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radio-appears Locked account

radio_appears@books.theunseen.city

Joined 2 years, 4 months ago

I read light, but broadly. Currently one of my favorite things is to dig up female sci-fi/fantasy authors from the 70s and 80s. I find it difficult to separate my own personal experience of a book from its "objective" good or bad qualities and rate and review it in a way that could be useful for some hypothetical Universal Reader. I just wanna chat, really.

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China Miéville: Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1) (2003) 4 stars

Perdido Street Station is a novel by British writer China Miéville, published in 2000 by …

I think this is my favourite of Mielville yet! God, the worldbuilding is so vivid and creative, and the plot is tearing along, the politics are uncompromisingly evoking of Marxism in a time of capitalist realism. This is everything I wanted from him, and almost, but didn't quite, get in his other novels. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth Hand: Wylding Hall (2015, Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.) 5 stars

A haunting told through interviews with folkscene legends

No rating

A horror story about a '70s UK folk band, a pretty amazing era and environment for folk and music in general. Hand made the truly inspired choice to tell the entire story in the form of interviews with the band members, decades after the events of the book, which I'm guessing was inspired by her background in music journalism. It also adds to the realism of this being one of those half-apocryphal, half-confirmed fact music legend stories, and I wonder if it was also inspired by one - specifically the mysterious disappearance of Licorice McKechnie, who sang for The Incredible String Band. Not only is this a great update to the epistolary genre, I also feel it should really play into the current true crime/horror podcast genre that often uses similar story telling devices.

Apart from that though, I found the story a bit mediocre. It's a spooky, very slow-burn …

Lev Grossman: The Magicians (Paperback, 2009, Arrow) 3 stars

A thrilling and original coming-of- age novel about a young man practicing magic in the …

Hear Me Out:

No rating

So. Storytime. In my country, children are separated into different high schools at twelve years old, based on academical aptitude. At the highest level, there are two types of school, gymnasium and atheneum, with the only difference being that at a gymnasium they also teach Greek and Latin. That's the one I went to (not bragging, I was a very mediocre student). As you might imagine, the type of twelve-year old that chooses to go to a gymnasium usually isn't just smart, but also very driven to prove themselves academically. Many of us staked a lot of our self-esteem on our intelligence, especially if we didn't have a lot else going on, like also being athletic or socially gifted. We were all kind of used to being the smartest kid in the room, and then suddenly we weren't. Worse, there were always a couple of stand out, near genius level …

Sophie Mackintosh, Jacqueline Harpman: I Who Have Never Known Men (2019, Penguin Random House) 5 stars

‘For a very long time, the days went by, each just like the day before, …

I who have never known mostly anything

No rating

Expect only questions, no answers from this book.

Have you ever read one of those stories where after the apocalypse, or maybe on an uninhabited island, one person is left, seemingly the only person left alive at all? And the whole story arc is about them dealing with loneliness and trying to find another human? Usually they do, usually one of the opposite sex, the implication being that they'll procreate, thereby solving the loneliness problem for at least two generations. Have you ever thought about that second generation? The siblings who will either have to resort to incest or dying out one by one? I often did. I wondered what it would be like for the last sibling, truly the last person on earth now.

I Who Have Never Known Men is about that last person, an account of her life, and it's as bleak as you would expect it …

China Miéville: Embassytown (2012, Pan Publishing, PAN) 4 stars

Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe.

Avice is an immerser, …

Second time I'm reading this book. First time was, god, more than a decade ago, and I'm noticing it goes down much easier now. It was a bit difficult to get into back then. I don't know why, but it feels like such a nice, cozy November read for me right now. It's not a cozy story, but I picture the whole story as taking place in a vaguely steampunkish world, set against the constant black of space.

