stuff i read 14 Februrary 2020

[tabacoychanel]

Annalee Newitz, The Future of Another Timeline (2019) For a book whose thesis is “abolish men” this turned out less angry and more introspective than I expected. I came for the time travel and stayed for the non-time-traveling POV, Beth, who spends her entire arc in 1992. This is weird because I’m aggressively uninterested in the early nineties punk rock scene, which is >50% of Beth’s story. Beth’s world felt real and lived-in; Tess’s felt plot-driven. Tess’s mission: prevent a shadowy conspiracy of incels from plunging us into the Darkest Timeline. Bit by bit it dawns on us that Tess’s present is already perilously close to that timeline—in Tess’s 2022, abortion is illegal in all 50 states. And yet there are time travelers who remember a country where abortion was legal. We’re told that making big “edits” to history causes psychological distress in travelers, who have to reconcile two conflicting sets of memories. Newitz does this neat trick where she replicates the travelers’ disorientation on the reader; she has you nodding along because of course Harriet Tubman was elected senator and of course we got universal suffrage in 1870. I had to google “women’s suffrage USA” to confirm my hunch that on the federal level women didn’t get the vote until 1920. But that’s intentional. Nobody who’s not a subject matter expert (or researching a novel) has the relevant dates & facts at their fingertips. Our internal timelines for “which events happened when” are fuzzy and vulnerable to suggestion/manipulation. This is an apt metaphor for abuse victims who are gaslit by their abusers, as Beth is gaslit by her father. The way he kept changing the rules on her so she had to scramble to anticipate every fluctuation in his mood? That was ghastly. It’s no wonder Beth found escape through punk rock, which is an explicitly political genre. But doesn’t all music help you retain thoughts & feelings you might only have intermittent access to? Music is a medium in which “cognitive and emotional are less divided.” Thus, punk rock inculcated defiance in Beth and Tess both, under a system where defiance ought never have been possible. I devoured this book in one sitting. I look back at The Handmaid’s Tale and The Female Man which are also set in near-future dystopias and also about reproductive rights and I wonder if Newitz’s book will age as well as those two.

Daphne Du Maurer, Frenchman’s Creek (1941) If you thought this was going to be a sexy romp where a very bored, very married aristocrat has an affair with a swashbuckling pirate then you don’t know Du Maurier. If you do know Du Maurier you’d assume she’s congenitally incapable of writing a book that’s not a stealth-paean to the Cornish countryside, AND YOU WOULD BE CORRECT. Dona St. Columb is a fugitive from her own life. She’s run away from London to rusticate in Cornwall. She’s a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad neighbor, and (most damning as far as I’m concerned) a bad employer to her servants. Even when she’s surrounded by pompous douchecanoes I found it hard to sympathize with her, which means, probably, I’m not meant to. What this book does really well is examine the difference between hunger for diversion/stimulation and hunger to achieve/accomplish. Initially Dona can’t tell the difference because she’s been entombed in a life that asks her to abdicate her sense of self, and she’ll take anything at this point. Any escape hatch. The worst part about Dona’s entourage of male admirers isn’t that they pressure her for sexual favors; the worst part is they demand her attention and energy and they’re livid when she mentally peaces out because she’d rather daydream about piratical hijinks than listen to these useless men drone on. Utterly relatable. I think this is a technically accomplished book but not one that resonated with me. Du Maurier can do better, and my campaign to make everyone acknowledge My Cousin Rachel as the zenith of Du Maurier’s work proceeds apace!

Steven Burst, Taltos (1988) (Vlad Taltos #4) “Why did Morrolan have walls around a castle that floated?” For the #aesthetic, Vlad, jeez. Teckla was a heavy book and it was so nice to have Vlad back to his breezy self, here at the start of his journey. What makes this book work is the flashbacks, which are interspliced with surgical precision between the stitches of the present-day narrative thread. In the present, this is a “how I met my Dragonlord buddies” origin story. In the past, it’s a “how I became an assassin” origin story. These are both facts I already knew about Vlad—that he’s an assassin, and that he has Dragonlord buddies who would die for him—but it’s the how that matters. I was legit tearing up at the end of every flashback, particularly if Vlad’s grandpa appeared, and when Loiash switched from calling him “Mama” to “Boss” I may have shed extra tears for how large the House of Jhereg’s mercenary values loomed in the poor kid’s life. If Vlad can never be a “real” Dragaeran and his atypical upbringing precludes him belonging wholly to the category of “Easterner,” then what does that leave except “assassin”? That’s one identity he chose for himself. Of course in the present-day it’s a running gag which is the more insulting term, “Jhereg” or “Easterner.” Goddamnit this is such a good book. The point at which it definitively blew my mind was when those centaurs commended Vlad on being “a good companion,” and the whole story flipped on its head. This is Morrolan’s quest; Vlad is just the sarcastic sidekick. I thought it was going to take the form of an elaborate heist but then it turns out they’re haring off to the Underworld omg. And the way Vlad saves the day by drawing on what his grandpa taught him!! I was chuffed to see everybody acting EXTREMELY Slytherin primary in the third act (everyone except Sethra, who seems to have prioritized saving Zerika over saving Aliera but that may have been bc she saw the entire Dragaeran Empire as her circle of concern). I think this series does its finest work when Burst is wrestling with questions of identity and Taltos is a real standout.

