"it makes no damn sense. compels me, though."

[jazzfish]

I've just picked up Ninefox Gambit (Yoon Ha Lee) for a reread, ostensibly in the hope that I'll get through the Hexarchate story collection this time but mostly because I want something zippy and brain-twisty.

I'm not sure how else to describe it. Ninefox shares with The Quantum Thief (Hannu Rajaniemi) et seq and the Commonweal (Graydon Saunders) a complex world coupled with a basic disregard for as-you-know-bob exposition that I crave. These are the kind of books where I spent my first read trying to get a handle on where I stood, because there was obviously some really interesting stuff going on below the surface if I could just get my bearings well enough to see it.

Ninefox is a space opera that uses Sufficiently Advanced Technology in the form of "the calendar," a belief system strong enough to influence the available tech. Quantum Thief has a great deal of, well, quantum handwaving. The Commonweal couples terse narration with deeply complex social and magical structures.

Mike Ford's books don't set me off in the same way, somehow. Or: Aspects does, but I don't know if that's because it's less familiar to me (only read it twice). Dragon Waiting ought to but doesn't. Gene Wolfe doesn't quite do this either. I think that's because I find that Wolfe's prose takes more effort to get into. Or maybe I just need to reread the Solar Cycle again.

I suspect that The Archive Undying (Emma Mieko Candon) will do this but I don't have a print copy. Might jump to the ebook for my plane trip, though.

Any other suggestions? What have you read lately where you couldn't make head nor tail of the worldbuilding but it kept you turning pages anyway?

Comments

[reedrover]

My memory says that Warbreaker by Sanderson suffered from random slices of continuity, but I have no impulse to re-read it to confirm that fact.

[jazzfish]

Heh. I've been avoiding Sanderson for multiple reasons, some better than others.

[davidgoldfarb]

I quite enjoy Sanderson.

[jazzfish]

De gustibus, et cetera! I am mostly not a fan of Big Fat Fantasy Books/Serieses in general. (I am curious to see what I'll make of Malazan.)

[greenstorm]

I mean, this was my experience for the first several in the Gardens of the Moon series.

[jazzfish]

... I think that has convinced me to put Gardens Of The Moon up next. (For certain values of "next": I might finish the Hexarchate trilogy-plus-story-collection before starting something new. And I just got an email this morning that the next Steve Brust book has shipped, so that'll interrupt whenever it arrives.)

[selki]

Yoon Ha Lee has amazing writing chops; I think all that is intentional. His recent entry on how to write unsympathetic characters that still get some sympathy had me laughing and cringing: https://yhlee.dreamwidth.org/5159022.html

[jazzfish]

Indeed! Yoon's stuff is not always to my taste but in my experience it's generally quite well done.

(That was a great entry.)