Tak! commented on David Mogo by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
The #SFFBookClub pick for May 2024
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The #SFFBookClub pick for May 2024
I suggested this for #SFFBookClub, and so I gave this a reread so I could enjoy it again. I love the way this novel takes Hollywood and its obsession with stars and all of its racism and homophobia, and mixes it with fey magical realism. Overall, it's definitely a book whose strengths are in its setting and its writing, rather than in a tight plot, but I still love the characters.
In particular, probably my favorite part of this book are the constant turns of phrase that bring in fey elements at unexpected times. You're just reading along and then you get hit with a line like "The cameras were better now, I told myself. They had tamed them down, fed them better." Silent movies steal people's voices. Film stars are (ambiguously but also maybe literally) stars in the sky and wield their star power. Names are sacrificed, or …
I suggested this for #SFFBookClub, and so I gave this a reread so I could enjoy it again. I love the way this novel takes Hollywood and its obsession with stars and all of its racism and homophobia, and mixes it with fey magical realism. Overall, it's definitely a book whose strengths are in its setting and its writing, rather than in a tight plot, but I still love the characters.
In particular, probably my favorite part of this book are the constant turns of phrase that bring in fey elements at unexpected times. You're just reading along and then you get hit with a line like "The cameras were better now, I told myself. They had tamed them down, fed them better." Silent movies steal people's voices. Film stars are (ambiguously but also maybe literally) stars in the sky and wield their star power. Names are sacrificed, or hidden for protection. These pieces give the story some extra teeth and a darker edge of danger that always feels present at the margins. The extra ambiguity over what's real in a story about movie magic is delicious.
I have mixed feelings about parts of the end, especially with the trip to San Francisco. I think this is probably the part where the novel loses me a little bit. The pieces work well, but the pacing is a little jarring. It's nice to have a moment to come full circle to Luli's sister, the reveal of art outside of Hollywood that Luli has been too tunnel-visioned to see, and the continuing contrast of the realness of Tara and other places with the fey world of movies. I like the depth that this journey adds, and I'm not sure where else arguably in the novel that it would go.
"What so great about being seen?" Tara demanded. "What's so important about that?"
She might have had the words for it, but I didn't. They locked up in my throat, about being invisible, about being alien and foreign and strange even in the place where I was born, and about the immortality that wove through my parents' lives but ultimately would fail them. Their immortality belonged to other people, and I hated that.
One thing I saw in this reread was how much the book played with "being seen": fey bargains to get seen in pictures; pressure about being seen in "wrong" ways; being mis-seen as Mexican instead of Venezuelan; being asked to make do things to be seen as straight and married; the fear of being seen as crossing class lines or being seen as queer and butch.
This one just wasn't for me. I feel like it was one of those books that's all setting and no plot - and the setting was great, but I just couldn't engage with it.
I generally enjoyed this, but not as much as I hoped I would gives how much I love Nghi Vo. That’s not to say this was bad compared to their other works, just that the characters didn’t grab me nearly as much. I felt the true strengths here were the setting, an early 20th century Hollywood where the magical realism is so honed in, most of the time it almost feels like poetic analogies of reality. I think this time period is under represented in fiction, at least in my sampling, and I found it refreshing; especially with queer representation, we were always here, just beyond the sight of society.
The main character was well developed, I could sympathize with their motives, and their decisions followed their persona. I just don’t relate to people that are reckless while having it all, which of course is an oversimplification because at what …
I generally enjoyed this, but not as much as I hoped I would gives how much I love Nghi Vo. That’s not to say this was bad compared to their other works, just that the characters didn’t grab me nearly as much. I felt the true strengths here were the setting, an early 20th century Hollywood where the magical realism is so honed in, most of the time it almost feels like poetic analogies of reality. I think this time period is under represented in fiction, at least in my sampling, and I found it refreshing; especially with queer representation, we were always here, just beyond the sight of society.
The main character was well developed, I could sympathize with their motives, and their decisions followed their persona. I just don’t relate to people that are reckless while having it all, which of course is an oversimplification because at what cost does having it all come at? I think it revealed to me how much more I will prefer safety to recklessness (or rather expressing your true self in the face of oppression), so I learned more about myself, albeit in an uncomfortable way. The rest of the cast didn’t do it for me and were there to support the MCs narrative, which I believe was intentional, it was always about the MC.
I think the real draw here is the setting and how it’s in conversation with historical (and modern) social power structures and the cost not only existing as a marginalized person of society, but what success looks like and at what costs does it come?
It kept very much to the themes of the original: genocide, greed, betrayal, and the sheer amount of damage a few bad-faith actors can do in a system not designed to account for them
Finished just in time for #SFFBookClub sequels month 😅
#SFFBookClub pick for April 2024
Content warning I don't think I can review this without some vague spoilers
Babel is a story of colonialism, racism, sexism, whiteness, Englishness, loss, betrayal, and despair. It's basically a modern parable grittily illustrating the causes and consequences of colonialism.
I love the translation magic mechanism, and I found the embedded etymology tidbits super interesting.
I also appreciate that the author had the courage to allow Bad Things to happen to major characters - not in a GRRM torture porn kind of way, but just as a kind of natural consequence of the world and the characters' interactions.
