⚧️⚕️ 25 Zeptember 2024 Day 10,329 Summer Reading
Authority, Jeff VanderMeer
While I found the last twenty percent or so engaging and was left excited for the sequal, this novel definitely dragged compared to Annhilation. The bit about the Voice and hypnosis and the list of curse words was frustratingly opaque and I found Control’s overall approach to The Southern Reach tedius, especially the contrived conflict with Grace.
Children of God, Mary Doria Russel
I first read the Sparrow circa Christmas of 2018 and moved on to Children of God immidiately after. Since then I’ve read the Sparrow once more, but the transition in narrators (I read both on audible) was extremely jaring, especially for the voice of Santos. This time, I read Children of God more than a year after my last reading of The Sparrow and was able to enjoy the narration on its own terms.
Children of God is a very different novel from The Sparrow. Its development of the worlds’ high politics—the birth order-caste system of Rhakaat and the Society of Jesus on Earth—is richer for its opacity in a way that Authority is tedious. Russel plays with time in both novels (the nonlinear structure moving back and forth between the periods after Santos’ return and before in The Sparrow, the temporal dilation of relativistic speeds and the the historical inquiries of the Jesuits in Children of God) but whereas The Sparrow is driven by the disection of Emilio’s trauma and charachter transformation, Children of God hangs heavy, frozen in the headlights of his fated return to the world of his unmaking. In The Sparrow, we can hardly wait to get our protagonists to meet the aliens; in Children of God, we want to hold Emilio back kicking and screaming before his return.
I remain uncertain about the thematic conclusion of Children of God. Could the Jesuits have saved the Jarakatta without Emilio’s help? Probably not. Does this make return to faith and his forgiveness of Vincint feel satisfying or persuasive feel satisfying or persuasive, even in light of Isaac’s music? Not really. Russel excells at writing persuasively about divinity, but Emilio’s recuperation—after being so drawn out through all of the latter passages of The Sparrow and perhaps seventy percent of Children of God strikes me as too rushed, too tidy. I don’t know what I wanted. (Nevermind—I do know one thing I wanted: a Mother General of the Society of Jesus! But alas, I suspect the 2080s will be too soon for such a development, even as I hope otherwise.)
Despite this rapid turn around, the charachterization in COG otherwise is impecable. Russel writes children better than most SF writers, her treatment of the holy cruelty of Vincent and Galacius is convincing, and in remarkably few, exposition-rich scenes she makes Sean, Josebo, Franz and Johny come to life. Danny Ironhorse’s moral sacrifice is worthy of that of Abraham, and one cannot help but hating him and loving him. The only real weakpoint in the main cast is Carlo, whose bisexuality makes a certain sense as a foil to Santos and mirrror of Havlan Kitari but in practice Carlo never quite transcends his narrow self-servingness in a cast of otherwise tragiheroic agents.
Beloved Of The Sun, Ann Leckie
My first Leckie but hopefully not my last. A really intriguing premis—the words of a God must be true, and if they fail to become true the power of that God may be shattered. The gambit with the nameless God is played a little too obvious so that the arc of the narrative feels somewhat mechanical and Hawk is left seeming too credulous to really inspire terror. The second-person pov was really well done, I’m a firm partisan of second-person so that excited me right off the back.
The Will To Battle, Ada Palmer
My fourth(?) reading of this book this year. Its excellent, heart wrending, beautiful, more sprawling than its predecesors but leaves one grasping for every straw we can find re OS, Utopia, Cray, etc.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers
Re-read this one in light of Record of a Spaceborn Few. Really rich charachterization. At times a little overly sachrine but it earns it with the really nicely worked themes of specicide and the loss of Lovey.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber
Wow wow wow wow wow wow wow. A hard read to be sure, but so so fascinating and even hopeful in its way. The intersection of debt, magic, religion, metaphysics, state-market dynamics, feminist critique and rebelious philosophy makes the imagination spark and crackle like little else. Also an important contribution to the deconstruction of the mideval period as it exists in the popular consciousness and provincialization of Europe. The awful hugeness of human history and the project of liberation incites and humbles in equal measure.
What Makes This Book So Great, Jo Walton
My second reading of a great book about re-reading great books. I really appreciate Walton’s refusal to accept the narrowness of the mainstream cannon of SF. A rousing celebration of the collective project that is genre.
20020: An American Football Story, Jon Bois
I love Bois, he was the first writer to get me excited about the philosophy of sport. This novela is more tightly written than its prequal and though I love the eclectic nature of 17776, this one more fully captures the essence of the project of making meaning out of empty time.
The Scar, China Mievile
Trying to use this as a framing device for my thesis. Its lovely and sad and tragic and bitter.
Looking for Jake, China Mievile
Kind of disapointed by this one. I liked the one about the commodification of Christmas and the title story, but the Tain despite having a great, peak Mievilian premise dragged in the middle and most of the others were pretty forgettable. Three Moments of an Explosion was definitely prefereable.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
from the more litterary end of the Dick cannon, perhaps one of his more cogent meditations on blured realities. oh so rebellious and oh so white. there’s a nocturne-Seussean quality to the worlds he conjures up. the demonic charachters flitting about in their quibs, the incidental apotheosis of Richard Nixon, and the coin operated streetlights install a certain nostolgic yearning to have gone walking down these bleak streets which my operating system can’t quite shake.
Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and The Deep Origins of Conciousness
thrilling exploration of evolutionary biology, history of science, and xenophenomonology. but it doesn’t go quite far enough in pressing for a more radical, widespread model of concsciousness.
Record of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers
One of the most powerful opening scenes in a novel I’ve read, richly tapastried in charachterization and worldbuilding. I cried reading the scene with Sunny and his nephew, there’s such a binary between judgement and patronizing pitty when it comes to sex workers, it so cathartic to read about one just living his life.
Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky
I love when SF draws on theological and mythological paradigms for its prose. Tchaikovsky’s Children, Liu’s Three Body Problem and especially Dark Forest, and Palmer’s Terra Ignota do this masterfully. On my first reading of Children of Ruin I was somewhat disapointed we didn’t get as much of a step by step development of the Octopus Civilizatiton as in Children of Time, but on reread I have to conclude it really does succede on its own own ecclectic terms.
Between Two Fires, Christopher Buehlman
I read this one in a two day rush before my audible account expired. mixed feelings. the first three parts functioned really well as enviornmental/climate fiction, the portrayal of society from the mundane to the metaphysical under the pressure cooker of the Black Death were uncanny and compelling and strangely comforting. part 4 was reorientated the narative to thewards more interpersonal papal politics and at the same time shifted from magical realism to a more straightforward clash of capabilities and powers. something was lost that made the first parts so weird and great. still bold, still weird, but not what I felt was being built up to. The end, especially the detentmont, was very neat and tidy, very just so, and while some of the surreal poetry of the earlier parts of the work reemerged the impression was one of an abrupt shift shift form the horrors of a heaven and earth abject and abandoned by God to one micromanaged by Him just because.