sophia_sol | Entries tagged with pub date: 2016

When I watched The Untamed (hereafter CQL) in 2021, my immediate thought upon finishing was that I HAD to read the book (hereafter MDZS) that it was based on. Now, more than two years later, I have finally done that.

And it's so good you guys!

And also, really very different from CQL.

I knew that already, because on top of the way that inevitably at least some things get changed in any adaptation process, I understand that the complex system of chinese censorship has standards for a wide variety of different things not being allowed to be shown on tv. And several of those things are integral to the version of the story in MDZS.

Being now familiar with the versions of the story told in both tv and book, I think the difference that's the biggest is the moral universe being presented by the themes of each story. CQL is the story of a person who always tries his best to do what's right, and is treated poorly by society because of it, but eventually is able to triumph. MDZS is the story of a person who makes some huge mistakes and then has to (gets to?) learn how to live with them.

Both are wonderful stories worth telling! And they have a lot in common. But they are not, in the end, the same story. Going forward I will definitely be paying more attention to which version is being tagged as the fandom when I open fic!

I do feel like I'm not quite up to writing a coherent review of the book right now though. I read the first two-thirds or so back in April, and then accidentally took a multi-month break from reading it, and then read through the remainder over the course of the last few weeks. So the beginning portions of the book are fuzzy in my head and easy to confuse with everything else I have read about CQL/MDZS and the fanfic of both, and it's hard to hold the shape of the entire narrative in my head.

But I do have a few more notes! Most of which are varyingly spoilery for either or both of CQL & MDZS

( Read more... )

idk I feel like I'm spending most of this review talking about MDZS only as relates to CQL which feels a bit unfair to MDZS as the originator, like I'm not respecting it as its own thing! But it's hard for me to talk about it in any other way after having spent the last two years so much in the fandom. If I'd come to MDZS before I ever knew anything about CQL this would be reading very differently!

At some point I do want to do a closer reading of MDZS to appreciate it better for what it specifically is doing, like the way I'm currently doing a TGCF close read on mastodon. There's so much fruitful stuff to pay attention to in any work by MXTX.

Anyway please rec me fic that is particularly good at being based in MDZS canon! I want to spend more time exploring it!

Huh, this novella did some odd and wonderful things, playing back and forth and sideways with time and with what's real, and I loved it. I loved the rhythms of the prose too, and I loved the fascinating worldbuilding that you just got matter-of-fact hints of as major things happened offscreen while the book focused on things that were small and personal and familial.

I think it would have benefited from me reading it all in one go, because at least for me, I had trouble keeping in my head what had happened in my previous day's reading and I kept having to go back and reread previous chapters, but that might just be a me-and-my-memory problem.

Aqib's relationship with his (male) lover, his wife, his daughter, his brother, and his father are the major focus of the book, and all of these relationships are fascinating, and some of them are very unhealthy but still understandable. I was fascinated by the Blessed Femysade in particular!

And dangit, now I think I DO need to read the other novella by Wilson set in this world, Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, which I'd previously skipped over because it looked like it wasn't going to have a happy ending and I didn't want to get invested!

This is a collection of short stories translated from Japanese, and inspired by traditional Japanese ghost stories, from what I understand, so I am absolutely confident I'm missing nuance and implications since I don't know any of the stories it's based on -- but you know what, this was an entirely charming book even coming in cold as an outsider.

The stories feature an exuberant mixing together of living people and ghosts, of people who have supernatural talents and people who don't, all just living their lives (or their deaths, lol) and being themselves. Some of the stories intertwine with each other, with characters who are minor background characters in one becoming the main character in another, giving you different perspectives on things in a fun way, but each story is complete in itself. The overall impression one gets is that the author just likes people, even the ones who are irritating or who make bad choices or who don't like other people themselves, and it's a very cheering sort of impression to come away with.

Thanks to

skygiants for the recommendation!

I've read this novelette before, but it was years ago, and at the time it was long enough between when I read it and reviewed it that I didn't have a lot to say. Well, I just reread it and I have things to say!!! Mostly that it's GREAT.

It's the story set in the Chinese afterlife, featuring a Malay woman named Siew Tsin who died very young, who's manipulated by a dead relative of hers and then sold off to be the second wife of a very rich and powerful dead man.

