September 2016 Reads

[Darth Richard II]

I think I might read this 9/11 related SFF collection I bought a while back/ NOrmally I try to avoid 9/11 stuff cause it makes me cry like a little bitch but I just watched a bunch of stuff on the history channel related to it(against my own advice) and now fuck I might as well dive deep in. I probably wont sleep for a week anyways.

Sorry, bit of  a personal rant there, 9/11 related stuff tends to upset me and get me all chatty and rambley . I love you guys.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I found The Wine -Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brian more enjoyable compared to the last few Aubrey/Maturin books.  I particularly liked Stephen's excursions in the high Andes in Peru. Having been there myself I can relate to the flora and fauna as well as the awesome majesty of the Andes. 

Now reading the final volume of the The Dagger and Coin series, The Spider's War by Daniel Abraham.

[brunhilda]

Just picked up The Call and Stories of Your Life. I'm at that moment of anticipation between having just finished a book (Bronze Key, meh) and jumping into the next (The Call). As The Call was a recommendation from here, I'm particularly looking forward to it

[williamjm]

I finished Peadar's The Call. I liked his previous trilogy a lot (particularly The Inferior and The Vounteer), but I think this is probably his best work yet. I thought the pacing was very effective and relentless due to having the Calls happening regularly (and unpredictably) throughout the book and there's a genuine sense of tension due to most of the characters being constantly on the verge of being thrust into a situation they're unlikely to survive. Switching between such a large number of POVs for a relatively short book could have been a risky proposition but I think it worked well here and helped to flesh out characters better than if we'd just had Nessa's POV for the story. The Grey Land was very atmospheric and horrific, and I thought the Sidhe had the right mix of twisted logic and inhuman incomprehensibility in their actions and motivations.The ending tied up most things satisfactorily but left enough unresolved for the sequel.

[Starkess]

I finished the Dangerous Women anthology. Wasn't super impressed with it. Would have hoped for better female characters, given that theme! There were some good ones, and some terrible ones, and mostly very forgettable ones. The Diana Gabaldon novella was ridiculously long and pointless. The GRRM novella was good but a bit too relentless dark for me.

22 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I only read the first one. I liked it, it was very different from anything I;ve ever read, but the size of the whole thing has made me reluctant to start it back up til i get that to read pile down to a reasonable number

There are a lot! I tend to read them in about 3-book chunks and I'm in no rush. I think I read book 1 at the very beginning of 2014.

[Lyanna Stark]

Finished Kay's duology "Sailing to Sarantium" and "Lord of Emperors" and well, I have so much to say about them, but I cannot really seem to order my thoughts. Firstly, of course, they are beautifully written, because it's Kay, innit.

Secondly, the themes of transience and legacy and what mark we leave on the world, and that eerie sense of loss really mark the novels, it carries them, it hums in the background, constantly. Everything is meant to end. We live so much in the moment, we forget that everything is transient.

There is a lot to say about the characters as well, some of them larger than life.

SPOILERS (long rant)

 

I just have no idea why Kasia was just dropped, and why we were constantly told she was the clever one, yet only saw very few things that were actually clever. She was just a passive, silent observer. So she managed to marry some dude, for reasons also unexplained (why did he fancy her? It is never really explained.) Especially in novel 2, she seems frightened like a little bird and hardly utters two words together. Shame, really.

Which brings me to to Styliane, which I think was a character with Cersei-like qualities. A female evil genius, or she could have been. Instead, she is defeated, humiliated and shown as totally two-dimensional in the end. Such a crying shame. Styliane is only cold, manipulating and, amazingly short sighted, in the end. Unless you count that one time she shagged Crispin, for also unknown reasons. Which we will get back to.

