cahn

I am still here! A little swamped until (at least) Easter with a couple of commitments (including the super totally optional self-imposed one of getting the kiddos to make a music video for church -- I did it last Easter and Christmas and, well, we're still not going to church, so).

But in the meantime my hold on A Desolation Called Peace came in from the library, and I read it, and I have a lot of feelings about it that boil down to... eh, it was fine. Which -- if you remember my breathless (spoilery) this-was-an-amazing-book reaction to A Memory Called Empire -- is, while not a negative review, not what I had hoped for either.

I think the big problem that I had with it was how all the characters sounded fairly similar in voice, which bothered me because the whole point of the first book, and a major theme of the second, is the culture of the Teixcalaanli vs. the culture of the little nation-entities it was trying to engulf, like Lsel Station, and how they were different. So I would have expected, when we were in the head of a Teixcalaan, for it to sound different than being in the head of a Stationer (which we were for the entire first book). The culture is different, the assumptions are different, the way they react to things ought to be different! And there was a little of that, but it seemed almost perfunctory, added-on -- oh, right, we need a mention of poetry, we haven't had one in a while, here you go. Mostly being in the head of a Teixcalaan seemed very much like being in the head of a Stationer, or being in the head of an Earth human Euroamerican, which just bugged me.

(I'm trying to remember places this kind of thing is done well -- I felt this way about Ann Leckie's Ancillary books; the Imperial Radch really is a different kind of culture and mindset, plus which ship-culture is its own thing. And the other one that's coming to mind is John M. Ford's The Final Reflection. His Klingons do have a truly culturally different and often terrifying-to-a-Terran mindset, while still being entities one can sympathize and even empathize with. Please give me other examples, because now I'm in the mood for this.)

And it did kind of make me like Empire not as well in retrospect. All

hamsterwoman's (spoilery) critiques of Empire and how the worldbuilding felt shallow, I was willing to handwave at the time because I was able to headcanon deeper worldbuilding for her examples, but now... I'm kind of coming over to that side, because it really felt to me like Martine hadn't done the worldbuilding work to be immersed in a different worldview, and I can't handwave POV.

The plot management was kind of weird -- the big reveal of this book was basically given away in the preface (and in interludes after that so it's not like I could forget it), so when our characters figured it out, I was kind of like "that's nice, but we readers already knew that?" ( Talking about it in rather more spoilery fashion, though I've tried not to be completely explicit )

Also. The italics. Are even worse, if that is possible, in this book than in its predecessor. I was complaining to D about this, and demonstrated by opening to a completely random, non-pre-selected page and pointing at all the italics on that page. (There were a lot!) The fact that I could confidently do this is, GAH, where was the editor in this? I mean, I definitely empathize. in everything I've ever written, including these DW posts, I actually have to go in afterwards and remove at least half of the italics I've put in (you have no idea how much I'm restraining myself from italics right now), but... at least I actually do remove (some of) them. Also, this played into everyone sounding the same. The eleven-year-old kid uses tons of italics, yeah, that even makes sense! The risk-seeking Stationer-Ambassador, maybe. The middle-aged career military admiral? Mmmmmph. What I'm saying here is that Martine had an easy chance to make the style reflect the character, and she didn't take it -- and that is a microcosm of all the other problems I had with the book.

This makes it sound like I didn't like the book, and I liked it a lot! It was certainly an entertaining space romp and I had a great time reading it. As in Empire, all the characters are interesting and even likeable. And (especially after we got through the setup portion of the book) her writing has got tons of narrative drive, which I loved, and I ate the book up rather quickly. And I continued to love that algorithms are a Thing in her books! And it's interesting to read this in conjunction with the Gap series (still reading!) -- Donaldson thought he was being all inclusive -- and he was, for the 90's! -- by having (always "heartbreakingly beautiful") awesome kick-butt female captains (who, interestingly, always, always are answering to some male authority figure). But it's so cool to have female characters who are in various different positions of authority and also aren't always, well, one body type :P

But, yeah, I wish Desolation had been more than it was.