I love the choice of Siew Tsin as the pov character. Through her eyes you can see just glimpses of a much more exciting story happening to other characters, but Siew Tsin is caught up in her own issues: her efforts to be good, her efforts to be someone, how she is always too late when she finally decides to do anything. The story is about Siew Tsin learning how to make and feel confident in her own decisions. And although I might WANT to know more of the story of Ling'en and Yonghua, I'm also very happy with what we do have on the page!

And I LOVE the moment at the end where ( okay spoilers )

Islamicates Volume I, edited by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

A collection of stories that was made available free online, this book is specifically focused on collecting works of sff inspired by Muslim cultures. My initial reaction to the book is that it badly desperately horribly needs a copyeditor (AUGH it was painful to read in places!!) and tbh could also have used a stronger hand in a more in-depth editing too, but if I set that aside, it was a pretty interesting read!

Not all of the stories worked for me, and even the best stories were only fairly good, but I really enjoyed reading a whole book of stories about Muslim characters, a demographic who don't tend to get a lot of focus in sff. My favourite stories in the collection were "Calligraphy," "Searching for Azrail," and "Congruence."

A Mosque Among the Stars, edited by Ahmed A. Khan and Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

Like Islamicates, this book is a freely-available collection of Muslim-focused sff short stories. But it's an earlier effort and, imo, a weaker one. It's also badly in need of a strong copyedit and editor. But it has an even greater disparity between the stronger stories and the weaker ones, with the weak ones very weak, imo, and I was left with some complicated feelings even about some of the stories I enjoyed reading. I'd recommend reading Islamicates over this one.

WHY do I keep reading Alyssa Cole when her books never work for me??? Sigh. I guess it's because they just keep coming so close and hope springs eternal. I'm letting go for real this time though! (And will keep dreaming of what could have been with A Hope Divided, because that one came SO CLOSE.)

This one is a romance set in the era of the civil rights movement, between a Jewish man and a black woman. I liked both lead characters, I liked their backstory together, I liked the activism that is the focus of the action in the book.

But the way the interest between the leads was described just always felt uncomfortably awkward to read for me, which meant that any scene that was about their relationship rather than their commitment to their cause or their relationships with their families or their personal growth just didn't really work for me. (Possibly this is another "me being asexual" thing. Sexual interest between characters in some other romance novels does work for me, for a given value of "work" where I merely find it boring and unrelatable, but it's possible that the way Cole writes it just hits those notes in a different way where it's a little too obviously alien to my experience, or something? idk!).

And, more disappointingly, it felt like at a certain point in the book the story rather abruptly went from having a narrative shape to just skipping from scene to scene. The first half or so of the book felt well framed and well balanced to me. But after Sofie joins the bus rides, the rest of the book felt like a series of snapshot epilogues instead of actually telling the whole story, which was disappointing and made me feel like I never got a satisfying ending to the story and the characters. Up to that point I was thinking that maybe I'd finally found an Alyssa Cole book that I actually liked!

SIGH.

This is a pair of cute, quick-reading children's novels. The premise: a brand-new robot washes up on the shore of an unpopulated island, so instead of learning how to do useful tasks from new human owners, she learns how to become part of the life of the island amongst the animals. It's a sweet story about family you choose for yourself, and also acknowledges the realities of the cycles of life and death in the natural world.

( Read more... )

Ultimately these books are optimistic in tone, and I like Brown's simple, direct prose style and how the narrator isn't invisible. And I love the premise, of a robot at home in the natural world. I'm glad I found these.

This last week I read seven romance novels in a row without noting down any kind of detailed thoughts about any of them to write proper posts about, because it was That Kind Of Week. I'll come back and finish tidying some of my backlogged book thoughts for posting later but figured I might as well just throw these up since I won't be able to make proper posts of them.

1. After The Wedding, by Courtney Milan - a reread of a truly excellent one, still adore it, still deeply want to know everything about Theresa's story following this novel because I care wayyyy too much about Theresa.

2. Briarley, by Aster Glenn Gray - a m/m retelling of Beauty and the Beast which was absolutely lovely and I approved of just about every choice the author made in how to adapt the original story.

