2022 Rereads
Jan. 2nd, 2023 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaIn 2022, I reread 57 books. Below are not 57 reread notes: some I hadn't previously reviewed, so they got "real" reviews instead; some, mostly the manga, are multi-volume series; a few are simply here unaccounted for. I like to chart my rereads, my changing relationship with texts ... but rereads are also an escape from the self-imposed responsibility of a cogent review, and over this long, busy year of not wanting to communicate, I took the occasional break and just ... didn't record anything.
That's okay. It was still a year of phenomenal rereads, and I still plan to prioritize rereads for the indefinite future. Honestly, one of my new favorite parts of the reading process is when I slide a book directly from my To Be Read list and on to my To Be Reread list. Past-me has great taste in my favorite books.
These appear in order read.
Alternate Realities, C.J. Cherryh
I skipped the Arthuriana on this reread, although I may return to it some day. But oh, "Voyager in Night," "Wave Without a Shore," my beloveds! The former is about alien and iterated consciousness, and it's the story that made me fall in love with this speculative premise; and still much darker, stranger, and chewier than most takes I've encountered since then. Cherryh has a penchant for hurt/the barest shred of comfort, for interrogating social bonds formed in intolerable circumstances, and both works so well in this very high concept setting. The latter is such a guilty pleasure, id-fic for 20-something me: oh-to-clever assholes in a battle of wits for social control, clever and rich with repressed longing and rejection and unexpected consolation. Cherryh calls these "magic cookie" stories, and they really are: maybe too rich and indulgent to be complete books, but such a treat at this length. & even more fun on reread.
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
I spent a lot of this reread thinking about rereading Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire. The series came out around the same time and both are about imperialism and its discontents; and they're opposites on the spectrums of "rereading a dense, confusing speculative work." In Machineries of Empire, a lot of that confusion is in the calendrical system, a combination of science fiction, magic, and social metaphor with vast worldbuilding implications and dizzying, intentionally unparsable explanations. But in Imperial Radch, particularly here in Ancillary Justice, the multi-instanced/interlinked consciousness and the foil of a two-part narrative is ... super comprehensible, actually; intentionally overwhelming at first blush, but almost more of a narrative trick than authentically dense. This isn't a criticism! It's a satisfying structure, and I love Breq's PoV—in both timelines; in the contrast between them.
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
A very different book than Justice, and the changes are almost disappointing—because where the first book is highly constructed, this is a series of crises and their resolutions. The events turn out to be interconnected, but there's not a lot of character agency in those connections. But the what it does do, and well, is develop the setting and the cast. The series has a huge concept and scale, and I love it; but it's sold by its interpersonal relationships, by Breq's sense of self and social bonds. This is effectively the first of a duology about making those bonds a dynamic lived experience rather than a tragic backstory, in a way that doesn't undermine but rather enriches said backstory.
Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
This is where the payoff was for me when I first read the series, and it remains true on reread. Breq, and by consequence all the artificial intelligences and much of Radch (and outside) society, come to feel very real. I love that the narrative "trick" of the first book is the emotional lynchpin of the finale—Imperial Radch is always about the experience of being (and not being) multiply-bodied, and the social/emotional implications of that are convincing and compelling—and, as I noted in my original review, so fully indulged. It scratches the itch I have for AI narratives as exploration of alternative forms of consciousness, embodiment, and interpersonal dynamics.
Not a perfect book—in particular the antagonist characterization is frustrating, a little stupid and hammy in a way that saps too much threat. But what a satisfying end to such an engaging series. Big concept; big payoff, where the payoff is about 80% crying.
Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia Butler
I rarely reread short fiction, rarely read short fiction quickly, but did both here because this collection is, at its best, condensed doses of Butler's most engaging qualities. It opens with the singularly memorable "Bloodchild," and the rest of the collection of course can't compete. What a great story, deeply Butler and with a punchy, unsettling premise that's particularly effective in short form. I was intrigued by the afterward on this reread, by that gray expanse between not being a story about slavery and being "a story about paying the rent." I also love "Amnesty," and the bones (and title) of "The Evening and the Morning and the Night." The more speculative, the more engaging—but in short fiction Butler has less room to question the fundamental assumptions of her premises, which leaves some stories feeling simplistic and essentialist and makes me wish that "Amnesty," in particular, had been a novel. The less speculative titles leave less of an impression, but also tend to be shorter.
