outofrange wants to read A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown
From Cory Doctorow's 2024 reviews: pluralistic.net/2024/12/02/booklish/
Reading for sanity, solace, meaning, meandering. Partial to mountains and desert, climate themes, balancing the heavy with the light.
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From Cory Doctorow's 2024 reviews: pluralistic.net/2024/12/02/booklish/
From Cory Doctorow's 2024 reviews: pluralistic.net/2024/12/02/booklish/
From Cory Doctorow's 2024 reviews: pluralistic.net/2024/12/02/booklish/
Not my usual fare, and I considered stopping in the first book. Glad I didn't! I didn't put a lot of effort into following all the hints, but I definitely enjoyed the gradual assembly of perspectives from the series of fictional authors. I feel like I got a few looks at Wall Street history, mostly unfamiliar to me.
Moon, the main character of the Raksura series, shares a great many characteristics with Murderbot: he's isolated, traumatized, often inspires fear in others through no fault of his own, and doesn't know where he belongs or how to fit in. Naturally, the first book is mostly concerned with reuniting Moon with his people and chronicling the joys and pains of integrating into this complex society. The plot is slightly predictable, but this is easily compensated for by the sheer originality of the setting: one of the few fantasy books/series I've read that does not bother with the conceit of fitting human society into a world where magic exists, but rather imagines a world where magic is just another routine natural force. There are no humans in this world but there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of sentient humanoid species, and just as many sentient non-humanoids. There are also floating islands, flying …
Moon, the main character of the Raksura series, shares a great many characteristics with Murderbot: he's isolated, traumatized, often inspires fear in others through no fault of his own, and doesn't know where he belongs or how to fit in. Naturally, the first book is mostly concerned with reuniting Moon with his people and chronicling the joys and pains of integrating into this complex society. The plot is slightly predictable, but this is easily compensated for by the sheer originality of the setting: one of the few fantasy books/series I've read that does not bother with the conceit of fitting human society into a world where magic exists, but rather imagines a world where magic is just another routine natural force. There are no humans in this world but there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of sentient humanoid species, and just as many sentient non-humanoids. There are also floating islands, flying boats, ruins of wondrous monuments built by long-vanished peoples, and trees large enough to hold entire forests on one of their branches. It's fun, it's compelling, and it has distinct elements of coziness that make it a comforting re-read for me.
There is one criticism I think is valid, which is the gender essentialism of the Raksura. I don't believe this is deliberate on Wells' part; it's simply an extension of the magical but somewhat caste-ist conception of how Raksura society works. Certain people just get certain jobs by virtue of their phenotype at birth. Which could be oppressive, except that Raksura society doesn't have money and nobody has to work for food and shelter. This didn't HAVE to mean that Raksura don't experience gender dysphoria, but that's what ends up happening--even though one of the MCs has an unexpected shift of body plan and has challenges dealing with that. There is, however, a laidback background acceptance of multiple sexual orientations. I didn't find this to be enough to ruin the story, but some people have, so I thought it was worth mentioning.
From Cory Doctorow's review.
The broken earth has a lot of appealing elements (sorry) with narrative experiments going on at different scales. Some worked better than others for me, none were total flubs. The power dynamics between characters are fairly well balanced, but sometimes the characters felt a little too imaginary to me.
A SEASON OF ENDINGS HAS BEGUN.
IT STARTS WITH THE GREAT RED RIFT across the heart of the world's sole …
Deserts and a great review from @SallyStrange
We get an account of a groundbreaking scientific expedition to Antarctica from a writer grappling with understanding climate change while yearning for motherhood, and determined to break the Antarctic adventure tale mold by including as many perspectives as she can.
An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize …
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single …
I grabbed this without much consideration and got embarrassingly far through it before I got the Dickens heritage. If I read David Copperfield I've forgotten it, but if it explores real societal issues through the eyes of kids as well as this story does, it would be worth a comparison to get a sense of how the problems have evolved. It's not just problems though, they are lived by good characters.