What irritated me was how everyone and their bleeding dog have sex with everyone for the flimsiest reasons, and how almost everyone of the major characters seem to be somewhere between attractive and amazingly gloriously godlike in appearance. I had hoped this sort of beauty fawning was isolated to certain segments of UF/Paranormal Romance (read: vampire romance), but unfortunately it is also true for these novels, and it is a crying shame. Further, despite having lots of sex in it, it's all dreadfully boring, bland and seems dull as a butter knife. It's also extremely slanted towards a male gaze, with the most expression we get from a woman is along the lines of "well, he is attractive" or "isn't he a beautiful man?". While with the women, we get constant reminders of their golden hair, their regal bearings, their alluring perfume, their graceful movements, etc. Women, in Sarantium's world, are bodies, they exist to move in the world, to entice men, and to scheme amongst each other while often using men, and their sexual allure while doing so. The men are concerned with heritage, with faith, with the nature of beauty, with achievement. Men are spiritual beings, women are physical beings that men desire.

Also, despite all this ubiquitous sex, nobody gets knocked up, ever. There are children, but they were either conceived outside of the actual storytelling, or they are dead (transience of everything). It gives the impression that the female characters are not really...complete? They are sexualised beings, but not with a complete sexuality (since before contraceptives that would mean a lot of these women wouldn't know who the father of their child was a lot of the time, given the general predisposition of having a pretty wide circle of lovers).

 

The one exception is perhaps the Empress Alixiana, whom we learn early on was a dancer, and a lot of people seem to assume basically a prostitute, and that she had some "back alley work" done, which is why she cannot get pregnant. As she is also exceptionally beautiful and impressive, while the Emperor Valerius is rather plain looking, everyone assumes she has lots of affairs. The lack of an heir is blamed on her, by basically everyone. Yet everyone assumes the Emperor is staying with her because he loves her and because she is amazingly beautiful, etc. Only at the very end do we learn that her childlessness is most likely not due to her, bet to her spouse, the Emperor. That implies she was faithful to the Emperor throughout, and that she wasn't really what people assumed. We learn at the end that she wishes for children, and that she knew that her childlessness was caused by the Emperor, and she accepted that, both what it meant for her, what it meant for Valerius, and his legacy. In itself both a gift and a tragedy.

At least my girl Gisel got an empire to handle at the end. One of the most satisfying scenes at the end fpr me were Gisel and Councilor Gesius handling the administration of the empire together.

I suppose Gisel and Styliane were supposed to be two examples of what happens when life gives you lemons. Do you make lemonade, or do you murder someone with Sarantine fire? However, there is an annoying facet of it too, since Gisel is very much sacrificing herself for her people, in a sort of womanly, altruistic fashion, while Styliane is just a cold-hearted harridan. It's a shame that Gisel didn't get to be more cold-hearted, and Styliane not have more humanity, although Gisel does get the better deal since she wields her status as royalty like a warhammer and her youth and beauty as a bow and arrow. It would have made them even more interesting to have them more nuanced, and it would have annoyed me less that the woman succeeding needs to be the one to sacrifice herself for her people. Also FFS Leontes, being so good-looking, why are you such a poor shag?

Which brings me to another point of contention, and that is how Kay seems to conflate sexual attraction with respect, or affection. This seems to happen quite often and for no discernible reason. Why does Styliane have some warm feelings for Crispin? Because they had what is probably the novel's least dismal shag? That sets the bar really quite low. While Kay does loss and grief marvelously, he is really quite awful at writing anything resembling romantic feelings. He can describe what happens when a romance crashes and burns, with very light touches. I thought the Thenais/Scortius sad ending was one of the more touching ones, and of course very tragic, but we never know *why* they fell in love, or how, or even when they met, or anything. It is fait accompli all the time. Or, in the case of Crispin, just bizarre wish fulfillment since all sorts of women are falling over themselves for this country bumpkin, for again, no particular reason. Apart from perhaps plot reasons, but then at least then he could be described as an extremely attractive man or something, which he really isn't.

 

 

 

Anyway, memorable characters, an amazing setting. Lord of Emperors is the sort of novel that will stay with you for a long time.

 

Started on Ancillary Justice too. 55 pages in and I AM IN LOVE. This is the shit, seriously.

[Darth Richard II]

Ancillary Justice, I can never remember if that's the first or third, but yeah those are good times.

[The Marquis de Leech]

11 minutes ago, Lyanna Stark said:

 

  Hide contents

What irritated me was how everyone and their bleeding dog have sex with everyone for the flimsiest reasons, and how almost everyone of the major characters seem to be somewhere between attractive and amazingly gloriously godlike in appearance. I had hoped this sort of beauty fawning was isolated to certain segments of UF/Paranormal Romance (read: vampire romance), but unfortunately it is also true for these novels, and it is a crying shame.

