#adrian empire

[trve-grimdark]

The Exalted and The Everchosen

(Adrian Smith)

[lilareviewsbooks]

4 SFF Books For (Humanities) Nerds

Hey guys! I know I promised this like, last year, but life got in the way :( But now I can finally present to you - my list of books for humanities nerds!

To put it simply, these are books I think broach topics that are close to the humanities nerds' interests - sociology, history, art, anthropology, political sciences... And sure, they could be considered "boring", but if you're into the humanities - you'll have a ball with them! (and, of course, anyone can enjoy these!)

The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison

5 stars | 446 pages | standalone, but there are spin-offs | queer side character

This is the book that spurred this list, so, if you want a longer review, I have it on my blog. But suffice it to say that The Goblin Emperor is a fairly long and detailed account of what happens in the court of a country of elves when the youngest, unfavoured and half-goblin son of the king ascends the throne. This book is masterful. It seemlessly weaves in personal and political concerns as we follow Maia, the newly crowned emperor. The writing style is slow - we follow the emperor's every day life. We are with him when he rises in the morning until when he wakes up. It waits for something to happen, and is quiet and slow. It's absolutely delightful: despite his politicking, Maia is mostly and more ardently concerned with kindness. He wants to treat people fairly. This not only makes for a sweet main character, it also means the book is a fascinating character study, as well as an incredible feat of world-building. I think nerds will enjoy its slow and traquil pace, its dedication to politics, language and customs of this world and its charming main character.

A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine

5 stars | 462 pages | completed duology | queer main characters

For a sci-fi twist, I think A Memory Called Empire is the way to go. The duology follows Mahit, a citizen of a small satellite of the Teixcalaan Empire, who is chosen as the next ambassador for her home. She must journey to the capital with a very important mission - find out why her predecessor mysteriously disappeared. Again, what there is to enjoy here is lush, expansive world-building. The Teixcalaani feel so, so real. Every little detail was thought of, from their language to their smiles. It's truly impressive, and the prose, I remember, is also beautiful, making these details pop out even more. This is also incredibly political, as Mahit descends into the belly of the beast, so to speak, in search of answers. But it is framed by a pretty straight-foward murder mystery, which might be fun for people used to mystery stories. And the second book broaches first contact! - it's just so much fun! I also have a longer review for this series, if you would like more details! Nerds will be drawn to the expansive world-building, attention to detail, and reflections on empire, memory and legacy.

Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

4 stars | 201 pages | standalone | no one's queer, I don't think :(

This one might be a good pick for veterans of SFF - it has a fun gimmick! You must've heard the phrase "any science advanced enough in undistinguishable from magic", attributed to Arthur C. Clarke. This book takes that concept and runs with it. For Lynesse, a princess in a medieval society, Elder Nyr's "giant tower" is magical, and he, a magician. For Elder Nyr, an anthropologist come from a different planet, his interests are scientific, and his "tower", a spaceship. The fun of the novella is that we flip-flop between these two people's perspectives, so that half the story is a sci-fi, and the other half, a fantasy. I found this story to be unique, and to understand its place in the speculative genre quite well. It defies expectations and conventions in a creative way that I think nerds familiar with them will enjoy!

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson

5 stars | 399 pages | uncompleted series | queer main characteres

Another good bet is The Traitor Baru Cormorant, the first installment in the Masquerade Series, which is not finished yet. It follows Baru, who, as a child, watches her country be colonized by the Masquerade Empire. She vows revenge, and to destroy the empire from the inside out. In this installment, she is finally trusted to be sent as an Imperial Accountant to Aurdwynn, a famously ungovernable territory... This one is very, very brain-y. It's dense political fantasy, and I admit I had some trouble following the economics, sometimes - that was never my strong suit!! The tapestry of betrayals, alliances and twists is rich, intricate and realistic. People have diverse interests, are multi-faceted individuals, and yet have a reason to be acting they way they are acting. This makes for satisfying plot lines, and incredible twists. I still haven't recovered from what the first book did to me, to be honest. Nerds, if you want to be dazzled and made to work for it, pick this one up. The Traitor Baru Corumorant will have you scratching your chin, thinking hard and having a lot of fun with (yay!) economics and accounting!

I have a couple more of these if anyone is interested :) And as always, if you need a book rec, feel free to send me an ask!

[ifishouldvanish]

Think about how deeply Alucard buries his anger and pain, how hard he is to provoke because it's not what his mother would have wanted and he doesn't want to become his father, how it all manifests as this pervasive, detached melancholy and a sense of duty at the expense of the Self...

