@Tak@reading.taks.garden Me neither! I've just read the first chapter so far, and been struck by just how vividly the research base is rendered.
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I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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el dang quoted System Collapse by Martha Wells
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in …
If they were like other humans, recreational activities = throwing balls or sticks at each other really hard.
— System Collapse by Martha Wells (Page 143)
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.
el dang started reading System Collapse by Martha Wells
System Collapse by Martha Wells
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation …
Brutal, and much more human than I'd expected
5 stars
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 …
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.
Paris was beautiful in the ugliest way, and I only dreamed of being loved so unconditionally.
— I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea (Page 221)
Content warning end of ch4 spoiler
...and then, even though every page of the first 4 chapters has been infused with Laure's unambiguous lived experience of racism, the first time anyone actually says the quiet part out loud and is directly racist to her face still manages to be infuriating, as it should be.
el dang commented on I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea
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.
We were desperate to be the girl who dies, always.
— I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea (Page 3)
The context immediately cuts down the melodrama, but this is an opening line I'm going to remember.
el dang started reading I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea
el dang reviewed Wondrous Journeys In Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr
Award-winning historical fantasy and literary folktale. Winner of the presigious Etisalat award.
In a tent …
Interesting but sort of unsatisfying
3 stars
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.
el dang wants to read How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
#SFFBookClub Jan 2024
el dang commented on Wondrous Journeys In Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr
Award-winning historical fantasy and literary folktale. Winner of the presigious Etisalat award.
In a tent …
this book is a fun read, but I can’t help feeling that every dramatic tension since the narrator left her village has been resolved too quickly.
el dang commented on Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. …
Incidentally, Standard Ebooks has this: standardebooks.org/ebooks/mary-shelley/frankenstein
I find their editions reliably the nicest ebook version of any public domain work, even compared to ones sold as ebook editions by for-profit publishers.