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juushikaTitle: The Privilege of the Sword (Riverside Book 2)
Author: Ellen Kushner
Published: Spectra, 2006
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 227,645
Text Number: 726
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The mad Duke Tremontaine promises to relieve his family's debt if he may train his niece in swordplay. Perhaps recycling an antagonist from Swordspoint is lazy; certainly there's some trailing subplots here, and it takes time for the headhopping and politicking to coalesce into a narrative. But this won me by the halfway point, and won me entirely. It's a delight to come back to this world, with its affected tone and character cameos (featuring significant growth!), and it benefits from the introduction of gender diversity. It deglamorizes the Regency-esque setting, and creates room for issues of gender presentation and social roles, for an organic sexual awakening and coming of age. The narrative-within-the-narrative is an especially nice touch; it frames Privilege in a self-aware but loving light, and the way that characters interact with it functions better than the subplots to explore the diversity of women's experiences within a misogynistic society. Being able to see a work's flaws and yet not care about them is evidence of a sincere, engaged joy—and I certainly had that with this book, and love and recommend it.
Title: Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp
Author: Molly Tanzer
Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2015
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 375
Total Page Count: 228,020
Text Number: 727
Read Because: continuing the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Lou Merriwether, a psychopomp from San Francisco, travels east to investigate the disappearance of Chinese workers. This has a fantasy/steampunk Western setting, talking bears and psychopompery, a mixed-race, genderqueer protagonist, and an oversized tone with just enough grit. Lou has a great voice and makes bad life choices, and while she eventually gets called on the latter it slows the pace of the book's middle third. The tone absolutely overextends—the protagonist at one point calls the antagonist "hammy," and he is, and it gets old, and so the final third also drags. But the joy of this is in the details: the distinctive, lively characters (bless Coriander); the diversity and Lou's gender presentation; Lou's work and its interactions with worldbuilding and plot. This is an uneven effort, but likable and engaging, and worth reading of that and genre appeal.
Title: Software (Ware Book 1)
Author: Rudy Rucker
Published: Prime Books, 2010 (1982)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 170
Total Page Count: 228,190
Text Number: 728
Read Because: co-read with Teja, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library (but also free from the author)
Review: Robots invite the creator of robot sentience to become immortal. There's some hardcore, classic cyberpunk themes at play here: transhumanism, robot consciousness, iterated identity; they're not developed in any great depth, but they're satisfying. They're also couched within an aggressive, exhausting, drug-added parody of tone that infects the language, plot developments, and characterization. (It almost resembles A Scanner Darkly, but is crasser, less dark, and the tone doesn't especially benefit the narrative.) Software manages to be readable because it's so short; I enjoyed it more than I frankly thought I could, and it works as a quick hit of classic Big Cyberpunk Ideas—but as experience or aesthetic, it's not my thing. I think the sequels would be too much for me, and I'll probably skip them.
(Teja also went on to read the next immediate sequel, and may return to the series some day. He says that Wetware went to some plot places he didn't expect, but otherwise was that same combination of unsubtle forefront cyberpunk themes and distasteful exhausting tone.
We had a similar response to Software. It's pretty thinky, but mostly by extrapolation: punchy, brief statements of concept, but jumping quickly between them, bridged sometimes by a moment of transhumanist-themed self-reflection but as often by drunken escapades or vaguely distasteful character moments. Some of the concepts tie together, but as many are abandoned one-offs. It works for me because they're themes I really love: RNGesus as literal entity/religion is a delight; likewise, the fluid arguments of what defines a sentience, what role body plays, what role iteration plays, what role continuity/memory plays. But the voice and tone.... We also read Scanner together, and that's one of my favorite books; and the difference is that Scanner goes about things darkly (pun intended)— the drunken escapades are humanizing, are darkly comedic relief, but they also represent a self-aware part of a tragic lived experience. Here, it feels like something Rucker can't excise—it wouldn't be his voice without it—but it gets in the way of what I care about, often literally, taking some of the limited space from more interesting speculative concepts. The narrative nihilism fits the themes, I guess; I still didn't like it. Anyway, co-reads with Teja continue to not be super satisfying books—but they've gotten me visit a lot of cyberpunk and this sure is cyberpunk; it's honestly one of the more satisfying as pure food for thought.)
