I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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It was magic. In every world, it was a kind of magic. "No maids, no …
I'm more than halfway through this book and still not sure what I make of it. It's a pleasant read, but I'm not finding myself particularly engaged with any of the characters, so I'm also not really invested in whether things go well or poorly for them.
When Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017―revealing the ancient poem in a …
Latest group read. I had... mixed feelings about the Odyssey, so there are things I'm looking forward to about this one and things I'm not.
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high on her recent victory that tore southern …
Content warning Spoilers for all over both books
When I finished She Who Became The Sun, I was disappointed to have to wait for this sequel, I had loved that volume so much. But this one really didn't draw me in in the same way.
I'll start with parts I did enjoy. Parker-Chan is a great writer, both as a conjurer of scenes, and in the way they draw characters richly by switching between interior perspectives and the perceptions of others. The arc of Zhu and Ouyang haltingly moving towards understanding each other is compelling until it's cut short, and the "Zhu's capers" scenes are just as much fun as in the first volume.
But I found the shifting motivations of the characters took a lot of interest out of this oen. Wang and Ouyang felt flattened by their hyperfixation on revenge at all costs. Madame Zhang's fixation with the self-imprisoning role of Empress when she had so much real power as Queen makes no sense. Zhu's shift from desperate, audacious attempts to survive to grasping at "greatness" apparently for its own sake had the odd effect of making the stakes seem smaller even as the story gets bigger, which makes the violence feel gratuitous in turn, in a way that it never did in the first volume no matter how grim things got. And Ma and Xu both seemed shrunk by their portrayal as basically martyrs for the revolution.
I spent much of the book wondering why Zhu and Zhang couldn't just come to some detente and enjoy their successes, and why anyone other than Xu Da and maybe Ma Yinzi followed Zhu with such loyalty. Towards the end Ma has some lines which seem to explain it in a sort of social justice way, but coming so late in the book they felt tacked on.
I'm still looking forward to the next thing Parker-Chan writes, but found this one kind of a let-down.
he lantern light seems to have written a poem; they feel lonesome since i won’t …
Translator's page with audio for correct pronounciation of the poets' names, and a short list of typo corrections: yilinwang.com/the-lantern-and-the-night-moths/
It was magic. In every world, it was a kind of magic. "No maids, no …
#SFFBookClub April
Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, …
Content warning Spoiler about the translators' trip abroad
Some more historical context: the real world Lín Zéxú confiscated the British traders' opium this week in 1839 sinica.substack.com/p/this-week-in-chinas-history-lin-zexu
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high on her recent victory that tore southern …
I've been looking forward to this sequel since the moment I finished book 1. #SFFBookClub
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. …
I wasn't expecting to like this book anywhere near as much as I ended up doing! The story as told in the book is much more interesting than the limited image of it that's got in to popular culture, and this was my first encounter with the whole thing. It's so much more about deeply flawed Victor Frankenstein (TLDR: our reading group kept using the term "main character syndrome") than about the mad science process. And while the creature is far from likeable, his portrayal has genuine pathos, even though most of what we hear about him is secondhand through the recounting of someone who hates him.
There are several impressively strong resonances to the modern world, between the general lack of ethics in tech and the current wave of "AI" hype. And of course big self-centred men who think that extreme success in one sphere gives them licence to …
I wasn't expecting to like this book anywhere near as much as I ended up doing! The story as told in the book is much more interesting than the limited image of it that's got in to popular culture, and this was my first encounter with the whole thing. It's so much more about deeply flawed Victor Frankenstein (TLDR: our reading group kept using the term "main character syndrome") than about the mad science process. And while the creature is far from likeable, his portrayal has genuine pathos, even though most of what we hear about him is secondhand through the recounting of someone who hates him.
There are several impressively strong resonances to the modern world, between the general lack of ethics in tech and the current wave of "AI" hype. And of course big self-centred men who think that extreme success in one sphere gives them licence to behave as badly as they like in others.
This collection of stories introduces some good new characters and adds some backstory for others and their teachers, but really it's Earthsea itself that gets fleshed out, and particularly the magic school at Roke. The stories cover a range from the foundation of that school through a sort of coming-of-age tale about Ged's teacher Ogion, on to the immediate aftermath of the previous book, Tehanu.
I didn't find the end of the last story satisfying, but Le Guin described it elsewhere as a bridge to the final book, so perhaps it's just intentionally so. I'll certainly be coming back to Earthsea sooner or later--I seem to read about one of these books a year--so I will find out.
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
A long, heavy, beautifully written and very biting book about the ways in which colonialism coopts people and institutions, and the simultaneous difficulty and necessity of resisting that. Deeply and cleverly tied in with real 19th Century history of Britain and its empire, while also being a fantasy story with a very specific magic system that I enjoyed in itself.
I highly recommend this book, but it should also come with some content warnings: * Colonialism * Lots of depictions of racism * Abusive parenting * Abusive academia * Violence * Not afraid to kill important characters
Time for something at least a little bit comforting after the last couple of SFFBookClub titles.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. …
Somehow I ended up doing a bunch of pre-20th century group reads lately. Out of all of them, this is by far the book I like the best. Dracula is wonderfully atmospheric but also painfully racist; Moby Dick's best parts are absolutely gorgeous but it could have done with a massive edit, also racism; I got bored of Don Quixote after a while. But this one is wonderfully and tightly written, and I'm reasonably confident that everything obnoxious in it is intentionally so (in short: oh, Victor is so perfectly hateable).
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Historical note: Jardine & Matheson were real people and played very much the same role in real history that they are playing when they show up in this book. Their company, now just "Jardine Matheson", still exists, still has a large footprint in Hong Kong, and did very well out of Britain's abuse of China. If you don't know the history and don't want spoilers then I'd wait until a couple of chapters after they're introduced to look them up. Though I'm also assuming that somewhere after where I've reached, the book must diverge from the real history.
Karl Gützlaff was also a real person whose attitudes seem to be faithfully represented in the book, though I don't know enough about him to know how historically accurate his actions in the book are. #SFFBookClub
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Content warning ch15 spoiler
Yesterday I read the scene in which Professor Lovell browbeats Robin into pretending contrition and giving up a scrap of information about Hermes. A different part of it is haunting me: the way Lovell never engages with a single moral claim Robin makes, just mocks and dismisses them out of hand. That part of the conversation, I've had personally with so many relatives and the occasional coworker / fellow student. And I keep reading reports of political and media figures doing the same - Lovell might as well have just said "woke" with that sneer they all do.
None of which is a criticism of the book! It was a painfully well-observed scene. #SFFBookClub
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
London at the time of... approximately chapter 15: sciencemastodon.com/@oldmapgallery/111931878489659575 cdn.masto.host/sciencemastodoncom/media_attachments/files/111/931/866/556/732/629/original/197a25046f337b05.jpg
among other things, it really underscores how separate Hampstead would have felt back then.