Comments

[tabacoychanel]

it occurs to me that Vlad simply picked the wrong identity to lean into with Morrolan. And once he course-corrected, with Fenarian brandy and stuff,
omg!! yr right

wait there are people who find Vlad off-putting??? and prefer Paarfi books? wut. haha he is the main draw for me. i know you view everything through a Morrolan-lens but VLAD! i can’t relate to not rooting for Vlad.

It's not like Vlad would ever ask him, because that would be validating that Morrolan might know something that he doesn't, and we can't have that
adfkdjfdkfjd so true

you can almost see the two of them figuring out just how far they can push each other's buttons without setting the other person off
:nods:

Brust's timing shenanigans are such
i never commented on the way he structured Teckla around a laundry list, and here in Phoenix it’s a—idk, i’d shelve it in the self-help section i suppose. targeted at independent contractors and small business owners.

but they are spoilery for future books, so I think instead I will just sort of dump the non-spoilery pieces of them here
i really appreciate you taking the time to consolidate non-spoilery thoughts for me! benefits of a bespoke consligiere ;) really though if it’s too time-consuming in future i’m perfectly happy to consume your spoilery thoughts once i’ve finished consuming the relevant canon

It's such an action-charged scene, I keep forgetting that very little action actually happens and the rest of it is mostly in Vlad's head.
whoah!

It really jumped out at me this readthrough how much time Vlad spends looking at Morrolan's face here
omg! reminds me of this thread where someone just collated all the times Harry spends thinking about Draco’s stupid face

awww i see we both honed in on the Mama-->Boss changeover and how charged it was

[hamsterwoman]

wait there are people who find Vlad off-putting??? and prefer Paarfi books? wut

Well, Vlad is not, you know, a nice person. And I think the friend in question would just never voluntarily read a book about a mob boss. She was bothered by stuff like him running brothels and so on, which, I mean, that's a fair thing to be bothered by, but it also comes with the property.

And don't get me wrong! While I'm all about Morrolan, I do really love Vlad, too,and find him both a really interesting character and a very effective protagonist.

i never commented on the way he structured Teckla around a laundry list, and here in Phoenix it’s a—idk, i’d shelve it in the self-help section i suppose. targeted at independent contractors and small business owners.

LOL re: Phoenix's frame XD Every book has its own different framing device, some of them more off-the-wall than others. I think the laundry list in Teckla is my favorite, though. I am kind of impressed Brust hasn't run out of ideas for them yet :P

really though if it’s too time-consuming in future i’m perfectly happy to consume your spoilery thoughts once i’ve finished consuming the relevant canon


Ahaha, trust me, it is the exact opposite of a problem for me to read back over my notes from the Vlad books and share them with you so that we can talk aboutthese things sooner than we otherwise might have :DDD (But of course I will be very happy to link you to the full write-ups once you're done with the Vlad books and the Paarfi books if you decide to read them or my digest version thereof :D)

where someone just collated all the times Harry spends thinking about Draco’s stupid face

Yeah, it's rather like that, LOL. (Nor does it stop in Taltos. There are some lines where I'm genuinely like, um? I don't know how to read this platonically...?)

[tabacoychanel]

its own different framing device, some of them more off-the-wall than others
"laundry list" was p wild, can't wait to see how much more off the wall it gets...

i'm kinda stalled on Phoenix been having a few mental health days BUT the Ada Palmer is really interesting because it's like...so new and different it's basically teaching me how to read it as I go along? does that makes sense? most of hte time i pick up a book i kinda know the shape of it and i can read like 5 words per page and i'll still be ok (this is more true in some genres--cough romance cough--than others) but Too Like the Lightning is some kind of terra nova it's so groundbreaking. i have to pick my way through it carefully but i'm making steady progress!

it is the exact opposite of a problem for me to read back over my notes from the Vlad books and share them with you
XD thank you

[hamsterwoman]

been having a few mental health days

Aww, sorry to hear that *hugs* (and, yeah, Phoenix is kind of not the most cheerful Vlad book)

it's basically teaching me how to read it as I go along? does that makes sense?

It does! Like, it's very intentionally constructed to gradually reveal some pretty complicated effects, using some tools I've never seen in genre fiction, or modern fiction I've read, for that matter. So, yeah, I felt the same -- I wasn't sure what a lot of it was doing, early on, but it was (almost) all really interesting. And some of the things that did not impress me at first continued to work better for me the farther in I got with the series.

I'm very happy to hear you're finding it interesting and fulfilling so far!