I was in the middle of a couple of books (for instance, was kind of stuck halfway through the fourth Gap book for quite a while, though that's moving again) but books I did manage to finish last month:

Piranesi (Clarke) - I really liked this!

rachelmanija's review (points to tag list so that spoilers don't show) was what got me to read it -- in particular she said that it was narratively much more compelling than Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (which I liked quite a lot, but which took me forever to read even at the time and which I probably wouldn't be able to read at this point, what with everything) and it is. I finished it in a day because it was just that compelling. She also says, and I agree, that it's much better to read without any spoilers at all, so. I won't say I liked it as much as rachelmanija, but I liked it quite a lot, and I did adore that ( extremely mild implicit spoiler )

Desdemona, if you had only spoken! (Brückner, trans. Bron) - part of

selenak's awesome if quixotic effort to get some cultural literacy into my brain :) These are a set of monologues from historical and literary women across the ages -- ranging from Lysistrata from her eponymous play to Goethe's wife to Sappho to Desdemona; they evoke a bit for me what I think of as the best part of fanfic, where it makes you think about the source material.

I of course have read Othello (though I have never seen it, and hilariously my fingers typed "Otello" for, uh, Reasons -- and which I have seen and loved), but a lot of these I know from osmosis rather than by direct experience, like Lysistrata, or Petrarch's Laura (I mostly have heard of Petrarch and Laura from my love affair with Dante). Effi Briest (from the book of the same name) I knew only from previous conversation with

selenak, and there were a couple I'd never heard of at all: Malvida von Meysenbug (an idealist and thinker and friend to famous guys) and Gudrun Ensslin (a terrorist -- and there's a grim humor in how her monologue talks about how she will be forgotten). And then there was Christiane von Goethe, who was the one I was originally given to read and whom I knew pretty much zero about; her voice is quite entertaining. Desdemona's monologue is a bit of an AU, which is rather nice :P There's one of the Virgin Mary which is quite interesting, as I'd never thought that much about her after Jesus's death/resurrection, whoops -- really thought that one was neat.

I enjoyed most of them -- interestingly, the monologue I liked least was Katharina Bora, the wife of Martin Luther -- for some reason I didn't like the voice assigned to her -- and it's interesting because maybe because I didn't like that one as much, that was the one where I got most invested in finding out about her in real life, and where I have this bio of the Luthers by Michelle DeRusha in my shopping cart. (I looked around a bit -- depressingly though not surprisingly, biographies of Martin and/or Katharina seem like they're generally either religious hagiographies or feminist manifestos, and I just want someone to tell me the history! WHY SO HARD. ~~Frederick the Great salon has totally spoiled me~~ This looked like the best of what amazon had to offer, but if anyone has a good rec...)

...yes, I am this much behind :P

December reading that I forgot to post about in December

I had beta reading I didn't post about, plus one more!

Red, White, and Royal Blue (McQuiston) - This wish-fulfillment exercise where a serial-numbers-filed-off female president's son has a gay romance with a prince of England was quite cute! I read people's reviews before reading it and many people found it a little too... wish-fulfillment... given the last several years... and while it didn't bother me early on, it did start being a little too much that way for me in the last half, idk why it took until then. Also, I'd heard that it was very light on actual knowledge about British politics but given that my knowledge is probably lighter, that didn't bother me too much, but it did bother me that I felt weirdly like Prince Henry didn't actually sound like any sort of British person to me -- like, he would occasionally use British-English words, but something about the diction otherwise sounded very American. Did anyone else have that problem?

Call Me By Your Name - uh, DNF. I would have been all over this book twenty years ago; at this point in my life adolescent sexual angst (gay in this case, but also would apply to het) wasn't something I wanted to read a whole book about unless it was written in Gilded Age Wharton pastiche in which case bring it on!!

