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Entry tags:
more fiction
Still way behind in blogging nonfiction, but I accumulated enough fiction to justify a new entry.
Dan Simmons, Hyperion: My son really liked this sf novel, so I gave it a try. I did not like it. It’s a Canterbury Tales-style story of linked stories, where each pilgrim is heading to the world of Hyperion, where the Shrike—a remorseless killer worshiped by one human sect—will allegedly grant one pilgrim’s wish while killing the rest. Despite the very different backgrounds of the pilgrims, their voices merged together for me. Pet peeve: there’s a woman who has “her father’s pistol”—it’s called that literally every time it shows up, which is a lot (in the next volume it’s “the pistol” once, I think), but it does not represent anything about her relationship with her father nor is that relationship otherwise important to her story and she’s had it for many years, so it’s her fucking pistol, thanks.
Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion: Here I find that I’m moderately interested in the underlying story (two factions of humanity, one enmeshed with AI and one not, fighting it out or possibly fighting against the total destruction of humanity) while still not liking the writing style or characters very much. Still annoying: all characters who have sex experience it the same way, which includes a man getting raped by a woman (his former lover, who he currently considers an enemy), and then later deciding that he wanted it because he still loved her; the woman’s actions are treated as generally commendable and she is in fact presented as the embodiment of innocent heroism, although the rape was entirely extraneous to her mission.
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Service Model: Tchaikovsky is really willing to commit to the bit. In this novel about a valet robot who inexplicably kills his master and then goes searching for repair/a new master, that means that every verbal interaction has an identifying tag and confirmation response, which might get annoying. Eventually, the robot is renamed Uncharles by a rogue human, and they try to figure out what has caused society’s collapse. The reveal is not terribly surprising, but it’s not a hopeless story despite the huge amounts of devastation canvassed.
Paul Cornell, The Lost Child of Lychford: Second novella about the witches of Lychford—a child ghost appears to the vicar, but can’t communicate. She and the other witches are caught up in a scheme to break the boundaries that keep horrors from other worlds out of ours.
Paul Cornell, A Long Day in Lychford: This novella is interesting because it explicitly raises the question: is Brexit the same thing as the tropes of keeping monsters out with magic? The answer, by the way, is “no,” but it’s useful to have the question raised, as one of the witches deals with the fact that being born in a place isn’t enough to be considered part of it if you have the wrong skin color.
Paul Cornell, The Lights Go Out in Lychford: One of the Lychford witches is suffering from dementia, but has to hang on long enough to stop another assault on the town. If anything, it’s a little too easy in its portrait of dementia, where magic can help the sufferer at key points.
Paul Cornell, Last Stand at Lychford: The faeries invade at last, and the remaining witches—aided by a Ukrainian immigrant who can’t see magic at all—have to fight back.
Max Gladstone, Wicked Problems: It occurs to me that there are some people who’d be annoyed by finding meme-ish quotes/catchphrases in a book supposedly set in a world completely different from our own, and sometimes I’m one of those people. But here it just seems part of the fun, as (at least) two groups of people with very different agendas—including a father who tried to make his son into a priest by giving him magical scars, a girl who wants to be a Craftswoman but may be turning into a god, and various other players—converge on a final battle which will either stop or allow eldritch horrors from beyond the stars to consume the world; interestingly, each group we follow, and possibly one we don’t, sincerely believes they’re on the “stop” side.
Naomi Novik, Buried Deep and Other Stories: Collection of stories, including from the worlds of Temeraire (Caesar, and also a Pride and Prejudice retelling), the Scholomance, and the in-progress world of (architectural) follies. Nicely representative.
M.R. Carey, Echo of Worlds: Second in a duology about a genocidal war between machine intelligences and organic sentients, focusing on the small group of organics, machine intelligences, and hybrids that is trying to stop it. Interesting use of the idea of group consciousness—both machine and organic—and how that changes one’s stances on extinction events.
