A few chapters further in and I'm enjoying this a lot more. I think it front-loaded a lot of zoomed-out worldbuilding, which is not the most interesting part of the book. Now it's much more a story of a few characters in that context, and the magic aspect is being developed in a way that adds more than I thought it would at first. #SFFBookClub
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I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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el dang started reading Saints of Storm and Sorrow by Gabriella Buba
In this an enthralling Filipino-inspired epic fantasy, a nun concealing a goddess-given gift is unwillingly …
#SFFBookClub July.
One chapter in I'm a bit frustrated with how transparently it's a skin on the colonised Philippines--if it stays this literal I'll end up wishing I were reading a straight historical novel instead of fantasy--but there are some interesting ideas here that I'm hoping the author will start to play more freely with.
el dang reviewed In Universes by Emet North
For fans of Emily St. John Mandel and Kelly Link, a profoundly imaginative debut novel …
A fascinating fractal
5 stars
This is the book version of the theme-and-variations composition structure used in classical music and sometimes techno. The first chapter is a lovely and sad story in its own right; it almost feels like what Chekhov might have come up with if he'd been writing with today's gender and sexuality sensibility. Each thereafter takes mostly the same set of characters but with progressively larger twists - at first it's very much "what if protagonist had made a different choice at this key moment?", but it gradually shades over into wilder sci-fi speculations.
Strangely, it was the wilder variations that really made the book click for me. Before things got really weird I was starting to question how the book was going to sustain interest for 11 chapters, but North answered that question very effectively. I don't think it would have worked to go directly to those, the smaller variations feel …
This is the book version of the theme-and-variations composition structure used in classical music and sometimes techno. The first chapter is a lovely and sad story in its own right; it almost feels like what Chekhov might have come up with if he'd been writing with today's gender and sexuality sensibility. Each thereafter takes mostly the same set of characters but with progressively larger twists - at first it's very much "what if protagonist had made a different choice at this key moment?", but it gradually shades over into wilder sci-fi speculations.
Strangely, it was the wilder variations that really made the book click for me. Before things got really weird I was starting to question how the book was going to sustain interest for 11 chapters, but North answered that question very effectively. I don't think it would have worked to go directly to those, the smaller variations feel needed for the coherency of the whole, but I loved the effect of the whole set together.
el dang reviewed The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …
A delightful read, with a bit of a frustrating ending
4 stars
Content warning Vague discussion of ending
I loved this book as I read it. It probably helps that I identified with bits of the [unnamed but clearly an authorial self-insert] narrator/protagonist's experiences from before the book started; more on that in a moment. But it's also an entertaining story, and very engagingly written - many chapters had me laughing out loud at key moments even though the book's in no way a comedy overall.
Much of the book feels like a very sharp criticism of British society--I identified strongly with the narrator's endless experiences of people putting their assumptions over her experience, and needing to remind her that she doesn't quite fit in--and of the government / civil service's overconfidence in its own intrinsic goodness. In the face of that it was at times frustrating seeing the protagonist be so deeply invested in the Ministry and her job standing in it, but if I take a more critical eye to myself it becomes easy to understand as a reaction to that never quite being allowed to fit in. That part cut deep for me personally.
I also appreciated how much the book is also a lockdown story. I've been grumbling lately about how little art I've encountered that seems to process the covid pandemic and the experience of lockdowns in retrospect. And here came this book, clearly using the roommates-in-hiding portion of its arc to work through some feelings about that experience. More of this please!
The ending felt... not exactly too neat in that it does leave some ambiguity, but too abrupt. It felt like most of the story proceeded at a fairly comfortable pace, and then suddenly the author felt a need to bring it to a close with a sharp turn.
el dang wants to read I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, Sophie Mackintosh
‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, …
el dang
boosted
reading tofu quoted Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body …
"How would your dispose of a body so it wouldn't be found?"
