juushika

The genesis of finally doing a deep (ish) (I am reading what Open Library has on offer, skipping Christmas books, but including multiple editions) Margaret Wise Brown was that she popped up in Hannah McGregor's A Sentimental Education, particularly in the context of queer picture authors/illustrators edited by Ursula Nordstrom, herself a lesbian. McGregor mentions that Nordstrom edited Arnold Lobel, James Marshal, Tomie dePaola, Maurice Sendak, and MWB, among others.*

This - the overlap between queer creators and children's fiction - is something I had noticed when delving into picture books a few years ago; it's an overlap probably not limited to Nordstrom, although her role is absolutely pivotal. But it's also so ... natural. McGregor comments that many beloved queer picture book authors (she mentions MWB, Edward Gorey, and Maurice Sendak IIRC) famously did not have, like, and/or indicate that they were writing for children, necessarily. Instead picture books, as exploratory, creative, often dreamlike works asking questions about self-identity and learning one's place in the world, are naturally spaces for queer exploration and self-expression. I'm paraphrasing from a text I read on audio and augmenting with my own reading*, but the TL;DR of this was:

Hey, go read more MWB. And thus I am!

And the thing about MWB as opposed to other picture book deep dives: MWB was not herself an illustrator; she has been enduringly popular; she left behind many unpublished manuscripts after an early death. As a result, there's rarely one true set of illustrations, and many of her books have been re-illustrated/re-released/re-edited, even, over the years, with some even more complicated origin stories (that'll come up in another set of reviews). Fascinating! Messy! And valuable insight into the relationship that art has on picture books, as I'll talk about below, in exceedingly long reviews for 30 page volumes.

As usual, my very very favorites are outside of the cut; but The Diggers, while not good, is fascinating.

* read: if I've mixed up any details, it's because oops, and because audio retention is for losers & I already returned the book.


( Home for a Bunny )


Title: The Dead Bird
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Remy Charlip (1958), Christian Robinson (2016)
Published: Harper & Row, 1965; Harper, 2016
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 40, 30
Total Page Count: 506,990
Text Number: 1807-8
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: Don't touch dead birds; k cool glad we got that out of the way.

This is phenomenal. The illustrations are kind of whatever for me - Charlip uses a limited (personally unappealing) (I hate blue-greens) color palette and soft, rounded shapes; Robinson's work is more vibrant and the children more diverse. Of the two, I prefer Charlip, in part because the more subdued palette reflects the somber tone, but mostly for the use of negative space: illustrations and text are on alternating spreads, which gives the text an incredible amount of contemplative space. And so in Carlip this is a spread:

"The children were very sorry that the bird was dead and could never fly again. But they were glad they had found it, because now they could dig a grave in the woods and bury it. They could have a funeral and sing to it the way grown-up people did when someone died.

So they took it out to the woods.

And in Robinson, this is three pages of low contrast text over vibrant images.

And the text should have that weight. This is a quiet, honest book about the profound imperfection of grief - grief as celebratory, performative, experimental, as a preparation for later life experiences; grief as profound, communal, healing; grief as material act; grief as "And every day, until they forgot, they went and sang to their little dead bird and put fresh flowers on his grave." It's not didactic but rather reflective, and the space it gives to imperfection really struck me.

When I feel compelled to write more about a picture book than there are words in the picture book, I know I'm going to remember it.


( Little Fur Family )


( The Diggers (two editions) )


Title: Two Little Trains
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Jean Charlot (1949), Leon and Diane Dillon (2001)
Published: William R. Scott, 1949; HarperCollins, 2001
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 30, 30
Total Page Count: 507,210
Text Number: 1814-5
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: The picture book deep dives I've done in the past (Gorey, Sendak, among others) have largely been by author/illustrators, so rarely have I encountered alternate versions of the same text. Reading MWB has taught me how illustrations change a picture book, not just the aesthetic but the tone, emphasis, even interpretation.