That's a criticism that could be levelled at a few of the Kay books I've read (that, and melodrama). Mind you, he's definitely one of the better prose stylists in the genre, so it's not as if he lacks redeeming features. 

[Lyanna Stark]

1 minute ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

That's a criticism that could be levelled at a few of the Kay books I've read (that, and melodrama). Mind you, he's definitely one of the better prose stylists in the genre, so it's not as if he lacks redeeming features. 

Oh, I don't mind the melodrama terribly, it has its place. He definitely does not lack redeeming features; quite the opposite. The prose is sometimes almost like reading poetry in how it flows.  I do strongly believe that the need for certain things to happen to really infuse the novels with the larger themes of transience, loss, heritage took priority at times over characters and pacing. Which is fair enough, I just think the characters were good enough and the story well enough crafted the ideas and themes would still have been clear even with them sometimes taking a step back, as it were.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh justice is the first one. If you like it that early in you're in for a treat, most people, me included, felt it took a while to really take off.

 

edit: ok I'm going to have to finally try some Kay this week.

[Lyanna Stark]

32 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Oh justice is the first one. If you like it that early in you're in for a treat, most people, me included, felt it took a while to really take off.

 

edit: ok I'm going to have to finally try some Kay this week.

Oh great. I felt the tension in the writing and the pacing are already definitely to my taste.

If you try the Sarantine mosaic, let me know what you think It's definitely a multi-faceted work. It was a long time since I read Kay before Lions of Al-Rassan the year before last, and I still have Tigana and A Song for Arbonne to go. Weeeh!

[unJon]

4 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

Oh great. I felt the tension in the writing and the pacing are already definitely to my taste.

If you try the Sarantine mosaic, let me know what you think It's definitely a multi-faceted work. It was a long time since I read Kay before Lions of Al-Rassan the year before last, and I still have Tigana and A Song for Arbonne to go. Weeeh!

Have you read Kay's latest? Children of Earth and Sky? Set after Sarantine Mosaic but with many references and Easter eggs back to those books and some of those characters. 

[Lyanna Stark]

1 hour ago, unJon said:

Have you read Kay's latest? Children of Earth and Sky? Set after Sarantine Mosaic but with many references and Easter eggs back to those books and some of those characters. 

Not yet, I am being good and reading them in order But it's definitely on my To Read list.

[SeanF]

8 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

Finished Kay's duology "Sailing to Sarantium" and "Lord of Emperors" and well, I have so much to say about them, but I cannot really seem to order my thoughts. Firstly, of course, they are beautifully written, because it's Kay, innit.

Secondly, the themes of transience and legacy and what mark we leave on the world, and that eerie sense of loss really mark the novels, it carries them, it hums in the background, constantly. Everything is meant to end. We live so much in the moment, we forget that everything is transient.

There is a lot to say about the characters as well, some of them larger than life.

SPOILERS (long rant)

  Hide contents

I just have no idea why Kasia was just dropped, and why we were constantly told she was the clever one, yet only saw very few things that were actually clever. She was just a passive, silent observer. So she managed to marry some dude, for reasons also unexplained (why did he fancy her? It is never really explained.) Especially in novel 2, she seems frightened like a little bird and hardly utters two words together. Shame, really.

Which brings me to to Styliane, which I think was a character with Cersei-like qualities. A female evil genius, or she could have been. Instead, she is defeated, humiliated and shown as totally two-dimensional in the end. Such a crying shame. Styliane is only cold, manipulating and, amazingly short sighted, in the end. Unless you count that one time she shagged Crispin, for also unknown reasons. Which we will get back to.