Keri Hulme: The Bone People (Hardcover, 2005, Louisiana State University Press) No rating

Integrating both Maori myth and New Zealand reality, The Bone People became the most successful …

Do not read if you have small children

No rating

Content warning child abuse vaguely discussed, mild spoilers for the ending

reviewed Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (Who Fears Death, #1)

Nnedi Okorafor: Who Fears Death (Hardcover, 2010, DAW Hardcover) 4 stars

An award-winning literary author presents her first foray into supernatural fantasy with a novel of …

Vibrant and raw

No rating

I looked it up, "Who Fears Death" isn't a debut novel, but it feels like a debut novel in the best possible way. It's emotionally raw, and slightly unfinished in the sense that you can feel the author poured all her ideas and feelings and all the themes she wanted to explore into this book to the point she couldn't possibly get to all of them. The result is something that's brimming with creativity and life. While the book reads mostly like something targeted at a YA audience, it's frank and direct in its discussion of sex and female sexuality in a way that you wouldn't expect to see outside of adult literature, but it lends a lot of power to the story overall. This is something that matters to the author, and you can tell.

The setting in which magic exists next to the left-over technology from an implied …

Robin McKinley: Beauty (Hardcover, 1995, Random House Children's Books (A Division of Random House Group)) 4 stars

A retelling of the story Beauty and the Beast. There is also a sequel available …

Enjoyable, but not very deep

No rating

After Sunshine, I'm returning to the McKinley writing I enjoy - her fairy tale re-tellings.

While I missed the darkness of Deerskin, it's a perfectly well done version of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. There's a bit of coming of age, there's a bit of romance. I liked that all three sisters had a really good relationship. It was enjoyable and there isn't much more to say about it. That may be because of the source material, of course. Beauty and Beast was written by Barbot de Villeneuve to educate young French noblewomen on virtue (as far as I know), while Deerskin comes from the oral tradition of German mothers telling terrifying tales so their children would stay out of the woods. And even within that category it is one of the Grimms' more horrifying fairytales. Disney isn't going to adapt that one, you can be sure. (I …

reviewed Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London, #1)

Ben Aaronovitch: Rivers of London (2018) 3 stars

Child kidnapping is already an appalling crime, but in the latest case for Detective Constable …

Really enjoyed it.

No rating

Content warning I tell you who did it.

Katharine Kerr: The Dragon Revenant (Deverry Series, Book Four) (Paperback, 1991, Spectra) 5 stars

For years the provinces of Deverry have been in turmoil; now the conflict escalates with …

Almost finished this book. I'm honestly really disappointed it doesn't included the same past-lives sections as the former three, that was kind of their whole selling point and what I enjoyed most. From googling a bit, I also gather it's not going to come back in the sequels...

Man, I'm really hankering for a big fantasy doorstopper that is not too grimdark (Malazan is on my list, but those are pretty dark right?), but I think I'm going to give some others a shot. Maybe Patrick Rothfuss, The Gentleman Bastard? Recommendations welcome.

reviewed Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Robin McKinley: Sunshine (Paperback, 2004, Jove) 5 stars

Just should've re-read Deerskin

No rating

I've already written a review of another one of Robin McKinley's books, Deerskin. I loved that book, it was psychological, metaphorical, immediate, disgusting, cathartic and very introspective. Logically, I expected something similar from Sunshine. The premise seemed to promise that as well; A vampire and a human are locked together in a room. He hides in the shadows, she moves with the spot of sunlight falling through the window. But as night falls... I expected a tense, intense, slow thriller. Will she die? Will she convince the vampire to let her live? Who locked them in this room together and why? I looked forward to that story.

It wasn't that. It was that for like, the first chapter, and then it became something entirely different. In a sense, it isn't really fair to resent a story for not being what you wanted it to be. Sunshine isn't bad, it just …

reviewed The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth, #1)

N. K. Jemisin: The Fifth Season (Paperback, 2016, Orbit) 4 stars

This is the way the world ends. Again.

Three terrible things happen in a single …

Slightly disappointing Hugo Winner

No rating

Warning: Extremely Vague Spoilers

It’s clear to see why The Fifth Season won a Hugo award and became immensely popular. Jemisin is an amazing world-builder and extremely good at plotting. She knows exactly at what pace to reveal the mysteries of her world to make her readers desperate to find out what happens next. The culture and history of her world are shaped by the titular “fifth seasons” years-long periods of environmental disasters, which is a great concept, and her orogenes are a really cool half-magic, half-science twist on typical elemental magics. She also manages to do something that was once thought impossible: create fantasy-cursing that sounds both thematic and natural.

Jemisin wants to do more than just write an exciting book though, she has a message, a two-fold one at that. She’s clearly both inspired by climate disasters in our world, as well as (racial) oppression. I say racial, …