travel and books

[jazzfish]

Well. I just had the fastest checkin / security experience I've ever had at YVR: no one in line ahead of me to check in, two slightly slow people in the fast line at security. I think the time from stepping off the train to thru security was on the order of ten minutes, and most of that was walking from one end of the domestic terminal to the other and back again.

The gate isn't empty, but it's not as crowded as I expect the Toronto redeye to be. I'm okay with that.

What are you reading now?

Just started Melissa Scott's Dreamships, about which I know pretty much nothing except that Steph is a fan of Scott's work. (I think I read one or two of hers before moving here but they did not survive the Great Cross-Country Purge.) It's enjoyable so far.

What did you just finish reading?

For some reason I had a strong desire to read Gene Wolfe's four-volume crypto-Catholic generation-ship epic Book Of The Long Sun. I think this is somehow only my second reread; might be my third. I can confirm that the crypto-Catholicism is ... not really all that crypto. On the other hand the ending of "and then a bunch of us got on the lander and went down to the planet, and it turned out the Pope had been a vampire from the neighbouring Vampire Planet all along, the end" is more telegraphed than I remember. Though it helps if you remember the Pope really is a vampire from a previous read. (Er. Spoilers for a thirty-year-old tetrology, I suppose, though honestly if you're paying attention you find out the Pope is a vampire early in the second or third book.)

These are very Wolfean books, by which I mean they excel at doing the thing where something happens that means one thing to the characters in the book and quite another to the reader. They also have an awful lot of scenes of the main character explaining things to other people, which is less fun. But they're good, and there's not much out there like them.

Before that, Martha Wells's Books of the Raksura. I like these a little less on this read, I think. Partly it's that they're overflowing with characters that I have difficulty telling apart. Partly it's that they lean into the fantasy trope of The Evil Race. The final duology tries to undermine that, with the hybrid queen whose name escapes me but who is trying so hard... but then Wells brings in the groundling race who've decided that killing everyone else is fine if it means it kills off all the evil Fell as well. They're still enjoyable, they still have great characters with complex and real-feeling relationships. Just ... not quite as solid as I'd like.

What do you think you'll read next?

Beats me. Something else in ebook, since I only brought one paper book (Wells's City Of Bone). When I get home I may read Wolfe's Book of the Short Sun, the sequel trilogy. Or I may not; I remember it as being extremely depressing, mostly because it's narrated by someone who's not sure who he is and is extremely depressed about it.

Comments

[shanaqui]

I remember liking City of Bone a lot, and keep trying to reread it, but my attention is very -- ping! Something else came up. 😅 I really need to get round to the Raksura books, though.

[jazzfish]

Likewise! Perhaps this will be the year.

I do enjoy the Raksura books quite a bit. The characters I can tell apart are a lot of fun.

[reedrover]

I’m glad the security theater portion of your travel was smooth/fast.

Enjoy the re-reads!

[jazzfish]

Thank you! I am looking forward to some mental downtime.

[davidgoldfarb]

I read the first couple of the Books of the Raksura when the series was up for a Hugo, and I ran aground on that Evil Race trope. And in all honesty she has the same tendency to have one-dimensional villains in the Murderbot series: that series has enough to keep me going with it nevertheless.

[jazzfish]

That's entirely fair.

... I guess she does. Huh. Maybe I find one-dimensional villains more palatable when they're 'a couple of people being terrible' or 'an organization making short-sighted choices' than when they're 'an entire species'?

[davidgoldfarb]

Probably? I'd say that I do too.

[carbonel]

Along with the Evil Race bit, my other problem with the Raksura books is food management. The book shows Raksura eating an entire medium-sized animal in one sitting, and that lasting only a day or two. And yet it doesn't show them going into starvation mode if they can't eat that way. And where is all that food going? Do they have a storage stomach or such? It just doesn't mesh with what I know about (admittedly, Earth-only) digestion and physiology.

[jazzfish]

The whole Raksura economics and food situation is bonkers all the way down, and up. How on earth do they support an entire colony on basically hunter-gathering and subsistence farming? Etc etc etc.