As a history nerd I could list off a bunch of things that really please me about She Who Became the Sun, but like to go into more depth for just one specific thing where I'm just delighted at her understanding of the period:
(minimal spoilers but I'll be polite)
Two of our major characters are a woman posing as a male buddhist priest, and a Han eunuch in service to the ruling mongol Yuan dynasty.
Both of them are sexually queer, which is pretty evident immediately, but the book's also really smart is exploring their specifically dynastic-China brand of gender queerness.
"Family" in china was conceived as basically a straight line of descent from father to son, and to be male was to continue that chain of lineage. If there's no one to honor and remember you it's kinda the death of your soul, you've really got to continue on that family line. And of course you've got to honor your parents through filial action, and one key filial action is not disfiguring the body that they gave you - big reason why all those dudes in Chinese epics are running around with such long hair and mustaches!
But then there's priests and eunuchs, both of whom notably live outside this conception of family and masculinity. They do not continue the chain, they don't have sons. And both are non-filial - eunuchs bodies are cut, while buddhist priests shave their heads and may have induction scars (think of those dots you see on a dude's upper forehead). Both classes are more or less outside of the male gender.
The eunuch thing is a bit more obvious, but I was really tickled that the author chose "buddhist priest" as what her heroine is posing as. It creates this interesting and very specific-to-its-setting additional layer of gender queerness on top of its more obvious "woman posing as man" gender queerness that I think most writers would have started with and figured was more than enough.
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.
What I keep thinking of when I read it is the kdrama Painter of the Wind,
where it's a lady posing as a guy to be in a painting academy in old-timey Seoul. Very much in that classic kdrama tradition of them going, "haha, we're just playin' with gender roles a little!" and then realizing halfway through that oh shit their show has gotten REALLY gay, panicking, and sending the same-sex female love interest off on a bus.
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.
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
ks
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
If we're talking books from the perspective of animals, I can recommend Dogs of War by Adrian Tschaikowsky. It's told from the perspective of a "enhanced" dog, and also feature a bear and a swarm of bees. It's pretty cool.
I finished reading my first book of 2022, which was Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, picked by me mostly due to glowing recommendations of forumers here.
It was good, sometimes very good, but it was not amazing and it did not destroy me emotionally, like it did some other people. I probably expected too much, so it's not the book's fault for my overgrown expectations.
If we're talking books from the perspective of animals, I can recommend Dogs of War by Adrian Tschaikowsky. It's told from the perspective of a "enhanced" dog, and also feature a bear and a swarm of bees. It's pretty cool.
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
He has a long (like, 15 books) fantasy series where instead of typical fantasy race shit it's all humans who have some aspect of an insect. Mantises are badass but emotionally distant warriors, Dragonflies are fast and strong and creative but Mercurial, Beetles are physically resilient and great industrialists, Spiders are beautiful and manipulative. Etc.
He has a long (like, 15 books) fantasy series where instead of typical fantasy race shit it's all humans who have some aspect of an insect. Mantises are badass but emotionally distant warriors, Dragonflies are fast and strong and creative but Mercurial, Beetles are physically resilient and great industrialists, Spiders are beautiful and manipulative. Etc.
Also there are giant insects everywhere.
He likes weird animal stuff, it's great.
This series is called Shadows of the Apt and is 10 books long. First 2 books are rather mediocre, even if they have interesting worldbuilding, but later quality increases with each new title - I recommend this series, but it is important to know that this is not something that will grab you from the start.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited January 2022
I just finished reading the very excellent Nothing Can Hurt You by Nicola Maye Goldberg.
It's a book sort of halfway between a novel and a short story collection, centered around the killing of a young woman at a small college in Massachusetts. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different person who was, in some way, touched by the events. Some of these connections are people who knew her or were close to her, but others are significantly more tangential, the effect of a single death rippling outwards (and similarly in regards to time, some of the stories are from years after the tragedy).
