I feel like I should have asked this, is either of those books bleak and/or depressing? Life is shitty enough right now that I am trying to avoid anything that is just blatantly depressing.
Harrow is principally about a character dealing with their grief.
I would not say that the series or even the book is ultimately depressing but if you don't want to see a character literally shutting down emotionally while also dealing with all sorts of other stressful shit this might be a pass for now. Maybe read Gideon and see if it's your thing? It's got a goth vibe but it's a lot closer in tone to like, a teen dystopia novel.
I feel like I should have asked this, is either of those books bleak and/or depressing? Life is shitty enough right now that I am trying to avoid anything that is just blatantly depressing.
Harrow is principally about a character dealing with their grief.
I would not say that the series or even the book is ultimately depressing but if you don't want to see a character literally shutting down emotionally while also dealing with all sorts of other stressful shit this might be a pass for now. Maybe read Gideon and see if it's your thing? It's got a goth vibe but it's a lot closer in tone to like, a teen dystopia novel.
That's fine. I just meant like Sophie's choice level of depressing. Grief is fine, everything in the world going to literal shit and the characters being powerless to stop it is not. Like I had to quit playing The Banner Saga over it. Just to fucking bleak.
I mean, it's a story of space necromancers, so there's a lot of death involved. That said, it's far enough removed from reality that it feels very separate.
Also, the memes.
I mean, it's a story of space necromancers, so there's a lot of death involved. That said, it's far enough removed from reality that it feels very separate.
Also, the memes.
The more depressed it becomes the more inundated with memes it is. Just like your average millennial.
I feel like I should have asked this, is either of those books bleak and/or depressing? Life is shitty enough right now that I am trying to avoid anything that is just blatantly depressing.
They're certainly dark, but they have some real funny parts (a few of which will hit particularly hard for the kind of person who posts on a webcomic forum). There's also some genuinely beautiful expressions of love and affection.
I will say that as someone who chronic depression and dissociative disorder, harrows book triggered me hard enough I had to stop reading. Dunno if that will apply to you, but another data point for you
I finished Children of Time last night. Not quite how I thought it would end but still interesting. It was a weird book though. I feel like it had an odd perspective where it was like first person omniscient and limited but at the same time.
I feel like I should have asked this, is either of those books bleak and/or depressing? Life is shitty enough right now that I am trying to avoid anything that is just blatantly depressing.
Gideon is joyous as a person and book, and Harrow is not but her book is.
In the subgenre of "Lesbians deal with deep depression" that's been going around Harrow is among the least depressing. That may be an argument for it being the least effective at relating the experience but it sure makes it more pleasant to read than, for example, Baru Cormorant.
I got bogged down in Monster and never finished it, I really should get back into it because y'all said the end was good the last time I asked.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
The end of Monster is decent, but Tyrant absolutely slaps and pays off a lot of things that were set up in Monster.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Speaking of depressing, I reserved a book called Silent Earth from the library because it sounded interesting, about insect extinction, but now I actually have it in my hands I haven't been able to open it cos I just can't imagine coming out of it not feeling like shit.
I just recently finished Tyrant, the author mentioned book 4, and that got me searching I didn't even realize Monster and Tyrant were originally 1 book that got split because it was too big, it definitely feels like that.
Speaking of depressing, I reserved a book called Silent Earth from the library because it sounded interesting, about insect extinction, but now I actually have it in my hands I haven't been able to open it cos I just can't imagine coming out of it not feeling like shit.
yeah I've got a small pile of climate/anthropocene books that I've bought because "this is interesting and I care about it and I should have more data" but am unwilling to ever actually read because man, I know the broad strokes. Filling in the details is just gonna make my headspace even worse.
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited February 2022
It's gotten to the point that I hesitate to pick up any book focusing on any plants or animals. I just know that it's going to be nine chapters of wonderous discovery and nature's miracles and one chapter of "anyway, they're all turbofucked and will likely all be dead by the time you retire."
Two notable and well-written exceptions are jellyfish and algae, so I guess we've got that going for us.