I'm not the public library feed, Senior Officer, go do your own research. I said, "If I told you, then you might find all the bodies I've already disposed of."
el dang replied to Another Hopeful Fool's status
@BEZORP@books.theunseen.city Enjoying it a lot so far, not really far enough in yet to know if it's going to stay this much fun. I'm a little wary--especially when it's a somewhat hyped book--that it might be just fireworks and not quite sustain the interest. Looking forward to finding out.
el dang quoted The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …
I should say that my face does a good impression of whiteness, late-entering or not. I didn't know how to tell [minor spoiler redacted] that I'd been tricking him, feature by feature. I wasn't sure I was ready to. He'd made, as people do, an assumption about me that left me room to maneuver. Later, when he found out the truth--as people do--he'd be unbalanced by his own mistake. Another person's unguardedness in that moment can be very useful, interpersonally, as long as you don't soften.
— The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Page 27)
"But you don't look Turkish..." #SFFBookClub
el dang quoted The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …
"Your mother was a refugee, wasn't she?" she said, which is a demented way to begin a job interview.
— The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Page 4)
el dang commented on The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …
Chapter 1 thoughts: I'm charmed by this so far, but waiting to see how it turns into a whole story. Every page feels thoroughly quotable, and I'm finding I have a lot to identify with in the narrator character who is very clearly a self-insert by the author, so that biases me in the book's favour.
Also, the physical book itself is an unusually nice artefact for a modern book. This publisher evidently cares how the paper feels in the hand, and I appreciate that. #SFFBookClub
el dang started reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what …
Security expert Dora left her anarchist commune over safety concerns. But when her ex-girlfriend Kay …
Short, tense thriller
5 stars
This is a tightly focussed that tells one story from one character's perspective, against a background of a much bigger collapse that doesn't really get discussed. I think that focus is one of its strengths, at the same time as I'd love to see the same story through the eyes of a couple of the other characters in it.
Wasserstein also uses the story as a vehicle for some trans parent trauma catharsis, by way of a character who is the sum of every bad parental reaction to a child coming out as trans. It also pokes a bit at the tensions between anarchist commune idealism and practice, and at the simple truth that one's clone would still be their own person. Which is a lot to pack in to a novella!
el dang wants to read The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …
#SFFBookClub May
el dang reviewed Showa 1926–1939 by Shigeru Mizuki
"First volume of Shigeru Mizuki's meticulously researched historical portrait of twentieth century Japan. This volume …
Taught me a lot, beautifully drawn, at times confusing
4 stars
Well, I was wondering if this would be a quick read because manga or slow because of the heaviness of the material. Quick won out, though it certainly is very heavy material.
It's two stories interwoven: Mizuki's personal memoir (this volume is from early childhood - young adulthood), and the history of Japan. He's a great storyteller, and the art is beautifully done. At times he editorialises explicitly, and at times intentionally lays off passing judgement. In the middle of the book this was confusing, but by the end I felt like I could understand the editorial choices he was making. It comes across as a very compassionate way to tell stories that in the end he is clearly horrified by--both the politics and some of his behaviour as a kid.
The personal memoir + history book work better together than I'd have expected in this volume. My reservations were …
Well, I was wondering if this would be a quick read because manga or slow because of the heaviness of the material. Quick won out, though it certainly is very heavy material.
It's two stories interwoven: Mizuki's personal memoir (this volume is from early childhood - young adulthood), and the history of Japan. He's a great storyteller, and the art is beautifully done. At times he editorialises explicitly, and at times intentionally lays off passing judgement. In the middle of the book this was confusing, but by the end I felt like I could understand the editorial choices he was making. It comes across as a very compassionate way to tell stories that in the end he is clearly horrified by--both the politics and some of his behaviour as a kid.
The personal memoir + history book work better together than I'd have expected in this volume. My reservations were about the combo of hindsight and childhood stories specifically (as opposed to vol 2 which will clearly be that much more personal), but the childhood stuff ends up illustrating the social atmosphere in interesting ways. My one complaint is that the timeline jumps around in ways that make sense for the personal story, but at times make the history hard to follow. Probably if I had been less clueless about Japanese history before reading this it would have been less distracting.
I'm very glad I read this, both for the enjoyment and to start filling a big hole in my knowledge. I'm looking forward to getting hold of vol 2.
@mouse@bookwyrm.social Had couches not been invented yet?