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juushikaTitle: Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature
Author: Wayne Barlowe
Published: Workman Publishing, 1987
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 333,325
Text Number: 1174
Read Because: reading the author + on this list of speculative evolution texts, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: The followup sketches are what make this, because the anatomy and locomotion studies have a life to them which is absent from the stiff, repetitive poses and isolated close-ups of the full-color spreads. There's a lot of humanoids here, and many of the non-humanoids are humorously improbable; some illustrations are shrinkwrapped, borrowing legitimacy from the worst tendency of paleoart. The source materials make for a poor reading list, as it's largely golden age SF from white men. But the cumulative effect of leafing through the spreads, turning from silly green vegetable men to nightmare-fuel hand-walking Demons, has the playful and imagination-sparking effect of speculative evolution. The aliens co-exist in the text, diverse and embodied; the brief blurbs are easy to binge, and the bodies-first approach that strips the aliens from their sources creates a cluttered universe of exploration, sapient life, danger, and an abundance of telepathic powers. It's a flawed work that one wishes were expanded or updated to explore more diverse sources, but it's still delightful.
Title: Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb Book 2)
Author: Tamsyn Muir
Published: Tor, 2020
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 510
Total Page Count: 333,835
Text Number: 1175
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Further necromancers in space adventures as Harrow joins the Emperor's service—as a fractured version of herself and an incomplete version of the Lyctor she's meant to be. Gideon the Ninth is a hot mess that ultimately won me; this is a hot mess, too, and in interconnected ways—but I find myself less charitable. The divisive tone of Gideon is replaced by an engaging second person narrative—but it throws into relief the flimsy memetic humor. I survived the cluttered plot of Gideon by skimming the bloated cast of mayfly murder-mystery victims, so returning to them is a mistake—the twists are legible, but they and the character development lack emotional investment.
And the whole thing just isn't that clever. Maybe Gideon isn't either, but it has good payoff. This sets itself up well: an intriguing premise in Harrow's instructions to herself and a convincingly massive scale set against an emotional deep-dive into trauma; again, it's the character arcs that bring life to the aesthetic excess of the world. But Harrow's plotting is lost within larger machinations, and the climax is spent spectating other characters during reveals that manage to be both overbroadcasted and inscrutable setup for the final book. It's not bad. It has too much stylized abrasive mysterious energy to ever be bad. But it can't skate by on novelty as did Gideon, and it leans on the flaws of that first book rather than growing past them.
Title: The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna
Author: Mira Ptacin
Narrator: Chloe Cannon
Published: HighBridge, 2019
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 260
Total Page Count: 334,095
Text Number: 1176
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The history of spiritualism and the current state of Camp Etna, one center of the movement as it exists today. The latter is more fully developed, and watching the author's skepticism transform during the course of her interviews humanizes the individuals involved and legitimizes the movement. But I find all that less interesting than the historical elements, which are delivered piecemeal in discrete, well-researched snapshots which fail to form a complete historical narrative. It's more human interest than historical; not what I wanted.
Author: Wayne Barlowe
Published: Workman Publishing, 1987
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 333,325
Text Number: 1174
Read Because: reading the author + on this list of speculative evolution texts, paperback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: The followup sketches are what make this, because the anatomy and locomotion studies have a life to them which is absent from the stiff, repetitive poses and isolated close-ups of the full-color spreads. There's a lot of humanoids here, and many of the non-humanoids are humorously improbable; some illustrations are shrinkwrapped, borrowing legitimacy from the worst tendency of paleoart. The source materials make for a poor reading list, as it's largely golden age SF from white men. But the cumulative effect of leafing through the spreads, turning from silly green vegetable men to nightmare-fuel hand-walking Demons, has the playful and imagination-sparking effect of speculative evolution. The aliens co-exist in the text, diverse and embodied; the brief blurbs are easy to binge, and the bodies-first approach that strips the aliens from their sources creates a cluttered universe of exploration, sapient life, danger, and an abundance of telepathic powers. It's a flawed work that one wishes were expanded or updated to explore more diverse sources, but it's still delightful.
Title: Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb Book 2)
Author: Tamsyn Muir
Published: Tor, 2020
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 510
Total Page Count: 333,835
Text Number: 1175
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Further necromancers in space adventures as Harrow joins the Emperor's service—as a fractured version of herself and an incomplete version of the Lyctor she's meant to be. Gideon the Ninth is a hot mess that ultimately won me; this is a hot mess, too, and in interconnected ways—but I find myself less charitable. The divisive tone of Gideon is replaced by an engaging second person narrative—but it throws into relief the flimsy memetic humor. I survived the cluttered plot of Gideon by skimming the bloated cast of mayfly murder-mystery victims, so returning to them is a mistake—the twists are legible, but they and the character development lack emotional investment.
And the whole thing just isn't that clever. Maybe Gideon isn't either, but it has good payoff. This sets itself up well: an intriguing premise in Harrow's instructions to herself and a convincingly massive scale set against an emotional deep-dive into trauma; again, it's the character arcs that bring life to the aesthetic excess of the world. But Harrow's plotting is lost within larger machinations, and the climax is spent spectating other characters during reveals that manage to be both overbroadcasted and inscrutable setup for the final book. It's not bad. It has too much stylized abrasive mysterious energy to ever be bad. But it can't skate by on novelty as did Gideon, and it leans on the flaws of that first book rather than growing past them.
Title: The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna
Author: Mira Ptacin
Narrator: Chloe Cannon
Published: HighBridge, 2019
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 260
Total Page Count: 334,095
Text Number: 1176
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The history of spiritualism and the current state of Camp Etna, one center of the movement as it exists today. The latter is more fully developed, and watching the author's skepticism transform during the course of her interviews humanizes the individuals involved and legitimizes the movement. But I find all that less interesting than the historical elements, which are delivered piecemeal in discrete, well-researched snapshots which fail to form a complete historical narrative. It's more human interest than historical; not what I wanted.
