Reviews and Comments

Just sharing Enne's set of CWs for this book from weirder.earth/@picklish/111701657327009106 because hashtags still seem to only partially work between Mastodon and Bookwyrm:

"I wanted to pass on content warnings for: suicide, pandemic, climate change, death, euthanasia, animal experimentation, body horror, despair" #SFFBookClub

I just noticed that I've added a translation to bookwyrm even though I'm reading it in English. More importantly, in today's reading group we realised that there are at times quite large differences between the 1818 and 1831 texts, and decided we're going to stick to the 1831 one, which conveniently is what Standard Ebooks used.

I like how with the 1831 introduction this is a story within a story within a story: Frankenstein's story within Robert Walton's tale of how he found Victor Frankenstein, within Shelley's own frame story about being stuck in the Alps with Lord Byron in the notorious Year Without A Summer.

From the one chapter I've read so far I can tell this is going to be a lot heavier than the last couple of things I've read. Promising start, though. #SFFBookClub

I continue to love the Murderbot series. By this point, the action parts have lost impact because there's too much precedent for how they're going to turn out, so I think it's wise of Wells to play that part down a bit in this book, in favour of a story more about persuasion and trust building. And the ongoing saga of Murderbot learning about both its limits and capabilities continues to be one of the most relatable arcs in SF/F.

This fell off the #SFFBookClub poll because it didn't seem to grab other peoples' interest, but I am still intrigued.

Between the cover and the scene descriptions the author had trailed on Mastodon, I was expecting this book to be mostly gore. What I actually found on reading is that it's mostly a story of a very relatable character suffering in the isolation of having to be twice as good and still never fitting in due to everyone else's racism. With some very hard-to-read descriptions of just how brutal the competition of a top ballet school is, and frankly easier-to-read interludes of supernatural gore, all of which serve the human story.

It's also beautifully written, with the protagonist's internal conflict carrying through, and a lot of confusion about other characters' relationships and motives that feels like the confusion I would be experiencing in the protagonist/narrator's shoes rather than any flaw in the telling.

As straight storytelling, the climactic scene is preposterous, but as a continuation of the emotional rollercoaster up to that point it works perfectly.

I wasn't expecting this book to be my kind of thing, and now I can't wait for Shea's next one.

This book is doing a fantastic job of capturing a very relatable tension between the protagonist's genuine, hard-won defiance and a certain amount of lying to herself in trying to deny how much it hurts.

This is a set of stories-within-a-story, which are their best are very entertaining and vivid. But as another #SFFBookClub mentioned, I think it would have worked a lot better as a series of separate stories. In trying to pull it all together as one person's adventures, Nimr ended up making a lot of the dramas resolve too quickly and neatly to maintain interest, and the ending manages to be simultaneously too neat and unresolved.

This one's gonna be a slow read through, reading aloud with a group of friends an hour a week.

DNF. Until I hit the super antisemitic bit, I was wavering between "I don't really care about the story" and "but each page is fun to read", and... it's not fun any more. I didn't even decide not to continue, I just haven't felt like it.

Oh, so that's where the antisemitism I saw another review mention is waiting. And it's not just the sort of casual BS I sadly expect from 19th Century goy authors, it's a character with no name other than "the [disgusting | ugly | insert other insult here] Jew", whose ugliness is mentioned every page for a while, and appears to "own" a young actress. Also, a Shakespeare impresario who the character can't imagine could possibly actually appreciate Shakespeare rather than just seeing money to be made, because that would be too human.

There's a lot to unpack here about whether it's Wilde telling us how he really feels or not, given that he puts a lot of obvious nonsense in the mouths of his characters. But I'm not sure I have the energy and I might just bounce. Partly because I think I need to not keep running into [epithet Jew] right now, and partly because I'm a bit frustrated with the book anyway.

I'm finding I don't care what happens to any of the characters. Not even enough to wish ill on them, I just don't care. Until this bit, the pleasure of reading each page was keeping me going, and a lot of it really does sparkle, but put a big caveat on that pleasure and why am I still reading?