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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

@Tak@reading.taks.garden Oh, I like this exercise. And thank you for the reminder of the opening line. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the book now, and appreciate this line even more in hindsight.

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.

#SFFBookClub

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.

#SFFBookClub

@calor It's open to anyone, but it's a bit confusing at the moment because hashtags don't quite sync right between Bookwyrm and Mastodon (probably true for Misskey, Pleroma, etc too, Mastodon's just the one I have experience with). All you have to do to participate is to post about the book with the tag. But:

1) We all really appreciate it if anything at all spoilery is behind a warning that says how far into the book you are, so people can wait until they've reached the same place to read it.

2) If you also have a Mastodon account, you'll see more traffic on the #SFFBookClub tag over there, and you'll get more replies if you use that one.

#SFFBookClub February pick.

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.

Adding this to the #SFFBookClub poll; go to weirder.earth/@eldang/111807462468721007 to vote

Adding this to the #SFFBookClub poll; go to weirder.earth/@eldang/111807462468721007 to vote