What irritated me was how everyone and their bleeding dog have sex with everyone for the flimsiest reasons, and how almost everyone of the major characters seem to be somewhere between attractive and amazingly gloriously godlike in appearance. I had hoped this sort of beauty fawning was isolated to certain segments of UF/Paranormal Romance (read: vampire romance), but unfortunately it is also true for these novels, and it is a crying shame. Further, despite having lots of sex in it, it's all dreadfully boring, bland and seems dull as a butter knife. It's also extremely slanted towards a male gaze, with the most expression we get from a woman is along the lines of "well, he is attractive" or "isn't he a beautiful man?". While with the women, we get constant reminders of their golden hair, their regal bearings, their alluring perfume, their graceful movements, etc. Women, in Sarantium's world, are bodies, they exist to move in the world, to entice men, and to scheme amongst each other while often using men, and their sexual allure while doing so. The men are concerned with heritage, with faith, with the nature of beauty, with achievement. Men are spiritual beings, women are physical beings that men desire.

Also, despite all this ubiquitous sex, nobody gets knocked up, ever. There are children, but they were either conceived outside of the actual storytelling, or they are dead (transience of everything). It gives the impression that the female characters are not really...complete? They are sexualised beings, but not with a complete sexuality (since before contraceptives that would mean a lot of these women wouldn't know who the father of their child was a lot of the time, given the general predisposition of having a pretty wide circle of lovers).

 

The one exception is perhaps the Empress Alixiana, whom we learn early on was a dancer, and a lot of people seem to assume basically a prostitute, and that she had some "back alley work" done, which is why she cannot get pregnant. As she is also exceptionally beautiful and impressive, while the Emperor Valerius is rather plain looking, everyone assumes she has lots of affairs. The lack of an heir is blamed on her, by basically everyone. Yet everyone assumes the Emperor is staying with her because he loves her and because she is amazingly beautiful, etc. Only at the very end do we learn that her childlessness is most likely not due to her, bet to her spouse, the Emperor. That implies she was faithful to the Emperor throughout, and that she wasn't really what people assumed. We learn at the end that she wishes for children, and that she knew that her childlessness was caused by the Emperor, and she accepted that, both what it meant for her, what it meant for Valerius, and his legacy. In itself both a gift and a tragedy.

At least my girl Gisel got an empire to handle at the end. One of the most satisfying scenes at the end fpr me were Gisel and Councilor Gesius handling the administration of the empire together.

I suppose Gisel and Styliane were supposed to be two examples of what happens when life gives you lemons. Do you make lemonade, or do you murder someone with Sarantine fire? However, there is an annoying facet of it too, since Gisel is very much sacrificing herself for her people, in a sort of womanly, altruistic fashion, while Styliane is just a cold-hearted harridan. It's a shame that Gisel didn't get to be more cold-hearted, and Styliane not have more humanity, although Gisel does get the better deal since she wields her status as royalty like a warhammer and her youth and beauty as a bow and arrow. It would have made them even more interesting to have them more nuanced, and it would have annoyed me less that the woman succeeding needs to be the one to sacrifice herself for her people. Also FFS Leontes, being so good-looking, why are you such a poor shag?

Which brings me to another point of contention, and that is how Kay seems to conflate sexual attraction with respect, or affection. This seems to happen quite often and for no discernible reason. Why does Styliane have some warm feelings for Crispin? Because they had what is probably the novel's least dismal shag? That sets the bar really quite low. While Kay does loss and grief marvelously, he is really quite awful at writing anything resembling romantic feelings. He can describe what happens when a romance crashes and burns, with very light touches. I thought the Thenais/Scortius sad ending was one of the more touching ones, and of course very tragic, but we never know *why* they fell in love, or how, or even when they met, or anything. It is fait accompli all the time. Or, in the case of Crispin, just bizarre wish fulfillment since all sorts of women are falling over themselves for this country bumpkin, for again, no particular reason. Apart from perhaps plot reasons, but then at least then he could be described as an extremely attractive man or something, which he really isn't.

 

 

 

Anyway, memorable characters, an amazing setting. Lord of Emperors is the sort of novel that will stay with you for a long time.

 

Started on Ancillary Justice too. 55 pages in and I AM IN LOVE. This is the shit, seriously.

A very interesting write up. I agree with a lot of what you say/

 

I also thought it unrealistic that so many beautiful aristocratic women would fall for Crispinus, who is, after all, a long way down from them socially. 

My impression was that Styliane cared for nothing other than avenging her father's death.  Not even the prospect of becoming Empress really interested her, which is where Valerius went wrong;  he thought that Styliane had figured out that she and Leontes would succeed Alixana and him in due course, and that she'd be satisfied with this.