3. Sweet Disorder, by Rose Lerner (Lively St Lemeston #1) - small-town politics involving a young widow being encouraged to remarry for voting reasons but she has her own personal stuff going on too, liked it a lot.

4. True Pretenses, by Rose Lerner (Lively St Lemeston #2) - a reread, still totally delightful, love everything about it.

5. Listen to the Moon, by Rose Lerner (Lively St Lemeston #3) - really interesting marriage-of-convenience story about a valet-turned-butler and a maid, really wish I'd had the wherewithal to write down more detailed thoughts about this one because it super deserves it, very much worth the read.

6. A Taste of Honey, by Rose Lerner (Lively St Lemeston #4) - sweet and cute but it didn't really speak to me.

7. The Blue Castle, by Lucy Maud Montgomery - an old favourite comfort-read which I don't allow myself to reread too often anymore for fear of wearing out the story in my mind but the situation was deserving of a reread and it hit the spot as it always does.

A magic realism novel about American slavery written using the conceit that the Underground Railroad was a literal actual railroad underground. It's an interesting and compelling book in many ways but honestly....I am kind of confused by the point of the conceit in the first place. Possibly (probably) I am just not Literary enough for this book and am failing to recognize important thematic details that the corporealized railroad draws out but that part of the book doesn't work for me personally.

And between that and another part of the book that seems out of its historical context from my knowledge ( (one small spoiler) ) it makes me doubt the historical veracity of everything I'm reading. Yes, it's fiction, but what parts of its historical setting are based on fact and what aren't? How much is part of the alternate-world fantasy? I have no good way of judging. And so I could never get a handle on how to interpret the setting.

Which is a shame because there's a lot to love about the book. It's a vivid and gripping story about a young woman's experiences with slavery and with the many faces of racism and prejudice as she attempts to escape. I cared a lot about Cora and about many of the characters she meets along the way. It's a powerful book, and an important one. I'm just....very slightly off mark for being the right audience for it because of the magic realism. I'M SORRY.

Does what it says on the tin! This book is a chapter-by-chapter overview of various important issues relating to the Indigenous population in Canada, so it doesn't do an in-depth look at anything but gives you a good starting place for understanding the realities and complexities. And then each chapter extensively cites sources for further research so it's a great jumping-off point for deeper learning if desired.

A bunch of the content in the book was stuff that I already knew in a vague way, so the book was helpful in solidifying that vague knowledge, and other content was new to me which was also helpful!

Also: it has very readable prose, which is absolutely not to be taken for granted in a book that's basically a 101-level textbook. I first picked it up at bedtime to glance at the first few pages to decide if I wanted to take it to work the next day as my lunch-break read, and looked up again 60 pages later, well past my bedtime. A GOOD SIGN. Except for the sleep deprivation.

Overall a strong and helpful introductory book for settler peoples in Canada.

These two books are the last two in the Birchbark House series. They're a bit different in feel than the other three because instead of having one main character through whose eyes you see most things, these two books jump around a lot between the various characters that make up the family. There's some focus on Omakayas's two sons, yes, but they don't get the same degree of attention that Omakayas got in the first three books.

( Read more... )

HELLO YES I HAD A LOT OF FEELINGS.

So I accidentally went and read a bunch of two-star reviews on goodreads when I was partway through this book, which was great for making me mad about how people are Wrong On The Internet. At least it's averaging 4.5 stars so the people who are Wrong are in the minority.

But also like, the things that people dislike the book for are part of why I like it (optimistic about people being generally kind to each other, cares about diversity, more interested in characters than plot). Which I guess indicates that the book is in fact highly successful at what it sets out to do, it's just that not everyone wants that.

This book is a sequel to Becky Chambers' first book, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, and I still adore the title to that book btw. But it's the sort of sequel where you actually don't need to have read the first book to follow this one, because none of the main characters are the same between the two books, and this book evidently has no interest in letting the reader know anything else that happened to the first set of protagonists.

The main characters are Pepper, a human woman, and Sidra, an AI in an illegal humanoid body who Pepper is helping out. ( Read more... )

An interesting book on the theme of what home and family really mean, explored through the lens of a father-daughter team who can time travel using a sailing ship but only if they have a map made in the time and place they're aiming for. I really loved it!