Arkady Martine, Rose/House: Novella about an AI house created by a famous architect, deeded to one of his former students—who denounced him/was shaped by him in ways that are unclear from the story. The house reports a murder on its premises, but won’t let any human but the student in. I found it annoyingly elliptical, repetitive in language, and also imagining a Texas police force that apparently changed more in forty years than I would have thought plausible (for some reason they … respect the house’s wishes and don’t break in to examine the body). But if you like ghost houses, maybe?
Steven Brust, Lyorn: Well, that was a Vlad book. A bunch of musical parodies of greater and lesser recognizability, and at one point Vlad tells someone he’s doing something “because reasons,” which seemed a bit on the nose. Vlad hides out in a theater in order to avoid the Right Hand’s assassination attempts and gets involved in the ongoing production, which is a play about a play, leading to various observations about performance and performers. Plot-wise, the point is to clear up his existing troubles to set the stage for a big fight. Apparently there are two more books to come in the cycle, though only one is definitely set after this one, which seems like it would require a very eventful book.
Waubgeshig Rice, The Moon of the Turning Leaves: A decade after the outside world ended/the power went out, the group of Anishinaabe who moved away from their reservation have depleted the local resources. Nangohns, now a teenager with little memory of the Before Times, goes with some of the others to see if there’s a better place to live. It’s both a tense survival narrative, where small mistakes can cost dearly, and also clearly part of the broader cozy-ish trend of being concerned with the details of living in the post-apocalypse, rather than missions (despite the journey at its center) and political structures or daring rescues. Very graphic description of the aftermath of violence, which fits in well with the themes--there are no wisecracking heroes here.
Jason Pargin, I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box of Doom:A Lyft driver agrees to drive a mysterious woman with a mysterious box from California to just outside of DC in time for July 4. For understandable reasons, a subset of the internet generates conspiracy theories about it; a retired FBI agent is also concerned; and also it turns out there’s an ex-con after them, willing to do substantial harm to get the box. It’s all Pargin’s unique combination of not-quite-satire and “barely plausible absurd thing happens,” and I enjoyed it despite being the kind of always-online person he suggests is likely in deep trouble.
Dan Simmons, Hyperion: My son really liked this sf novel, so I gave it a try. I did not like it. It’s a Canterbury Tales-style story of linked stories, where each pilgrim is heading to the world of Hyperion, where the Shrike—a remorseless killer worshiped by one human sect—will allegedly grant one pilgrim’s wish while killing the rest. Despite the very different backgrounds of the pilgrims, their voices merged together for me. Pet peeve: there’s a woman who has “her father’s pistol”—it’s called that literally every time it shows up, which is a lot (in the next volume it’s “the pistol” once, I think), but it does not represent anything about her relationship with her father nor is that relationship otherwise important to her story and she’s had it for many years, so it’s her fucking pistol, thanks.
Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion: Here I find that I’m moderately interested in the underlying story (two factions of humanity, one enmeshed with AI and one not, fighting it out or possibly fighting against the total destruction of humanity) while still not liking the writing style or characters very much. Still annoying: all characters who have sex experience it the same way, which includes a man getting raped by a woman (his former lover, who he currently considers an enemy), and then later deciding that he wanted it because he still loved her; the woman’s actions are treated as generally commendable and she is in fact presented as the embodiment of innocent heroism, although the rape was entirely extraneous to her mission.
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Service Model: Tchaikovsky is really willing to commit to the bit. In this novel about a valet robot who inexplicably kills his master and then goes searching for repair/a new master, that means that every verbal interaction has an identifying tag and confirmation response, which might get annoying. Eventually, the robot is renamed Uncharles by a rogue human, and they try to figure out what has caused society’s collapse. The reveal is not terribly surprising, but it’s not a hopeless story despite the huge amounts of devastation canvassed.
Paul Cornell, The Lost Child of Lychford: Second novella about the witches of Lychford—a child ghost appears to the vicar, but can’t communicate. She and the other witches are caught up in a scheme to break the boundaries that keep horrors from other worlds out of ours.