Two trains puff puff puff, chug chug chug, to the west. The Dillon frames one as real train and one as a toy, which is a classic real/play parallel that invites the child reader to imagine a stair rail as a mountain. And, as it's Dillon, the art is unsurprisingly solid.

But the (original 1949) Charlot is a different beast entire, a dreamscape of two trains rendered in flat pale colors and loose, fluid lines, the child-conductors napping under a gilded moon and amidst animal cargo on a long, surreal journey west, west, west. Rather than parallelism, repetition, but the use of negative space and direct address in the text ("Look down, look down that long steel track / Where you and I must go") invite the reader aboard.

The Charlot is less concrete and more open, impressionistic, fantastical even, and I'm crazy about it; and, also, by the juxtaposition, because while the Charlot is objectively better, the text taken in two such different directions is insightful and thought-provoking. And there's yet a third (Pizzoli) that I haven't read, and who know how it alters the text.

Title: Rebecca
Author: Daphne du Maurier
Published: 1938
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 420
Total Page Count: 364,485
Text Number: 1328
Read Because: reread; ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library but I own it in paperback
Review: This is as much a dream as Manderley: beautiful, unbelievable, privileged, stumbled upon, an exuberance of flowers which growing cloying, claustrophobic, finally nightmarish as identities are mirrored and overshadowed, as actions are compelled. I love warm-weather gothic for just that vibe, and this is so gothic—the laborious slow burn of the first half, the intense thriller of the second half, the blatant and utterly effective gimmick of the unnamed protagonist and the titular Rebecca. It's manipulative, seductive, compellingly characterized; Mrs. Danvers holds a particularly special place in my heart. This has been a favorite since I was in high school and rereads never disappoint.

( Somehow I assumed that I'd never reviewed this before, which is doubly untrue... )


Title: Golem
Author: David Wisniewski
Published: Clarion Books, 1996
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 369,090
Text Number: 1354
Read Because: mentioned n this discussion of scary Jewish children's books, but I finally picked it up because it came up in a Jacob Geller video; hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: It's difficult to imagine reading this in a group setting or to a child because the intricate papercuts demand to be poured over by one's own—they're claustrophobically dense and brutally crisp; the white core at the cut edges of intense red, orange, and brown paper almost feels like an aggressive sharpening filter. It defines the tone: things with are vast, sacred, awesome, unknowable, and mournful seen with too much clarity. What an experience! I'm always on the lookout for Jewish picture books(/Jewish picture book authors) and scary picture books, and this is a goldmine of both.


Title: Burnt Offerings
Author: Robert Marasco
Published: Valancourt Books, 2015 (1973)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 371,065
Text Number: 1363
Read Because: numerous mentions by Gothic Charm School, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Like many early and/or formative examples of a genre, this feels cliché in retrospect: a young urban family escapes the crowded city for a vast, decrepit summer home; the home consumes its occupants to sustain itself and revive its wealth and beauty, which is charmingly literal and elicits some great imagery, especially in the hum behind the occupied bedroom door and in the tedious but occasionally very effective level of material detail.

It doesn't compare to haunted houses I love more. The tension between the fear of being and the drive to be consumed by the home hinges on materialism but offers limited examination of class anxiety; and while it's natural that a haunted house must compel its inhabitants, there's just not enough autonomy for me to buy the ultimate surrenders. So thematically it's as trite as the premise: all the familiar components are there, but the examination isn't particularly diverse or robust. Nonetheless this grew on me as it went on; not a must-read for the genre, not a particular favorite, but satisfyingly adequate with some fun touches.

Sure am still writing reviews for books I read in February/March 2020!!!! Kudos to all y'all who managed your catchups and yearly wrap-ups at the beginning January, because it's taking me an age. But let it be a message to future-Juu: I will almost definitely get to those reviews someday, so I may as well take notes for them, which I did not do for Air Logic and then came to regret. TY to this Tor write-up which goes into enough depth about both plot and themes that I could pick out which memories and reactions belonged to that book in particular.