Edit: also ants. Ants don't give a fuck, there will be ant colonies in the last thin habitable zone between the cooling planetary core and the red giant-irradiated crust.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
Witchmark by CL Polk
Two World Fantasy Award winners and the first part in a series that’s won multiple Nebula and Hugo awards. That’s a pretty good deal for the price of $0.00. They’re free to own until the end of the day on the 18th of February.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I'm 20% through Hild, which was written in 2013 and is supposedly the first book of a trilogy, but the second book hasn't come out yet.
Which might be good because holy cow is this book AGGRESSIVELY set in 7th century Britain. I think I might just start over from the beginning now that I'm starting to get a handle on things, cuz I frequently have no fuckin' idea what anyone is talking about at all. Which I don't mind, because the characters do, it's just that logically nobody's gonna take the time out to explain to me like, the social importance of textiles, or who exactly the Æthelings are, or what it means when a gesith of the king calls our young heroine a hægtes in a cyrtel. On the other hand we get like paragraph long explanations of how a fountain works, because a fountain is incredibly novel incredible ancient technology that no one could be expected to believe in without seeing, and multiple characters argue over how exactly the foreign Christ priests use their bound scrolls (book? What's a book?) to cast their magics.
Anyway so far I'm quite liking it, but it's definitely not a relaxing read-before-bed sorta book. Ancient Britain is a very strange and very foreign land!
I like this little passage, our young heroine looking out over a ruin:
Hild climbed the tallest birch. She settled in the saddle of a thick bough hanging over the water and thought of nothing in particular amongst the coin-size leaves whose undersides shimmered with water light.
[...]
From here, all that remained of the fort where they'd dug up the treasures and her beads were two turf banks. Once it had been home to half a hundred horse soldiers from far away. Perhaps their herds had cropped the same grass that Ilfetu nibbled now. She gazed down at the shoulders of her mare, the whorls of grey hair, the fly about to bite at the base of her tail.
She imagined the fort as it would have been in Uinniau's ten-times great-grandsire's lifetime: a square of tall wooden walls built of whole trees with their bark still on them and their tips sharpened, neat ditches and banks, a gate in the centre of every wall, the scent of fires cooking unimaginable food, and over everything the smell of horses, the vibration of horses galloping away.
She always imagined them galloping away, leaving. That's what the Redcrests had done; they'd left. They left behind their stone houses in Caer Luel and beautiful white fountains, their red-tile roofs and straight roads, their perfectly round red bowls with pictures of dogs hunting deer around the rim, their exact corners and glass cups. And now the marble statues had lost their paint and stood melancholy white streaked with moss; tiles had blown off in storms and been patched with reed; men built fire stands directly on the cracked and broken remnants of once-brilliant mosaics.
The fort at Carlisle didn't house half a hundred Roman cavalry, it housed a thousand, a number of soldiers Hild can't really imagine. And she describes Birch tree leaves as coin-sized, which we certainly wouldn't today, but her coins are bigger. And I love how the Roman goods are notable for their perfect roundness and edges, something that doesn't immediately occur to us today as inherently being a big deal.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I'm 20% through Hild, which was written in 2013 and is supposedly the first book of a trilogy, but the second book hasn't come out yet.
Which might be good because holy cow is this book AGGRESSIVELY set in 7th century Britain. I think I might just start over from the beginning now that I'm starting to get a handle on things, cuz I frequently have no fuckin' idea what anyone is talking about at all. Which I don't mind, because the characters do, it's just that logically nobody's gonna take the time out to explain to me like, the social importance of textiles, or who exactly the Æthelings are, or what it means when a gesith of the king calls our young heroine a hægtes in a cyrtel. On the other hand we get like paragraph long explanations of how a fountain works, because a fountain is incredibly novel incredible ancient technology that no one could be expected to believe in without seeing, and multiple characters argue over how exactly the foreign Christ priests use their bound scrolls (book? What's a book?) to cast their magics.
Anyway so far I'm quite liking it, but it's definitely not a relaxing read-before-bed sorta book. Ancient Britain is a very strange and very foreign land!
I like this little passage, our young heroine looking out over a ruin:
Hild climbed the tallest birch. She settled in the saddle of a thick bough hanging over the water and thought of nothing in particular amongst the coin-size leaves whose undersides shimmered with water light.