Paul Cornell, A Long Day in Lychford: This novella is interesting because it explicitly raises the question: is Brexit the same thing as the tropes of keeping monsters out with magic? The answer, by the way, is “no,” but it’s useful to have the question raised, as one of the witches deals with the fact that being born in a place isn’t enough to be considered part of it if you have the wrong skin color.
Paul Cornell, The Lights Go Out in Lychford: One of the Lychford witches is suffering from dementia, but has to hang on long enough to stop another assault on the town. If anything, it’s a little too easy in its portrait of dementia, where magic can help the sufferer at key points.
Paul Cornell, Last Stand at Lychford: The faeries invade at last, and the remaining witches—aided by a Ukrainian immigrant who can’t see magic at all—have to fight back.
Max Gladstone, Wicked Problems: It occurs to me that there are some people who’d be annoyed by finding meme-ish quotes/catchphrases in a book supposedly set in a world completely different from our own, and sometimes I’m one of those people. But here it just seems part of the fun, as (at least) two groups of people with very different agendas—including a father who tried to make his son into a priest by giving him magical scars, a girl who wants to be a Craftswoman but may be turning into a god, and various other players—converge on a final battle which will either stop or allow eldritch horrors from beyond the stars to consume the world; interestingly, each group we follow, and possibly one we don’t, sincerely believes they’re on the “stop” side.
Naomi Novik, Buried Deep and Other Stories: Collection of stories, including from the worlds of Temeraire (Caesar, and also a Pride and Prejudice retelling), the Scholomance, and the in-progress world of (architectural) follies. Nicely representative.
M.R. Carey, Echo of Worlds: Second in a duology about a genocidal war between machine intelligences and organic sentients, focusing on the small group of organics, machine intelligences, and hybrids that is trying to stop it. Interesting use of the idea of group consciousness—both machine and organic—and how that changes one’s stances on extinction events.
Arkady Martine, Rose/House: Novella about an AI house created by a famous architect, deeded to one of his former students—who denounced him/was shaped by him in ways that are unclear from the story. The house reports a murder on its premises, but won’t let any human but the student in. I found it annoyingly elliptical, repetitive in language, and also imagining a Texas police force that apparently changed more in forty years than I would have thought plausible (for some reason they … respect the house’s wishes and don’t break in to examine the body). But if you like ghost houses, maybe?
Steven Brust, Lyorn: Well, that was a Vlad book. A bunch of musical parodies of greater and lesser recognizability, and at one point Vlad tells someone he’s doing something “because reasons,” which seemed a bit on the nose. Vlad hides out in a theater in order to avoid the Right Hand’s assassination attempts and gets involved in the ongoing production, which is a play about a play, leading to various observations about performance and performers. Plot-wise, the point is to clear up his existing troubles to set the stage for a big fight. Apparently there are two more books to come in the cycle, though only one is definitely set after this one, which seems like it would require a very eventful book.
Waubgeshig Rice, The Moon of the Turning Leaves: A decade after the outside world ended/the power went out, the group of Anishinaabe who moved away from their reservation have depleted the local resources. Nangohns, now a teenager with little memory of the Before Times, goes with some of the others to see if there’s a better place to live. It’s both a tense survival narrative, where small mistakes can cost dearly, and also clearly part of the broader cozy-ish trend of being concerned with the details of living in the post-apocalypse, rather than missions (despite the journey at its center) and political structures or daring rescues. Very graphic description of the aftermath of violence, which fits in well with the themes--there are no wisecracking heroes here.
Jason Pargin, I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box of Doom:A Lyft driver agrees to drive a mysterious woman with a mysterious box from California to just outside of DC in time for July 4. For understandable reasons, a subset of the internet generates conspiracy theories about it; a retired FBI agent is also concerned; and also it turns out there’s an ex-con after them, willing to do substantial harm to get the box. It’s all Pargin’s unique combination of not-quite-satire and “barely plausible absurd thing happens,” and I enjoyed it despite being the kind of always-online person he suggests is likely in deep trouble.