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radio-appears Locked account

radio_appears@books.theunseen.city

Joined 10 months, 2 weeks ago

I read light, but broadly. Currently one of my favorite things is to dig up female sci-fi/fantasy authors from the 70s and 80s. I find it difficult to separate my own personal experience of a book from its "objective" good or bad qualities and rate and review it in a way that could be useful for some hypothetical Universal Reader. I just wanna chat, really.

Still trying to figure this bookwyrm thing out.

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Tales of Neveryon (Neveryon) (Paperback, 1979, Bantam Books) No rating

A novel of myth and literacy about a long-ago land on the brink of civilization. …

If Conan the Barbarian was written by Margaret Mead and Michel Foucault

No rating

An anthology of interwoven short stories that take place in a fictional ancient civilization - heavily implied to be the first ancient civilization, actually. Two pairs characters feature in all of them, until they finally meet in the last one; Norema, the barbarian woman and her companion Raven, a warrior from a matriarchal society who is constantly accosted by culture shock in this strange country where men do get to make decisions, and Gorgik and Little Sarg, the lovers, who use their old slave collar as a ruse to free other slaves, as well as a powerful symbol within their sexual relationship. (Look, Delany is a man of interesting sexual tastes and little shame, so you're going to find out about them.)

While that makes this book sound pretty lurid (which is why I decided to read it, not gonna lie), it's actually much more concerned with portraying the contrast …

Who Fears Death (Hardcover, 2010, DAW Hardcover) 5 stars

An award-winning literary author presents her first foray into supernatural fantasy with a novel of …

Who Fears Death, indeed.

No rating

Very excited to finally start this novel after it spent about a decade languishing on my to-read list, featuring a main character with one of the most badass names ever. (It reminds me of Fela Kuti, didn't he give himself a name that meant something like "He who keeps death in his pouch"? Always loved that.)

Patternmaster (Paperback, 1995, Aspect) No rating

The combined mind-force of a telepathic race, Patternist thoughts can destroy, heal, rule. For the …

A bit of a let-down compared to Wild Seed

No rating

So, I burned through the whole patternmaster series in a matter of months, which is pretty unusual for me. I like to leave big gaps in between installments, so I don't get burned out on a story.

While the series is overall great, I really regret reading the books in chronological order, starting with Wild Seed, and ending with this one, because in publishing order, this is her first book and her first published novel ever. As is to be expected, as Butler's skills as a writer increase, the quality of these earlier and earlier published novels decreases. Patternmaster isn't necessarily bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to Wild Seed, or even Mind of my Mind and Clay's Ark. Not to mention that the stories become gradually less ambitious. So, the overall effect is that a series that starts as an epic world-spanning, century-spanning tale of conflict between two …

The titular ripple in the titular storm

No rating

I picked this book up from a Little Free Library, so I didn't know this was the third installment of a five-part series. It was not an issue, honestly, as it's pretty easy to pick up on the events that proceeded the novel. Martha Quest, the main character of this semi-autobiographical novel, has just left her husband and child and is discovering her political self in Rhodesia's small communist scene against the background of the Second World War. The titular storm, of course.

She's part of the secret "group" that consists of - at most - twelve people who intend to topple the colonial regime and make Rhodesia a communist country, in which all classes and all races are equal. Despite this very ambitious goal, most of their meetings consist of lectures on the history of communism and arguing whether or not wearing make up is a sign that a …

Jane Eyre (Paperback, 2009, SMK Books) No rating

I didn't get Wuthering Heights, but I get Jane Eyre

No rating

This is the third book written by the Brontë sisters I've read, and so far I've definitely enjoyed it the most. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall felt a little too moralistic to me, with Wuthering Heights I couldn't understand the characters' motivation. Jane however? I get Jane. Abused and neglected in childhood, desperate for love, yet still too proud to accept crumbs... I get Jane Eyre.

It's just a shame how much the two other most interesting female characters in the book - which would be Bertha and Adele - are treated. Bertha is little more than a plot device, when her story carries so much potential. Charlotte Bronte wouldn't have even had to make her sympathetic to satisfy me, just show a little bit more of her perspective. But, you know, I'm a person who has lived in the world for a couple of years, so I knew about …

reviewed Deerskin by Robin McKinley

Deerskin (Hardcover, 1999, Tandem Library) No rating

From the award-winning author of Sunshine comes a novel that "will involve readers from the …

The darkest fairytale retold

No rating

Content warning Vague mentions of incest and rape. Spoilers for a literally ancient fairytale.

reviewed Deerskin by Robin McKinley

Deerskin (Hardcover, 1999, Tandem Library) No rating

From the award-winning author of Sunshine comes a novel that "will involve readers from the …

The darkest fairytale retold

No rating

Content warning Vague mentions of incest and rape

Little Women (Little Women, #1) (2004) 4 stars

Louisa May Alcotts classic novel, set during the Civil War, has always captivated even the …

Didn't hit for me

No rating

So. I didn't like this book very much, but this is a bit of an annoying review to write. The reasons why I don't like this book are not really something I can fault the author, as they're pretty much to be expected for a book written in this time period.

