Words are inadequate

Jacob's Ladder trilogy

2019-03-13T23:32:22Z

Elizabeth Bear, Dust (or Pinion)
Chill (or Sanction)
Grail (or Cleave)

I'm torn. The author's preferred titles have lovely opposing dual meanings, but the published titles are more evocative for me. Well, Dust is, anyway. And as a bonus, there are the lovely chapter headings with quotes from, among other sources, Conrad Aiken's lengthy modernist poem "The House of Dust." Oh well. Onward.

The Jacob's Ladder is a generation ship, launched around seven hundred years ago. Five hundred years ago, a series of disasters marooned the ship around an unstable star, and split the ship's governing intelligence into several separate parts. Now the star is threatening to go nova, and our heroes have to get the ship moving again, and find a place to make landfall before the ship completely falls apart.

Dust especially reads like a variant Amber Diceless campaign: the (essentially) royal family are, thanks to nanotech, long-lived, brilliant, just plain superior to normal humans ('Means', in another example of words with multiple relevant meanings), and rightfully distrustful of each other. Hence they spend a lot of time scheming and plotting and maneuvering around. This is not exactly a criticism: I love Amber Diceless, I especially love the later game Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, and I really enjoyed watching the various plots unfold, from the perspectives of characters who don't have quite all the information. It doesn't, however, make for a wholly satisfying read. "Oh, yes, I suppose character X was behind all this. We'll send people to arrest them." And, as in Amber, the gigantic cast of characters means that most of them end up feeling a bit shallow. I wanted to spend more time with most of them, to get to know them beyond just the image they put up.

Chill's big denouement felt a bit weak: not the event itself, the battle at and with the Leviathan that the long-dead crew imprisoned, but the reason behind it all. And Grail... the contact with the unexpected inhabitants of the planet they're heading for is handled so well on a character and dialogue level, and then the conflict is resolved by an almost literal deus ex machina.

Don't read these for the coherent plot, is I guess what I'm saying. Read them for the atmosphere and the characters and the journey. For Mallory the necromancer/gardener and the grove of fruit trees with dead people's memories, for the sentient carnivorous plants and Benedick's animate toolkit. For Perceval's wings, and Rien's bravery, and the Corwinesque Prince Tristen and solid practical Chief Engineer Caitlin.

Delightful, if unsatisfying. Recommended.

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books, with digressions

2018-01-17T22:54:19Z

What are you reading right now?

Nearly through Max Gladstone's Last First Snow, the fourth or first Craft Sequence book. I did not expect urban planning to make a central appearance in these, though really I should have. I appreciated the awareness and explication of both sides (resident and developer) in the fight over the Skittersill slum. The book changes tone markedly about halfway through, of course: you know how this has to end, based on the status quo in Two Serpents Rise, but the change in tone is handled so deftly it's not really a problem that you're almost reading two different books.

One could in theory read these in chronological order: you'd lose the sense of dread and the familiarity of the characters of Elayne and the King in Red, which would I think detract from the book's atmosphere, but I guess you'd gain an appreciation for Temoc's arc. I dunno. Same argument as for Star Wars I-VI, and I don't buy it there either. I'm sympathetic to "Machete Order" (4-5-2-3-6) but I tend to think setup-payoffs mostly only work in the direction they're written.

Hm, the other comparison is eBear's first two Edda of Burdens books, where All The Windwracked Stars does a lot of heavy-lifting for the worldbuilding and By The Mountain Bound gives the tragic backstory. (And then, based on my one read of it, The Seas Thy Mistress doesn't satisfactorially pull them together, but I should reread them before passing judgement like that.) Yeah. I definitely prefer the sense of impending tragedy one gets from reading in pub order.

What did you just finish reading?

Reread of William Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy. I picked up a remaindered Pattern Recognition when I was working at Waldenbooks and enjoyed it better than I'd expected to. Then, before we moved to Vancouver, I went on a book binge-and-purge: things I hadn't read or didn't remember well got fifty pages and if I didn't like them, away they went. Pattern Recognition was one of two books where that resulted in acquiring /more/ books rather than fewer: I reread it, and enjoyed it enough to go in search of the rest. (The other was Walter Jon Williams's Metropolitan.)