Edit: I think honestly the less you know going in the better and I may have already said too much, so I'm going to throw the rest of my thoughts and recommendation into spoiler tags - they're vague spoilers, I'm just talking structural stuff, but still. If that description sounds good, just go read the book, it's short.
It's not a mystery, per se, although it occasionally tries to trick you into thinking it is. In nearly every instance you could probably remove a chapter from all other context and it would still be a nice little sad short story, it's not like a puzzle that each one provides a clue towards solving.
But the other side of not being a mystery is that there's no parlor scene, no convenient ending which explains exactly what happens in a dry and informative fashion. Which, again, nothing to solve, but there's still something lingering at the edge, because you're stuck at a sort of voyeuristic distance from the events themselves. You can see how people were effected by the killing, you'll even get their interiority and their deeper thoughts and feelings sometimes, but that's not the same thing.
All of this is the point, I'm certain. It's a book heavily influenced by the idea of true crime, which has some of those same voyeuristic tendencies (and also the whole centering yourself and involving yourself in events that were not really about you).
And in some ways, the real point is that the specifics don't necessarily matter in the same way that the results do. This is a book about crime, sure, but it's more importantly a book about grief and about recovering from the aftermath of a crime.
Anyways it's very good and you should read it, that's my point here.
I'm obviously in the minority based on book sales, but my favorite Adrian Tschaikowsky is Guns of the Dawn. Which is pride and prejudice mixed with the Sharpe series and a dash of magic.
He has a long (like, 15 books) fantasy series where instead of typical fantasy race shit it's all humans who have some aspect of an insect. Mantises are badass but emotionally distant warriors, Dragonflies are fast and strong and creative but Mercurial, Beetles are physically resilient and great industrialists, Spiders are beautiful and manipulative. Etc.
Also there are giant insects everywhere.
He likes weird animal stuff, it's great.
This series is called Shadows of the Apt and is 10 books long. First 2 books are rather mediocre, even if they have interesting worldbuilding, but later quality increases with each new title - I recommend this series, but it is important to know that this is not something that will grab you from the start.
Is it 10? I got up through 8 before wandering off somewhere else. I should finish it some day.
You should have been like me and continue to buy books all through college despite not reading for self enjoyment for many years, and then coming back to it with an infinite backlog
Shadows of the Apt ends with Tchaikovsky palpably yanking the eject lever like it kind of just crashes to a stop when theres clearly like fucking five more books in the tank, he realised he could end up writing that shit for the rest of his life
Shadows of the Apt ends with Tchaikovsky palpably yanking the eject lever like it kind of just crashes to a stop when theres clearly like fucking five more books in the tank, he realised he could end up writing that shit for the rest of his life
I have some respect for realizing you don’t want your entire life to become about one idea you had and bailing out
There was only two plot points that I feel were abandoned in Shadows of the Apt without any resolution
1. Foreshadowing that the moth guy whose name I forgot is still alive
2. Tynisa was supposed to return to the Dragonfly lands for some duel against the mantis, but died in the final book instead
Other than those, I feel like the ending was pretty conclusive.
Shadows of the Apt ends with Tchaikovsky palpably yanking the eject lever like it kind of just crashes to a stop when theres clearly like fucking five more books in the tank, he realised he could end up writing that shit for the rest of his life
I have some respect for realizing you don’t want your entire life to become about one idea you had and bailing out
Oh absolutely, and it's not like the last books were terrible or even bad but I got a definite sense of "oh fuck I could do this until I look like GRMM eject eject eject"
There was only two plot points that I feel were abandoned in Shadows of the Apt without any resolution
1. Foreshadowing that the moth guy whose name I forgot is still alive
2. Tynisa was supposed to return to the Dragonfly lands for some duel against the mantis, but died in the final book instead
Other than those, I feel like the ending was pretty conclusive.
I found the whole strange looming menace rather curtailed, a lot of that freaky underwater shit seemed like it was going to get threaded into something broader, that stuff you said
Again not like slapdash but like I gotta get the fuck out of here
I finished She Who Became the Sun. It's very good! I have a few quibbles but I'm like 90% positive on it.
