I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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"Ambitious and immersive...an elegantly told meditation on how we can’t leave ourselves behind." -Esquire Magazine …
“Generation ship novel in verse” - this is either going to be incredible or go down in flames, and I want to find out. #SFFBookClub
The Empires of Varkal and Med’ariz have always been at war.
Alefret, the founder of …
The review in www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g60078949/best-sci-fi-books-2024/ makes this sound amazing.
Content warning some major spoilers
It took me a long time to pick this book up because even though Kingdom of Copper left me wanting more, the sheer size of this tome was intimidating. And the end of Kingdom of Copper was so bleak that I knew there would be some rough things ahead.
In the end, the hardest reading by far were the chapters from Dara's perspective. On the one hand because of a sense that he really was trapped, over and over again, until finally figuring out how to break out. On the other, because they are ultimately the self-justifications of a war criminal. That probably makes them even harder reading today than they were when the book came out, but it also makes them particularly important to face up to today. And I think one of the really powerful things Chakraborty does with this series is to face up to various different ways people use their convictions to justify atrocious things to themselves.
I loved the Ali-Nahri interplay, watching Muntadhir grow into a more three-dimensional person, and getting some portrayal of Rustam. I also appreciated how even though he doesn't appear in the book, the character of Ghassan gets fleshed out more by peoples' recollections of and reactions to him. The book left me simultaneously more disgusted with him and more empathetic towards him, which is quite a feat.
At the same time it did have some parts I found distractingly clunky. Just like the middle of City of Brass, the climactic battle feels too Marvel movie for my taste - it could have done with being a little less turned up to 11, less breathless, and less impossible feeling. Every time the peri have appeared in this series they've felt like a too-convenient deus ex machina, and I think the author found herself having to do that because she painted herself into corners with the impossibility of odds against Nahri. By the end, Manizheh had turned from a sympathetic villain into rather too much of a cartoon. And Dara's resolution was a bit too neat, though I did appreciate how the bonus material at the end complicates that some.
But this was still a satisfying end to a series I have loved.
@picklish@books.theunseen.city I loved this book as I read it, and it's been continuing to grow on me since. It's also definitely the book I've recommended to the most other people this year.
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions …
This is one of a few books we've read for #SFFBookClub that consists of a series of ostensibly separate stories which collectively build one world. I loved the quietly unsettling mood of a lot of the stories, and actually enjoyed how much the author keeps the reader guessing until about half way through the book. But the two stories--one about halfway through, one near the end--which do the most explicit explaining ended up doing too much of that for my taste. I think a certain amount of tying things together was needed, but making things too neat was a bit of a loss, and the big picture story doesn't work as well for me as all the facets in the individual chapters.
Freshly translated poems reveal the complexity, self-realization, and spiritual freedom of three classical Daoist women …
Interesting selections, beautifully rendered in English, with a lot of helpful contextual material and annotations. Every now and then the annotations get a bit much, but more often they genuinely added to my enjoyment of the poetry.
In this an enthralling Filipino-inspired epic fantasy, a nun concealing a goddess-given gift is unwillingly …
I had a lot of fun tearing through this book. At first I felt like it was a bit too directly "colonised Philippines but with magic" to be interesting fantasy, but in the end Buba used the magical elements to really bring out the clash of two religions and cultures in a powerful, interesting way.
#SFFBookClub September, which I'll pick up after finishing outside.ofa.dog/book/178751/s/i-am-the-dark-that-answers-when-you-call because it took me longer to get hold of a copy of this one.
Rimonim is a richly woven tapestry of poetry meant for use. From a time of …
In a year in which it's been extremely difficult to value or engage with my own culture, this book has been one of the few things I've felt able to connect to. It's one person's approach to drawing out all that is beautiful, nurturing, and life-affirming in Judaism, and explicitly rejecting all the ways our tradition gets used to defend evil. I needed it so very much, and ended up sending copies to a couple of dear friends.
been looking forward to this one...
Content warning spoilers
@Tak@reading.taks.garden I just finished this yesterday and was thinking about similar things. It doesn't have the obvious set up for a sequel that I'm used to in first books of series, but there is the clear hint of "Codicía won't leave Aynila alone", and as you say by far the more interesting part is how damaged every surviving character is.
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions …
#SFFBookClub August
There is a sense in which this book is "Spirit Island: The Novel". But as I type that I realise how snarky it sounds, and I don't actually mean that as criticism. #SFFBookClub
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
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.
