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jazzfishOh hey, it's Wednesday. I've been up north since my inexplicably delayed flight on Saturday, and it's been ... good? Good. I have also done A Lot of reading. It's been a good week or so for books.
What are you reading now?
In the home stretch of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, the first in a trilogy best described as "Harry Potter by way of The Hunger Games." So, a magical boarding school, but it's infested with magical monsters, who like nothing better than devouring unsuspecting students for their mana. The school has a survival/graduation rate of something like forty percent, and this is considered a vast improvement over other options. I picked this up because both Steph and Mya recommended it highly, and because I'd apparently bought the ebook at some point.
I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying our viewpoint/protagonist, El ("Galadriel"), and her drive and cynicism-tempered-with-optimism. I'm especially enjoying seeing her work out for herself the ways that the larger and more established groupings of magicians ("enclaves") explicitly set up the Scholomance to reinforce their existing power structures.
What did you just finish reading?
Mm. First reread of Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead: if Max is going to go to the trouble of writing a new Craft trilogy I may as well reread the extant ones. These are also fantastic, and also about power, though differently so than the Scholomance, and explicitly about 2008. I confess I did not expect the villain to be a genuine TESCREAList but I guess the seeds of that nonsense were present fifteen years ago too.
Before that, Rebecca Fraimow's novella The Iron Children. More fantasy, more critique of power, from a very different angle. It crams a lot of worldbuilding and a decent amount of character into a small pagecount, mostly by cutting out "plot," which is fine by me. There's still a decent amount of stuff happening, and more importantly we get to see it affecting multiple characters.
Before that, finished up Lords And Ladies, about which more anon, but: it is really quite nice to get a Discworld book that I genuinely liked, especially one I didn't expect to.
What do you think you'll read next?
Two Serpents Rise, I think, and then I can argue with myself about whether I'll grab the rest of Scholomance now or wait for a theoretical ebook sale. Or maybe I'll just go straight into Scholomance.
What are you reading now?
In the home stretch of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, the first in a trilogy best described as "Harry Potter by way of The Hunger Games." So, a magical boarding school, but it's infested with magical monsters, who like nothing better than devouring unsuspecting students for their mana. The school has a survival/graduation rate of something like forty percent, and this is considered a vast improvement over other options. I picked this up because both Steph and Mya recommended it highly, and because I'd apparently bought the ebook at some point.
I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying our viewpoint/protagonist, El ("Galadriel"), and her drive and cynicism-tempered-with-optimism. I'm especially enjoying seeing her work out for herself the ways that the larger and more established groupings of magicians ("enclaves") explicitly set up the Scholomance to reinforce their existing power structures.
They wanted to be safe. It's not that much to ask, it feels like. But we don't have it to begin with, and to get it and keep it, they'd push another kid into the dark. One enclave would push another into the dark for that, too. And they didn't stop at safety, either. They wanted comfort, and then they wanted luxury, and then they wanted excess, and every step of the way they still wanted to be safe, even as they made themselves more and more of a tempting target, and the only way they could stay safe was to have enough power to keep everyone off that wanted what they had.Quite curious as to where it goes from here.
What did you just finish reading?
Mm. First reread of Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead: if Max is going to go to the trouble of writing a new Craft trilogy I may as well reread the extant ones. These are also fantastic, and also about power, though differently so than the Scholomance, and explicitly about 2008. I confess I did not expect the villain to be a genuine TESCREAList but I guess the seeds of that nonsense were present fifteen years ago too.
Before that, Rebecca Fraimow's novella The Iron Children. More fantasy, more critique of power, from a very different angle. It crams a lot of worldbuilding and a decent amount of character into a small pagecount, mostly by cutting out "plot," which is fine by me. There's still a decent amount of stuff happening, and more importantly we get to see it affecting multiple characters.
Before that, finished up Lords And Ladies, about which more anon, but: it is really quite nice to get a Discworld book that I genuinely liked, especially one I didn't expect to.
What do you think you'll read next?
Two Serpents Rise, I think, and then I can argue with myself about whether I'll grab the rest of Scholomance now or wait for a theoretical ebook sale. Or maybe I'll just go straight into Scholomance.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-21 12:53 pm (UTC)I really need to get to A Deadly Education, one of these days. Everything tells me it's up my street, but my reading whims are very, well, whimsical.
...Actually I need to reread/catch up with Max Gladstone's work as well. Aaah, so many books, so little time!
no subject
Date: 2023-12-21 10:03 pm (UTC)As for Max: Empress of Forever was a notch above "okay", I think; I'll reread it at some point. Last Exit had some REALLY interesting ideas and I am not sure whether the actual book held up to them.