I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Content warning ch12, non spoiler
I'm enjoying how much Kuang ties the fantasy world of the book to the real world unrest that was happening at the same time, and how timeless the attitudes of the people fully bought into the system are. #SFFBookClub
Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during …
Book 2 in a series, and a wonderful fleshing out of things that were introduced in City of Brass. The politics get more complicated and feel more real as a result, the focus characters get more developed, and the city feels more alive. It feels like such a sharp analysis of the ways resentments and conflicts get stuck and self-feeding that I kept seeing real-world stories reflected in it. But it's never as narrow as an allegory for any one thing in the real world, it's much more an exploration of the whole type of thing.
It does have weaknesses: never getting Ghassan's perspective lets him feel like a cartoon villain, and never getting Muntadhir's makes his growth feel lurching and unpredictable... which in fairness it probably would have done to people around him too. And where the ending of City of Brass deftly managed to stand on its own …
Book 2 in a series, and a wonderful fleshing out of things that were introduced in City of Brass. The politics get more complicated and feel more real as a result, the focus characters get more developed, and the city feels more alive. It feels like such a sharp analysis of the ways resentments and conflicts get stuck and self-feeding that I kept seeing real-world stories reflected in it. But it's never as narrow as an allegory for any one thing in the real world, it's much more an exploration of the whole type of thing.
It does have weaknesses: never getting Ghassan's perspective lets him feel like a cartoon villain, and never getting Muntadhir's makes his growth feel lurching and unpredictable... which in fairness it probably would have done to people around him too. And where the ending of City of Brass deftly managed to stand on its own at the same time as leaving a clear opening for a sequel, the end of this one doesn't stand on its own at all.
I'm very glad that the teaser for Empire of Gold makes clear that we'll get some chapters from Manizheh's perspective, and I hope it also gives Zaynab a bit more space, since she feels a bit like a plot mechanism so far. But I couldn't put this volume down and it took some self control to not launch directly into the next.
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Content warning minor spoilers for book 1 / the first 4 chapters
I'm thoroughly enjoying this book so far, including among other things the descriptions of Oxford through the eyes of some new students. It's clear that Kuang has a lot of affection for the place even as she's setting the story up to be very sharply critical of it in important ways. And that's striking a very personal chord with me.
I interviewed at Oxford as a potential undergrad, and didn't get in. It was the one university I applied to that required an interview, and even though the interview itself was frustrating [I seemed to be evaluated on prior subject knowledge, for a subject they advertised as not needing prior background to study], the 3 days in Oxford in an autumnal fog around it were lovely. Looking back I'm reasonably confident that I was better off studying elsewhere, but every now and then I do get some longing for the place because it is so beautiful, and it is possible to fall for the illusion it has of itself as a town-sized temple of pure learning.
I think Robin and Rami's 3 days of freedom before term starts managed to capture a lot of that feeling. It's already clear the place isn't going to be as good for Robin as he thinks, but oh it's such a beautiful place it's easy to be charmed by it.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
A very emotional and structurally interesting book - somewhere between a set of short stories and a set of chapters with very varied styles and points of view.
I loved the ways the stories were connected to each other, and the best of them were absolutely heartrending pictures of grief, fear, and mourning. Many of them did live on in my mind for some time afterwards. But towards the end I felt like some of the broader attempts to pull it all together in one arc didn't quite land for me.
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
#SFFBookClub February pick.
Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during …
CW for this book: a big piece of what it's about is stuck conflicts and deeply ingrained oppression, and the ways in which mutual fear / the fears of the people currently on top keep them stuck with horrifying consequences. Reading it right now I keep thinking about Palestine, which I think is partly intentional but there are also strong echoes of many other things. I'm about 2/3 of the way through and I think it's excellent, just also a very grim read.
To some extent this applies to City Of Brass too, but this volume paints a lot more of the history of the trilogy's world and goes a lot harder on the political themes.
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming …
Adding this to the #SFFBookClub poll; go to weirder.earth/@eldang/111807462468721007 to vote
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Adding this to the #SFFBookClub poll; go to weirder.earth/@eldang/111807462468721007 to vote
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
Chapter 3: I see now that characters from one story do show up in others, so the book overall will get to have character arcs not just a zoomed-out plot one. Makes me even more curious how much the stories have been reworked between individual publication and collecting into book form.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
Content warning Chapter 2 spoiler; CW for plague
At first, I thought the plague business was a bit too much of a neat topical tie-in. But then I noticed in the front matter that many of the chapters are adapted from previously published short stories, and the original version of ch2 was published in 2013. So at least the outline of the plague predates COVID by years.
I'm curious whether the line about disagreement whether the virus was airborne was added in the editing for the book, because if not then that detail is astonishingly prescient.
Either way, I find myself wanting to know what happens to Skip and Dorrie after the events of this chapter. I can't tell yet if the book will pick them up again later or if each chapter's going to be a totally isolated vignette within the overall setting.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
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
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. …
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.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
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
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in …
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.
Human survival hinges on an bizarre alliance in Semiosis, a character driven science fiction novel …
This fell off the #SFFBookClub poll because it didn't seem to grab other peoples' interest, but I am still intrigued.