#we can't all be baru cormorant!!!!!

[llycaons]

I think this book has lost the plot...why is the major conflict (and potential grand finale) now preventing a versenian overthrow of the nobility...like the nobles and the system is so awful here, and they've hinted at wanting to free the city from their control, and it maintains itself THROUGH violence, so...yeah? its not a bad plan, even? but they're like nooooo too many versenians will die well how they THINK this will happen! and ofc this resistence group has like racial blood purity stuff going on and is violently targeting mixed-race ppl. idk. in the finale of the last book they couldn't destroy the stupid medallions bc it would kill a dozen nobles and that was apparently too high of a cost (okay the mc was in there too), so my hopes shouldn't be too high

[july-19th-club]

first thing i do with any baru book is read the entire table of contents and book three has like ten more stories about ash YES yes yes AND it ends with a chapter titled 'the lightning in the east' YES YES YES finally we get to go out there and see what horrible stuff is in the frightening zone yessssssssssssssssssssssssss

[thesiltverses]

Hello! Writing first to thank you for such an extraordinary creation - as a piece of writing and even more so in performance. Every episode manages to somehow build on and outdo the last; you navigated that transition from a smaller scale story of grisly mysteries and personal crises of faith to a grand scale of war, revolution and political satire with absolute aplomb, and never lost that throughline of exceptional characterisation and sharp writing, always steering to the most interesting conflicts. You are always very humble in your public comments, but I hope you allow yourself a little pride, because this is absolutely top notch stuff.

I was struck by Paige's final words, that she hopes what they left would be found 'flawed, inadequate, yearning'. As the show went on, I was surprised - in a good way - that the show's politics gradually crystalised into a full-on nihilist anarchism, something perhaps even along the lines of Monsieur Dupont. (Muna used the 'a' word in one of the Q&As but it was pretty evident even before that). Taking these gods as a metaphor for ideologies and social systems, the scope of it becomes pretty universal - and unsparing. And, equally, hard to answer.

I wondered when the Many Below/Wound Tree was introduced what answers they would find: what political movement could truly resist cooption or becoming its own horrible self-sustaining egregore. And in the end the answer you express I suppose is a negative one: that even Paige's god of victims is a tool, one that must eventually be discarded to go into some unknown place beyond it all (to walk away from Omelas), towards something that narrative fiction - as a form of the 'endless words' that are derided so much in the third season - can no longer address. Which I respect - to pose the question is vital, even if the tools can't reach any answers if they even exist.

I think this struggle exists in many stories that address themes of making a break from the rapacious society that created them (and take it seriously) - your Baru Cormorants and Mononoke-himes. We can describe the problem vividly, but since we do not have a counterexample to hand, any story we tell about ~what is to be done~ and what it will look like when it is feels like it will be just as hollow as the spins and angles and parasitic fantasies that so many characters advance in the Silt Verses. (How could there possibly be a time where it finally works out, after we have seen all this? But then, what are we living for?)

To try to make this a question and not a ramble, I wanted to ask - what do you see as the role of fiction in addressing the horrible machinery of this world? Is it enough to pose the question particularly sharply, skewer the bad and inadequate answers, and leave the readers/listeners to figure out how to make the killing of gods concrete? How do we punch through the bounds of it all being Content, another product to be bought and sold? What does it mean to sit here and fantasise about people making that revolutionary break when there is no revolution to be had?

I don't know what answer I'm hoping for here, but given the themes of the show, I feel like this must be a kind of thing you've thought about, and probably have a far more developed line of thought than I do. And if this is a bit too much to drop in your inbox on a Saturday morning, I will say again thank you for writing this story and all the actors for making it so strikingly concrete - it truly means a lot, and I will treasure it.

Hi, and thank you for listening and for a beautifully written and thoughtful ask! ('Horrible machinery of the world' stopped me dead in my tracks.) And I am very proud, genuinely.

I don't have a good enough answer to your questions, and for me a lot of TSV is very much about trying to figure those answers out, but let me try and sum up my perspective bit by bit.

Is it enough for fiction to pose the question, without also proposing the answer?

I don't think it's enough for fiction as a collective body of work.

I'd argue there's probably a tendency towards open-endedness and irresolution in these individual narratives simply because it feels like a more honest acknowledgement that in real life, the foe has yet to take a real body blow and will not go down easy; that the foe, in fact, is the marketplace for the work itself and ironically profits from the popularity of stories with easy heroic victories over villains who represent capitalism. That these stories inevitably become a pleasant consumable that serves our complacency within the belly of the beast, a kind of daily tonic to reassure us that good always triumphs and regular people always come out on top.

I also think that the sheer scale and scope of the topic creates its own challenges; you probably can't engage thoroughly enough with both the dystopian question and your ideas for a utopian answer all in a single story, without ultimately turning the latter into that false reassurance, a quick handwave of a happy ending.

You mention Omelas, and I think we could illustrate the problem by looking at how LeGuin handles her two successive masterpieces:

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, which gives us the titular resource-rich u(dys)topia built on invisible suffering, and the dissidents who turn their backs on that world and walk out into the inhospitable wilderness in search of something better.

The Dispossessed, which as its premise gives us Anarres, an imperfect but sympathetic anarchist society whose adherents turned their backs on a neighbouring world of capitalist plenty to live out in the inhospitable wilderness in search of something better.

Anarres can very reasonably be viewed as LeGuin's direct answer to the question posed by Omelas, and she would have likely had it in her mind already as she wrote Omelas. But if the short story had ended with 'I hear that against all odds, the ones who walk away have successfully founded an anarchist utopia where hardship is everywhere but it's shared as equitably as possible. THE END', the amount of lazy shorthand and empty comfort involved in that happier ending would inevitably make it a dishonest and unserious offering.