My only real lingering beef is that once her heroine reaches the rebel city she kinda stops being very human. To a large degree this is obviously on purpose - she's super obsessed with fulfilling her fate and purposefully cuts out any part of herself that won't service that goal, but by the end of the book she's kinda the least likable character. Like Eunuch guy's story is filled with self hatred and repressed queer longing and resentment and etc etc, while after a while Zhu stops seeming like she feels any particular way about much of anything, she just does things. It felt like it could use a chapter or two of just her hanging out, having relationships with other people, and exploring what the rank-and-file feel about her.
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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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
Just finished Lords and Ladies. I was cheering for Maggrat there at the end. All of them really, but especially Maggrat.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I need a new book to read but I'm not sure what. Fancy a break from sci-fi/fantasy. Maybe some historical fiction. My go-to for that is usually Bernard Cornwell but I should probably branch out a bit.
I just finished "A Wish Too Dark and Kind" by M.L. Blackbird and it was good but pretty weird and kind of a lot. If you're into fantasy/horror that substitutes Old Testament imagery in for the normal eldritch horror players then you'll probably dig it.
I just finished "A Wish Too Dark and Kind" by M.L. Blackbird and it was good but pretty weird and kind of a lot. If you're into fantasy/horror that substitutes Old Testament imagery in for the normal eldritch horror players then you'll probably dig it.
im not sure if it's exactly what you mean but that just sounds like a shin megami tensei game.
Angels are literally eldritch beings that exist to convey the will of a greater being so unfathomable that any method of perceiving it will render you permanently mad.
One of them is entirely eyes. One is just a wheel. I love that wheel.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
After finishing Harrow I opened up another book I had on my Kindle but I wasn't in the mood for it, and then I bought that Silver Pigs book tynic recommended. Upon starting that one I got a notification from Goodreads, proudly telling me "you finished reading [book I read one page of]!". Because I guess my kindle now talks directly to Goodreads? And Goodreads is smart enough to know when I've started a new book but dumb enough to think I've completed a book that my kindle has only recorded 1% progress on. For some reason I find that really annoying. Apps were a bad invention.
I just finished "A Wish Too Dark and Kind" by M.L. Blackbird and it was good but pretty weird and kind of a lot. If you're into fantasy/horror that substitutes Old Testament imagery in for the normal eldritch horror players then you'll probably dig it.
im not sure if it's exactly what you mean but that just sounds like a shin megami tensei game.
It isn't! 8 people with A Lot of Backstory get invited to a place by a guy, they're all various sorts of immortal and awful, and it's remarkably well written and self-assured for a first novel. It's got a lot of Old Testament deep cuts in it that are not explicit and you wouldn't need to know that they're Biblical to enjoy the book but it's good interesting flavor like anything mined out of mythology can be.
After finishing Harrow I opened up another book I had on my Kindle but I wasn't in the mood for it, and then I bought that Silver Pigs book tynic recommended. Upon starting that one I got a notification from Goodreads, proudly telling me "you finished reading [book I read one page of]!". Because I guess my kindle now talks directly to Goodreads? And Goodreads is smart enough to know when I've started a new book but dumb enough to think I've completed a book that my kindle has only recorded 1% progress on. For some reason I find that really annoying. Apps were a bad invention.
It's also very hit or miss on that? So sometimes when I open up books on my Kindle that I'm teaching it class, it will decide to tell Goodreads that I am reading it, and sometimes it doesn't at all. 💁Everything about it is frustrating, and I guess I should like remove Goodreads from my Kindle, but it's also convenient to have it on there. Bleh. Apps are dumb.
Oh man I wish I'd encountered those audio productions first that sounds great
Anton Lesser does an excellent cynical Plebian private eye.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited February 2022
In one sense, the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson consists of three books: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. This is the format in which I purchased them many years ago in print.