[...]
From here, all that remained of the fort where they'd dug up the treasures and her beads were two turf banks. Once it had been home to half a hundred horse soldiers from far away. Perhaps their herds had cropped the same grass that Ilfetu nibbled now. She gazed down at the shoulders of her mare, the whorls of grey hair, the fly about to bite at the base of her tail.
She imagined the fort as it would have been in Uinniau's ten-times great-grandsire's lifetime: a square of tall wooden walls built of whole trees with their bark still on them and their tips sharpened, neat ditches and banks, a gate in the centre of every wall, the scent of fires cooking unimaginable food, and over everything the smell of horses, the vibration of horses galloping away.
She always imagined them galloping away, leaving. That's what the Redcrests had done; they'd left. They left behind their stone houses in Caer Luel and beautiful white fountains, their red-tile roofs and straight roads, their perfectly round red bowls with pictures of dogs hunting deer around the rim, their exact corners and glass cups. And now the marble statues had lost their paint and stood melancholy white streaked with moss; tiles had blown off in storms and been patched with reed; men built fire stands directly on the cracked and broken remnants of once-brilliant mosaics.
The fort at Carlisle didn't house half a hundred Roman cavalry, it housed a thousand, a number of soldiers Hild can't really imagine. And she describes Birch tree leaves as coin-sized, which we certainly wouldn't today, but her coins are bigger. And I love how the Roman goods are notable for their perfect roundness and edges, something that doesn't immediately occur to us today as inherently being a big deal.
From memory, there’s a pretty strong correlation between “books Kana likes” and “books I like,” (as well as “books Kana dislikes” with “books I dislike”), and I love medieval British history, so that’s an immediate buy. I still need to finish Elizabeth Moon’s Divided Allegiance and Oath of Gold, and Evan Winters Rage of Dragons, but it’ll probably be after those.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I just finished The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell. Pretty fascinating take on the intersection of technology, and ethics and how it plays out in war.
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
On this week's LeVar Burton Reads, LeVar read Troll Bridge by Terry Pratchett, which is a nice intersection of things I like right now.
I was up reading late last night and I'm up to 50% on Hild. It's cool, and the author obviously put in a ton of research, but I definitely have to be a little reserved in my recommendation.
The reservation: The author obviously knows her shit about the time period, but I don't, and the way she tells the story kind of assumes that you also know all about the time period. There's a LOT of factions and a LOT of crazy anglican/welsh/irish/frankish names running around that can all blur together. Veteran writers will usually throw out some little light reminders of who a character is or where so-and-so is or what we know about x plot, and she just doesn't do that basically ever. TBF it's a bit like Goblin Emperor, which also didn't drop hints for you - half the characters struggle is deciphering who's scheming against who and why, so it makes sense to keep the reader feeling overwhelmed too. OTOH like right now the king is dealing with a major rival and I just plain don't remember who exactly this guy is or what exactly it was he did that made him a rival in the first place.
On the other hand it's a very female-centered story set in a cool time period that I don't know much about, that's really dedicated to being true to the time period, and it's a non-magical book about the life of a seer/prophetess. So she's like one part political advisor, one part bullshit confidence artist cold-reading people to guess what they want to hear, one part possibly neuro-atypical innocent who just wants to go watch birds whose words then get blown up into grand predictions, one part... Well, point being there's quite a lot of parts involved in being a historical prophetess, and I've never really read a book that even tried to get into it the way this one does. It's very cool!
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
Tor's freebie program really is remarkable, they just give them away! It's crazy!
First hit is free and all.
Yeah it's almost always first book in a series right when a new book in it is coming out but honestly I'm still fine with it being a marketing gimmick because I still get a whole book
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I have been burning through the Cradle series. Its just a ton of dumb fun. It does feel very western Wuxia though, kind of like the old Jade Empire video game.
