![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorate Book 1)
Author: J.Y. Yang
Published: Tor, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 261,880
Text Number: 848
Read Because: reviewed by Kalanadi, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A pair of gifted twins find their paths diverging despite their shared fight against their mother's corrupt political reign. There's a lot going on in this slim novella: The voice and setting is evocative, with beautiful turns of phrase and a distinctive sense of place. The worldbuilding is original and I adore this type of political conflict, which addresses technological development within magical worlds and how technological access builds and informs social structures; it creates a conflict which is deeply tied not just to the characters but also to the speculative setting. The character development creates a unique narrative structure: at the beginning, the twins are almost indistinguishable and the narrative is slow, opaque; their estrangement—bittersweet, but also rich with gratifying intimacies and an engaging exploration of gender—builds a more accessible, attenuated narrative. It's not perfect—that slow start is still a detriment, and the ending is too clean—but this is a unique and ambitious work, and a successful one, especially for a debut. Of course I'll read the sequels.
Title: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Author: Philip K. Dick
Narrator: Scott Brick
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2007 (1974)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 262,115
Text Number: 849
Read Because: fan of the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A famous star find himself rendered unknown overnight within a dangerous police state. I've read Do Androids Dream and Scanner Darkly and almost all of his short fiction, but when looking for my next Dick novel most of the reviews (for all of them) fell along the lines of "interesting rather than enjoyable"—which is certainly true here. Success is twinned to failure: moments of sincere, affecting insight (into identity, into social relationships) are marred by an unlikable protagonist and the rambling, drugged tone that Dick defaults to; but that tone also raises recursive, thematically-apt questions of memory and identity and social role. It ends well, with a full and surprisingly cogent climax and denouement; yet the setting and plot device are never quite convincing. The question, then: do the relative strengths and successful marriage of theme to speculative concepts justify the interminable travails of a pretentious, misogynistic man, the grim satire of a dystopia, and the detours into drug use and psychosis? It can—Scanner Darkly is all these things and I love it, but it's also fueled by a message so personal as to make the work accessible and sympathetic; this is more theoretical, cerebral, and emotionally distant. Interesting—worth reading, perhaps—but not enjoyable; nor something I'd especially recommend.
Title: Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic
Editors: JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff
Published: Lethe Press, 2012 (2011)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 262,355
Text Number: 850
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Twelve short stories about queer women and magic, a refreshing and engaging premise that fosters lovely atmospheres, like the 1980s urban fantasy vibe of Sorrell's "Counterbalance" or the magic-touched science fictional world of Moraine's "Thin Spin." The plots and sometimes the voices are less memorable but generally competent; only about three stories made me want to read more by the author, but only one (Berman's "D is for Delicious") is outright bad—so, an adequate collection. But given the premise, I wish there were more on-page queer relationships—there's a wealth of recent breakups, some meet-cutes, but it's not quite the representation I hoped for. I admire this more in concept than execution, and wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, but it's fine.
in the 1980s and 90s, urban fantasy was a different breed, it was the Bordertown/de Lint school with remarkably fewer private investigators and significantly more art, less vampires and more fairies, magic as a secret bacchanal instead of a gritty underbelly
I just started the short story anthology Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic, and the first story, "Counterbalance" by Ruth Sorrell (who, near as I can find, hasn't published anything else?) makes me wonder what the genre could be now if it had kept that atmosphere. its plot and themes are fine, relatively unremarkable; the sense of place and evocative descriptions have the heightened lushness of Elizabeth Hand, the social gathering as a secret refuge reminds me of de Lint, there's an idealized but not uncomplicated sense of power and beauty and magic that is the profoundest wish-fulfillment
& there a vague gloss of "also there are PIs and vampires here too," a nod to the genre's evolution (the anthology was published in 2011)
& also it's pleasingly gay
if that's what UF were these days, I'd actually be keeping up with the genre
#old school (and old school-style) UF is a mixed bag—hasn't aged great/isn't to my taste/I want to like de Lint and ... never do.... #but I love the IDEA of it so much that for a long time I'd convinced myself I love the genre #and then I discovered where the genre is now and felt so confused and betrayed; I enjoy none of it #& so UF and I live at perpetual distance—I read a lot that steps into that territory & profoundly desire its potential #but the thing itself? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Author: J.Y. Yang
Published: Tor, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 261,880
Text Number: 848
Read Because: reviewed by Kalanadi, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A pair of gifted twins find their paths diverging despite their shared fight against their mother's corrupt political reign. There's a lot going on in this slim novella: The voice and setting is evocative, with beautiful turns of phrase and a distinctive sense of place. The worldbuilding is original and I adore this type of political conflict, which addresses technological development within magical worlds and how technological access builds and informs social structures; it creates a conflict which is deeply tied not just to the characters but also to the speculative setting. The character development creates a unique narrative structure: at the beginning, the twins are almost indistinguishable and the narrative is slow, opaque; their estrangement—bittersweet, but also rich with gratifying intimacies and an engaging exploration of gender—builds a more accessible, attenuated narrative. It's not perfect—that slow start is still a detriment, and the ending is too clean—but this is a unique and ambitious work, and a successful one, especially for a debut. Of course I'll read the sequels.