Instead, Anarres is a starting premise to be interrogated at length over the course of a separate story, rather than a happy ending to simply reassure the reader that better things are possible - and even at the end of the novel LeGuin's unresolved questions are still very similar to the ones that we're left with in Omelas (and the same questions that I feel like we were knocking about in The Silt Verses, and which I guess you could argue are all lingering concerns at the end of Mononoke, as well): how and where can we find space to create and sustain a genuine alternative when the narrative environment of capitalism is so powerfully all-subsuming and constantly growing to fill the space? Do we need to disconnect entirely, vanishing as if dead? If we disconnect, how can we possibly survive and what inhumanities or ethical compromises will be required of us? If we do survive, is our isolationism a dereliction of human responsibility to those left behind?

All of which is to say that I think present-day fiction absolutely can make the attempt to meaningfully explore potential alternative-utopian solutions in more depth and with far more tangibility than we attempted with TSV - but that dystopian fiction like ours which concludes with the unexplored promise of a revolutionary utopia and the vague reassurance that the irrepressible human spirit will figure things out from here on out (Chewbacca gets a medal, everyone's in the streets wearing a Guy Fawkes mask) doesn't do much more than dramatically undermine its own goal of disrupting the audience's comfort.

That said, one of my big regrets this season was that we didn't succeed in more engagingly exploring and articulating the Woundtree camp's development into a flawed but functioning society in Dispossessed fashion ahead of the ending. That was my intention, but what quickly became clear was that in a dramatic format, with a limited cast, it was just endless static meeting-room scenes with Paige and Elgin discussing difficult responses to impossible challenges, while everyone else was out having dynamic and exciting adventures with lots of fun and exciting gods. Dystopias remain too entertaining for utopias' own good.

What do you see as the role of fiction in addressing the horrible machinery of this world?

I believe that absurdist horror fiction specifically, founded on the principle of 'people in a world that makes no sense, deluding themselves that it definitely does make sense' can play a very powerful role in that stated purpose.

Many horror traditions carry the baggage of inbuilt or inadvertent conservatism - the concept of a peaceable, passive, safe, middle-class Normality which is then disrupted by a terrifying outside threat (alien, ultra-foreign, ultra-low-class, underworldly, wild, etc). But absurdist horror very directly identifies Normality as the true source of our terror and very directly confronts our human response to it. It creates the right environment for us to ask all of the good questions. Isn't this an unsustainable nightmare we're living in? Why are we expending so much energy pretending it isn't? How do we get out and what do we do if we can't?

Probably the only listener reaction that's genuinely frustrated me about both of our shows is the folks who come away turning their noses up at the bluntness of that approach and acting like they've Solved The Art simply for figuring out where our broad sympathies lie. "Hm, just listened to The Silt Verses and I understood it at once; it's clearly trying to say that capitalism is bad. A little heavy-handed in its messaging for my liking, hm-hm!"

Not to go full Garth Marenghi, but for me the directness of the provocation and the obvious outrageousness of the nightmare is the point; it then allows us to go to places that other genres (or more understated critiques) generally can't.

How do we punch through the bounds of it all being Content, another product to be bought and sold? What does it mean to sit here and fantasise about people making that revolutionary break when there is no revolution to be had?

God, I don't know.

Maybe it means nothing; maybe we can't punch through; maybe there is no story unruly enough to be truly unco-optable, and therefore even the most radical fiction ultimately serves as a distraction, a placebo, a reassurance (that we are not alone, that better things are possible) which will impact the wider world more by keeping us subscribed to the Kindle app than by any action we might feel inspired to take.

Amazon is paying Boots Riley to make TV shows. Disney won much praise for delivering a revolutionary fantasy in a Star Wars shell. Apple is funding excellent, discomfiting and furious corporate satires about how we happily ignore invisible worker abuses for the sake of our own lifestyles, but they also cannot be considered accountable for the deaths of Congolese child-labourers in the global cobalt supply chain. The Dispossessed is in development as a limited series and the LeGuin estate are closely involved.

The master doesn't just own the tools, he's been buying up the guillotines as well.

What if, as with the unknowable nothingness outside of Omelas, the only art that cannot be reduced to product in net service of the status quo is the art that's so invisible and inaccessible and disconnected as to not exist at all? Does being relatively small and ramshackle really lend us any ideological purity, any genuine detachment? You can listen to The Silt Verses on Apple and Spotify and Amazon Music. Brought to you by Acast.

Chapter 36 with Dev and Seb was to a large extent intended as an articulation of that worry. To what extent can we still trust in the integrity of a sincere love story (one that we want to believe in) it if takes place in an insincere and predatory environment? Can any meaningful story be told honestly within such a space?

This stuff really worries me. I think it's probably right to worry. I don't know the answer. I do know that there are some folks for whom the show has made a tangible difference in terms of their life's direction, and that's a huge comfort to me.

There was someone who said it helped them find their faith, strangely and wonderfully. Someone else who said it contributed to their decision not to go down a more lucrative career path within what they view as an exploitative industry. (I hope they don't regret that decision; I hope it makes them happy.)

So there's something there. Maybe.

[paradoxcase]

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Chapter 8

I guess she means she is being identified as an agent of the Masquerade, and not just as a foreigner? I kind of wonder where they would ordinarily expect someone who looks like Baru to be from, or what they would expect her to be doing there, considering that she was clearly brought there by Tain Hu and isn't like, a tourist or something. She mentions that they are worried about her "hunting social sin", but seems to take their behavior as evidence of financial crimes instead, which doesn't quite work. Like, are they afraid that she is here to cart them off to the Cold Cellar for conversion therapy but since that's actually irrelevant to her purpose here is that not indicative of anything that interests her, or does she think they are betraying their guilt in the counterfeiting scheme? I don't think both of those things can be true

I wouldn't have remembered that name without the Nook app's search function, so good that it was spelled out more plainly later on

Is Oathsfire her westerly neighbor? I don't think so. Look:

It's to the right of her on the map, that usually means east. At first I wondered if the map was actually upside down to how we normally see maps, and maybe up is south, maybe we are in the southern hemisphere, which doesn't fit with my memory of how this world is laid out, but maybe? But no:

