@Tak@reading.taks.garden Me too! So far I don't like the style and pacing of this one quite as much as the other two, but it's making sense as a third instalment in the series.
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Also eldang@weirder.earth
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 started reading Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer
From the publisher---
It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied …
Finally completing this trilogy, the previous 2 instalments of which I loved.
el dang reviewed The lathe of heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
“The Lathe of Heaven” ; 1971 ( Ursula Le Guin received the 1973 Locus Award …
Weirdest thing I've read by Le Guin
4 stars
It's funny how of all the books I've read by Le Guin, the one that's set on a baseline plausible Earth-in-my-lifetime would turn out to be the weirdest. Also funny how in what starts as a pretty reasonable extrapolation from 1971 to ~2000 has one repeated glaring error: multiple references to the perfect cone of Mount St. Helen's.
Against that background, we get a story of a man running away from his dreams because they give him a power he doesn't understand and can't control. And another man who wants to channel that power, setting up a modern Daoist fable about the hubris of trying to control too much.
el dang finished reading The lathe of heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
The lathe of heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
“The Lathe of Heaven” ; 1971 ( Ursula Le Guin received the 1973 Locus Award for this story) George Orr …
el dang started reading The lathe of heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
“The Lathe of Heaven” ; 1971 ( Ursula Le Guin received the 1973 Locus Award …
Birthday present from my brother last year; a bit embarrassed to have taken this long to start reading it.
el dang reviewed The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo
Set in an alternative historical present, in a "eusistocracy"--An extreme welfare state -- that holds …
A very topical dystopia
4 stars
The "Finnish Weird" label that I've seen bandied around fits but also doesn't quite - it had me expecting a bit of a lighter quirkier book than this turned out to be. The first scene or two definitely feels like that, but it quickly becomes apparent that a more serious dystopia is being spun, along lines set out by the cover.
Actually I should praise the cover more: it's one of the best book covers I've ever seen, because it tells a lot of the story but without spoilers since none of it made sense until I had reached the relevant parts of the book.
el dang finished reading The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo
Set in an alternative historical present, in a "eusistocracy"--An extreme welfare state -- that holds …
SFFBookClub July book, which I finally got around to.
el dang
boosted
I'm eldang on cohost too. To be honest I have as yet to see anything really compelling about it, but until I find the Perfect Social Network I'll always be interested in new attempts.
The financial model is interesting, but I have concerns about switching one monolotihic company-run moderation policy for another. And I get the sinking feeling when I read the staff account that they haven't actually used Mastodon and its forks... but that can't be true, can it?
el dang replied to Soh Kam Yung's status
@sohkamyung @DerekCaelin Oh, that's interesting! I remember being surprised by just how brutal Three Body Problem was about the Cultural Revolution. I know those events are officially disavowed, but had been under the impression that fully confronting how bad things got was still taboo.
el dang reviewed Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki
"Born from the obsessive and highly idiosyncratic mind of a cult figure of the Japanese …
Interesting ideas; tone I found hard
3 stars
This collection of stories explores some interesting territory around mental illness and sense of self, but ultimately the standoffish tone of almost all the narration grated on me. For any one story I think it was a reasonably effective device, but across the whole book it really limited my emotional engagement.
el dang reviewed City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty
"Step into The City of Brass, the spellbinding debut from S. A. Chakraborty--an imaginative alchemy …
A big story with a lot of humanity in its magical beings
4 stars
Content warning major spoilers
This is kind of two books, of which the first half was fun but frustrating, and the second half generally better.
In the first half, we're introduced to two main characters in separate worlds. Nahri the orphan who has some strange powers and turns out to be at least partly Djinn-descended, possibly the last survivor of an important dynasty. And Ali a prince in a brutal dynasty that murdered most of Nahri's ancestors, and who is determined to do something about the cruelty. Nahri has to flee her old life for Ali's city. The writing is clunky at times, Ali's a little too good, and it's too obvious that Nahri's flight will succeed, so the epic battle with every kind of magical demon feels more farcical than exciting. But the book's great strength is that this "conclusion" is only halfway through it.
What made the second half work better for me is that Nahri's arrival is such a complicating event in everyone's life, most definitely including her own. Ali ends up thoroughly compromised in ways that make him a much more believable character, and the interwoven strands of everyone lying to and scheming around each other get much more interesting. And I think Chakraborty just took a while to hit her stride as a writer, which makes sense given that this was her first book and not originally written with publication in mind.
At the end I was still a little frustrated. The hooks for the sequel are slightly too obvious and undermine the completeness of this (already long) book, and there are a few too many deus ex machina. But considering how much better the book got as it went along, I am excited about the sequel.
el dang finished reading City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty
"Step into The City of Brass, the spellbinding debut from S. A. Chakraborty--an imaginative alchemy …
SFFBookClub June
el dang started reading Annotated Arabian Nights by Omar El Akkad
A magnificent and richly illustrated volume with a groundbreaking translation framed by new commentary and …
The latest group read, and an absolute delight so far.
el dang started reading Dracula by Bram Stoker
I'm doing the #DraculaDaily thing like so many others. Which is turning out to be an excellent way to read a book that's become such a cliche, but which I had never read before.
el dang reviewed Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become …
Starts delightful, gets repetitive
2 stars
I started reading this with a group of friends, taking turns to read chapters aloud. For the first 5-10 chapters I was enthralled, finding it an utterly charming satire of essentially the same genre that Monty Python and the Holy Grail sends up. But after that it felt like it kept repeating the same jokes, and started to wear thin enough that I didn't actually finish it.