The series was also released in a series of slimmer trade paperbacks, split out from the big hardback versions I own: [Quicksilver, King of the Vagabonds, Odalisque], [Bonanza, The Juncto], [Solomon's Gold, Currency, The System of the World].
I had some Audible credits piling up, so I decided to pick up three books that I'd enjoyed in the past for some comfort listening. Now, Audible has them separated out thusly: [Quicksilver, King of the Vagabonds, Odalisque], The Confusion, [Solomon's Gold, Currency, The System of the World].
Now, a shopper in a physical book store can easily spot the difference between a skinny paperback and the dictionary-sized tome they are expecting. In a digital storefront, one may be forgiven for suspecting that this separation was designed to trick someone into burning a credit on a third of the first book, begrudgingly buying the next two subvolumes, getting the second book as expected, and then finding that what they thought was the third volume was actually the eighth subvolume.
Anyway, this didn't happen to me because I am far too clever and savvy to fall for such ploys, but I wanted to make sure that if you knew any dumb rubes you could warn them before they spent like seven goddamn credits on a trilogy of books they already own in print.
Jedoc on
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
Angels are literally eldritch beings that exist to convey the will of a greater being so unfathomable that any method of perceiving it will render you permanently mad.
One of them is entirely eyes. One is just a wheel. I love that wheel.
I just bought it, because that sounds like right up my alley.
Finished the fifth Murderbot book last night and it was really damn good. Unfortunately the sixth is on hold. In the interim I am going to read the first of the green bone saga. I also put Gideon and harrow the ninth on hold. Going to try and read more for this year. So far so good.
Posts
(minimal spoilers but I'll be polite)
Both of them are sexually queer, which is pretty evident immediately, but the book's also really smart is exploring their specifically dynastic-China brand of gender queerness.
"Family" in china was conceived as basically a straight line of descent from father to son, and to be male was to continue that chain of lineage. If there's no one to honor and remember you it's kinda the death of your soul, you've really got to continue on that family line. And of course you've got to honor your parents through filial action, and one key filial action is not disfiguring the body that they gave you - big reason why all those dudes in Chinese epics are running around with such long hair and mustaches!
But then there's priests and eunuchs, both of whom notably live outside this conception of family and masculinity. They do not continue the chain, they don't have sons. And both are non-filial - eunuchs bodies are cut, while buddhist priests shave their heads and may have induction scars (think of those dots you see on a dude's upper forehead). Both classes are more or less outside of the male gender.
The eunuch thing is a bit more obvious, but I was really tickled that the author chose "buddhist priest" as what her heroine is posing as. It creates this interesting and very specific-to-its-setting additional layer of gender queerness on top of its more obvious "woman posing as man" gender queerness that I think most writers would have started with and figured was more than enough.
Boooo
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I used to watch that! It was awesome!
Vokosigan
Prey of the Gods
Geodesica Ascent and descent....or was it descent and ascent?
Omega
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
It was good, sometimes very good, but it was not amazing and it did not destroy me emotionally, like it did some other people. I probably expected too much, so it's not the book's fault for my overgrown expectations.
He's got a real theme going there, huh.
Also there are giant insects everywhere.
He likes weird animal stuff, it's great.
This series is called Shadows of the Apt and is 10 books long. First 2 books are rather mediocre, even if they have interesting worldbuilding, but later quality increases with each new title - I recommend this series, but it is important to know that this is not something that will grab you from the start.
It's a book sort of halfway between a novel and a short story collection, centered around the killing of a young woman at a small college in Massachusetts. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different person who was, in some way, touched by the events. Some of these connections are people who knew her or were close to her, but others are significantly more tangential, the effect of a single death rippling outwards (and similarly in regards to time, some of the stories are from years after the tragedy).
Edit: I think honestly the less you know going in the better and I may have already said too much, so I'm going to throw the rest of my thoughts and recommendation into spoiler tags - they're vague spoilers, I'm just talking structural stuff, but still. If that description sounds good, just go read the book, it's short.