Star ratings are always meaningless, but especially for ambitious and longer works which will almost invariably attempt some things that fail—but which can attempt so much. This series is very much a "sum greater than its parts" experience in that regard, and warrants the recurring recommendations I've seen in my reading/online environment. Reading it carried me through (*pauses to google "when did lockdown start"*) the beginning of COVID, which is part of why I didn't find the energy to review it, but what a blessing to read then: it provides the escapism of a compelling secondary world and magic system, but it recognizes, engages, but doggedly finds hope in the face of cultural trauma, which I certainly needed at the time. And now.


Title: Fire Logic (Elemental Logic Book 1)
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Published: Small Beer Press, 2013 (2002)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 349,215
Text Number: 1263
Read Because: multiple recommendations, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is slow to start: the opening is long and disjointed, and finding the throughline (in the protagonist; in the setting) is a struggle. But once it gets going, it's ambitious and fascinating.

It does three things which are particularly interesting and mostly successful: 1) A trauma study that reminds me of Hartman's Tess of the Road, Cashore's Bitterblue, and Sweet's The Pattern Scars for the female protagonist and for a long, intimate, worldbuilding-engaged exploration of trauma recovery that makes a sometimes-flawed text so much greater than its limitations. (Thus it's even more disquieting that physical disability, while also present and meaningful, is given magical cures; this feels erasing and thematically discordant.) 2) Queer found family and slow-burn romance that dovetail with the above, echoing the long, slow investment in character that then supports the plot's larger issues of nations, histories, war. It feels like wish-fulfillment, but in a productive way. 3) A fascinating study of prophecy in fantasy, particularly the relationship between intuition vs./as prophetic insight: predicting the future becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's smart, organic, and thought-provoking; so, indeed, is the entire book.



Title: Earth Logic (Elemental Logic Book 2)
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Published: Small Beer Press, 2014 (2004)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 410
Total Page Count: 349,625
Text Number: 1264
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This picks up after a five-year timeskip that allows the relationships and society to progress at a reasonable pace, and it expands its focus from a central protagonist to her entire family. That feel-good core encompasses a larger and increasingly troubled/politically-ambiguous cast, building on the first book's successful balance between character-level investment and meaty worldbuilding. The magic I find less successful; it's bigger, more physical, which set against expetations built by the first book makes it feel metaphorical and thus (no pun intended) ungrounded.

But this sticks the landing—sticks it precisely when it seems it will falter: the political conflict differs from real-world analogs, and just when it seems to use its basis in fantasy to perpetuate tired equivalencies between the violence of oppressor and oppressed, it instead makes vocal, necessary space for anger and reparation. This series is good—not flawless, but it successfully balances its narrative elements and it approaches its themes with a persistent, thoughtful nuance. I may not have loved this as much as Fire Logic, but it's still satisfying.


Title: Water Logic (Elemental Logic Book 3)
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Published: Small Beer Press, 2007
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 330
Total Page Count: 349,955+400
Text Number: 1265
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A weak book in a strong series. It interweaves three plotlines in gimmicky, cliffhangery ways, and there's enough mirroring across plotlines to render the cliffhangers virtually interchangeable. I also continue to struggle with the elemental magics, which are increasingly concrete despite their figurative roots in the first book—and by this point that means literal time travel. In retrospect, I think it works: by the end of the series, the various branches of magic (and relationships between them) span figurative to literal, delineated to intuitive, creating a dynamic whole. I wonder if that impression will carry through to rereads and inform my future reactions to this book.

The overall strengths of the series persist, in particular its gradually expanding cast and scale underpinned by strong emotional investment. I particularly appreciate the ongoing insistence on cost (albeit continually undermined by the uncomfortable role of magical healing): the personal is political, and vice versa.


