs—a fortune—to do a small sabotage job, little does she know that it will lead to life-altering and life-threatening feats of criminal engineering, requiring her to use every relationship she has as well as her genius-level intelligence to survive. I don’t know if it will strike the same nerve as The Martian, but there’s the same mix of engineering challenges and occasional teamwork; if you wanted to learn about welding in a vacuum, you can here. Jazz seemed tilted towards the hard-boiled noir type, and she’s definitely a geek boy’s fantasy of a hot, smart woman who’s also in need of the love of a good geeky man, but she got to be the protagonist/hero and so I was ok with that. (I’m looking at you, Ready Player One.) I really appreciated the moment she’s in a physical fight with another woman and, when they realize that the bubble they’re in is in danger, they both stop trying to kill each other and switch over to survival/cooperation mode—like real people should and probably would, unlike movie characters.