Shortly put, like many older examples of children's lit, I find Little Women to be overly didactic and twee, with the added difficulty of disagreeing with some of the moral lessons it tries to teach.

I can see the value it must have had in its time, as well as to some readers, in portraying girls with interesting inner lives and conflicts, who did not always entirely fit the gender norms. It was, in that sense, an interesting bit of insight in the time period. But as an adult modern reader I couldn't really connect with it.

A Hat Full of Sky (2004, Doubleday Children's Books) No rating

A Hat Full of Sky is a comic fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, …

Crivens!

No rating

It seems I simply can't pick up a Discworld book without finishing it within three days or less.

The Tiffany books were my introduction to Discworld, and they, and the witches in general, are really still my favorites. I don't think I've ever experienced that elusive sense of being represented in fiction as strongly as when I read about Tiffany Aching mispronouncing words because she'd only ever saw them written down. More than that, I admire her (and Mistress Weatherwax). She's responsible and practical and decisive, all virtues that, in my opinion, don't get enough attention in fiction. Probably because authors don't naturally tend to be the practical sort.

I'm continually amazed by how well Pratchett writes women, even the clique-y, bizarre internal politics of tween girl friendships ring true. (If you weren't a Petulia or Anagramma, you've met them.)
Warm, insightful, incredibly funny... It's a Pratchett-book, what more do …

reviewed Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

Babel-17 (Paperback, 1969, Sphere Books) 4 stars

During an interstellar war one side develops a language, Babel-17, that can be used as …

Part pulp, part high-brow

No rating

A confusing mix when it comes to tone, this story reads mostly as a pulpy space opera, except for those moments where it launches into complicated discussions of linguistics and grammar.

Rydra Wong is a poet with such a great knack for learning languages that it borders on telepathy (body language is a language too, after all), and she uses her talent to decode the messages of the Invaders who, as the name suggests, are at war with her society.

I'm not a linguist, but I believe that the scientific theories on which the premise of this book is based have been debunked , which didn't help my suspension of disbelief. Personally, I was much more interested in another idea Delany introduced: discorporate people. Basically, in the future we prove that ghosts do exist, we just haven't yet developed the technology needed to perceive them. Without technological intervention we simply …

The Other Wind (Paperback, 2003, Gollancz) 4 stars

Perfect, satisfying ending to a great series

No rating

A great conclusion to the Earthsea series. One of the best sort: the kind that immediately makes you want to start right back at the beginning. It ties up all the existing threads and questions about its world so beautifully, that reading the series again with the knowledge of how it ends doesn't spoil the story, but is its own kind of pleasure.

Het verboden dakterras (Paperback, Dutch; Flemish language, 1994, Rainbow BV) No rating

In 1940, harems still abounded in Fez, Morocco. They weren't the opulent, bejeweled harems of …

Growing up in a harem

No rating

If highly recommend this book to anyone who's interested in the topics of feminism, women's rights and Islam. It skillfully circumvents the Western tendencies to either paint all Muslim women as oppressed doormats and all Muslim men as patriarchal brutes, as well as the tendency sometimes seen in more liberal spaces to refuse to acknowledge the religious oppression of women in Arabic countries entirely. And it does it while being an accessible and beautifully written memoir, rather than a dry academic text!

This book broadened my perspective so much by mentioning Muslim feminist thinkers (male and female) that I'd never heard of before. (This is the sort of book in which you do NOT skip the footnotes.) While Mernissi is a little child who feels the pressure to fulfill her mother's wish to be "a modern woman", most of the other characters are her family members of an older generation. …

Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in) is a 2004 vampire …

Review of 'Let the Right One in' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

"Let the Right One In" is essentially a horror book combined with a Scandinavian thriller. And if you've ever read one of those, you know how bleak they can be, with this one no exception. This book is one of the bleakest and, strangely, most realistic vampire stories I've ever come across.

The rules of vampirism that Lindqvist decided on are on the strict side of the spectrum, and he handwaves nothing to make Eli fit better into society, like many other vampire media does in order to tell the story they want to tell. No fake blood substitutes, no constantly cloudy skies, not even the idea of vampires as a different, superior species which is so often used to explain why they're not morally conflicted over drinking blood. In fact, in this story, there are very few vampires because most of them end up killing themselves out of guilt. …