I read through like the first half of the Traitor Baru Cormorant on a trip, and really enjoyed it, but I'm also really dreading the back half. I know what that title means, I know how this story has to end.
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I read through like the first half of the Traitor Baru Cormorant on a trip, and really enjoyed it, but I'm also really dreading the back half. I know what that title means, I know how this story has to end.
Been a while, so here's some stuff I've been reading.
The Mountain in the Sea. This is a sort of near future existential techno-thriller about a fictional species of octopus that may have developed culture and civilization. I really, really enjoyed it, and absolutely recommend it. It's sort of like a Kim Stanley Robinson novel, except with a plot, or a Jeff Vandermeer novel, except less weird and more interesting, if that makes sense. I absolutely devoured this and would be very surprised if it isn't the best piece of recent fiction I read this year.
The Mighty Hood. This is more or less a combination ship biography/history and British Empire apologia exercise. The ship stuff is enjoyable and interesting, the history is not infrequently wrong about details, and the empire bits vary between irritating, infuriating and bordering nauseating. But the book was written in the fifties, and you don't read stuff that old for up to date history or non-unpleasant views on colonialism, you read it because it has a sense of what the ship was like, and what it meant to people, and yes particularly in the case of the Hood a lot of that was wrapped up in less than pleasant views about world domination and colonialism. I can't say I recommend this or not, if you're archaic warship obsessed enough to be interested in it, you've either read it, have reasons not to read it, or have never heard of it and are checking Amazon right now. If you aren't, this isn't going to get you into such things, and frankly this is not where one should start anyway - as always I recommend Ludovick Kennedy's Pursuit, which has all the virtues of this book, few of the failings, and is generally superior in all ways except that it doesn't contain some of the stuff this one does.
The Moonstone, which is sort of a proto-detective novel by Wilkie Collins. It's very Victorian, somehow less pro-colonialism than the previous novel, and wordy like no getout. A slow burn, but I'm very much enjoying it.
Mountain in the Sea is high on my list of books I want to get. Good to see it's well-received in this thread, as well. Also, "Robinson with a plot" is kind of savage, but I must admit not entirely unfair to Robinsons novels. Which I love.
Still stuck on the last few chapters of Translation State, personally. This book just doesn't end. There's nothing happening, it's not interesting, I don't like any of the characters anymore, and it just keeps going. Somehow, I have been reading a chapter every other day for weeks and there's just more of them.
iirc, it actually got some criticism at the time for not being pro-colonialism enough. It tells you quite a lot about the prevailing media climate during the British Raj that the way Indian people were depicted in The Moonstone1 was considered unusually sympathetic and humanising.
And yeah, it's a pretty enjoyable book overall. Gabriel Betteridge's philosophical devotion to Robinson Crusoe is a particularly fun part.
1which, for anyone who's not read it, is still not great.
I love Robinson too. But there's a reason Aurora remains my favorite of his works, not only do you get to bask in his ideas, but he actually has a story where things happen. Honestly in some of his books I kinda wish he'd just give up the pretense and write an RPG setting manual instead of a novel.
But yeah, definitely pick up The Mountain in the Sea when you have a chance. It's a book I'm looking forwards to rereading in a year or two, as there's a few parts I don't think I fully understand the significance of yet.
It isn't great about the Indian characters (who, at least early on are very much seen in passing) but, like, I don't really expect anything written in the 1840s to do that well. And there's a substantial difference between not handling something well, and having lots of asides about how it's just too bad the Empire ain't around anymore.
I just started reading The Winter King (got it at a used book store) by Bernard Cornwell. Yet another rewrite of the Arthurian Legendarium (one of my favorites ever was Mary Stewart's one that began with the Crystal Cave, Hollow Hills, etc) and Cornwell's gritty style already appeals to me. I think I'll get the other two form the used book store today. :smallbiggrin:
Recently finished One Hundred Years of Solitude. In my opinion, it lived up to its towering reputation, which is impressive - despite being translated from Spanish, the prose is beautiful, and the journey through Colombian history presented by Marquez is highly engaging. If anyone here has read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, the structure here is oddly similar - the book follows a lineage of characters with repeated names and foibles, with these personality quirks resulting in both the rise and fall of the Buendia lineage. This generational focus allows us to see the long-term effects of the events of the story, showing in stark detail the effects of colonialism and war on Colombia. The use of magical realist elements is also extremely compelling - it reads not as an author afraid to label their works as fantasy but rather as extensive use of metaphor, which adds a layer of interpretation and thematic weight to the events of the story.