South is definitely down on the map. Then I thought, maybe the planet spins the other direction and the sun rises on the other side, and they reversed east and west because east is better defined as "the direction the sun rises from" or something, but no, on the right-hand side of the map we have this:

The right-hand side of the map is definitely east, this just seems like an error

It seems kind of strange to me that the language she is literate in is Iolynic, rather than Aphalone. Like, she already had to learn Aphalone as a second language, probably from someone Masquerade-related, it seems kind of unlikely that they would have specifically avoided teaching her how to read and write it, and all the people she would need to have written communications with probably also speak Aphalone and may not want to do business in another language, and it seems to be sort of a court language here. Iolynic was described as a creole earlier, if it actually is a creole, it seems unlikely to have an dedicated writing system, unless it is just using a writing system originally used to write Urun or Stakhi? But then she would be literate in another language, as well. And it can't be a completely different writing system from the one that Aphalone uses, because Baru can still read the numbers. And if it is the same writing system that Aphalone uses, why is she not literate in Aphalone?

She definitely knows the writing system if she can read the names. These seem maybe Iolynic? Not a lot of names ending in obstruents, so maybe Sentiamut is Stakhi, in fact I seem to recall that the Sentiamut woman from earlier was described as Stakhi

I mean, if you own land, you're not really a feudal serf anymore, and there isn't actually anything preventing you from becoming a landlord if you want to be one. Like, the class system that Aurdwynn is modeled after was basically divided into the "has land" class and the "doesn't have land" class to the best of my understanding. If the land that you own is shitty, you're just a weak feudal lord instead of a strong one

I think this is supposed to be like, hints that she is into her or that we are supposed to think they have some chemistry? I don't know, I might be too ace for these these little references that come up from time to time. But I don't feel like they really have chemistry. Tain Hu keeps trying to talk to her about the merits of rebellion and the ways in which the Masquerade is shitty and she just stolidly refuses to engage with anything

I'm guessing the book wants this to mean "bigamist" or something, but like, "bigamy" already exists as a word, I don't think they had to adapt one that as far as I'm aware has never been used for this context

I mean, it seems like all of these groups have been intermarrying for a long time now and the Masquerade would be hard put to sort them into three distinct and non-overlapping categories like that

I'm curious what makes Tain Hu think that Baru has any interest in ruling? Like, we know that's her goal. But with Tain Hu she's been consistently sticking to the "I'm just an accountant, I just want to keep accounts" story

Kind of curious about what kind of new thing Tain Hu wants to build after her rebellion?

It seemed clear that Xate Olake was probably involved in all of this, but this feels kind of too neat and simple to me. Also, we are only 1/4 of the way through the book, still. I guess we're meant to understand that Xate Yawa is in on this, or covering it up, or something? Or at least, Baru is meant to understand that, anyway. This book has sort of been promising that clever things will happen, but I don't think anything really clever has happened yet. Hopefully there is more to this

She says she has two things she wants to know here, but then she only asks how the counterfeiting was accomplished. What was the other thing she wanted to know?

[cornon-thekopp]

The Monster Baru Cormorant, pg. 363

> "Hush", Hu says, "hush, it's all right: trust me."

> Don't trust *me*, Hu.

> "I mean it," Hu says, neither smiling nor winking, but fixing Baru with the plain intensity she often used in field command: a woman who knew death, and trusted it as a companion. "I'm bringing her to you. I know you don't understand why. But you need her. Trust me."

This is during Baru's seizure, so if we are operating off of a strictly "natural" explanation for the vision of Tain Hu that Baru sees here, then Tain Hu is created by Baru's mind and can't know anything that Bary herself doesn't know. However, this section doesn't really have any context or build up, and the only "her" I can think of who fits this is Aminata, which Baru would not know about.

I'd love to hear other people's takes but right now I'm putting this down as ambiguous evidence of the supernatural slant that Tain Hu takes on in monster and tyrant.

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2025 #15

had a weird week! but i saw a bunch of cool movies and attended many library events

Finished:

Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb, narrated by John Keating I am not sure I trust the set up of this trilogy in the hands of a white usamerican author. we are in like very high alert noble savage trope territory, and trying to balance having a white protagonist from the ever expanding conquering kingdom up against strange and mystical native peoples is... delicate to say the least!

The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All, Vol. 1 by Sumiko Arai, translated by Ajani Oloye okay i see what the hype is about

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, narrated by Rob Inglis absolutely a classic for a reason. this packs so much adventure into it. its not as if Tolkien hasn't already had Fucking Enormous impact on what the fantasy genre looks like, but i do think that a fair number of modern fantasy authors could stand to go back to the hobbit and really study what he does here, how the prose works, how its paced and how it moves from one story to another at a very solid clip

What Did You Eat Yesterday? Vol. 14-15 by Fumi Yoshinaga, translated by Jocelyn Allen this is my emotional support middle age men slice of life

Blue Box, Vol. 8 by Kouji Miura, translated by Christine Dashiell oh my god I love Ayame. she's so excellent and a great balance to the other characters in the cast. i can't wait to see what chaos she is going to cause. also i'm starting to read Chiaki as like aro-spectrum, maybe demi-romantic from how she describes the seed of her feelings for Taiki, as not liking him yet but there being potential for her to fall for him

Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, narrated by Michael Page doesnt live up to the first book, but what could? the pirate stuff is interesting but plain and simple it takes Locke and Jean far away from the rest of the interesting stuff they were doing and sorta kills a lot of momentum and build. not sure if there's a satisfying way to wrap up the time delay poison plot as the series goes on, i feel like any resolution to it would be kinda a let down

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite fun! tho has the classic flaw of scifi setting mysteries of locking the key to howdunnit behind world building that it doesn't estabish early enough to give the reader time to try and puzzle it out

Abandoned:

Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao started this lesbian romance bc i heard good things about there being a butch love interest. and she is great, i do indeed love her and her butchness. however there is a pattern in this book where in one chapter there is a Conflict, someone's feelings get hurt, or there's a miscommunication or something- classic "why are they not together yet" fodder- but then by the next chapter, or even within the SAME chapter, that conflict would be resolved with emotional maturity and grace. and... I guess I get that that is the romantic fantasy that this book is delivering? but it is not for me. it really killed the tension and drama when there wasn't a chance to stew in any conflict and instead everyone always knew the right thing to say after a couple pages

Started/Ongoing:

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson, narrated by Christine Marshall hold for the audiobook came in at the library. i am finally reading another of the series that the lesbians on my tumblr dash love

Point of Dreams by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett yay more of this series! only two chapters in and excited for more

[books-coffee-and-the-woods]

re: 2023 new releases. hope you're ready for a long message because there were a lot.

hot new releases/things that were relatively popular

He Who Drowned The World, Shelley Parker Chan (Chinese mythological historical, very gay, very stabby a la Baru Cormorant. Book 2 of 2. A particular favorite of mine from this year)

Witch King, Martha Wells (New fantasy book by author of murderbot fame. I didn't actually click with this one but I'd be remiss to leave it off)

House With Good Bones, T Kingfisher (Southern gothic rose horror by the very talented Ursula Vernon)

Translation State, Ann Leckie (high sf alien horror regency romance. Wheeeeee. I had a lot of fun reading this. You can read it as a standalone, but you get deeper context if you've read the ancillary justice series, also highly recommended)

Will of the Many, James Islington (futuristic roman empire aesthetic rigged murder school. Not precisely good but appallingly catchy, I read all six hundred pages in pretty much one sitting. If you liked red rising you'll like this, if you hated red rising you will Not)

OH YEAH THE ACTUAL NEW MURDEBOT NOVEL (System Collapse)

A Power Unbound, Freya Marske (book 3 of 3, magic alt edwardian romances with murder. This is more romance proper but it's about equal with the action plot and Marske is very good. I don't think you've read these so you'd have to start at book 1)

Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh (The book that absolutely knocked my socks off, my pick for the best sff release of the year. I forget if I've already told you about this one)

Starling House, Alix Harrow (Southern gothic house drama. Similar feel to Ninth House or The Book of Night)

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty (Divorced lady pirate adventure-drama a la Arabian Nights.)

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett (Charming, heavily fairy tale trope themed, vaguely reminiscent of the Lady Trent books)

more obscure new releases from this year that I thought were cool, but not in the Hot New Reads You Can't Miss Because Everyone's Read Them category

Under Fortunate Stars, Ren Hutchings (sf timey wimey space shenanigans with aliens. Immensely cool premise.)

Small Miracles, Olivia Atwater (fallen angel sent to tempt a too good mortal. Extremely charming)

The King Is Dead, Naomi Libicki (vaguely persian flavored fealty romance, very heavy to the fealty. Original, thorny, and intriguing)

The Deep Sky, Yume Kitasei (What if we terribly traumatized everyone going on a generation ship by making them go to viciously competitive boarding school together and then act surprised when a murder mystery occurs. Heads up that it's more interested in the human drama than the SF worldbuilding)

The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (early modern fantasy world anti-imperialism fever dream narrated by a cult survivor. Brilliantly written, spectacularly original, one of the best books I read this year)

Things for 2024, content warning for being (obviously) things I haven't read and thus without quality control

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden

The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P Djeli Clark

Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan

Goddess of the River, Vaishnavi Patel

The Woods All Black, Lee Mandelo

Exordia, Seth Dickinson

A Sorceress Comes To Call, T Kingfisher

Running Close To The Wind, Alexandra Rowland

Wow tumblr just lets me keep writing words. I didn't think they let me have this many in asks. Oh, and pro tip-- keep an eye out for tordotcom's most anticipated upcoming books for the first six months of 2024. They should be publishing it within the next week or so and I always add masses of books to my tbr from there.

oh holy crap, thanks!! I'll have to check these out!

thoughts on a few of em:

He Who Drowned The World - still have to read She Who Became the Sun lol but hopefully I'll get to em next year!

Witch King - Martha Wells has been recced by like All my sci-fi mutuals now lmao I REALLY gotta get into her!

House With Good Bones - THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY ON MY SHELF!! I just didn't fucking read it this year whoops. Very excited for new Kingfisher

Starling House - I was on the fence about this one since I really didn't like Once and Future Witches, but those comparisons give me hope! I'll add it to the library list!

Some Desperate Glory and Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries are 2/3 of the books published in 2023 that I actually managed to read (the 3rd is The Woman in Me lmao), I can't remember if you recc'd Some Desperate Glory, but it was SOOOOOOOO GOOD OMFG

Small Miracles - my aunt has been trying to convince me to read Atwater for quite a while, I'll have to give this one a try!

The Saint of Bright Doors - I have this one on hold!! Saw a post for it a week or so ago and it sounds absolutely delightful!

The Familiar - SO SO EXCITED for this one! I hope Bardugo is maybe...slowly....extricating herself from the Grishaverse and going to write more books not related to it... (not that they're all bad, I loved the Six of Crows duology, I'm just not into it anymore and I reeeealllly like her adult books lol)

Running Close To The Wind - oh yay new Rowland! I still haven't read her last book (the one with the guy on the cover who looked EXACTLY like my boss to the point where it became an Office Meme that [Boss] Is A Gay Romance Cover Model, still meaning to get a UK version of it but haven't yet) but I'll have to look this one up!

[theygotbitchesinmedia]

Whenever I read a book like baru cormorant I'm always left with one burning question: what do the lunatics on Goodreads have to say about this one? I think this bits probably my favorite.

a lot to unpack here but I think my favorite is the idea that in a book where they are explicitly speaking many languages notably none of which are English the term "sodomite" should be taken literally and understood as having the exact same etymology as it does in the real world.