Guy Gavriel Kay's got a new book coming out and somehow I didn't realize he was still active so I guess it's time to circle back to Children of Earth and Sky, which I've been meaning to do for a while.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Dude is remarkably prolific
I circle back every few years and realize he's got one or tow new books out
I think the only older book of his I haven't read at this point is the Fionavar Tapestry (and possibly a sequel, not sure if it's one book or two)
I think the last one I read of his was A Brightness Long Ago which was set in the city-state period of not-Italy right before the fall of not-Byzantium
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I finally finished the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Turns out I had only ever read up to maybe So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish.
These are very good books but they certainly take a little bit of a turn from absurdist to fairly acerbic cynicism. It feels kind of like Douglas Adams had a bit of a bone to pick with everything and everybody and the Guide was his way of sticking it in their eye and when he was done, he was just done with it and wrapped it up. The end. No moral.
For a book series thats so tongue in cheek and dripping with that early British, Monty Python esque humor, it bends a bit sad and nihilistic towards then end. Im not necessarily saying thats a bad thing. The constant, underlying theme throughout the whole thing is the universe is random, pointless and insane and all of us are so hilariously insignificant in every single facet. We only have our plane of existence with which to orient ourselves and cant begin to even pretend to fathom the things just slightly out of our peripheral vision.
Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
edited February 2022
If you'd like you could read And another thing... by Eoin Colfer, technically the 6th and final book in the Hitchhiker's Guide series. It is weird but I think worth it. Adams did intend to write a 6th book. They even did a full radio adaptation with the original radio cast, without Peter Jones, obviously.
I finally finished the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Turns out I had only ever read up to maybe So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish.
These are very good books but they certainly take a little bit of a turn from absurdist to fairly acerbic cynicism. It feels kind of like Douglas Adams had a bit of a bone to pick with everything and everybody and the Guide was his way of sticking it in their eye and when he was done, he was just done with it and wrapped it up. The end. No moral.
For a book series thats so tongue in cheek and dripping with that early British, Monty Python esque humor, it bends a bit sad and nihilistic towards then end. Im not necessarily saying thats a bad thing. The constant, underlying theme throughout the whole thing is the universe is random, pointless and insane and all of us are so hilariously insignificant in every single facet. We only have our plane of existence with which to orient ourselves and cant begin to even pretend to fathom the things just slightly out of our peripheral vision.
But still, it all ends kinda heavy.
Yea, I don't read the 5th book anymore when I do a re-read.
Posts
Harrow is principally about a character dealing with their grief.
I would not say that the series or even the book is ultimately depressing but if you don't want to see a character literally shutting down emotionally while also dealing with all sorts of other stressful shit this might be a pass for now. Maybe read Gideon and see if it's your thing? It's got a goth vibe but it's a lot closer in tone to like, a teen dystopia novel.
That's fine. I just meant like Sophie's choice level of depressing. Grief is fine, everything in the world going to literal shit and the characters being powerless to stop it is not. Like I had to quit playing The Banner Saga over it. Just to fucking bleak.
PSN:Furlion
Also, the memes.
The more depressed it becomes the more inundated with memes it is. Just like your average millennial.
They're certainly dark, but they have some real funny parts (a few of which will hit particularly hard for the kind of person who posts on a webcomic forum). There's also some genuinely beautiful expressions of love and affection.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
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Gideon is joyous as a person and book, and Harrow is not but her book is.
If you tapped out after Traitor things get significantly worse before they get better so you may not wish to continue.
yeah I've got a small pile of climate/anthropocene books that I've bought because "this is interesting and I care about it and I should have more data" but am unwilling to ever actually read because man, I know the broad strokes. Filling in the details is just gonna make my headspace even worse.
Two notable and well-written exceptions are jellyfish and algae, so I guess we've got that going for us.
Edit: also ants. Ants don't give a fuck, there will be ant colonies in the last thin habitable zone between the cooling planetary core and the red giant-irradiated crust.
Thinking of Murderbot, Tor’s free E-books this month include a Murderbot.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
Witchmark by CL Polk
Two World Fantasy Award winners and the first part in a series that’s won multiple Nebula and Hugo awards. That’s a pretty good deal for the price of $0.00. They’re free to own until the end of the day on the 18th of February.