Also, and I'm shocked nobody talks about this, there's a shocking amount of incest. Like, so much incest. To the point where like half the romantic relationships in the book are incestuous. It's kind of weird, but the book is an undeniable masterpiece, so...
Currently about halfway through Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. It's not quite as good, but that's a somewhat unreasonable bar to compare it to - on it's own, I've found it to be a very good read so far. Maybe it's the translation, but it's shockingly readable - the prose is utilitarian, almost plain, although I suspect much of this is the translation using a variety of very standard (almost cliched) phrases, and much of the precise meaning inherent to kanji has likely been lost. However, despite this, it has been a gripping read, very interesting and honest portrayal of puberty. Also, because I know some people might appreciate this, one of the most important characters in the book is a trans man, who is depicted with a great deal of respect and empathy - it's an important aspect of the character, but it's not the focus - the character is important to the story far beyond that.
Also, since this is my first time posting in the thread: I have read the Locked Tomb books, and I think I feel the opposite about them compared to some other people I've seen here - maybe I'm just younger, but I legitimately really liked Gideon as a character and found her to be very compelling and honestly (somewhat) relatable. It makes sense to me that she would be horribly maladapted - who has she had the chance to interact with who is remotely normal? My level of investment was the thing that pulled my through Harrow the Ninth, even though I found the second person somewhat annoying (to be fair, it's mostly just 3rd person but slightly worse, but it is an issue, even if I get why Muir made the call). If you've finished Harrow, I would recommend Nona mostly on it's own merits - it's not very similar to either of the previous books, but it is very good (in my opinion) on it's own, so it's probably worth a read.
Kafka isn't my favorite of Murakami's books. I always recommend Wind Up Bird Chronicle as a good starting point. If the reader is used to mostly fantasy/sci fi, I recommend Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMusketeer;25836565
Currently about halfway through Haruki Murakami's [I
One of the greatest authors of current generation IMO. Though his later work is getting breathy and derivative, its still worth reading as they come out.
Those are fun, and the rare series that improves in the later books. But I'm kinda a sucker for the fall of Camelot, so your milage may vary.
The weird thing about literary incest is that everybody acts like it's taboo, and literally nobody seems to care.
I find this interesting, because I'm never sure what people mean when they say they find a character relatable, or why this is a good thing. To me relatable tends to imply like myself, and I already spend all day in my own head, not sure why I'd want to vacation somewhere so similar.Quote:
Also, since this is my first time posting in the thread: I have read the Locked Tomb books, and I think I feel the opposite about them compared to some other people I've seen here - maybe I'm just younger, but I legitimately really liked Gideon as a character and found her to be very compelling and honestly (somewhat) relatable.
Anyway, the new Dragonlance, Dragons of Fate, came out yesterday, so that's a Condition Red clear the decks reading event for me. The first 50 pages read like Weis & Hickman Dragonlance should read, kinda clunky, very enthusiastic, and somehow managing to feel like the most cliche thing possible while simultaneously threatening to veer off the tracks at every second. Also it opens with a 3 page poem, and I am a firm believer that fantasy novels should do this.
The big difference between this and early DL like Chronicles or Legends is that those were written by young people really stretching and going for a project they believed in. This is a lot calmer, much more like a veteran band playing a riff on one of their old hits, where it's familiar and that's entirely the point. You don't read Dragonlance in anno domine 2023 because it's the hot new thing, you do it because Sturm Brightblade lives rent free in your brain, has for years, and you're happy to have him.
We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
Makes me want to hug my mother.
To me, "relatable" isn't about whether or not I can compare them to myself. I see it more as the character's behavior being digestible or believable, of feeling like I can start to get an idea of what makes the character tick. I don't need them to be similar to me, I just need their characterization and decision-making process to feel consistent. If they can't be relied upon to act in alignment with a few core traits (consciously or subconsciously), I lose interest pretty quickly because I start feeling like the narrative is just doing whatever it wants to jam people into their starting positions for the dramatic ending.
The other way I see "relatable" used is really more about whether a character is sympathetic or not. And that one I can understand, at least for the opening act of Gideon the Ninth. Gideon doesn't have anybody to be friendly to until about 1/4 of the way into the book, so she's very combative in that first quarter, and thus her personality at the start comes across as very grating and smarmy. It took me a very long time to start caring about the characters -- at the start, the only thing getting me through it was the evocative descriptions and the compelling prose writing. The characters only started to grow on me after the halfway point, honestly.
Funny enough, i bought the predecessor book Dragons of Deceit when it came out intending to read it and... it's still sitting there on my shelf behind four other books I intend to read as well. And now the sequel is already out! This is like the anti-GRRM model for releasing novels.