In general the negative reviews on good reads seem very mad that baru was a prodigy which is interesting considering how insanely common that is for a Protagonist Trait especially in sf/f and politically-oriented storytelling in general. Bitches will be rooting for The Chosen One if he's a guy but if a young woman of color just happens to be Very Smart it's so unrealistic that it takes them out of the entire narrative. Many such cases.

If there's one complaint of the series I do have to agree with it's that the rapid fire birds eye view of the main war campaign and most of its skirmishes does feel a little bit oddly paced and lacking in immersion which isn't 100% to the story's benefit, and that we don't get quite as familiar with most of the dukes as wed need to for their characters to be interesting. But I also don't think we're supposed to care all that much about most of the dukes for pretty obvious reasons and I'm unsure how you would make the coyote stuff more robust without writing a book 2-3x as long so I can't be to pressed about it. If this were not a series I would consider the pacing questionable but ultimately this was not a story about aurdwynn this was Baru Cormorants Fun Accounting Vacation | Also Baru Cormorants Tormentous Nightmare

[sirjuggles]

Oh no I might be a Book Elitist. And not even an interesting one.

My work recently started a book club, where we all vote on the next book to read. So far we've read The Last Masterpiece by Laura Morelli and The Measure by Nikki Erlick. And both have been fine as novels go, but they're just... simple. Uncomplicated. Which isn't a bad thing! I honestly feel both books accomplished what they set out to do, and the authors are clearly talented. But I finish them and I don't feel excited to talk about them. Or, perhaps worse, I am only interested in discussing what they did poorly, and of course no one wants to hang out with That Guy.

But where's my cryptic background worldbuilding hints to uncover? Where's my complex knots of character identities to untangle? I want to read a story that does something weird and original and heartwrenching. An American woman falling in love with a handsome Italian freedom fighter during WWII or two lesbians navigating their relationship struggles in NYC just can't match up to the madness of The Locked Tomb, or Baru Cormorant, or Witch King. But I absolutely cannot ask my Historical Romance coworkers to subject themselves to House Of Leaves or whatever for my sake.

[lady-inkyrius]

Tagged by @kwarrtz to list 10 books I want to read this year. Narrowing it down is a pretty difficult task; I've got probably around 100 unread books on my bookshelf from going round charity shops and stuff buying whatever caught my fancy, and I really want to start reading more again so I can begin to get through them all. Last year I only read 6 books but I'm pretty sure I should be able to do more before the end of this year. This'll probably be mostly fiction though there's some non-fiction that I think will make it on to the list.

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon — To start off, this is what I'm currently reading at the moment. As of writing this I've read two of the three parts and I'm finding it pretty fun to read, It's one of those books where I can basically only describe it as fascinating. Books about the nature of humanity often appeal to me a lot. I really enjoy Sturgeon's prose; while perhaps a bit intentionally obscure, it's rather stylish.

Welcome to Dorley Hall by Alyson Greaves — Second on this list only because it's probably what I'll end up reading next, this is a bit self indulgent of me, but hey, I'm always up for a book if it thinks it can actually do something interesting with gender.

The Troika by Stepan Chapman — As soon as I came across this one I knew I had to read it, it sounds very weird but extremely up my alley.

Triton by Samuel Delany — Apparently written partly as a response to The Dispossessed (one of my favourite books), this would be my first exposure to Delany's work, of which I also have Babel-17 and Nova unread.

Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter — And here we have the one non-fiction entry on this list, I actually started reading GEB a few years back, but never ended up finishing it. I mean to rectify that this year.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov — Haven't actually decided whether I want to read Lolita or Pale Fire first, but I didn't want to put both on here. Might as well go with Lolita as probably the more well known one.

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse — If I remember correctly, I first came across this when I was talking with my dad about books he'd read when he was younger and the concept caught my interest.

Worm by Wildbow — I know I've waxed poetic about how I have a bunch of unread books sitting on my shelves to get through, and reading Worm isn't particularly conducive to that, but I can't pass up putting it in this list. Some napkin maths puts it at about a 100 hr read, which means it would likely be more than a month of reading.

The Crow Road by Iain Banks — I've long said that Banks is one of my favourite authors of all time (along with Le Guin and Pratchett usually), but I somehow never got round to reading this one, which seems to be one of his more well known works.

The Traitor (Baru Cormorant) by Seth Dickinson — This is a Tumblr recommendation (a lot of my mutuals seem to like it), so hopefully it lives up to that.

Accidentally posted this before adding this final paragraph, so I don't know if this will ping people properly, but @abalidoth, @phaeton-flier, @riverlinden, or @yuritypology if you or any of my other mutuals want to have a go at this you're free to!

[amosnaomi]

my rankings for all the books i read this yr + my thoughts

RE-READS

The Thief (Megan Whalen Turner) - No lie, every year I choose one book (if not more) from this series to reread. It's just so rewarding to reread. God bless good fantasy.

Fire and also Graceling (Kirsten Cashore) - For WOMEN.

BEST

Go Tell It on the Mountain (James Baldwin) - One of the best novels ever written in English and it's not even a lie. Everything he did with his characters to contextualize one coming of age is just breathtaking.

The Color Purple (Alice Walker) - What Walker does with the epistolary novel is incredible. Moved me to tears many times over.

The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead) - PLEASE read this before the movie comes out. On every fundamental level this book is amazing.

Open Veins of Latin America (Eduardo Galeano) - So well-written I was shocked to discover it was translated. Also made me sick to my stomach.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (himself) - As a memoir it's amazing, as a persuasive essay it's amazing, as the art of writing - you guessed it.

Cannery Row (John Steinbeck) - Sorry I am a Steinbeck guy. And he does an incredible "place-as-character" novella here. And his character work is great.

The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison) - To write a story this heartbreaking and also this compelling . . .

A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry) - I need to see this live.

GOOD BUT NOT GREAT

A Room with a View (E. M. Forster) - Sorry I am a Forster guy. It's not his best, but man I had fun. His Forsterisms are so charming to me.

Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles (Rosecrans Baldwin) - I like the structure of his chapters and the manner he weaves information. I've just read too many books on L.A. for this to be great.

The Pearl (John Steinbeck) - He's a good writer, so this still hit, but it's a straightforward novella. Not his best.

Severance (Ling Ma) - As I read it, I thought it was fine; the longer I think about this book after the fact, the more I like it lmao.

Fingersmith (Sarah Waters) - For me, this felt like the perfect mix of Dickensian and gothic genres. However the ending drags on way too long. (The Handmaiden truly is one of the best movies ever made.)

The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson) - The first 200 pages are so compelling and the last 200 pages were much harder for me. The story clogged too many characters and nations without enough room to breath . . . but oh my god the ending is crazyyyyy.

Watchmen (Alan Moore) - The ending of this is so dogshit I can't believe we let Alan Moore get away with this. It's compelling until then tho. The visuals alone are amazing.

Martyr! (Kaveh Akbar) - The ending to this really sucks and depletes my enjoyment of the whole book. We need to bring back sitting on a book for a decade until it's refined. Made me excited to read his poetry though.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Best American Short Stories of 2023 (multiple authors) - Favorite stories: "Peking Duck" by Ling Ma, "Bebo" by Jared Jackson, and "Treasure Island Alley" by Da-Lin

As You Like It (Shakespeare) - Not his best fr. But man his gender shenanigans will always be fun.

Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea (multiple authors) - Favorite chapters: "Gendered Violence, Crisis of Masculinity, and Regressive Transgression in Postmillennial South Korean Crime Thrillers" and "A Spunky Girl Meets a Queer Boy: Neoliberal Remediation of the Post-Authoritarian Period in the Korean Reply TV Series." The second one has actually changed me fundamentally lmao, I can't watch kdramas the same anymore.

"The Composite Nation" by Frederick Douglass - One of my favorite essays ever written, and so ahead of its time that it's painful.

MID-OFF

Tom Lake (Ann Patchett) - The issue with making two-timeline stories is that one timeline may be more interesting than the other. Such is the case with this. However, this was the first book I read in one of my book clubs, where every book after was awful, and my running joke after every new book was, "Wow, isn't Tom Lake amazing?"

The Wren, The Wren (Anne Enright) - The issue with making two-narrator stories is one may be more interesting than the other. Such is the case with this.

The Guest (Emma Cline) - Amongst many problems this book has, priority #1, can we PLEASE LEARN HOW TO END NOVELS?!

First Lie Wins (Ashley Elston) - Has enough twists to be a page-turner, but it should be sexier by 100. Also better written.

Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt) - Remarkably boring novel.

I LEGIT CAN'T REMEMBER THESE

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home (Lorrie Moore) - I had to look this up to remember it. All I know is the writing isn't my style.

Ghosts (Dolly Alderton) - You could tell she transitioned from nonfiction to fiction. Boring.

GOD-AWFUL

Hench (Natalie Zina Walschots) - I understand what this author is trying to do re: disability, but it can't convince me of its basic argument that the novel rests upon. Also, boring.

Idlewild (James Frankie Thomas) - I truly hate this book. It should be a sin to be this boring in both writing style and plot. Worst of all I could FEEL the insecurity of the author as an AUTHOR in the backtracking style of writing, either stand on your characters being pieces of shit or write something else! I actually apologized to my friend for suggesting this book for book club because I was so embarrassed by how bad it was.

[llycaons]

well. all done with book 1. magic system absolutely ruled. the romance WAS nice even with the dubious age gap. social and political finale was bullshit, but reading the summary for the next book and it sounds like the original crew is more in charge instead of literally - and I cannot say this enough - a 21 year old rich boy

in terms of 'overthrowing an empire' books I've read recently, it IS more satisfying in a lot of ways than the imperial radch because at least they killed that guy, but while leckie has a better grasp on sociopolitics in general and paid more attention to the actual people being liberated post-rebellion, they both still annoyed me in major ways lol

[highladyluck]

13 books tag game, tagged by @amemoryofwot and @asha-mage (incidentally I typoed that as "amemeryofwot" which would be an excellent sideblog concept, maybe snatch that one up?)

1) Last book I read:

Mistress of the Empire by Raymond Feist & Janny Wurts (at the time I started filling this out, anyway… I've been working on this ask for several days) This whole trilogy was a delight, thanks to @sixth-light for telling me I would love Mara!

2) A book I recommend:

The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord. It's a quiet little road trip romance exploring grief & diaspora, in a setting that I can best describe as 'if Madeline L'Engle had been in charge of Star Trek worldbuilding'. (If you squint you can see analogues to humans, Vulcans, Romulans, and Orions, but the tone is reminiscent of L'Engle.) There are sequels that follow different characters but this is the first one and it works as a standalone. I feel like it has a lovely light touch on some intense subjects and I appreciate the way each chapter works as a separate story while still fitting into the whole.

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

I remember staying up past my bedtime for The Monster Baru Cormorant, I think? At the very least, that's where we first get my beloved Tau-Indi, and the pacing on the climax is kinda weird, about 2/3rds in, so I think I would have read through to it without stopping. I don't know if this question is supposed to be about compellingness or pacing? Probably compellingness, I think I'm weirdly fixated on structure when I read things. But sometimes I think books you 'can't put down' are at least partially that way because there's no damn place to breathe, and I don't entirely approve.

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more)

I see from literally everyone who has tagged me in this that this is one of the two free spaces for Wheel of Time, but I'll switch it up: Lifeboats by Diane Duane. It's set between Young Wizards 9 & 10 and deals with an emergency response team permanently evacuating an entire alien population from a natural disaster (RIP their moon and also consequently their planet). This novel is a huge comfort read for me and is undoubtedly the Young Wizards work I've read the most. I don't really know how to explain what it means to me… I wish I had had it when I was living and working in a foreign country.

5) A book on my TBR

A friend recommended Cahokia Jazz (in general, not to me specifically) and it sounds SO MUCH like my jam. I suspect if I can't find it at my library soon, I'll end up buying the ebook.