Tokyo Babylon, CLAMP
This is even better on reread. It's just so well balanced: Supernatural serialized mysteries are fine as a concept, but they can be episodic, they can struggle to find a throughline; this has overarching goals baked into the premise, and isn't coy about them or about Seishiro's questionable characterization, yet the final reveals* are still bigger and worse than the foreshadowing implies. Even on reread it feels shocking, with the narrative wallop of a twist ending, but much more coherent and thematically apropos. I even love the epilogue, since X exists to fill out it brevity. A delight, and (there but for the fact that I'd already returned the first omnibus) I almost did back-to-back rereads this time.
* And I love the physical experience of reading the omnibuses and watching my bookmark creep towards that sudden, ominous chunk of black page-edges.
X, CLAMP
I stand by my original review. This is a little strange to reread, as I remember for its highs and thus feel caught out by the grind of character introductions and early Kamui, who is more beloved but perhaps no more enjoyable on reread. But those highs—! I love this cast entire; I love rereading Tokyo Babylon to X in order, this time; I love that the unfinished ending is more exciting than disappointing—the bones of it are there, in Subaru as foil, and I'm happy to wonder about Kamui's wish and whether he can determine his own future. Love, love this series.
Amatka, Karin Tidbeck
Two takeaways from this reread: 1) The book feels rougher around the edges now, to some an extent an evitable consequence of rereading & thus knowing what foreshadowing/hints to look for, but nonetheless those elements seem heavyhanded; the tone also feels changed, less evocative and dreamy. I think this can largely be attributed to the fact that my first read was in audio and this reread was in print—I know I'm a stronger print reader, but it's fascinating to see that in action, and to see when weaker retention/attention can actually benefit a text. 2) Still loved it, though!I previously made comparisons to VanderMeer's Annihilation and Newman's Planetfall, and I love that I only have more comparisons now (more VanderMeer, of course, but also Lem's Solaris, Burke's Semiosis, the video game Sable)—that I can identify a branching family narratives about an organic apocalypse/alien biology as a source of human transformation. I love their sci-fi tropes (I would read a thousand stories about "progeny of a lost generation/immigration ship, stranded in alien territory") and if, as I wrote in my original review, the ending is rushed—perhaps that rush is necessary to convey the scale and strangeness of the transformation . I love this combination, of rereads as insight into me as reader & book as text, and as the opportunity to revisit yummy genre concepts that I already knew I'd enjoy and, indeed, did.
Black Iris, Elliot Wake writing as Leah Raeder
A touch-and-go reread. This is so overwritten that I almost bounced off, but once the central dynamic is introduced that becomes something of a selling point, excessive and obsessive. I remembered maybe 15% of the plot, which isn't great because it indicates that the reveals, while adequate, don't compellingly reframe the prior content, particularly in the case ofArmin and the ongoing themes of biphobia/homophobia . It's a very raw book, too overwrought to call it "earnest" but also so very in earnest: vent art as a novel. I dig that, but not as much as I did a few years ago.
Strange Grace, Tessa Gratton
Actually, upon reread I see more of the flaws! I wish I could red-pen this; there's a few bits that feel outright overlooked in editing, but also I want to cut the ending by half, particularly to remove the communal responsibility bit that peters to nothing. But this is still so much my id that I kind of don't care: if I could teleport adjacent to any fairytale forest, it might be this one. I wish the town felt more real, had its own charm I was convinced were worth preserving, but the iddy elements this indulges, of belonging both with your triad and within the dangerous forest you were taught to avoid, is top-tier stuff, even if the girl-songbirds are less interesting avatars of the forest's beauty than literally any other body horror "serrated carnivorous deer"-style invention.
A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik
I adore this style of worldbuilding, that asks and answers so many questions but in ways that have immediate impact on the characters—nothing just theoretical, all of it chewy, so much delightfully strange. Meanwhile the relationships are nice and the action is okay. Thus, as with my first read, I blazed through the first half and read the second like a normal person. But this time, I can go on to sequels!