Nah, combative and smarmy aren't the main problems with Gideon for me. I like combative characters. She's just... kinda simple. Very focused on things I don't care the least bit about, and generally not very proactive. I really don't care for her lusting over every woman she sees, same as I don't when, say, Harry Dresden does it, who at least has other qualities.
This encapsulates a lot of what I mean by the term, too, although I usually associate a character being "relatable" with being a bit like me in some way.
Thinking about it, I'd break down my initial assessment of characters into a mix of whether they're relatable, sympathetic, or interesting. I want a character to hit at least one of those categories, if not more. I'd also note that I usually have a higher tolerance for characters as a book/series goes on and I get a sense of how much I can trust what the author's doing for them, especially for deliberately unsympathetic characters. To use an ASOIAF example, if Cersei's POV was introduced in book 1, I don't think I'd have cared for it. By book 4, though, GRRM's shown that he frequently uses unreliable narration, he's shown the world that Cersei's living in and reacting to, so I've got the broader context to interpret her narration and actions and that she's very deliberately written as deeply unreliable.Quote:
The other way I see "relatable" used is really more about whether a character is sympathetic or not. And that one I can understand, at least for the opening act of Gideon the Ninth. Gideon doesn't have anybody to be friendly to until about 1/4 of the way into the book, so she's very combative in that first quarter, and thus her personality at the start comes across as very grating and smarmy. It took me a very long time to start caring about the characters -- at the start, the only thing getting me through it was the evocative descriptions and the compelling prose writing. The characters only started to grow on me after the halfway point, honestly.
EDIT: With TLT, I found Gideon fairly entertaining, but not all that interesting at first; the rest of the characters and the plot were more what kept my interest. (There's a reason that act 1 of GtN is the part of the series I almost never reread). I thought she became more interesting once her relationship with Harrow was fleshed out more, and once Harrow became the focus in HtN, that was what really grabbed me.
I think I just define "relatable" more specifically - do you consider it a synonym for "enjoyable to read"? Because I don't think a character needs to be interesting or even enjoyable to be relatable. They just need to have internal consistency that I can follow at least a little bit so it feels like their decisions make sense. But maybe that's a meaningless distinction.
No argument on her being simple or passive. I do take issue with "lusting over every woman she sees" -- it felt very organic and justified, and it didn't bother me, for several reasons:
- Her attraction is very descriptive, but tasteful. The narration doesn't fixate in a way that feels dirty or objectifying; it always reads as "appreciative," I guess.
- It's all in her head. Gideon never acts on any of it -- no kisses, no sex scenes, etc., it's just idle thoughts (and pretty brief ones, at that).
- The objects of her affection are always people who are doing it intentionally: they want to be seen and admired (including one who uses it for social power, and one who directly uses it to manipulate Gideon). I mostly recall her fixating on her two main crushes: maybe she lusted after Camilla or Judith or someone else, but I can't recall it.
- Gideon is very plainly starved for both emotional and physical intimacy, and has been all her life.
- Outside of the world of the book, and I recognize this one is a personal bias: I'm more likely to give a female character a pass for demonstrating sexuality (in non-fetishized ways), doubly so for a queer female character. Literature is choked with a sinful glut of horny straight men - why should they get to have all the fun? :smallamused: Celebrate WLW-normative fiction!
All of this combines to make her reactions at Canaan House very believable for me. Gideon is a young adult (the horniest demographic) who grew up surrounded by anemic weirdo cultists and has only very recently wound up in a castle full of hot, friendly people. Frankly under those circumstances I find it odd that she's not lusting after everyone even more. :smallbiggrin:
I'm not trying to convince you, just sharing why it worked fine for me. I'm interested in any further thoughts on this that you have!
Maybe I'm overly literal about it, but I've always interpreted "relatable" in this context as specifically being able to relate to (part of) a particular character, regardless of whether they're also interesting or likable or whatever.
Exactly. Which if a character is "overly focuse don things you don't care at all about", they're not relatable.
I find a lot of #relatable content very similar. "Oh my gee, when I message someone and they don't get back to me within .00001 nanoseconds I FREAK OUT! #relatable"
Not relatable to me in the slightest, I do not care, and the fact that you find that thing or event that important to you annoys me.
Heh. I was the only kid in my class without a phone. My parents had to force me to get one.