6) A book I’ve put down

Can't think of a recent one, but if I hadn't forced myself to finish reading it because it was a Hugo Award nominee, I would have DNF'd Project Hail Mary.

7) A book on my wish list

I wish for more Baru Cormorant but I also literally cannot imagine how Seth is going to write that next book. So like, I'm girding my loins for Baru #4 either 15 years from now or never.

8) A favourite book from childhood

When I was really little I loved the Berenstain Bear books and my mom HATED that I loved them ("they were so badly written!" - my mom the children's librarian) but she bought them for me anyway. That's love.

9) A book you would give a friend

You all need to read Middlemarch by George Eliot. I don't care what stage of life you're at, you will find something resonant in it. Read it now, and read it again in 20 years. Give it to recent high school grads. Give it as a wedding present. Take it to the beach. BUT I am specifically recommending it to the WoT contingent, because the characters are so good!

10) The most books you own by a single author

It's actually either Diane Duane or Terry Pratchett, and DD's probably winning because I don't have every Pratchett book but I do have almost every DD book including tie-in novels.

11) A nonfiction book you own

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz. I don't read a ton of nonfiction but the writing is very engaging and I think cities are neat.

12) what are you currently reading

I'm between books but I just finished The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (as I am writing this part several days after question 1). I didn't like it as much as the first one, The Mimicking of Known Successes, but I think it's just a taste thing. I didn't like being in Pleiti's POV very much, her overthinking is too much like mine and it alternately stresses me out and makes me angry, because I can see the assumptions/unhelpful thought patterns but I can't fix them. Obviously, to draw that reaction from me the characters are well-defined, and I like everything else about the series, I just hope it goes back to Mossa's POV.

13) what are you planning on reading next?

WHEN WILL 'RED SIDE STORY' BY JASPER FFORDE REACH MY HOUSE??? I have been waiting like 15 years for this sequel to Shades of Grey and the entire point of preordering it was so I could have it ASAP. I could have walked into a bookstore on May 9th and walked out with it, and instead I won't get it until tomorrow. >:(

I think I am supposed to add a shelfie? The organizing principles(s) of this shelf in my bedroom are very weird…. Classics/adventure, fantasy, popular science writing? Someday I need to reshelve everything in the house according to size/favoriteness/genre/theme/vibes (in that order) but I haven’t felt like it.

I think pretty much everyone I was going to tag already got tagged, so whoever want to do it, go ahead!

[mumblingsage]

Happy to say Isabel Cooper finished *her* fantasy trilogy with a proper send-off, though I have to say, I would have enjoyed seeing more of the previous books' protagonists (including in a longer epilogue than we got). Like, I sometimes find it distracting when an author of a romance series keeps talking about and showing off other characters rather than telling the current story, but Cooper's characters are unique enough that I would really have enjoyed spending extra time with them! The scant glimpses we get of the first 2 couples just make me want to see more and learn how they've been doing, and sure, I can develop elaborate headcanons, but this is a genre where you can usually expect to see the previous couples brought out for a victory lap and I'm sorry the Stormbringer series had to be an exception to the rule.

My qualm about the series' characters being unrealistically polite and calm continues and actually reached peak at a few parts in Blood and Ember. Cooper kept acknowledging they had reason to be impatient or sharp and then kept giving them beyond superhuman (they are superhuman, but beyond that) powers of tact and emotional regulation! It really would have been a better book and a more convincing romance if the characters were allowed to be imperfect to each other. (Or else I'm just jealous of anyone who has enough spare strength to keep emotional discipline.) But the central tension of the story was solid (might be spoilery to discuss in detail, but the heroine's reason for thinking she might not have a chance at lifelong love with this guy was excellently agonizing), the couple was cute, the mythology arc wrapped up in a surprising yet fitting way. The monsters and magic were great and the fight scenes were fun but didn't steal page count from actual plot and character arc resolution, not least because sometimes the fight scenes furthered the plot. Imagine that. What did steal page count was a lot of back and forth of characters reassuring each other that they mean no offense, and weren't offended, but thank you for the consideration anyway...often about things I wouldn't have expected to need so much smoothing over. (Then, that I was supposed to take a very human and rather moving error as a plausible sign of Possible Evil Possession rather than someone's nerves getting the better of them had me chewing my lip grimly. And the fact that the characters had already spent so much time courteously handling non-issues made it harder to distinguish how they managed a real problem.)

Maybe I'm just not cut out for reading series to the end. Next up is the final book of RJ Baker's Wounded Kingdoms trilogy, which I love for the setting but also, damn, these characters have grown on me, I hope at least some of them reach satisfying conclusions that I'm told about in sufficient detail to understand.

(Is it that the pace of modern publishing doesn't allow authors to write really satisfying final books anymore?)

(meanwhile I thought the third book in the Baru Cormorant series would be the last, which has left me with a lingering inability to manage my expectations as the number of pages left dwindles... I mean, I'm glad my "Shit, Dickinson can't possibly wrap it up in the space we have left!" cry was answered with "Absolutely not, see you in a few years for another 600-800 pages to resolve these plot threads." But that makes me all the more disappointed when an author doesn't pull an additional final book from their sleeve. Or--miracle of miracles--just finishes the darn story, sees the characters off, sweeps the floor and calls it a day.)

[paradoxcase]

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Chapter 2

There's this kind of interesting contrast going on in this chapter, where she is protecting Lao and thinking of this as a rebellious treason against the Masquerade, but also she keeps on reiterating that the only possible way to counter the Masquerade is to work with it and play by all of the rules until she gains enough power to change it from within, and that regular people actually openly opposing them from the outside can't possibly work ever. This does not bode well

This isn't the only place where it's reiterated that we don't know for sure that Salm is dead, so I think that's pretty much a guarantee that he's going to show up again later at some point, right? And since Baru's whole, like, motivation for everything here is to avenge Salm's death, I wonder if that will throw some kind of wrench in things when he does

Cairdine Farrier calls the Masquerade an "Imperial Republic" which seems oxymoronic on its face, but I guess maybe we're using "Empire" here only in the sense of imperialism, and not in the sense of a realm ruled by a hereditary ruled who is higher than a king. Which is kind of funny to me, since in my currently project, I'm using "Empire" only to mean that and not to refer to imperialism. (The country that calls itself an empire actually matches that description about as well as the DPRK matches the description of "Democratic People's Republic", but that's a separate issue.)

