Precision-seeking, but often ridiculous. The same figure as indeed_distract@wandering.shop.
This link opens in a pop-up window
I loved The Vanished Birds more fiercely, but I think that this one made me laugh like the SICKOS guy more often, so who's to say which is better, really. Brilliant and weird, playful and bloody, and confident enough in what it's doing to put off explaining it until it has enough momentum to hurt.
Taryn Cornick believes that the past – her sister's violent death, and her own ill-conceived revenge – is behind her, …
An adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts. …
In this first full-length novel from the acclaimed Birdverse, new love blossoms between an impatient starkeeper and a reclusive poet …
She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.
To possess the Mandate …
An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy …
On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. …
A triumphant, genre-bending breakout novel from one of the boldest new voices in contemporary fiction
Vern - seven months pregnant …
Reena Manji doesn’t love her career, her single status, and most of all, her family inserting themselves into every detail …
Snap's town had a witch.
At least, that’s how the rumor goes. But in reality, Jacks is just a crocks-wearing, …
While the Iskat Empire has long dominated the system through treaties and political alliances, several …
So Bujoldian it feels like a warm bath.
Started slow and dense and took me a long time in the background of other things, before blossoming into something marvelous about halfway through. This is the second in a series about what might be the only relatively safe and democratic place to live in a world whose ecology has been warped by magic and whose politics have been dominated by conflicts between tyrannical wizards for hundreds of thousands of years. The first book was about going to war with the kinds of magical and social technologies you need to secure a place like that against whatever terrors want in; this one is about finding more or less prosocial ways to learn to be a wizard in community, in a universe where that's a bit like finding an ethical way to be an exposed nuclear reactor.
I'm glad these books exist. They're triumphs of worldbuilding that make no attempt whatsoever …
Started slow and dense and took me a long time in the background of other things, before blossoming into something marvelous about halfway through. This is the second in a series about what might be the only relatively safe and democratic place to live in a world whose ecology has been warped by magic and whose politics have been dominated by conflicts between tyrannical wizards for hundreds of thousands of years. The first book was about going to war with the kinds of magical and social technologies you need to secure a place like that against whatever terrors want in; this one is about finding more or less prosocial ways to learn to be a wizard in community, in a universe where that's a bit like finding an ethical way to be an exposed nuclear reactor.
I'm glad these books exist. They're triumphs of worldbuilding that make no attempt whatsoever to ease the reader in, weird and inaccessible in a way that would be difficult to pitch to a wide audience but is easily beloved by a narrow one (and I'm counting myself in the latter group even though I'm not sure I followed more than two thirds of the dialogue) -- an excellent fit, in other words, for internet self publishing.
To be clear, if I'd encountered this attached to a D&D campaign setting or something when I was a teenager, it would have blown my mind. As it was, though, I felt uncomfortable with its recurring trope of racial pure-bloodedness, and thought its singular emphasis on this one guy's fame and importance made the whole thing feel a bit small and claustrophobic.