Oh yeah, certainly. The thing that's most immediately notable about The Moonstone, from what I remember, is that Collins unambigously portrays the violent looting of culturally significant gemstones from India as precisely that: violent looting. A position that in some circles can still be a little controversial today, let alone the mid-19th century
Yes! Wind-Up Bird is probably him at his finest, but I'd definitely call Kafka a close second, even after accounting for the cats (I'm not a cat person). I'm very fond of After Dark as well (and the four books of the Rat trilogy and…). It's a distinctly Murakami-brand novel and might be less daunting for a new reader of his than the "big ones" in terms of length and overall complexity.
(Oh, and
Spoiler: Kafka Warning
if you take issue with (implied (notional)) incest or (~)gerontophilia, Kafka might have rough bits ahead for you.
It's not bad. But not top of the list either, as far as I'm concerned.Quote:
If the reader is used to mostly fantasy/sci fi, I recommend Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as well.
Do note, nevertheless, that he's kind of two authors. Norwegian Wood, South of the Border &c. and the above works read quite differently, if you ask me.Quote:
One of the greatest authors of current generation IMO.
Killing Commendatore, I'm so looking at you right now.Quote:
Though his later work is getting breathy and derivative, its still worth reading as they come out.
I'm probably using it wron half of the time, but I mostly understand relatable as 'I can see where this character's coming from', as broadly as that, and without regard to whether that's due to my lived experience or not and whether I like where they end up or not.
Same for me. I feel like sometimes it gets misused to just mean "they're likable" or "oh hey they're like me" or similar. Not saying anyone here is doing that, just that the term sometimes feels like a misnomer. Their characterization just needs to make enough sense for me to not feel lost.
Ha, glad I'm not the only one reading this. Also glad it remains pretty good overall. I'm about a third of the way through, and while I'm not 100% on board with what's going on, I'm broadly interested in where they're going with this.
Spoiler: Kinda vague plot direction spoiler stuff
I strongly suspect that this whole trilogy is basically trying to retcon Dragons of Summer Flame and its consequent cosmology out of existence. Which, well, I actually liked both War of Souls and Dark Disciple (and would love a followup trilogy to that) but I can certainly see the appeal of rebooting the weirder, less overtly Dragonlance portions of Dragonlance, particularly since those only really exist thanks to corporate meddling. Since the novels are now completely independent of... whatever the hell WoTC is doing with the setting, there's no reason for W&H to not try to tell the stories they actually want to tell. And because I don't care about what is or is not canon, only whether the stories are good, it won't exactly harm my enjoyment of anything that does actually get axed. If they're going that route.
This is always how I've interpreted it, mostly because for anything else we already have perfectly useful words like sympathetic or understandable or compelling or well written. And I just don't get a lot of value out of reading a character and going "huh, that's just like me." I'd far rather have interesting or perplexing or complex or pretty much anything else.
Yeah, I was really pleasantly surprised that it opened with that, and every single character in the novel so far has treated the guy as basically a total jerk and wanted as little to do with him as possible. That's actually kinda bold for mid-Victorian British literature.
I find some value in characters that're like me, though it's hard to put into words why. To keep using TLT as an example, a lot of what Harrow goes through in HtN is very similar (though much more intense) to struggles I've had in my own life; the way she tries to manage things, the ways she thinks and feels, are incredibly familiar. I found that sort of...cathartic, I guess I'd say? Feeling that deep connection with Harrow and sympathizing with her struggles helps me get in touch with my feelings about my own difficulties. I also feel seen and understood, which is meaningful and comforting in general. I have a lot of emotions about Harrowhark Nonagesimus, can you tell?
I have come across "When Gravity Fails" by George A. Effinger, which is a cyberpunk/detective novel I immensly enjoy. You have the dirty lowlives, the amazing bodymods and some terrible applications later on. The fact that it takes place in a Muslim culture adds some interesting flavour to it. It is really really good and I am currently enjoying the second part :-)
'Relatable' is a tricksy one.
If 'relatable' just means 'consistent characterisation', then it's so broad as to not be very useful, though. Nearly every character is relatable in some way, by that definition.
Even in its narrower definition of 'relates to my experience. It might be useful as a descriptive tool, but in terms of a critical tool, different people find different things relatable, so 'character G is relatable' doesn't have a communicable meaning. You see reviewers and critics talk about characters being relatable, but if they mean by virtue of their own experience, then what about people with different experiences? And if they think they're speaking for the larger audience, then that runs into a problem of speaking for an audience with different experiences.
If someone says 'character G is unrelatable' and someone else relates to them, are they wrong?
The easiest way to make a character relatable is to make them super generic protagonist blank slate.
Finished Dragons of Fate, the second book of what I guess we're calling Classic Dragonlance.