Book of Mormon - Because I had committed to run this church reading group, I finally read the whole thing from 1 Nephi to the end of Moroni for the first time in more than fifteen years. (It comes around every four years in the scripture rotation, and many members read it every year. My not reading it has been something of a personal act of quiet intransigence, plus which I honestly don't think I could have taken it before last year.) It was... an interesting experience. There are some things about it that are really compelling, actually; reading it in 2020, I was particularly struck by, and posted about various times in reading group, the repeated message over many books and generations that reaching out to the Other, the one who is unlike you and whose views you may not understand or accept, is important; and when one turns away from the Other, that is the start of a process that leads to cataclysm. (Particularly resonant in this year because the reading group I was heading has a large political variety, even if we don't talk about it explicitly.)

January reading

Candide (Voltaire) - Norton Critical Edition - okay, I haven't finished all the essays at the back, but I did finish Candide, which was much funnier a) now that I'm in the middle of a Voltaire bio b) with the footnotes. (I got this edition because of the footnotes.) One day I will get around to putting my writeup in

rheinsberg...

Gap Cycle books 1-3 (Donaldson): The Real Story (reread-skim), Forbidden Knowledge (reread), and A Dark and Hungry God Arises - so

selenak had this post on Die Walküre, which is one of my favorite operas ever, and in addition to my snarfing up the Met 2011 one with Kaufmann/Terfel/Voigt/Blythe (which I liked! but which did not unseat the Chereau in my heart! but hopefully I will post more on this later) I of course was reminded of the excellent Ring synopsis at the end of The Real Story, and

iberiandoctor had also recommended to me, and from there I had to read the thing.

Basically, the five-book Gap series is space opera inspired by and in dialogue with the Ring Cycle, although I'm not sure I'd call it Space AU Ring Cycle, because Donaldson really does an excellent job of broadening and expanding the universe and the characters so that it's more than just a Ring retelling, even a worldbuilding-heavy one, but rather something that is its own creation where you can see the roots of the Ring in it. It's really twisty and dense and plot-and-worldbuilding-heavy and I'm enjoying the heck out of it.

On the other hand...! D described it as "classic Donaldson," in that everyone just is put in horrible situations all the time so that they can angst dreadfully about it. As part of this, there is a lot of rape. There is a lot of rape and/or seriously nonconsensual sex -- or, well, the first two books are particularly awful that way, but actually I'm midway through book 4 and I don't think any rape has happened since... book 2?... so hopefully we're out of that part -- and various men (who are not raped, although one of them has memories of it) have things happen to them that... are described as "like rape." (This has not stopped, midway through book 4.) Yeah, these books are like that. Very 90's. I give Donaldson points for saying in the afterword to The Real Story that he worried when he wrote it that people would side-eye his subconscious. I mean... self-awareness is half the battle? :P

It's also very 90's in the assumptions it makes about men and women and the way it's totally trying to be feminist (and, like, is an improvement on other stuff I was reading at the time, to be fair) by having a few awesome kick-butt women characters (basically the Sieglinde and Brünnhilde and Valkyrie-sisters and Norn characters) but... idk... it's a universe that has built into it a lot of male-power-dominating assumptions (as you can kind of see from all the rape going on) in ways that are sort of brought out given that the last space operas I read were Memory Called Empire and the Ancillary series, neither of which... are like that.

Also -- and this was the most annoying thing of this type -- he makes Fricka a GUY! I mean, a slimy guy, but WTF. Fricka is awesome and I am not cool with her part being given to a guy, even if he's also made Fricka a bad (or at least slimy) guy, which ALSO WTF (but which makes more sense under the rules of his universe). This would have been less not-OK if, say, Loge had been female, but noooooo.

(Also, the Wotan analogue is sooooo much more noble and awesome than his opera counterpart, it's a little annoying also.)

This is the third time I've attempted it (the first time I couldn't find all five books, the second time I lost the third book and only found it months later, at which point I'd lost my momentum) so we'll see if I finish it this time... I'm enjoying it a lot and I hope to finish it! But yeah, it's very 90's and although I am enjoying it because I first read the first of these in the 90's, I would really feel very weird recommending it to anyone else in 2021.