Author: Ellen Kushner
Published: Spectra, 2006
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 227,645
Text Number: 726
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The mad Duke Tremontaine promises to relieve his family's debt if he may train his niece in swordplay. Perhaps recycling an antagonist from Swordspoint is lazy; certainly there's some trailing subplots here, and it takes time for the headhopping and politicking to coalesce into a narrative. But this won me by the halfway point, and won me entirely. It's a delight to come back to this world, with its affected tone and character cameos (featuring significant growth!), and it benefits from the introduction of gender diversity. It deglamorizes the Regency-esque setting, and creates room for issues of gender presentation and social roles, for an organic sexual awakening and coming of age. The narrative-within-the-narrative is an especially nice touch; it frames Privilege in a self-aware but loving light, and the way that characters interact with it functions better than the subplots to explore the diversity of women's experiences within a misogynistic society. Being able to see a work's flaws and yet not care about them is evidence of a sincere, engaged joy—and I certainly had that with this book, and love and recommend it.
Title: Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp
Author: Molly Tanzer
Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2015
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 375
Total Page Count: 228,020
Text Number: 727
Read Because: continuing the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Lou Merriwether, a psychopomp from San Francisco, travels east to investigate the disappearance of Chinese workers. This has a fantasy/steampunk Western setting, talking bears and psychopompery, a mixed-race, genderqueer protagonist, and an oversized tone with just enough grit. Lou has a great voice and makes bad life choices, and while she eventually gets called on the latter it slows the pace of the book's middle third. The tone absolutely overextends—the protagonist at one point calls the antagonist "hammy," and he is, and it gets old, and so the final third also drags. But the joy of this is in the details: the distinctive, lively characters (bless Coriander); the diversity and Lou's gender presentation; Lou's work and its interactions with worldbuilding and plot. This is an uneven effort, but likable and engaging, and worth reading of that and genre appeal.
Title: Software (Ware Book 1)
Author: Rudy Rucker
Published: Prime Books, 2010 (1982)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 170
Total Page Count: 228,190
Text Number: 728
Read Because: co-read with Teja, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library (but also free from the author)
Review: Robots invite the creator of robot sentience to become immortal. There's some hardcore, classic cyberpunk themes at play here: transhumanism, robot consciousness, iterated identity; they're not developed in any great depth, but they're satisfying. They're also couched within an aggressive, exhausting, drug-added parody of tone that infects the language, plot developments, and characterization. (It almost resembles A Scanner Darkly, but is crasser, less dark, and the tone doesn't especially benefit the narrative.) Software manages to be readable because it's so short; I enjoyed it more than I frankly thought I could, and it works as a quick hit of classic Big Cyberpunk Ideas—but as experience or aesthetic, it's not my thing. I think the sequels would be too much for me, and I'll probably skip them.
(Teja also went on to read the next immediate sequel, and may return to the series some day. He says that Wetware went to some plot places he didn't expect, but otherwise was that same combination of unsubtle forefront cyberpunk themes and distasteful exhausting tone.
We had a similar response to Software. It's pretty thinky, but mostly by extrapolation: punchy, brief statements of concept, but jumping quickly between them, bridged sometimes by a moment of transhumanist-themed self-reflection but as often by drunken escapades or vaguely distasteful character moments. Some of the concepts tie together, but as many are abandoned one-offs. It works for me because they're themes I really love: RNGesus as literal entity/religion is a delight; likewise, the fluid arguments of what defines a sentience, what role body plays, what role iteration plays, what role continuity/memory plays. But the voice and tone.... We also read Scanner together, and that's one of my favorite books; and the difference is that Scanner goes about things darkly (pun intended)— the drunken escapades are humanizing, are darkly comedic relief, but they also represent a self-aware part of a tragic lived experience. Here, it feels like something Rucker can't excise—it wouldn't be his voice without it—but it gets in the way of what I care about, often literally, taking some of the limited space from more interesting speculative concepts. The narrative nihilism fits the themes, I guess; I still didn't like it. Anyway, co-reads with Teja continue to not be super satisfying books—but they've gotten me visit a lot of cyberpunk and this sure is cyberpunk; it's honestly one of the more satisfying as pure food for thought.)
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Date: 2017-08-22 09:39 pm (UTC)