Reading Wednesday
Apr. 3rd, 2024 07:05 am Just finished: The Night Garden by Nicole Bea. This was so cuuuute. I don't have a lot to add after last week. It was just wonderful and charming.
Currently reading: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. I haven't gotten much farther on this but it remains very good. Anequs, our heroine, and her baby dragon have arrived in the city to stay with her brother, who lives in a horrible rooming house with sketchy people. It's very steampunk in exactly the way I wished steampunk would have been when it was more of a thing, using the strange moment at the birthplace of modern science to examine colonialism and capitalism.
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. Okay so I meant to read this ages ago, when it was anti-recommended to me by some terrible people with the opposite taste in books as I had (I figured if they disliked it, I would love it, because we could agree on precisely one author). But somehow I never did despite thinking![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yhlee is rad and loving his short stories. Whoops. Anyway I am reading it now.
Anyway I am not an expert in military sci-fi but this has to be the smartest military sci-fi I've read. The ultimate power in the universe is pure mathematics, and as long as everyone agrees on the theory, physics and weapons work just fine. But the Fortress of Scattered Needles has been taken over by heretics who are messing with the theory, and our antiheroine, Cheris, has to take it back and end the calendrical rot. In order to do so, she enlists Jedao, an undead general executed hundreds of years ago who has never lost a battle but has a habit of going crazy and committing massacres, including of his own forces.
What blows me away is the poetry of the language and worldbuilding, which is not what I associate with the subgenre. The terminology alone is evocative, and even if I don't understand the military maneuvering or math concepts (I am a bear of little brain) I can vividly picture the world and the characters. This is just beautifully written and drops you right in the middle of a bizarro civilization and expects you to keep up. I'm about a third of the way through and loving it so far.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Why no whale this week???
Currently reading: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. I haven't gotten much farther on this but it remains very good. Anequs, our heroine, and her baby dragon have arrived in the city to stay with her brother, who lives in a horrible rooming house with sketchy people. It's very steampunk in exactly the way I wished steampunk would have been when it was more of a thing, using the strange moment at the birthplace of modern science to examine colonialism and capitalism.
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. Okay so I meant to read this ages ago, when it was anti-recommended to me by some terrible people with the opposite taste in books as I had (I figured if they disliked it, I would love it, because we could agree on precisely one author). But somehow I never did despite thinking
yhlee is rad and loving his short stories. Whoops. Anyway I am reading it now.Anyway I am not an expert in military sci-fi but this has to be the smartest military sci-fi I've read. The ultimate power in the universe is pure mathematics, and as long as everyone agrees on the theory, physics and weapons work just fine. But the Fortress of Scattered Needles has been taken over by heretics who are messing with the theory, and our antiheroine, Cheris, has to take it back and end the calendrical rot. In order to do so, she enlists Jedao, an undead general executed hundreds of years ago who has never lost a battle but has a habit of going crazy and committing massacres, including of his own forces.
What blows me away is the poetry of the language and worldbuilding, which is not what I associate with the subgenre. The terminology alone is evocative, and even if I don't understand the military maneuvering or math concepts (I am a bear of little brain) I can vividly picture the world and the characters. This is just beautifully written and drops you right in the middle of a bizarro civilization and expects you to keep up. I'm about a third of the way through and loving it so far.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Why no whale this week???