( Read more... )

Back when this book was new I kept on seeing hype for it everywhere but didn't ever quite feel like it sounded enough up my alley to be bothered reading it. But then I read a short story by the author which I really enjoyed, and decided maybe I should get around to All the Birds in the Sky after all. It took me a while, but finally I did!

And this is definitely a good book, but like.... I don't know what to do with it. I'm not convinced I like it, but it is certainly very interesting. It's not quite like any other book I've ever read. And I don't know what to say about it! But I'm glad I read it.

( Read more... )

Gosh, what a good book! A slow start - a slow most of it, actually, but very worthwhile. I love the way it shows over and over that there are no easy, uncomplicated answers for anything.

This book's premise is that it fixes the horrific stuff that happened at King Leopold's hand in the Belgian Congo, with bonus steampunk. ( Read more... )

OH GOSH!!! It's hard to know what to say about this book. It was SO GOOD.

( in which I find a lot of things to say anyway )

WELL I am now finished the Rivers of London series so I suppose I will post about the last four books all at once here since it feels weird to keep posting one at a time as if I'm not already done. Here we go!

( Whispers Under Ground, by Ben Aaronovitch )

( Broken Homes, by Ben Aaronovitch )

( Foxglove Summer, by Ben Aaronovitch )

( The Hanging Tree, by Ben Aaronovitch )

This book was incredible. It's a memoir of a biologist, interspersed with small sections of thematically relevant plant facts. But as well as it being the story of her scientific life, it's also just as much the story of her relationship with Bill, her best friend/chosen brother/platonic soulmate/lab manager/whatever you want to call him, and how central the two of them are to each other, how important.

So at its heart this book is just a lovely look at two weirdos who love science and each other, and that is just like EVERYTHING GOOD?? I had a lot of feelings. Plus the quality of the prose in this book is great which is always nice too, and not to be relied upon in memoirs!

(it's super weird though to read professional reviews of this book. One review I read mentioned Bill in all of one paragraph out of about fifteen, clearly seeing his and Hope's friendship as a minor facet of the book. Hope's pretty clear in the last chapter of the book that in large part writing this book was writing about Bill, and the important connection between Bill and Hope permeates the entirety of the book! But because the rest of the world doesn't know how to understand important platonic relationships, this gets sidelined in reviews. Ugh.)

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly

As is the case for many people, I'm sure, I read this book because I'd seen the recent movie based on it, thought the movie was wonderful, and wanted to know more. And this book was definitely worth seeking out! I was gonna explain the premise of the story for people who aren't familiar, but the book does it for you in its expansive subtitle so there you go.

( Read more... )

An interesting book, though not quite what I was expecting it to be! I put a hold on the ebook at my library on a whim, based on nothing more than the cover and title which I saw when browsing Overdrive. I was expecting something more in the line of a memoir/autobiography. What this book actually is: a collection of writings from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg over the years, with bits of introductory material contextualizing the pieces.

So it was still very interesting, even if not what I was expecting. It's much more about US law than it is about Ginsburg herself. So I now know a lot more about how the Supreme Court works. Ginsburg comes across very well in this book though - intelligent, articulate, caring. (Also she's REALLY REALLY SHORT oh my gosh, those pictures at the end, she is always by far the smallest person in any given photograph.)

The last section of the book shares a number of her recent dissents, which is a rather depressing note to end on. She argues forcefully for what I would agree is the correct decision on issues like women's reproductive rights, and it's so sad to know that these pieces are the dissent and not the opinion of the court.

It was weird to read her praise of Scalia throughout the book. He's the Justice she refers to most often, and it seems she genuinely liked him as a person. It feels weird to hold that knowledge alongside the knowledge that he vociferously fought for the exact opposite side on a lot of issues she clearly thinks are of dire importance in the lives of many people. I don't know if I could be friends with someone who so actively worked for so much of what I would consider to be harm in the world as Scalia did.

It's also depressing to read this book in the context of knowing that Scalia's seat is gonna be filled by a Donald Trump nominee. Auuuggghhhhhhhhhh. I just hope he doesn't get the chance to replace any other Justices as well. Ginsburg seems to be in good health for an 83 year old and I HOPE SHE STAYS THAT WAY. FOR AS MANY YEARS AS NECESSARY.