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A messy but enjoyable book about robots, grief, and memory set in a post-war unified Korea.
The plot, pacing, and characters meandered a bit too much for my taste, but it was made up for by the texture in the world and its threads of philosophy. I do also love a story that is engaging with both disability and transness through the lens of robots and robotics.
The robot understands that how we love isn’t divine. It is meager, selfish, exquisitely cruel. Think of any time a war erupts—who among us would not sacrifice the lives of many to save the one person we love?
— Luminous by Silvia Park
Luminous: 100/100
Luminous is a book about death, loss, and self-loathing, told via the universal medium of robots.
I love the way the connections between the lives of the different characters are gradually revealed as the story unfolds. I also really appreciate the complexity and depth of the characters, even when they seen stereotypical seen from one angle.
The author wrote in the acknowledgements that she started out to write a children's book and kind of got derailed by personal circumstances into this thing that is much darker and more complex, but I'm very glad she did, Luminous is extremely good.
Luminous: 100/100
Luminous is a book about death, loss, and self-loathing, told via the universal medium of robots.
I love the way the connections between the lives of the different characters are gradually revealed as the story unfolds. I also really appreciate the complexity and depth of the characters, even when they seen stereotypical seen from one angle.
The author wrote in the acknowledgements that she started out to write a children's book and kind of got derailed by personal circumstances into this thing that is much darker and more complex, but I'm very glad she did, Luminous is extremely good.
PLEASE LEAVE YOUR ROBOTS OUTSIDE. ROBOTS, NOT HAVING A SOUL, ARE UNABLE TO WORSHIP GOD AND HAVE NO PLACE IN THE CHURCH.
— Luminous by Silvia Park
new instance rules
You know Dad doesn’t do autocabs or auto-anything. And his driver’s license expired a gazillion years ago.
— Luminous by Silvia Park
this is going to be my kids talking about me
When it was still active and nimble, it was a house of horrors from whose impenetrable womb wave after wave of bladed robots would emerge, whipping through the air, keen to slice and beep and blow.
— Luminous by Silvia Park
That summer was immortal.
— Luminous by Silvia Park
Three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this eerie multigenerational horror …
This was on the #SFFBookClub poll but never got picked.
The Bewitching is three intertwined stories that all revolve around witchcraft. In 1998, struggling grad student Minerva is researching Beatrice Tremblay who wrote a novel the Vanishing roughly based on the disappearance of her friend Virginia. The second thread is that Minerva gets a chance to read Beatrice's journals, and so we hear Beatrice's perspective of mysterious and traumatic events of 1934. The final thread is Minerva's great-grandmother Alba who tells Minerva a story on her deathbed about events from her childhood in 1908.
At night the three of them talked on ICQ about meaningless and profound topics.
I am a sucker for parallel stories, but I especially love how rooted each of these different narratives are in highly specific times and places.
As a horror story, the pacing reminded me a lot of …
This was on the #SFFBookClub poll but never got picked.
The Bewitching is three intertwined stories that all revolve around witchcraft. In 1998, struggling grad student Minerva is researching Beatrice Tremblay who wrote a novel the Vanishing roughly based on the disappearance of her friend Virginia. The second thread is that Minerva gets a chance to read Beatrice's journals, and so we hear Beatrice's perspective of mysterious and traumatic events of 1934. The final thread is Minerva's great-grandmother Alba who tells Minerva a story on her deathbed about events from her childhood in 1908.
At night the three of them talked on ICQ about meaningless and profound topics.
I am a sucker for parallel stories, but I especially love how rooted each of these different narratives are in highly specific times and places.
As a horror story, the pacing reminded me a lot of her previous book Mexican Gothic. There's a slow foreshadowing of creeping horror where things are going slightly awry (or maybe it's coincidence). And then, very late, there is a mask off moment where it's explicit what is happening. Having three intertwined stories that each have their own arc of tension only makes this stronger.
Content warning the navigating fox plot discussion / spoilers
@Tak@gush.taks.garden Reading between the lines, my conclusions were: Quintus was (probably) made by Toosa who taught Quintus about the roads, since multiverse Toosa is there right at Quintus's first moments of self-consciousness. I think it's possible that Quintus was traveling the roads prior to meeting Toosa as well. Toosa also made Cynthia promise to save Quintus (which happens off-page, right?), which also makes me feel like Toosa was in the know about the future (which lines up with the old/young Toosa appearance earlier). Maybe I'd guess that the "why" of Quintus was something around sabotaging the resurrection plan to thwart the incursion of the empire somewhat? That's what I got.