Think about how quick to provoke Olrox is, how justified he feels in killing Julia (right in front of her child no less) how openly he displays contempt, how comfortable and righteous he feels in his anger, how he refuses to bow to anyone until it's under threat of force; an abject refusal to give up the Self...

Think about "i thought you were just a myth."

Think about "a goddess should know where all her dragons are."

And then think about that voyeuristic shot of Alucard weeping alone in the castle after Dracula is defeated, and think about Olrox turning his back to hide his tears from the viewer when Mizrak leaves...

Now imagine these two healing and finding balance together 🥲

[ace-and-sleepdeprived]

guess who saw ghostbusters frozen empire again!! loved it just as much as the first time but the main thing that got my attention on my second viewing was that EVERYONE SAW the exchange pheobe and melody had. which is weirdly something that gets left out of the few pheobe x melody fics i’ve read where pheebs is being angsty over melody moving on - and yet people think the rest of her family OR even the others didn’t catch onto the fact she might’ve had more with the random ghost girl that helped save the world?? acknowledge the fact they SAW the ‘see you in the fabric of the universe’ exchange.

[highcoutureaffair]

PLAYBOY: What were your thoughts on Senna when you met him?

ADRIANE: [Laughing] You won't believe it. He was wearing his helmet and race suit, walked by the girls and i said to one of them: “He has a cute ass, doesn't he?”

— Adriane Galisteu interviewed for Playboy Magazine, 1997

[jadedontaskwhytoo]

They're just there to remind me that I'm single...

[dickinson-devotee]

"Today’s tale: Iron Maiden – Empire of the Clouds, from The Book Of Souls. This was an interesting album. We almost did not record it. Steve Harris had a series of unfortunate life happenings, and felt he wasn’t ready for the album. But sometimes, with an organization like that, it’s like turning a battleship around in a bathtub. All the logistics were set up for us to go and record this album in Paris, and so everyone went in a little unprepared. A lot of writing went on in the studio, and often when somebody would be in the studio writing, singer Bruce Dickinson would be in a little isolated booth off the left-hand side of the studio, playing the piano . He’d show me bits of this thing that he was working on, but to be honest, it didn’t really seem to interest anyone else in the band at that point. I could see there was value to it, so I encouraged him to keep on working with it, and he developed the story about the R101 airship and the crash of it. I think he may have literally been working on it for about six weeks before we started fashioning it for the band. Once we got going, we cut the song in various sections, almost theatrically scoring the different stages of Bruce’s complex story. Bruce played the piano, not especially well :-), but well enough to be manipulated in the final recording. Nico used a violin bow on the side of a gong, to make a terrifying noise as the airship was falling from the sky and crashing into the ground. All through the song there are musical “images” to go with the lyrics. By the time we had finished recording, the song was over 18 minutes long the longest song Iron Maiden had ever recorded. I remember listening back to the song with Bruce, at earsplitting levels on our final night in Paris. We had no idea that he had been suffering with a vocal condition, all through the album, and the day after he went to the doctor and discovered a huge cancerous growth in his neck. Somehow, he had managed to sing through it. The great news is that after treatment he is healthier than ever. The album went on to be number one in many countries all over the world. I’m looking forward to catching up with the guys in Sydney next month!"

Kevin Shirley

August 4, 2024

[avaelangel]

I really hope that in 300 something years Alucard didn't become just luminescent serious muchroom and still has a tendency to mess with Belmonts.

And I kinda...really want him to miss his friends. Because I miss them too.

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[analysisroulette]

Do you enjoy talking about bugs? Talking about penises? Oh boy do I have an episode for you...

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 16 - Empire In Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Okay, now onto the May reviews! Backlog vanishing before my eyes (or at least is now only 6 books long).

So I went into this book almost entirely blind – my roommate had gotten it as a secret santa gift from someone without much understanding of their taste in fiction, and it had just been laying unopened on the book shelf for four months until I grabbed it entirely based on the author.

I have actually read a decent amount of Tchaikovsky before – Children of Time and Ruin, and then Elder Race – but Empire was honestly entirely different than any of them (beyond a clear aesthetic fascination with anthropods, anyways). Which really only makes sense, considering it’s the first volume of a ten-book map fantasy series instead of hard sci fi or a fairly literary genre-blending novella, and also that it was published the better part of a decade before any of them. But these are things I did not know!