Title: Air Logic (Elemental Logic Book 4)
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Published: Small Beer Press, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 350,355
Text Number: 1266
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A satisfying book, which is a running theme of this series and especially important in the finale. And if some elements of the resolution are transparently satisfying and borderline feel-good, then it's earned that—in no small part because the journey there isn't easy. This is as plotty as Water Logic, but, though some plots spin sideways, better avoids narrative repetition. Reveals are rendered effective and antagonist characterization (particularly difficult with an evil mastermind) succeed based on the novel's central strength:

Air magic is beautifully realized. It meets the first and middle books halfway: as distinctly a personality, aptitude, and worldview as fire magic, but concrete and non-metaphorical in a way that encompasses the showy magic of earth and water. It makes the middle books more successful in retrospect and sells this book's plot. The personality-typing aspect of the magic system is linked to theme throughout the series, illustrating the diverse experiences of and solutions to cultural trauma; that air's logic creates conflicting but equally absolute worldviews epitomizes this and forces the resolution to find difficult solutions to complex problems. None of the sequels captured me in the same striking way as the first book, but the finale comes close to bringing things full circle—and what it encircles is original, thoughtful, indomitably nuanced, and hopeful. That outweighs intervening weaknesses.

( CW food. )

⁂

As I've mentioned, I've been borrowing video games from the library. The holds are long and the checkouts are 7-days, so only certain titles work and it creates a unique gameplay experience. It's perforce a title I'm not hugely invested in, something with a limited length, something not worth owning—but then I play the whole ~35 hour game in a week, with more focus and therefore immersion than I might give to a title I purchase and play for longer. I played Let's Go Eevee that way, which tbh is the only way to play the game. Most PKMN games are for me 200+ hours because I'm big into breeding and shiny hunting, but the central gimmick of Let's Go leans heavily towards overpowered single-Pokemon team and the shiny hunting mechanic is cute but the endgame is otherwise shallow; it's very much a 35 hour game.

And I just finished Super Mario Odyssey, which is my first Mario title! and which I only played because it has assist mode! which mitigates health management and largely does away with dying to void-outs. I love Nintendo's gentle/exploratory platforms but hate actual platforming because I can't spacial reasoning or operate under pressure, that's just not fun. So bless assist modes & may this be a thing in all future titles—it's never the wrong time to increase accessibility. 7 days were just enough time to do 500 stars worth of exploring with that satisfied feeling of every curiosity and corner offering a reward, and the due date came when I was hitting hard, unfun content I didn't want to play anyway.

I still contend that core franchise Mario titles are ugly AF with bad world aesthetics and (non-musical) sound design, and that the way gender issues are handled in the endgame cinematic is the worst of Nintendo's too little, too late methodology: something about the high-rez art style makes the forced marriage & objectification of Peach even more glaring, and you can't do that—play it straight, play it at length—for the entire game and then critique it in endgame and expect a cookie for your progressive vision. (The high-rez style also makes the cap-control mechanic feel weird, like ... it's an innately ridiculous game, I shouldn't be considering issues of consent and autonomy, and yet here we are.)

Petition that the next Mario title pulls a Metal Gear Solid 2, opening with Mario in the tutorial levels and then staring Peach for the entire rest of the game with no option to switch characters. Maybe she even rescues him, tbh I don't care. I hope the fanboys will be as mad about it as they were about MGS2.

⁂

The pattern of playing a lot of condensed game leads naturally to not playing almost anything afterward, to recover from burnout and rest my wrists. I've been reading a lot! Some very good books! But I'm fatally behind on reviews and honestly should be writing those right now, not this.

It's funny that after reading so much last year, I'm not burned out on books—just on writing about them. My reading distinctly hasn't been a passive thing, lately, in no small part because discovering OpenLibrary/the Internet Archive has made accessible some of those obscure feminist SFNal works which have been on my TBR for years and years. It's active, sometimes even combative reading, but that means I exhaust my reading-energy both in that engagement and at the mere thought of trying to write all of it down. Not writing reviews isn't an option for me, but as well as relearning the art of longer, messier reviews when a condensed one is impossible, I should also embrace the adage that anything worth doing is worth half-assing (rather than not doing at all) and just ... not write book reports, maybe even of things that deserve them.