This was, hmm, ok. I quite liked Dragons of Deceit, which I thought did some surprising things and went places. This one did not go places, and basically spent 4/5 of its length in one place doing almost nothing. Then it ups the stakes to a ludicrous degree in the last 20%. Which is really cool and fun, and I hope the last book pays it off well, but this particular book isn't stellar.
Now on to Imperial Reckoning, a history of the end of British rule on Kenya. Also Raven 2: a time of ghosts, another 1970s sword and sorcery novel with an extremely ridiculous cover. God I love ridiculous covers.
On the 'relatable' thing - I meant it largely in the sense of 'I can see how Gideon became that way, given her circumstances, and I could see myself being similar under similar conditions.' Secondly, I didn't find her annoying, and I also sort of meant that I can see myself in her more than in the people around her who might find her annoying, relative of course to her circumstances - I relate to her in that I'm more likely/able to see things from her perspective.
To be fair, though, I didn't have a super well thought out reason for phrasing it that way in my previous post - I was seeing a lot of people who said they found Gideon annoying or grating, or at least found her personality a detriment, and I felt differently about it and wanted to say that, especially as this is such a major ongoing topic in the thread. My above explanation is, I think, a large part of why my perspective on her differs from others, and probably (like I said, not that well thought out) what I meant when I said I found her relatable.
Also, I finished Kafka on the Shore, and... damn. I liked it quite a lot on the whole, although I didn't really understand the core of a lot of the symbolism (particularly the stuff with the entrance stone) - I feel like I would need to read it several times to truly understand it, as Murakami himself has apparently said was the intent. My favorite character was probably Hoshino, although Oshima is a close second - I love his whole vibe and found his arc of becoming more self-aware, kind, and empathetic through his interactions with Nakata and engaging more deeply with artistic works very interesting and enjoyable. Even though I'm still not fully sure what was going on a lot of the time, I found Murakami's take on the bildungsroman/coming-of-age story with Kafka very interesting. I also really enjoyed the symbolism and other magical realist elements - even if, as I have hammered home, I'm not entirely sure what they represent, they give the novel an endlessly compelling vibe of mystery and discovery that really pulled me through, along with the way they force you to think about the events and characters of the story on a deeper, somewhat metaphorical level. Also, weird that this was the second book I've read in a row to feature copious levels of incest.
Spoiler: Kafka WarningWhile I see what you meant with the (implied (notional)) incest with Miss Saeki, I'm not sure what you were referring to with the gerontophilia, even after finishing the book. If you were talking about Miss Saeki again, I'm not sure she's old enough for that term to apply (she's in her fifties). Also, none of the reasons Kafka is attracted to her seem to relate to her age (in fact, he falls in love with her younger self first.) Alternatively, if you were talking about Hoshino and Nakata, while the age thing would make much more sense (Nakata is described as an old man throughout the book), and I can certainly see that interpretation - when I initially saw your warning that was my main prediction - I'm not really sure I agree. I think their relationship has a much more familial bent (Hoshino thinks of Nakata as being like his grandfather), and I'm not entirely sure the text supports a romantic reading of their relationship, although I'm not opposed to it on principle.
I'm curious as to what you were referring to with gerontophilia - could you explain?
Also, on your recommendation and Wintermoot's, and because I enjoyed Kafka, I started reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I'm still only about 50-60 pages in (~10%), but so far it's pretty good, although pretty different from Kafka. I'm finding the different perspective of this one interesting - Okada has very different problems and priorities to Kafka, and I'm finding it pretty compelling so far, although not as much as Kafka, which had the benefit of starting with a mystery (why is Kafka running away from home, and what's going on with his dad) to keep you engaged until the story really gets going later on in the book. While Wind-Up Bird has a little of that (the woman who wanted to get to know Okada and kept calling him naked, what Kumiko was doing in the alley, what is up with May, et cetera), most of it is a lot more low-key, and so far, the questions raised have been less immediately compelling to me, although I'm still pretty engaged with it and looking forward to seeing what happens next. Also, the magical realist or otherwise metaphorical/symbolic elements (other than possibly the wind-up bird, and the woman who wants to get to know him) are much less significant thus far than in Kafka (the Boy named Crow is more significant and weirder than anything thus far introduced in Wind-Up Bird, and that was there from the first chapter), although they ramped up a lot as that book went on, so I'm sort of expecting more of the same here as well.
Yes. Yes it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by warty goblin
Also Raven 2: a time of ghosts, another 1970s sword and sorcery novel with an extremely ridiculous cover.
Looks like a Luis Royo knockoff. It's the sort of cover that would usually put me off at first glance, then read the first page to see if the writing is equally awful.