I viewed Gisel differently to you.  I thought she was a remarkably cold-blooded woman, who didn't leave any potential loose ends hanging around.  She had her six guards killed, for fear that any one of them might have overheard her conversation with Crispinus, and she made sure of Styliane by the end.  I don't doubt she would have had Alixana killed, had the latter ever emerged from hiding, and I suspect Alixana was aware of this.  My impression of Gisel was that she was advancing the interests of Gisel, much more than the interests of her own people.

The high points of the story for me were the chariot races, the scene on the island when Crispinus and Alixana visit Styliane's brother, the confrontation between Valerius and his assassins, and the hunt for Alixana through the city.

As an aside, Byzantine history is full of extremely interesting women.  Theodora rising from being a prostitute, to co-ruler of the Roman Empire and canonised as an Orthodox saint;   Irene, who was chosen to be Empress by means of a beauty contest, and (not exactly overflowing with maternal sentiment) later blinded her own son in order to seize the throne and restore the veneration of icons (she was almost made a saint);  Anna Comnena, a gifted intellectual who tried to murder her own brother to secure the throne, Theophano, who murdered two husbands and was the mother of probably the greatest Emperor (Basil II) all read like characters from far-fetched novels, but their stories are true. 

 

 

[Peadar]

19 hours ago, brunhilda said:

Just picked up The Call and Stories of Your Life. I'm at that moment of anticipation between having just finished a book (Bronze Key, meh) and jumping into the next (The Call). As The Call was a recommendation from here, I'm particularly looking forward to it

Thanks a lot, Brunhilda! I hope it doesn't disappoint.

16 hours ago, williamjm said:

I finished Peadar's The Call. I liked his previous trilogy a lot (particularly The Inferior and The Vounteer), but I think this is probably his best work yet. I thought the pacing was very effective and relentless due to having the Calls happening regularly (and unpredictably) throughout the book and there's a genuine sense of tension due to most of the characters being constantly on the verge of being thrust into a situation they're unlikely to survive. Switching between such a large number of POVs for a relatively short book could have been a risky proposition but I think it worked well here and helped to flesh out characters better than if we'd just had Nessa's POV for the story. The Grey Land was very atmospheric and horrific, and I thought the Sidhe had the right mix of twisted logic and inhuman incomprehensibility in their actions and motivations.The ending tied up most things satisfactorily but left enough unresolved for the sequel.

Much appreciated, William, delighted you liked it

[Jo498]

Finished Stephenson's Snow Crash yesterday. Maybe it was because of a necessary reading break of about 4 days before the last 40 pages but I found the ending a little too brief and somewhat lame after the build up before. I missed an ending scene for Juanita and Hiro...

Spoiler

Also what happens with Enzo and Raven? Raven apparently is not killed because his H-bomb does not detonate. Or was this just a hoax?

Still, a highly entertaining and worthwhile book (and as I said, it must have been an amazing read in 1992 when the internet was far from mainstream).

[aceluby]

Finished up The Thousandfold Thought by Bakker and enjoyed it as much as the other two.  Definitely everything I like in a fantasy series.  Already ordered the next 3 books which will be delivered on Wednesday.  In the meantime I'm starting Dragon's Keeper by Robin Hobb, hopefully I can finish those by the end of the year so I can work my way through the last of the Fitz & The Fool series.

[brunhilda]

9 hours ago, Peadar said:

Thanks a lot, Brunhilda! I hope it doesn't disappoint.

Wow, I should have hated it and I didn't. I loved it. What a roller coaster. Read it in one sitting. Are the cannibalism ones worth reading?

[RedEyedGhost]

3 hours ago, brunhilda said:

Wow, I should have hated it and I didn't. I loved it. What a roller coaster. Read it in one sitting. Are the cannibalism ones worth reading?

How's the author supposed to answer that?  

[Darth Richard II]

Whoever reccomended The Cold Between to me a few months ago THANK YOU.  Really good debut space opera militaryish scifi, a lot of focus in relations ships on small populated ships so WATCH ROMANCE COOTIES!