⁂

Incredible and borderline-unmanageable spike in back pain over the last ~2 weeks. This flare is remarkable in part for its duration, which is generally a sign that it's not a flare but a new plateau in my fun experience with a degenerative condition. Also remarkable because it's been interfering with sleep, particularly waking me up after ~4 hours & sometimes making it impossible to go back to sleep. That combo is utterly terrifying. I already do seven million things manage pain for sleep, so there's nothing I can do to improve things; sleep is already hard because of my brainweird; poor sleep is a trigger for ... more pain.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

These plateaus are always worse when I'm still adjusting to them. In a few months, it'll be background noise, just ... noisier noise than the old noise. But when I frequently don't feel pain, only symptoms of pain—when the bar of "distressing" and "disabling" is constantly shifting upward to hover at whatever level of pain I've grown used to—it makes me wonder: what is a pain scale, objectively (is there such a thing as "objective"); where do I fall on it; when will I tip over to an un-adjustable level. I hope this isn't it.

Title: The Invasion (Animorphs Book 1)
Author: K.A. Applegate
Published: Scholastic, 1996
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 185
Total Page Count: 284,975
Text Number: 923
Read Because: reading the series
Review: This is a more robust beginning than I expected, establishing the series's premise and major worldbuilding, also the character dynamics, and it has a mini-conflict and climactic action scene. The writing is workman-like and telepathy makes for convenient infodumping, but these aren't bad things: they make it possible to cram a lot into a short book. And I'm surprised by how well I remembered it, given that I haven't touched this series in 20 years. It's a phenomenal combination of elements—the tension between body horror and wish-fulfillment; the distinct characters made emotionally accessible by morphing into animals (the seductiveness of an animal's mind is great; the scenes where characters pet other-characters-as-animals is even better).

I imagine my response to the sequels will frequently be "same! but with various additions/exceptions" and so I won't review them in this much detail. But this was a great start. I can see why I loved it as a kid, and I'm excited to read more now.


( The Visitor (Animorphs Book 2) )


( The Encounter (Animorphs Book 3) )


( The Message (Animorphs Book 4) )


( The Predator (Animorphs Book 5) )


On account of how there are 54 main + 10 side books in this series, and because they're short and I'm reading them in bursts, I'll post these reviews in groups of ~5 at a time. Some overarching thoughts on reading the series so far:

( Read more... )

Title: Dark Mirror (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Author: Diane Duane
Published: Pocket Books, 1993
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 340
Total Page Count: 248,595
Text Number: 794
Read Because: mentioned here, used paperback purchased from the Book Bin
Review: At the edge of the galaxy, the Enterprise is pulled into the mirror universe by its predatory counterpart. This is my first time reading a spin-off novel for any franchise, which can't help but color my experience; seeing a franchise adapted to text is as interesting as the story itself. A novel allows for significantly more interiority and infodumping. Of the latter there's plenty, not delivered with exceptional grace but building a more thorough view of the mirror universe, particularly its history; it feels somewhat reductionist, but given context perhaps it has to be, and it does satisfy the itch for more information. The interiority is welcome, and is most robust in Picard but especially Troi, whose double is the best developed and most compelling; this is where the concept graduates from the broad fear of one's own worst tendencies and develops into a conflicted admiration/jealousy/fear of the selves one might have been—especially interesting in a character so association with emotions as is Troi. I wish this pushed further, but it's a strong attempt.

Novel length also allows for subplots, and they're well-intended (especially the non-humanoid alien) but rarely compliment the larger narrative. The best minor addition is the downtime, the anxious waiting, the technical difficulties which would kill the pacing of an episode but here make the setting feel enjoyably realistic. It helps that I didn't have high expectations and that the sheer novelty is a selling point, because the quality here is just so-so—but the experience is engaging and gratifying; I'm surprised by how much I liked this.