Which might be good because holy cow is this book AGGRESSIVELY set in 7th century Britain. I think I might just start over from the beginning now that I'm starting to get a handle on things, cuz I frequently have no fuckin' idea what anyone is talking about at all. Which I don't mind, because the characters do, it's just that logically nobody's gonna take the time out to explain to me like, the social importance of textiles, or who exactly the Æthelings are, or what it means when a gesith of the king calls our young heroine a hægtes in a cyrtel. On the other hand we get like paragraph long explanations of how a fountain works, because a fountain is incredibly novel incredible ancient technology that no one could be expected to believe in without seeing, and multiple characters argue over how exactly the foreign Christ priests use their bound scrolls (book? What's a book?) to cast their magics.
Anyway so far I'm quite liking it, but it's definitely not a relaxing read-before-bed sorta book. Ancient Britain is a very strange and very foreign land!
I like this little passage, our young heroine looking out over a ruin:
The fort at Carlisle didn't house half a hundred Roman cavalry, it housed a thousand, a number of soldiers Hild can't really imagine. And she describes Birch tree leaves as coin-sized, which we certainly wouldn't today, but her coins are bigger. And I love how the Roman goods are notable for their perfect roundness and edges, something that doesn't immediately occur to us today as inherently being a big deal.
First hit is free and all.
From memory, there’s a pretty strong correlation between “books Kana likes” and “books I like,” (as well as “books Kana dislikes” with “books I dislike”), and I love medieval British history, so that’s an immediate buy. I still need to finish Elizabeth Moon’s Divided Allegiance and Oath of Gold, and Evan Winters Rage of Dragons, but it’ll probably be after those.
The reservation: The author obviously knows her shit about the time period, but I don't, and the way she tells the story kind of assumes that you also know all about the time period. There's a LOT of factions and a LOT of crazy anglican/welsh/irish/frankish names running around that can all blur together. Veteran writers will usually throw out some little light reminders of who a character is or where so-and-so is or what we know about x plot, and she just doesn't do that basically ever. TBF it's a bit like Goblin Emperor, which also didn't drop hints for you - half the characters struggle is deciphering who's scheming against who and why, so it makes sense to keep the reader feeling overwhelmed too. OTOH like right now the king is dealing with a major rival and I just plain don't remember who exactly this guy is or what exactly it was he did that made him a rival in the first place.
On the other hand it's a very female-centered story set in a cool time period that I don't know much about, that's really dedicated to being true to the time period, and it's a non-magical book about the life of a seer/prophetess. So she's like one part political advisor, one part bullshit confidence artist cold-reading people to guess what they want to hear, one part possibly neuro-atypical innocent who just wants to go watch birds whose words then get blown up into grand predictions, one part... Well, point being there's quite a lot of parts involved in being a historical prophetess, and I've never really read a book that even tried to get into it the way this one does. It's very cool!
Yo the amount of times people I know start listening to this podcast vs the number of people I have begged to listen to this podcast makes me sad
I have bought more books as a result of this podcast than I've gotten from any book reviews or websites or newspapers ever
E: edited to make sense whoops
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Yeah it's almost always first book in a series right when a new book in it is coming out but honestly I'm still fine with it being a marketing gimmick because I still get a whole book
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I particularly like Triton
I circle back every few years and realize he's got one or tow new books out
I think the only older book of his I haven't read at this point is the Fionavar Tapestry (and possibly a sequel, not sure if it's one book or two)
I think the last one I read of his was A Brightness Long Ago which was set in the city-state period of not-Italy right before the fall of not-Byzantium
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Turns out I had only ever read up to maybe So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish.
For a book series thats so tongue in cheek and dripping with that early British, Monty Python esque humor, it bends a bit sad and nihilistic towards then end. Im not necessarily saying thats a bad thing. The constant, underlying theme throughout the whole thing is the universe is random, pointless and insane and all of us are so hilariously insignificant in every single facet. We only have our plane of existence with which to orient ourselves and cant begin to even pretend to fathom the things just slightly out of our peripheral vision.
But still, it all ends kinda heavy.
Yea, I don't read the 5th book anymore when I do a re-read.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It's a shame he never really got to rework it how he would've liked.