User Profile

There's an interesting world here, enough so that I did enjoy reading this book, but I never ended up caring much what happened to the characters. So it was pleasant enough but never really reeled me in.

I think this is just how I feel about Vo's writing in general, because I remember having a pretty similar reaction to The Empress Of Salt And Fortune. I can see what people who love her writing see in it, but it just isn't for me.

#SFFBookClub

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.

#SFFBookClub

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.

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/

I've been looking forward to this sequel since the moment I finished book 1. #SFFBookClub

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.

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

#SFFBookClub

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).