A Phantom Lover, Vernon Lee
Oh, this is so fun. I love where our narrator stands in the drama unfolding, how sympathetic is his/our shared fascination and how humorous is his emotional distance. I love the slow build of atmosphere with the coming autumn. I even like the ending more this time: the gothic lampshaded, the climax required, when our focus is always just on Alice.
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
I was wondering how rereading would change the book, and the answer is: The momentum of the mystery doesn't propel the story to the same extent, and that centers our writer's emotional journey, particularly his relationship with the house and with his other selves. I found the ending a touch disappointing on my first read, because I always get grumpy when characters leave magic powers/places behind (hide spoiler. But I love it now; it pushes forward, not back: an increasingly complex relationship rather than an absence.
That's okay. It was still a year of phenomenal rereads, and I still plan to prioritize rereads for the indefinite future. Honestly, one of my new favorite parts of the reading process is when I slide a book directly from my To Be Read list and on to my To Be Reread list. Past-me has great taste in my favorite books.
These appear in order read.
Alternate Realities, C.J. Cherryh
I skipped the Arthuriana on this reread, although I may return to it some day. But oh, "Voyager in Night," "Wave Without a Shore," my beloveds! The former is about alien and iterated consciousness, and it's the story that made me fall in love with this speculative premise; and still much darker, stranger, and chewier than most takes I've encountered since then. Cherryh has a penchant for hurt/the barest shred of comfort, for interrogating social bonds formed in intolerable circumstances, and both works so well in this very high concept setting. The latter is such a guilty pleasure, id-fic for 20-something me: oh-to-clever assholes in a battle of wits for social control, clever and rich with repressed longing and rejection and unexpected consolation. Cherryh calls these "magic cookie" stories, and they really are: maybe too rich and indulgent to be complete books, but such a treat at this length. & even more fun on reread.
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
I spent a lot of this reread thinking about rereading Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire. The series came out around the same time and both are about imperialism and its discontents; and they're opposites on the spectrums of "rereading a dense, confusing speculative work." In Machineries of Empire, a lot of that confusion is in the calendrical system, a combination of science fiction, magic, and social metaphor with vast worldbuilding implications and dizzying, intentionally unparsable explanations. But in Imperial Radch, particularly here in Ancillary Justice, the multi-instanced/interlinked consciousness and the foil of a two-part narrative is ... super comprehensible, actually; intentionally overwhelming at first blush, but almost more of a narrative trick than authentically dense. This isn't a criticism! It's a satisfying structure, and I love Breq's PoV—in both timelines; in the contrast between them.
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
A very different book than Justice, and the changes are almost disappointing—because where the first book is highly constructed, this is a series of crises and their resolutions. The events turn out to be interconnected, but there's not a lot of character agency in those connections. But the what it does do, and well, is develop the setting and the cast. The series has a huge concept and scale, and I love it; but it's sold by its interpersonal relationships, by Breq's sense of self and social bonds. This is effectively the first of a duology about making those bonds a dynamic lived experience rather than a tragic backstory, in a way that doesn't undermine but rather enriches said backstory.
Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
This is where the payoff was for me when I first read the series, and it remains true on reread. Breq, and by consequence all the artificial intelligences and much of Radch (and outside) society, come to feel very real. I love that the narrative "trick" of the first book is the emotional lynchpin of the finale—Imperial Radch is always about the experience of being (and not being) multiply-bodied, and the social/emotional implications of that are convincing and compelling—and, as I noted in my original review, so fully indulged. It scratches the itch I have for AI narratives as exploration of alternative forms of consciousness, embodiment, and interpersonal dynamics.
Not a perfect book—in particular the antagonist characterization is frustrating, a little stupid and hammy in a way that saps too much threat. But what a satisfying end to such an engaging series. Big concept; big payoff, where the payoff is about 80% crying.
Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia Butler
I rarely reread short fiction, rarely read short fiction quickly, but did both here because this collection is, at its best, condensed doses of Butler's most engaging qualities. It opens with the singularly memorable "Bloodchild," and the rest of the collection of course can't compete. What a great story, deeply Butler and with a punchy, unsettling premise that's particularly effective in short form. I was intrigued by the afterward on this reread, by that gray expanse between not being a story about slavery and being "a story about paying the rent." I also love "Amnesty," and the bones (and title) of "The Evening and the Morning and the Night." The more speculative, the more engaging—but in short fiction Butler has less room to question the fundamental assumptions of her premises, which leaves some stories feeling simplistic and essentialist and makes me wish that "Amnesty," in particular, had been a novel. The less speculative titles leave less of an impression, but also tend to be shorter.
