Reviews and Comments

Caveat legior: some weirdly sexualized moments, and the world is (still) authoritarian and anti-consent.

Popcorn reading

Okay so the main characters do seem to recognize that the nazi family is problematic but it’s still at core a book about how important blood purity is so. There’s that.

There is foreshadowing of a more-complexly-imagined world in future books, but it’s still the wrong side of the irony line for me.

…this might turn out to be white nationalist recruitment trash but we’ll see if it gets better

(review of series) These got progressively better-written, with more interesting plot tapestries, as they went. Still more homophobia than I'd prefer, of the "evil, gay, evil ... because gay?" variety, though that also walked back to something more reasonable in the later books. A decent presentation of how abusers get in your head, petty prejudices, and self-acceptance. Also provides a different angle on the magic system than the assassins books, which is neat.

This was a delight, as is usual with Murderbot. I enjoyed the treatment of trauma recovery as a confusion of "why can't I just keep using my old coping mechanisms" "what the actual fuck is my brain doing, this is not helpful" "if you do not schedule time for maintenance, your systems will schedule it for you, and their timing will be antagonistic".

Noticeably less snappy than the earlier books though -- it was easy to lose focus in descriptive stretches, and I wound up reading it twice to see if I could catch the things I missed the first time around.

Wow, that’s an awful lot of names. An awful lot of dudes. An awful lot of songs. And the protagonist is awfully gullible. Like three women, only one of which has any dimension at all, and even that is limited — even though the voice of the narrator is not linked to any of the characters who might be forgiven a backwards perspective as a character flaw. Upshot: The text is so low-density that you can ADHD Gothic you’re way into a brief fugue and come back to the story having missed nothing of consequence, but somehow the level of detail and text craft is enough to be decent company.

CN for period-appropriate (and forewarned on the cover) antisemitism, islamaphobic remarks, general xenophobia, torture and corrupt behavior by religious authority figures, misogyny, sexual assault.

Had to pause on this, the “telling the truth and not being believed” got too real

An old favorite

It’s clear why this launched a whole genre and lies in the roots of my favorite works of naval fiction — the descriptions of life aboard ship are vivid enough to bring the taste of salt spray to one’s lips. A pity the drama between officers is so sulky and constipated.

CN for casual racism, classism, and sexism typical of the genre. Demerits to the author for using female characters as props instead of as people, irrespective of how they are treated in-world.

Alright let’s do this

A gorgeous collection. There are moments that didn’t age well, but they are more than counterbalanced by the unreal yet distinct and matter of fact presentation of worlds aslant to our own, so perfectly Le Guin. If you like the little corners at the edges of things to suck you in, pick this up.