User Profile

Marek

wildenstern@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 11 months ago

A mix of academic (philosophy, cognitive science, some science and technology studies) and science fiction or fantasy. A bit of pop science for giggles.

Academic tastes: Enactive approach, embodied cognitive science, ecological psychology, phenomenology Fiction: Iain M. Banks, Ursula le Guin, William Gibson, Nnedi Okorafor, China Miéville, N.K. Jemisin, Ann Leckie

Love space opera but mostly disappointed by what I read there. Somehow didn't read Pratchett until recently, and now methodically working my through in sequence (I know sequence is not necessary, but ...).

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Marek's books

2024 Reading Goal

75% complete! Marek has read 30 of 40 books.

reviewed A Gathering of Shadows by V. E. Schwab (Shades of Magic, #2)

V. E. Schwab, V. E. Schwab, ve schwab: A Gathering of Shadows (2016, A Tom Doherty Associates Book) 4 stars

Four months have passed since the shadow stone fell into Kell's possession. Four months since …

A decent bit of light fantasy adventure.

3 stars

On a par with the first. A mostly fun romp. Drags a little in the middle, and is marred for me by the occasional use of very modern turns of phrase which I find very distracting (e.g. someone in a regency-ish era London claiming they're good at "multi-tasking").

China Miéville: Kraken (Paperback, 2010, Tor) 4 stars

Kraken is a fantasy novel by British author China Miéville. It is published in the …

Miéville's signature weird unleashed on his beloved London

4 stars

This it a re-read, I picked this up when it was first released.

In some ways, this is one of the more straightforward stories from China Miéville. It's a romp of a thriller in which esoteric religious beliefs ground an urban fantasy, as a museum curator, Billy Harrow, tumbles down the rabbit hole into a London of mystical cults, exotically arcane gangs, and clashing apocalypses.

Miéville's love for the crazy melting pot of London is on display, as he takes every bizarre sect at its word, and continues to twist the surreality dial over the course of the tale from "curiouser and curiouser" all the way to "gargling warthogs dancing the can can".

The writing is jarring mixture of his signature extended vocabulary at the service of a chopping London vernacular cadence that gets a little tough to read in places. That's just a sometimes thing, though, in what is …

reviewed A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab (Shades of Magic, #1)

V. E. Schwab: A Darker Shade of Magic (Hardcover, 2015, Tor) 4 stars

STEP INTO A UNIVERSE OF DARING ADVENTURE, THRILLING POWER, AND MULTIPLE LONDONS.

Kell is one …

Some sharp magical fun

4 stars

Though V.E. Schwab has been on my radar for a while I haven't picked up anything by her before. I have now ordered the second two books in this series. This was an interesting, fun adventure, with lots of character.

This is a multiple-worlds story, in which dimensions with different forms or levels of magical power are connected through a shared sense of "London" (though the different Londons and the countries in which they exist are quite distinct from one another).

The primary protagonist, Kell, is a magic user who moves between the worlds. His relationship with his own world is "complicated", and things are made much moreso when he unexpectedly ends up smuggling something he doesn't intend.

There are some lovely ideas here, and the world-building is well-handled. The main characters are compelling and sympathetic, while still having some rough edges. Setting the stage across the different dimensions takes …

China Miéville, Keanu Reeves: The Book of Elsewhere (Hardcover, 2024, Random House Worlds) 3 stars

The legendary Keanu Reeves and inimitable writer China Miéville team up on this genre-bending epic …

Making something oddly new from a pastiche of old ideas

4 stars

I haven't written reviews for the three volumes of comics that precede this and set the world for it - the BRZRKR limited run that introduces and sets out the tone and background for this fascinating collaboration between Reeves and Miéville (who is one of my favourite writers).

The comics are better than I would have expected, given that they are really a mish-mash of things that have come before - part Highlander, part Wolverine/Weapon X, part Interview with the Vampire, to name just a few obvious points of reference. The character work elevated it above the (often literally) pulp ideas.

Miéville and Reeves take that a step further here. The world and the characters get richer, and the storytelling more surreal. You can see a host of new references showing up (Octavia Butler being a crucial one). While I wouldn't rate it quite as highly as I would most …

reviewed A Past Unearthed by Jin Yong (Return of the Condor Heroes, #1)

Jin Yong, Gigi Chang: A Past Unearthed (2023, Quercus) 4 stars

CHINA , 1237 A.D.

Genghis Khan is dead. The Mongolians, led by the conqueror's third …

The first part of a story; personal relationships entangled in combat, history, and politics

4 stars

I am very much a beginner when it comes to wuxia literature, and in particular to the work of its extraordinary master in Jin Yong/Louis Cha.

Over the past few years the first books of the great wuxia epic described as stories of the Condor Heroes have seen new official translations. The Legends of the Condor Heroes has been published as a quartet, and now this is the first book in a new series, Return of the Condor Heroes.

We're in a new generation, and off to an inauspicious start as the son of Yang Kang, a boy called Penance, has a difficult and messy induction into the martial world of the wulin and the jianghu. I won't say much about the plot - it meanders in the way that you might expect from what was serialised fiction in its initial publication - but the ways in which everything that …

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reviewed The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #2)

Cory Doctorow: The Bezzle (EBook, 2024, Tor Books) 4 stars

The year is 2006. Martin Hench is at the top of his game as a …

Blood boiling financial thriller

4 stars

Content warning No specific spoilers, but commentary which you might want to avoid if you want to read it wholly fresh.