Title: Geisha, A Life
Author: Mineko Iwasaki
Translator: Rande Brown
Published: Atria Books, 2002
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 248,915
Text Number: 795
Read Because: see Tumblr post linked below, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The autobiography of Mineko Iwasaki, the most famous geisha in Japan until her sudden retirement at the height of her career. This is written partially in response to Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha (although it never says so directly); as such, it's made accessible to a foreign audience and does much to explain the controversy surrounding Memoirs, particularly the liberties that book takes with Iwasaki's life story, as well as the way it elides geisha and prostitution. This is also a memoir in its own right. Iwasaki relies heavily on anecdotes; her memory is precise, her language evocative, her personality changeable and occasionally smug. She simultaneously loves and criticizes the hierarchical social structure, restrictiveness, skill, artistry, and effort that contribute to a geisha's craft, particularly as interacts with gender and as it has failed to change with the times; her experience and opinions are fervent and complex. This throughline isn't as solid as it could be—in particular, it wants for a stronger conclusion, perhaps an argument about what she believes the future of geisha should look like. But it's a compelling effort, and especially valuable in a world where Memoirs of a Geisha is such a problematic and popular text.

(I wrote a relatively popular, v. shitty review of Memoirs of a Geisha back in the day that will! never! die!, but had still never read this important response to it (despite having provided it as recommended reading), so I finally corrected the issue. I wrote about that trash fire, and some more immediate and emotional reactions to Geisha, A Life, here on my Tumblr, crossposted below.)

( Read more... )


Title: Henry VI Part 3
Author: William Shakespeare
Published: 1595
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 100
Total Page Count: 249,015
Text Number: 796
Read Because: co-read with my mother
Review: The link this makes between personal, selfish, revenge-driven motives and the futility and pain of a civil war creates a solid, well-rounded thematic center which is echoed in the best scenes, including Rutland's murder, the King with the father/son murders, and Richard's fantastic speeches. I wonder if I would have enjoyed this so much if I weren't familiar with & looking forward to Richard III, because he was absolutely my favorite thing about this play, but he's a great character regardless. The momentum, language, and thematic consistency in this play reminds me of the better, later Shakespeare plays with which I'm more familiar; a solidly enjoyable experience.

Title: Season of Storms (Witcher Book 8)
Author: Andrzej Sapkowski
Translator: fan translation
Published: superNOWA, 2013
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 218,085
Text Number: 661
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After the short stories and before the other novels, Geralt goes on a quest to recover his stolen swords. Insofar as the best part of the series is Ciri, and Ciri is not here present, this is something of a letdown. There's plenty of nods to central characters and plot, but this story feels both less urgent and heartfelt. It's almost prosaic: somewhere between comedy of errors/slice of life/travelogue, the daily life of a Witcher down on his luck, resembling the short story collections more than the novels. That setup allows Geralt's personality to shine through and he is, as always, a delight; the Witcher setdressing is present, the subplots are successful, and there's even some profound, if coy, worldbuilding in the frame narrative. But without the interpersonal relationships that made me care about this series, I came away underwhelmed.

I was chatting with Devon about the Witcher series and mentioned offhand that there are eight books, the two short story collections, the five novels, and the... —and then I realized that I had never reviewed this later prequel, never even written notes for it; granted, I read it late last December, when I was reading less and a lot of my reviews got delayed, but the fact that I entirely forgot this book says something about it, I suppose.


Title: Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire Book 1)
Author: Yoon Ha Lee
Published: Solaris, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 218,470
Text Number: 662
Read Because: co-read with Teja, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An infantry solider named Cheris is selected to host Jedao, a long-dead traitor and brilliant general, in order to combat a heretical uprising. This has the inconsistent, piecemeal feel of a first novel: the beginning is almost deliberately obtuse (coming in familiar with the author's short fiction makes the style and worldbuilding more accessible, but patience serves just as well) where later sections are over-explained. But the experience entire is a remarkable journey. Math-as-calendar/-as-technology/-as-society is an engaging high concept, but the system's limitations and complicated cultural effects are what make it convincing. Lee's voice is an intense sensory experience, with evocative and alien synesthetic descriptions. The interpersonal relationships remind me of CJ Cherryh's uniquely implicit/explicit dynamics, where everything is tersely understated but functions on an intense, tropey level. The format, especially as a series opener, reminds me of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch: it introduces an entire world and has a satisfying arc, but is obviously the first part of a longer battle.