Content warning First Interlude of Book 5
I continue to be amazed at the nuance of the characters who act within the context of their position in society, making me both feel deep hatred and immense compassion. With the span of a couple chapters, I was goaded into the same bloodlust for Letty as Robin felt (which was not a common reaction for me, violence is not typically my jam), and then was able to nod in understanding through the eyes of Letty in this interlude. Nothing outlined here was new or a surprise, it was just lost in the bigger tapestry, and the more front and center suffering of the other characters. The short interlude brought this so deftly into focus; a reminder that anyone who isn’t on top is fighting tooth in nail in the social dogpile for space to breathe and be seen, to be accepted.
No matter how morally suspect or potentially thoughtless the decision was, she too took action that aligned with her beliefs and convictions. Brutal. #SFFBookClub
Edit: This quote was actually from another book I’m reading. See the quote from In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado for proper context. Sorry!
There was an idea somewhere in this book (early on perhaps?) that talked about the etymology of archive or archivist, how it’s an act of policy, governance, power. Even though I can’t recall the quote since I didn’t get a chance to write it down, it’s been a recurring haunting; sometimes insidious, other times ethereal and fascinating. The idea isn’t new, but peering under the hood into the history of the word and then filtering that through real historical context gives it more verisimilitude (more than this even, but words fail me) in my mind. #SFFBookClub
The audiobook is fantastic, there are just so many quotes I want to write down and I’m awful at doing it in this format. #SFFBookClub
By the time Professor Richard Lovell found his way through Canton’s narrow alleys to the faded address in his diary, the boy was the only one in the house left alive.
— Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang, R. F. Kuang
Content warning ch15 spoiler
@eldang@outside.ofa.dog I felt very similar about this scene. It was deeply uncomfortable in a very real sense. I felt that it was so well done and a perfect example of the fine distinction between caricature villains commonly found in books and an unrelentingly cruel and self-absorbed character that mirrors reality. In isolation they both look similar, but with context it’s a world of difference. #SFFBookClub
This is a belated #SFFBookClub read for me, as I finally was able to get my library's only copy of this book.
Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands reads like a set of short stories in a travelogue, where each chapter in this book felt like its own self-contained adventure. Most loose ends for each story get (almost too) neatly tied off before the next, and Qamar felt to me emotionally as almost a different character each time around. All of this together made the book feel a little shallow to me, as most of what I got out of it thematically was just a desire for travel.
The in-world "Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands" book connects both Qamar's parents as well as Qamar with other characters, especially given that we find out that there's only a half-dozen copies of it made, but it felt underused. By the end, it seemed …
This is a belated #SFFBookClub read for me, as I finally was able to get my library's only copy of this book.
Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands reads like a set of short stories in a travelogue, where each chapter in this book felt like its own self-contained adventure. Most loose ends for each story get (almost too) neatly tied off before the next, and Qamar felt to me emotionally as almost a different character each time around. All of this together made the book feel a little shallow to me, as most of what I got out of it thematically was just a desire for travel.
The in-world "Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands" book connects both Qamar's parents as well as Qamar with other characters, especially given that we find out that there's only a half-dozen copies of it made, but it felt underused. By the end, it seemed to be more of an easter egg to have the book appear in itself; at best, it's an overt symbol of the spirit of travel, and I wanted a little bit more oomph to it.
This all sounds very negative, but I enjoyed a lot of the short stories. They just don't stand as a whole together, and I think the book is weaker for it.
I read this for the #SFFBookClub January book pick. How High We Go in the Dark is a collection of interconnected short stories dealing with death, grief, and remembrance in the face of overwhelming death and a pandemic. Despite getting very dark, I was surprised at the amount of hopefulness to be found in the face of all of this.
It was interesting to me that this collection had been started much earlier and the Arctic plague was a later detail to tie everything together. Personally, I feel really appreciative of authors exploring their own pandemic-related feelings like this; they're certainly not often comfortable feelings, but it certainly helps me personally, much more than the avoidance and blinders song and dance that feels on repeat everywhere else in my life.
It's hard for me to evaluate this book as a whole. I deeply enjoyed the structural setup, and seeing background …
I read this for the #SFFBookClub January book pick. How High We Go in the Dark is a collection of interconnected short stories dealing with death, grief, and remembrance in the face of overwhelming death and a pandemic. Despite getting very dark, I was surprised at the amount of hopefulness to be found in the face of all of this.
It was interesting to me that this collection had been started much earlier and the Arctic plague was a later detail to tie everything together. Personally, I feel really appreciative of authors exploring their own pandemic-related feelings like this; they're certainly not often comfortable feelings, but it certainly helps me personally, much more than the avoidance and blinders song and dance that feels on repeat everywhere else in my life.
It's hard for me to evaluate this book as a whole. I deeply enjoyed the structural setup, and seeing background characters narrate their own chapters added quite a bit of emotional nuance. Pig Son especially would have hit differently without the background from a few chapters earlier. Some of the stories were quite full of knives, but my one complaint is that some stories in the back half felt like retreading similar grounds of grief and remembrance; they just didn't have the same level of impact for me. Both the final chapter and the title-generating chapter were thematically strong, but didn't quite carry the same level of emotional weight or closure that I wanted. I am not sure subjectively why I felt this way, but I think this is some of the flipside of its short story nature--that there's only a consistent emotional thread running through the book rather than a character or plot arc.
I'm really glad to have read this, and feel like a lot of these stories and feelings are going to stick with me for a long while.
A series of bleak, gritty glimpses of what's in store for us over the next few decades.
The tone is lightened a bit here and there with injections of optimism, but I think it works against itself a little when the optimism feels unwarranted.
The way that the characters from the different stories are linked reminds me a bit of Cloud Atlas (although I only saw the movie (sorry)).