the untamed pt 2

Early in my watch-through of The Untamed, if you asked me who my favourite character was, I would probably have said Lan Xichen. And I do love him a lot! But it turns out that that was just me falling back into my old habits of feeling like I can't just like the same thing everyone else likes, that's too normal of me. Because uh. Turns out Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are actually incredible?? I love them both a perhaps unreasonable amount! They are my favourites!

(Other second-favourite characters to go along with lxc, ones who I couldn't name early on because they don't show up as much until later in the show: all four of the main juniors, do not make me choose between them, they are all the BEST; Wen Ning; Mianmian.)

(...did I remember to tell my blog when I finished watching The Untamed, or did that just stay on twitter? I finished watching The Untamed! Months ago! It was amazing!!!!)

The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal

The thing about this series that has been nagging at me from the first book, but haven't been able to articulate to myself until now, is that it is simultaneously too hopeful and not hopeful enough. It makes it hard to believe in the hopeful future the books are clearly trying to work towards. ( cut for spoilers for the end of this book )

And one of the the other effects of this hope/hopelessness is it also kind of makes me feel like the efforts at diversity are asking for an ally cookie instead of feeling like what would actually happen in the version of history posited by the series. Given how sexist/racist/homophobic/etc the powers that be are, would they really be letting all these people into space? Even given the dire urgency caused by the asteroid? Bigoted people will shoot themselves in their own foot facilitate their continued bigotry tbh!!

I rated the previous books in this series highly and wrote positive reviews, but I had a sense of unease all along that I just ignored because I couldn't figure out what I was reacting to. I'm still not sure I'm able to fully explain my position here, but. The above at least points towards it.

Anyway, let me talk more about this book specifically! This book focuses on a different female astronaut than the Lady Astronaut herself. The hero of this book is Nicole Wargin, caught between her professional ambitions and her role as a political spouse to support her husband. I really enjoyed this aspect of the story. But the main driving plot of the book is: there's one or more saboteurs on the moon, endangering everyone in the nascent colony there! And this was EXTREMELY STRESSFUL for me to read about, which made the whole book super hard for me to actually read. I nearly gave up on it several times.

This was made harder by the fact that I was reading it while away in a provincial park on a canoe trip with no internet access, so I couldn't google for spoilers to lower my stress levels as I otherwise would have!

I also was not a fan of the fact that ( spoilers! )

Anyway I do overall still like this series, but not as much as I once did.

2021 Hugo Award: Best Novel

Hoorah, I have now read all of the finalists for the Hugo Best Novel this year! Let's go through my ranking of them.

For the books I finished and wrote a proper review, I've linked the review from the title of the book.

1. Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

Fascinating and lovely and odd and touching, and hugely immersive for such a (relatively) short novel.

2. Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse

Interesting and enjoyable, loved the worldbuilding and the author's style, but frustrated by the cliffhanger ending.

3. Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

I struggled to be invested for the first half but once I was there I was THERE. Very weird in a very compelling way.

4. Network Effect, by Martha Wells

I adore Murderbot and everyone Murderbot cares about, but I had trouble following what was going on for a lot of this book. Possibly I was hampered by having a bad day when I was reading it. Possibly I should try rereading it before casting my final votes, because I may not be doing it justice here. We'll see if I get round to that...

5. The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal

I mostly enjoy the series, but this book didn't work for me as well as previous entries in the series did. Too stressful for my tastes, and the ending didn't work for me.

6. The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin

I've really enjoyed the other novels by Jemisin I've read, but this was a DNF for me. It felt overly invested in New York City being special, and also just overly invested in New York City, a city that I don't have any reason to care about at all, having no personal connection to it. I think there were other things that weren't working for me as well, but I no longer remember what they were! And I didn't write down my thoughts at the time of reading it. But the book just didn't work for me.