We get a little more background that the Masquerade does in fact have a history of rebelling against hereditary rulers, which explains the positive treatment of "revolutionary" and "Manumission" last chapter, and I guess they have kind of gone in the other direction of "anyone can do anything, masks make everyone anonymous and equal" which is an interesting ideology that contrasts to the ideological basis that grew up in America after the colonies got rid of their king. It does make me curious about who the super-anonymous Faceless Emperor is, though

I'm not sure what doctrine she's referring to, here? I skimmed back through the first chapter, but I can't find anything

Yeah, so now I see the structure of this, where we have the Masquerade revolting against their original authoritarian leaders and their solution to authoritarianism being "more authoritarianism, but in favor of us this time" and now Baru is plotting against the Masquerade's authoritarianism, and her solution to the authoritarianism is "more authoritarianism, but in favor of me this time"

Ok, I legitimately do not know if "empiricism" is being used to mean "empiricism" here, or if we're actually supposed to understand it as "imperialism" which is something completely different. So far, the Masquerade hasn't seemed especially focused on empiricism

There is some discussion of "hygiene" and "sanitary", which were mentioned a bit before, and then we get:

So, I guess their old hereditary aristocracy got inbred, as hereditary aristocracies are wont to do, and for some reason they decided that the inbreeding was the worst thing about the hereditary aristocracy? Only, it's kind of odd. They seem very focused on the "planned inheritance" idea, but like, hereditary aristocracies are actually big fans of planned inheritance, too, they are often arranging marriages between their kids as soon as the kids are born in order to do things like consolidate power or preserve "royal blood" or form political alliances or etc. and the inbreeding is usually pretty intentional, like it's not happening because people are just marrying each other willy nilly with no rules or structure, which seems like the kind of system they are ideologically positioning themselves against. Or maybe their hereditary aristocracy was different?

Oh, and I guess also, their hereditary aristocracy was way too gay for them and they've somehow gotten the idea that The Gay polluted their gene pool in some way, and that the cure for The Gay is sexual assault

Ok, so gender roles in the Masquerade seem to be more or less aligned with modern western gender roles and there's nothing particularly new here

Aminata?

They've already taught her so thoroughly not to question any of the rules. Even when she is trying to get around the rules she thinks it is wrong to call them out. And even when Aminata is helping her here:

she's just saying, well, here's a different set of rules you can follow instead. But you still have to follow the rules

I'm like, a little relieved that he didn't actually try to give her amphetamines or something

Aminata, I am disappointed. How can you go around propagating homophobia while having a Eurovision name?

Baru claimed earlier that they had taught them about this punishment in school, which seems a little extreme for young teenagers, but I mean, literally nothing else about how the Masquerade views or deals with sexuality seems particularly normal, either

So, with Aminata's continued unwillingness to believe that there was any friend involved here, I guess she now thinks that Baru is infected with The Gay and wasn't properly cured of it. I wonder if this will have consequences later

And this is why the maps are of Aurdwynn, I see

Hopefully rest of this will be more focused on the train wreck that Baru's rise to power looks like it's going to be and less focused on the violent homophobia and sexual assault

Addendum: I queued this post, and then edited it again to add something and noticed that tumblr had automatically added a #YouTube tag, I guess because of the YouTube video? Anyway, if this for some reason posts with a #YouTube tag, that's what happened and it wasn't my doing

[lesbianswarm]

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (282-283)

MAJOR SPOILERS

"Do you know?" she wheezed. "Do you know what they’re about to do”

"Yes, Execarne said, sadly. "We're enacting a guarantine. Exactly like we quarantine any other outbreak. Do you understand the problem of this disease? The long incubation period? They get better for a while. They can travel before they start to bleed. Once it's out it can't be stopped."

"I know," she moaned. "But ..."

But if all the Kyprananoki died, the things they believed in would all be gone. Their gods and holidays. Their food. Their grudges, their gifts. All the things they had made of what they had.

"I can't remember," Barhu said.

"What? What can't you remember?"

"Taranoke. I swear to the caldera gods, sometimes. But I don't remember their names. I remember plantain leaf and cooked pineapple. Coffee. Iron salt. But I don't know how to make our food. I don't remember the right word for the elders. I remember hating plainsiders but not why...”

"Hush," he said, blowing smoke. "Hush, you're rambling. You're putting confusion in the air. Vital to hold onto our subjective control of reality, with such chaos around us."

"We can't do this. You can't allow this.”

"There are less than a hundred thousand Kyprananoki. Even if we had a ninety percent chane of containing the disease—which is grossly optimistic—a ten percent chance of the Kettling escaping to kill a million people, just a million, outweighs the entire population of Kyprananoke."

No. That was accountant logic, the logic that had failed her in Aurdwynn. Because numbers alone couldn't count what Tain Hu had meant to her. She was one life on paper and yet a universe to Barhu. Kyprananoke was more than a tally on a page. They had a heritage, the Jellyfish Eaters and the Scyphu and the Tiatro Tsun. And they had a language. And so many irreplaceable people, people like Ngaio Ngaonic, who she had met at the embassy.

She knew that Tain Hu wouldn't drop the mountain. Tain Hu had survived plague. She'd lost her parents to it. And doggedly, determinedly, she had gathered the survivors to rebuild. Because she believed that the right of an individual or a people to have a chance, even the smallest chance, was inviolable. That right was what kept powers from rationalizing the destruction of entire peoples as an acceptable cost.

"This is the wrong way," she said.