I enjoyed Lee's short fiction, but also found it frustrating because iteration and length limitations turned otherwise fantastic voice and concepts into repetitive worldbuilding. His first novel is everything I hoped for. The same techniques and themes are here, but they're given more space and elaboration. It's distinctive, fulfilling, and fully realized. I recommend it, and look forward to the sequels.

A pair of quotes, for posterity; I adore the language, the weird math-fantasy-science, how unsettling and evocative and strange it all is.

( Read more... )


Title: Home (Binti Book 2)
Author: Nnedi Okrafor
Published: Tor, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 175
Total Page Count: 218,645
Text Number: 663
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: One year after the events of the first book, Binti makes a pilgrimage home. I enjoyed the first novella in this series, but wanted more from it, specifically more complexity. This is more. It's as vivid, with equally satisfying character growth (these books would make fantastic movies, they're subplot-free and just the right length, and the world is so engaging) but Binti is working between points of intense, unpretty emotional conflict, and her cultural background is rendered with increasing complexity—it's a more complicated, difficult story. But unlike the first book, which is complete almost to its detriment, this one ends at the conclusion of Binti's character arc and leaves the plot with a cliffhanger; I'd've preferred a finished, novel-length work. But I still enjoyed and recommend it, and will read the next installment.

Title: Queen Victoria's Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy
Editors: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Published: New York: Tor, 2013
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 352
Total Page Count: 161,211
Text Number: 471
Read Because: fan of the editors, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: 18 Gaslamp stories, about the supernatural, otherworldly, and fantastic in or concerning Victorian England. Collections like these are worth reading for Windling's introductions alone—they're lovingly crafted, insightful overviews from someone who's spent a lifetime studying fantasy fiction. Unfortunately, Queen Victoria's Book of Spells doesn't quite live up to that introduction: the intent is there, but the stories frequently fail to reflect contemporary fantasy elements (there's a remarkable lack of fairies!) and, while many touch on the industrial revolution, few use the fantastic both to express anxiety and seek escapism on account. Still, the overall quality is high and the collection is flawlessly edited. There's a good balance of grim historical accuracy (Schanoes's "Phosphorus," with its memorable descriptions of phossy jaw, was my collection favorite) lightened by fantasy of manners-touched frivolity (Kushner and Stevermer's epistolary "The Vital Importance of the Superficial" has a lovely voice); there's a few failures, but they're largely redeemed by their placement—like the irony of Blaylock's curmudgeonly "Smithfield" counterpointed by Hieber's much more complex "Charged." Datlow and Windling are practiced editors, and this is another successful collection—thematically strong, varied, above average in quality. Still, it only met and failed to exceed my expectations.

I'm waiting on posting a book review (that book review, requested by the book's author) until I run it by Devon—I read things aloud to myself to proof them, but reading them aloud to someone else always catches a lingering typo, and even if he doesn't give much feedback his general thumbs up is the final reassurance I need that I'm not, indeed, talking out of my bum, but that I have something useful to say. But for all of that, I'm surprisingly unpanicked about this review—or else worrying over it for the last few days has exhausted my stores of panic. It's hard to balance expectations against experience, and I've been self-doubting my own feelings lately (more on that in a paragraph or two), so I worried for a while whether my judgement of the book was authentic—or if it was the product of, or defiance of, expectations. Having typed and edited the thing, though—no, I think it's just about right.