Quintus Shu'al is the world's only navigating fox. He's also in disgrace after leading an …
Content warning the navigating fox plot discussion / spoilers
I respect that so many things were left ambiguous: Quintus's origin, what's happening with the Empress, how did Quintus and Cynthia's crew come to their understanding, etc. - but maybe some of them could have been resolved? just one?
Quintus Shu'al is the world's only navigating fox. He's also in disgrace after leading an …
Whew, the ending felt so sudden I think I hurt something.
The Navigating Fox is like a thousand-page fantasy epic crammed into 150 pages. It's super well written, and the setting is great and I want more, particularly the Northern Membership - although I could stand to go a few days without reading the word "knowledgeable". Now give me the thousand-page edition. 😀
Whew, the ending felt so sudden I think I hurt something.
The Navigating Fox is like a thousand-page fantasy epic crammed into 150 pages. It's super well written, and the setting is great and I want more, particularly the Northern Membership - although I could stand to go a few days without reading the word "knowledgeable". Now give me the thousand-page edition. 😀
Even more sweeping and heart-wrenching than its 2015 prequel, The Monster Baru Cormorant is the …
She was not thinking like an Oriati, the people who for decades had been tricked and exploited by the Masquerade. What could you do to resist that trickery? You could stop acting in what seemed to be your own calculated self-interest. You could avoid doing what was necessary, because then Falcrest could manipulate you by changing the terms of necessity. You could focus, instead, on basic goodness, an inflexible moral code: be honest, be kind, be charitable. Was goodness still good if you hewed to it out of tactical necessity? Was there, Baru wondered, any difference between being good and pretending to be good for your own gain, if you took the same actions in the end? Was there any difference between telling the truth unconditionally, and deploying the truth in service of your agenda, if you told the same truth? Maybe the Oriati thought so. Maybe the difference between truth-for-itself and tactical truth was the only difference that mattered. Maybe the most crucial and subtle distinction in life was the difference between someone who was truly good and someone playing at goodness to gain power. Could she distinguish those two tendencies in herself?
— The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade, #2)
(Oriati are peaceful people with a thousand year history and a much larger population. Falcrest/the Masquerade is the up-and-coming, aggressive empire. East/southeast/south(?) asia history inspired setting.)
This series has its flaws, but I really like what it teaches about imperial conquest. And it's riveting.
(Oriati are peaceful people with a thousand year history and a much larger population. Falcrest/the Masquerade is the up-and-coming, aggressive empire. East/southeast/south(?) asia history inspired setting.)
This series has its flaws, but I really like what it teaches about imperial conquest. And it's riveting.
Quintus Shu'al is the world's only navigating fox. He's also in disgrace after leading an …
"I am curious as to how one ends a concept," she replied.
Scipio Aemilanus was standing next to the little fire of dried dung some humans of the Membership had built. Shadows and light played across his features.
"By force," he said.
Quintus Shu'al is the world's only navigating fox. He's also in disgrace after leading an …
The Navigating Fox is a novella that feels like a piece of a larger novel that's been extracted, loose threads and all. Or, maybe it's just uninterested in filling in all the details and giving explicit answers. I wish this story had been a novel to give it space to stretch its wings.
The best part of this book is all of the worldbuilding details. I love the idea of animals that have been given voices and are now knowledgeable (and self-conscious). I love the various societies and their interactions with an overseas empire that has started extending into the land of this novella. I loved the ideas of how a society that treats animals as people would need to operate. There's just so much going on here in the margins of this book over a core parallel telling of two journeys.
One thing my partner always says …
The Navigating Fox is a novella that feels like a piece of a larger novel that's been extracted, loose threads and all. Or, maybe it's just uninterested in filling in all the details and giving explicit answers. I wish this story had been a novel to give it space to stretch its wings.
The best part of this book is all of the worldbuilding details. I love the idea of animals that have been given voices and are now knowledgeable (and self-conscious). I love the various societies and their interactions with an overseas empire that has started extending into the land of this novella. I loved the ideas of how a society that treats animals as people would need to operate. There's just so much going on here in the margins of this book over a core parallel telling of two journeys.
One thing my partner always says about writing is that he doesn't need every detail spelled out, but he has to believe that the author knows these things. This is all to say that this not a book to read for a strong sense of closure, even if you can read between some lines. It feels coherent overall to me, but with a lot more loose threads than I had expected going in.
Quintus Shu'al is the world's only navigating fox. He's also in disgrace after leading an …
A faraway look came to the wiry man's eyes. "My most important role, good navigator, is to march to the entryway to the underworld, close the gates of Hell, and end death forever."
So, this time, he was to accompany me. This time he wanted me to take him to Hell.