So. Pattern Rec is deeply of its time. All three are, really, but it's especially noticeable in Pattern Rec, written in 2003 and set in 2002. An internet of forums, a lack of smartphones. It's about tech, in a time when the tech was changing rapidly, and that makes it a fascinating snapshot. It doesn't hurt that it's a great read, or that Cayce Pollard is just a lot of fun to hang around with. I want to reread it sometime soonish, so I can get a better feel for how it's playing with its themes. This is unlikely to be a hardship.

Spook Country is the reason I'm rereading these. Emily read them for the first time a couple of years ago and couldn't get over how solid and real Vancouver felt (in the second half of the book), compared to, well, every other setting he's written. And it's really neat to know exactly what he's talking about: the confusing array of bridges when you leave the airport, the ex-industrial area by the port. (I think I know exactly where Chombo's apartment is, and I am definitely going to look up the restaurant where Hollis et al meet up at the end.) As a book ... it feels slight, though a little less so than it did the first time I read it. Of the narrators, Milgrim's almost a nonentity, and he and Tito are interesting mostly for plot reasons. And I like Hollis Henry a little less than Cayce, both as a character and as a narrator.

Which is deliberate, I think, based on how Zero History turns out. Of the three it's the one I have the least sense for the shape of it. There's a lot going on in it, plotwise and character-relation-wise, and I don't think I managed to keep it all straight in my head. Intricate and exciting, and decidedly my kind of thing.

What do you think you'll read next?

Almost certainly an ebook, since all my physical books are now in boxes once more. Likely Craft #5.

Also, having re-read Pattern Rec, I really want to re-watch The Wire, to see if the sense of being Of Its Time is consistent across 2000s media (post-internet, pre-smartphone) or if it's specific to the tech-centricity of Pattern Rec.

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the chains that are unexpectedly refused for you

2014-08-28T18:56:23Z

It will have been raining in Harvard Square for only half an hour when you give up hope.

On Monday I got laid off. I spent the next couple of days lazily rounding up personal documents and potential writing samples from the work laptop.

Today I transferred those to my home machine, cleared all personal touches from the work laptop, and shut it down for the last time. Then I went out and stood on the porch for a little while.

The Fraser River was mostly empty. In the distance, a barge full of dirt passed out of view behind Annacis Island.

You cannot know what will happen next.

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miscellanea

2011-07-05T18:50:31Z

In addition to accomplishing a handful of things off my List, yesterday was a day for two major achievements.

First, I updated my computer-building credentials by successfully replacing the memory and hard drive in the work laptop. This involved popping the keyboard out and replacing it without breaking any of its flimsy plastic clips or losing any of the keys (except Home, but who uses that anyway?). My small hammer with several different screwdrivers built into the handle is now officially my go-to computer disassembly tool.

... excuse me, a little brown sparrow just landed on my open window, cheeped at me a few times, and flew away.

Where was I? Right. Secondly, and more importantly, I convinced/shanghaied/bullied uilos into going to the doctor for the persistent crud she's had since before Origins. Likely this only worked because she'd given it to me as of Satyrday morning, and by yesterday I was in pretty miserable shape. But we now have a regimen each of amoxycillin and an irritation at the need to submit claims to the insurance company. Just like home. (BC has a waiting period so we're safe from the dangers of socialized medicine for another couple of months.) The amoxy seems to be doing its job; I'm much more functional today.

Yesterday I also reread the first two ABC books[1] in reverse order, since B is technically a prequel to A, while C is a direct sequel to A that builds on backstory from B. I'm not sure whether I recommend this reading order or not. Probably not; it feels better to let the backstory fill in the gaps in the 'main' story. (In other non-news, if you believe in reading Magician's Nephew before LWW I have nothing to say to you.) Also, reading in pub order means you don't get "how Muire met Kasimir" twice in a row (it's the start of A, and also the last thing that happens in B).

Onward, with reinstalling a bunch of software for work. Yay fun.

[1] Also known as Elizabeth Bear's Edda of Burdens series: All The Windwracked Stars, By The Mountain Bound, The Seas Thy Mistress. A, B, Sea. What? Stop looking at me like that.

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