Tokyo Babylon, CLAMP
This is even better on reread. It's just so well balanced: Supernatural serialized mysteries are fine as a concept, but they can be episodic, they can struggle to find a throughline; this has overarching goals baked into the premise, and isn't coy about them or about Seishiro's questionable characterization, yet the final reveals* are still bigger and worse than the foreshadowing implies. Even on reread it feels shocking, with the narrative wallop of a twist ending, but much more coherent and thematically apropos. I even love the epilogue, since X exists to fill out it brevity. A delight, and (there but for the fact that I'd already returned the first omnibus) I almost did back-to-back rereads this time.
* And I love the physical experience of reading the omnibuses and watching my bookmark creep towards that sudden, ominous chunk of black page-edges.
X, CLAMP
I stand by my original review. This is a little strange to reread, as I remember for its highs and thus feel caught out by the grind of character introductions and early Kamui, who is more beloved but perhaps no more enjoyable on reread. But those highs—! I love this cast entire; I love rereading Tokyo Babylon to X in order, this time; I love that the unfinished ending is more exciting than disappointing—the bones of it are there, in Subaru as foil, and I'm happy to wonder about Kamui's wish and whether he can determine his own future. Love, love this series.
Amatka, Karin Tidbeck
Two takeaways from this reread: 1) The book feels rougher around the edges now, to some an extent an evitable consequence of rereading & thus knowing what foreshadowing/hints to look for, but nonetheless those elements seem heavyhanded; the tone also feels changed, less evocative and dreamy. I think this can largely be attributed to the fact that my first read was in audio and this reread was in print—I know I'm a stronger print reader, but it's fascinating to see that in action, and to see when weaker retention/attention can actually benefit a text. 2) Still loved it, though!
Black Iris, Elliot Wake writing as Leah Raeder
A touch-and-go reread. This is so overwritten that I almost bounced off, but once the central dynamic is introduced that becomes something of a selling point, excessive and obsessive. I remembered maybe 15% of the plot, which isn't great because it indicates that the reveals, while adequate, don't compellingly reframe the prior content, particularly in the case of
Strange Grace, Tessa Gratton
Actually, upon reread I see more of the flaws! I wish I could red-pen this; there's a few bits that feel outright overlooked in editing, but also I want to cut the ending by half, particularly to remove the communal responsibility bit that peters to nothing. But this is still so much my id that I kind of don't care: if I could teleport adjacent to any fairytale forest, it might be this one. I wish the town felt more real, had its own charm I was convinced were worth preserving, but the iddy elements this indulges, of belonging both with your triad and within the dangerous forest you were taught to avoid, is top-tier stuff, even if the girl-songbirds are less interesting avatars of the forest's beauty than literally any other body horror "serrated carnivorous deer"-style invention.
A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik
I adore this style of worldbuilding, that asks and answers so many questions but in ways that have immediate impact on the characters—nothing just theoretical, all of it chewy, so much delightfully strange. Meanwhile the relationships are nice and the action is okay. Thus, as with my first read, I blazed through the first half and read the second like a normal person. But this time, I can go on to sequels!
A Phantom Lover, Vernon Lee
Oh, this is so fun. I love where our narrator stands in the drama unfolding, how sympathetic is his/our shared fascination and how humorous is his emotional distance. I love the slow build of atmosphere with the coming autumn. I even like the ending more this time: the gothic lampshaded, the climax required, when our focus is always just on Alice.
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
I was wondering how rereading would change the book, and the answer is: The momentum of the mystery doesn't propel the story to the same extent, and that centers our writer's emotional journey, particularly his relationship with the house and with his other selves. I found the ending a touch disappointing on my first read, because I always get grumpy when characters leave magic powers/places behind (hide spoiler. But I love it now; it pushes forward, not back: an increasingly complex relationship rather than an absence.
