I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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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.
#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.
For fans of Emily St. John Mandel and Kelly Link, a profoundly imaginative debut novel …
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.
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …
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.
‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, then I began to think, …
el dang
boosted
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."
@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.
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
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)
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
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 …
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!