Anyway, there was some fast expectation adjustment going on as I read; the book is map fantasy, of the ‘could basically be someone’s D&D campaign except for how often they split the party’ variety. The central conceits (or gimmicks, depending on how uncharitable you’re feeling) are first of all that instead of having a world populated by humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and so forth, everyone in the setting is one type of another of insect/arachnid-kinden, humans offshoots whose ancestors infused themselves with the essences of some of the gigantic anthropods who are what the world has instead of chimera and dragons. They physically vary about as much as people in fantasy worlds usually do, and also they each have their own kind of magic. Importantly, the ability to understand, use and maintain complex machinery – to be ‘apt’ – is one of those inherited types of magic, and the Lowlands (the books setting) went through some real upheavel a couple centuries back when the Apt ants and beetles got good enough at technology to overthrow their wasp and mantis overlords.

The story itself is about the looming threat of conquest by the expandsionist Wasp Empire on the border of the Lowlands, and the refusal of the city states’ robber barons and magnates to see it as a threat instead of a profitable trading partner. The protagonists are barely-grown students who are wards or clients of an aging self-appointed spymaster whose been trying to rouse the alarm who are thrown into the spy games after a botched assassination attempt and from there there are duels, slavers, airships, prison breaks, heroic resistance fighters, love triangles, fraught long-lost parental relationships, etc, etc.

That probably sounds pretty dismissive, but I do want to emphasize that it’s not at all bad – it’s just all much more conventional than I’m used to from Tchaikovsky, which is was a bit disappointing. Tropey as it all was, it was still fun, and well-executed and -written enough to be the most enjoyable book I’d read in a decent bit.

Anyway, if a book must have fantasy race science with civilizations of entirely-human-but-also-meaningfully-biologically-distinct demographics, I thought this was pretty well done? Mainly in that it always seemed pretty clear that the ostensible immutable differences in character and intelligence between them are just our main POV being sheltered and unthinkingly racist, and it just barely manages to avoid having one of the kinden be ‘the evil one’, or be a bunch of stupid savages (barely).

I also did appreciate that Tchaikovsky managed to avoid making the Lowlands seem like any sort of utopia (or even, like, a good place – slavery and amoral robber barons and violent chauvinism everywhere), without it ever really being in question whether the whole place getting conquered by the vaguely Roman slaver empire would be any sort of good thing. Likewise also kind of amusing how the main villain’s whole subplot involves having his nose repeatedly rubbed in the fact that, even if he is personally incorruptible and devoted only to the good of the empire, absolutely none of his superiors, peers or subordinates are.)

Anyway, overall a fun read, most of the main cast was pretty endearing, fun pulpy adventure plot with not-entirely-awful pacing, love triangle plot that didn’t entirely make me was to light the book on fire. Still, can’t say it got anywhere close to inspiring me to read the other 9 volumes of the series.

[niofo]

actually fun fact, but asunder was one of the last da books i read, it was long after playing inquisition, reading wot and some 150k into a fic, where i had a very different vision of what actually happened there. my bad i guess, i should first get familiar with all the media about my special interest before starting to write, but to my defense, in 2019 it was just supposed to be a short side project without that much depth. anyway, you can imagine my surprise when i read asunder finally and learned how it actually looked like... not just the mage rebellion (not started by anders, but by a vote organized by fiona, and the templars started murdering long before that), but also cassandra's whole personal quest makes no sense, my circle mage inquisitor and also literal first enchanter vivienne should be well aware that tranquility can be reversed thanks to shale.

i'm still not sure how i'm going to handle this in the fic, i think i'll just retcon it so it aligns with how it happens in the games (bcos i have cass' quest already written), but man it's just frustrating. why even publish this additional sources (books, comics etc) if you're going to mess with it/ lie about it anyway? asunder is my least favorite da book not just bcos i hate rhys and evangeline, but it's just overall so frustrating. and i expected to actually like it, bcos i like mage stuff and cole.

[westgateoh]

If you like audio books, The Empire In Black and Gold series is brilliantly read by Ben Allen. He’s amazing. So many characters. So many accents. Sooooo realistic. I love the series as a story, but the narration is INCREDIBLE.

[headcanonsandmore]

"Empire of Black and Gold" has me very conflicted.

As a lover of the fantasy genre and interesting characters, I am delighted.

As an asexual person who is baffled by love triangles, I am... a little frustrated.

[ace-and-sleepdeprived]

i may or may not have started an ask blog for my ghostbusters oc haha

@ask-beccalesatz