But the other side of not being a mystery is that there's no parlor scene, no convenient ending which explains exactly what happens in a dry and informative fashion. Which, again, nothing to solve, but there's still something lingering at the edge, because you're stuck at a sort of voyeuristic distance from the events themselves. You can see how people were effected by the killing, you'll even get their interiority and their deeper thoughts and feelings sometimes, but that's not the same thing.
All of this is the point, I'm certain. It's a book heavily influenced by the idea of true crime, which has some of those same voyeuristic tendencies (and also the whole centering yourself and involving yourself in events that were not really about you).
And in some ways, the real point is that the specifics don't necessarily matter in the same way that the results do. This is a book about crime, sure, but it's more importantly a book about grief and about recovering from the aftermath of a crime.
Anyways it's very good and you should read it, that's my point here.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Is it 10? I got up through 8 before wandering off somewhere else. I should finish it some day.
You should have been like me and continue to buy books all through college despite not reading for self enjoyment for many years, and then coming back to it with an infinite backlog
I have some respect for realizing you don’t want your entire life to become about one idea you had and bailing out
2. Tynisa was supposed to return to the Dragonfly lands for some duel against the mantis, but died in the final book instead
Other than those, I feel like the ending was pretty conclusive.
Oh absolutely, and it's not like the last books were terrible or even bad but I got a definite sense of "oh fuck I could do this until I look like GRMM eject eject eject"
I found the whole strange looming menace rather curtailed, a lot of that freaky underwater shit seemed like it was going to get threaded into something broader, that stuff you said
Again not like slapdash but like I gotta get the fuck out of here
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
(Private eye in ancient rome, starts with The Silver Pigs)
There are BBC radio adaptations for the first 5 books and I strongly recommend them. They cycle through the Radio 4 Extra playlist fairly regularly.
im not sure if it's exactly what you mean but that just sounds like a shin megami tensei game.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
One of them is entirely eyes. One is just a wheel. I love that wheel.
It isn't! 8 people with A Lot of Backstory get invited to a place by a guy, they're all various sorts of immortal and awful, and it's remarkably well written and self-assured for a first novel. It's got a lot of Old Testament deep cuts in it that are not explicit and you wouldn't need to know that they're Biblical to enjoy the book but it's good interesting flavor like anything mined out of mythology can be.
It's also very hit or miss on that? So sometimes when I open up books on my Kindle that I'm teaching it class, it will decide to tell Goodreads that I am reading it, and sometimes it doesn't at all. 💁Everything about it is frustrating, and I guess I should like remove Goodreads from my Kindle, but it's also convenient to have it on there. Bleh. Apps are dumb.
wish list
Steam wishlist
Etsy wishlist
Anton Lesser does an excellent cynical Plebian private eye.
The series was also released in a series of slimmer trade paperbacks, split out from the big hardback versions I own: [Quicksilver, King of the Vagabonds, Odalisque], [Bonanza, The Juncto], [Solomon's Gold, Currency, The System of the World].
I had some Audible credits piling up, so I decided to pick up three books that I'd enjoyed in the past for some comfort listening. Now, Audible has them separated out thusly: [Quicksilver, King of the Vagabonds, Odalisque], The Confusion, [Solomon's Gold, Currency, The System of the World].
Now, a shopper in a physical book store can easily spot the difference between a skinny paperback and the dictionary-sized tome they are expecting. In a digital storefront, one may be forgiven for suspecting that this separation was designed to trick someone into burning a credit on a third of the first book, begrudgingly buying the next two subvolumes, getting the second book as expected, and then finding that what they thought was the third volume was actually the eighth subvolume.
Anyway, this didn't happen to me because I am far too clever and savvy to fall for such ploys, but I wanted to make sure that if you knew any dumb rubes you could warn them before they spent like seven goddamn credits on a trilogy of books they already own in print.
I just bought it, because that sounds like right up my alley.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
PSN:Furlion