In the meantime: Devon and I are officially sick. It's little sick, not big sick—a head cold mostly that's causing sore throat and stuffiness for us both. His comes on the heels of allergies and with a general propensity towards congestion; mine comes after about a week of pain, back and neck, bad enough that I took Tramadol last Friday (man, was that a good Friday), which is causing some general stiffness and muscle aches. But all in all, a little sick: stretching helps my muscles a lot (rest unfortunately makes everything worse, especially my neck), and I expect it won't last more than a few days more. I'm oddly cheered to know we are, indeed, sick, and that his allergies aren't coinciding with my physical misery. My spine has been hellish lately, so hellish as to lead to insomnia and depression; knowing that I have a head cold rather than further complications of back problems leading to sleep problems leading to full-body malaise is, in the way that bad news can be good news, a comfort.

Up until today I had brewing a post about wellness as defined by the slightly-unwell, a post which I think I'll trash rather than bring to fruition. Taking Tramadol puts my worldview into strange contrast and tends to bring out these thoughts in me—but because I've taken it before, and because I've recently been coming out of another depressive cycle, I've done plenty of thinking and writing on such issues lately. It's ground that's been recently trod; walking it again is unlikely to take me to any new destinations. Suffice it to say I've been having another crisis of worldview and belief-in-self: I have been pained, and concurrently depressed, and spending much of that experience contemplating the fact that I even as I dismiss my own problems as normal, therefore unexceptional, and I can realize that what I view as "normal" has a surprising tolerance for physical discomfort and mental suffering; furthermore I'm constantly convinced that those issues, both physical and mental, are probably fictional anyway—small complaints turned to great misery by a combination of self-indulgence and self-pity (and a hope that others will pity me too). Same old, same old, sad to say; worth mentioning mostly for my own records.

I still plan to get out of the house tomorrow, because moving does help my muscles and being upright helps clear my head, so activity may cure this cold better than rest. It's odd to be sick—because I get out rarely, I get sick rarely. The knowledge that I am is almost alien.

Something I realized while writing my last review: when I call a book "a pleasure to read" it means more than just those words alone. The opening line of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (which is one of my brain-books, one of the works of fiction which I can point to and say: me) is "It was a pleasure to burn." To reverse that line is, for me, a weighty concept and high praise. It indicate a book worth consuming, containing, holding within oneself; a book worth saving from the flames.

As we may all have noticed, I've been reading a lot lately. I'm still playing SL, and multitasking the two isn't easy, but it's worth it—because I've pledged to read only good books.

No, really.

This month I read some truly beautiful books, including some books by Kiernan, Valente's incredible Palimpsest and a book she recommended. And I read some that were simply mediocre—but after those brilliant novels, they felt worse than that: they felt like a waste of time. My to be read list is pretty damn long and spans all sorts of books and genres, but it included a fair number of novels which I wrote down for a good reason, but ultimately do not intrigue me. Sometimes those books are pleasant surprises, but more often my whim is a better guide than my sense of obligation. Fledging fascination doesn't always leads to a wonderful read, but often it does, and sometimes, like Valente's novels, or Kiernan's; like The Story of O, Sharp Teeth, Maledicte, those books which call to me end up being, in a word, perfect.

And so to hell with obligation, to hell with the books which I hear are decent or may be interesting. I went through my TBR list, I crossed off the maybe-sos, and I filled it instead with books which intrigue me. The lore of mythpunk. The politicking of fantasy of manners. Books mentioned here, glimpsed there, brain-making books and fantasy books and barely-reviewed books and books which look to be beautiful. Some of them will disappoint me—I don't doubt that. But some of them will be wonderful, some of them have already been wonderful, and I am so excited to read.

Along the same line: if you want to recommend a book, a truly wonderful and amazing book, I'm always looking to add to my TBR list.

In somewhat more mundane book-news, I've gone back and tagged my book reviews as recommended/not recommended. My reviews are indexed here; here are recommended books and the not recommended books; they are also tagged on my Amazon profile. "Recommended" doesn't indicate the best of the best, but it does include those, and may make it easier to browse my reviews. (For those curious, there are 141 recommended to 50 not recommended, which surprised me. Some of those recommendations, however, are rather unenthusiastic.)