Title: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Author: Philip K. Dick
Narrator: Scott Brick
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2007 (1974)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 262,115
Text Number: 849
Read Because: fan of the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A famous star find himself rendered unknown overnight within a dangerous police state. I've read Do Androids Dream and Scanner Darkly and almost all of his short fiction, but when looking for my next Dick novel most of the reviews (for all of them) fell along the lines of "interesting rather than enjoyable"—which is certainly true here. Success is twinned to failure: moments of sincere, affecting insight (into identity, into social relationships) are marred by an unlikable protagonist and the rambling, drugged tone that Dick defaults to; but that tone also raises recursive, thematically-apt questions of memory and identity and social role. It ends well, with a full and surprisingly cogent climax and denouement; yet the setting and plot device are never quite convincing. The question, then: do the relative strengths and successful marriage of theme to speculative concepts justify the interminable travails of a pretentious, misogynistic man, the grim satire of a dystopia, and the detours into drug use and psychosis? It can—Scanner Darkly is all these things and I love it, but it's also fueled by a message so personal as to make the work accessible and sympathetic; this is more theoretical, cerebral, and emotionally distant. Interesting—worth reading, perhaps—but not enjoyable; nor something I'd especially recommend.
Title: Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic
Editors: JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff
Published: Lethe Press, 2012 (2011)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 262,355
Text Number: 850
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Twelve short stories about queer women and magic, a refreshing and engaging premise that fosters lovely atmospheres, like the 1980s urban fantasy vibe of Sorrell's "Counterbalance" or the magic-touched science fictional world of Moraine's "Thin Spin." The plots and sometimes the voices are less memorable but generally competent; only about three stories made me want to read more by the author, but only one (Berman's "D is for Delicious") is outright bad—so, an adequate collection. But given the premise, I wish there were more on-page queer relationships—there's a wealth of recent breakups, some meet-cutes, but it's not quite the representation I hoped for. I admire this more in concept than execution, and wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, but it's fine.
in the 1980s and 90s, urban fantasy was a different breed, it was the Bordertown/de Lint school with remarkably fewer private investigators and significantly more art, less vampires and more fairies, magic as a secret bacchanal instead of a gritty underbelly
I just started the short story anthology Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic, and the first story, "Counterbalance" by Ruth Sorrell (who, near as I can find, hasn't published anything else?) makes me wonder what the genre could be now if it had kept that atmosphere. its plot and themes are fine, relatively unremarkable; the sense of place and evocative descriptions have the heightened lushness of Elizabeth Hand, the social gathering as a secret refuge reminds me of de Lint, there's an idealized but not uncomplicated sense of power and beauty and magic that is the profoundest wish-fulfillment
& there a vague gloss of "also there are PIs and vampires here too," a nod to the genre's evolution (the anthology was published in 2011)
& also it's pleasingly gay
if that's what UF were these days, I'd actually be keeping up with the genre
#old school (and old school-style) UF is a mixed bag—hasn't aged great/isn't to my taste/I want to like de Lint and ... never do.... #but I love the IDEA of it so much that for a long time I'd convinced myself I love the genre #and then I discovered where the genre is now and felt so confused and betrayed; I enjoy none of it #& so UF and I live at perpetual distance—I read a lot that steps into that territory & profoundly desire its potential #but the thing itself? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
