One Lodestar, one not
May. 25th, 2021 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnRaybearer (Ifueko) - 3+/5. Lodestar reading. West African-inspired fantasy where a young woman is chosen to be one of the "Eleven," the teenage future council and protectors of the teenage crown prince. There were a lot of really great things about this book; I especially appreciated the world and the details of it. And Tarisai was an engaging character, and it had a fair amount of page-turning compelling quality to it, and several interesting plot twists and themes (not perhaps super twisty to an adult, but nicely done for a YA), and at least one part I found genuinely moving.
That being said, it's pretty clearly a first book, with a fair amount of tell-not-show and a fair amount of characters making choices that are less because those choices flow organically out of their characters and more because, well, the character needed to be at place X at time Y to get the plot to work. I probably would not have gotten all the way through it had it not been not-a-Hugo homework. That being said, I am glad I got through it; I have read a lot of first books (and not finished more) that were far worse; and it has enough decided strengths that I wouldn't be upset if it won the Lodestar -- but Deadly Education is quite a bit better in terms of skill and craft and is still the one to beat, for me. I mean, not surprising, Novik has written how many books now? A lot, and improved every time. And I could totally see Ifueko working through these issues once she has a couple more novels under her belt. I'm interested to read more from Ifueko, and I'll definitely be reccing this one to E to read in a couple of years.
The Fortunate Ones (Tarkington) - 3+/5. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks gets a chance to attend a posh prep school and bond with one of the golden boys there -- and gradually learns the extent of the dysfunctionality he's signed up for. Actually I loved the writing in this, and there were a couple of compelling characters, and it was about prep schools and the messed-up lives of the rich, which is super my jam, so I was prepared to love it -- but the pacing was so odd that it made me like it a lot less. Sometimes long periods of time would skip by, kind of randomly, in ways that often meant we were disconnected from both the characters we'd come to know before the skip and from the new characters who happened to pop in after the time skip. And also sometimes major events would happen during a time skip which only were briefly mentioned by a character later, which blunted the emotional response to them. I think it either needed to be shorter (without so many time skips) or longer (filling in some of those gaps). (I think the gaps were because the writer didn't want to deal with what was going on in those gaps, mind you -- but it just didn't work for me.)
That being said, it's pretty clearly a first book, with a fair amount of tell-not-show and a fair amount of characters making choices that are less because those choices flow organically out of their characters and more because, well, the character needed to be at place X at time Y to get the plot to work. I probably would not have gotten all the way through it had it not been not-a-Hugo homework. That being said, I am glad I got through it; I have read a lot of first books (and not finished more) that were far worse; and it has enough decided strengths that I wouldn't be upset if it won the Lodestar -- but Deadly Education is quite a bit better in terms of skill and craft and is still the one to beat, for me. I mean, not surprising, Novik has written how many books now? A lot, and improved every time. And I could totally see Ifueko working through these issues once she has a couple more novels under her belt. I'm interested to read more from Ifueko, and I'll definitely be reccing this one to E to read in a couple of years.
The Fortunate Ones (Tarkington) - 3+/5. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks gets a chance to attend a posh prep school and bond with one of the golden boys there -- and gradually learns the extent of the dysfunctionality he's signed up for. Actually I loved the writing in this, and there were a couple of compelling characters, and it was about prep schools and the messed-up lives of the rich, which is super my jam, so I was prepared to love it -- but the pacing was so odd that it made me like it a lot less. Sometimes long periods of time would skip by, kind of randomly, in ways that often meant we were disconnected from both the characters we'd come to know before the skip and from the new characters who happened to pop in after the time skip. And also sometimes major events would happen during a time skip which only were briefly mentioned by a character later, which blunted the emotional response to them. I think it either needed to be shorter (without so many time skips) or longer (filling in some of those gaps). (I think the gaps were because the writer didn't want to deal with what was going on in those gaps, mind you -- but it just didn't work for me.)
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Date: 2021-05-25 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-26 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-26 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-27 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-26 12:44 am (UTC)(Meanwhile, I'm working my way through the Hugo novellas and have finally hit one I'm actually enjoying... XP)
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Date: 2021-05-26 04:52 am (UTC)Wait, which one are you enjoying? :D (My guess is Empress, as I am pretty sure it's not the McGuire, I think you posted already on Riot Baby and maybe Finna? and having read the Gailey myself I'm pretty sure it's not that :P Which I guess does also still leave Ring Shout! I haven't read either Shout or Empress.)
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Date: 2021-05-26 05:11 am (UTC)Empress is the one I was most looking forward to, though, so your hunch will hopefully also prove correct -- it's just that there were more holds on that one than the rest, so I'm still waiting for the library to deliver.
and having read the Gailey myself I'm pretty sure it's not that :P
Yeah, it is not that :P (that one's currently ranked last for me, probably, although to my surprise I did not hate it! Surprise because I have hated every previous Hugo-nominated Sarah Gailey thing I've read ("STET" and River of Teeth).
And you are also correct about the McGuire, which I'm picking my way through at 12% but keep dropping as soon as anything more interesting comes along, which is pretty much anything.
I have actually also read Finna, and it was one of the duds for me (which does make me a bit sad, as I had higher hopes based on enjoying some other stuff of Nino Cipri's). But I think maybe their stuff works better for me in the short form, like, flash-fiction sized.
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Date: 2021-05-26 06:03 pm (UTC)Which one is STET? I have had mixed experiences with Gailey; I loved Magic for Liars and found The Echo Wife deeply insightful about its characters, in a horrible way. Didn't get much out of Upright Women, beyond a strong vibe of "written for someone who is Not You."
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Date: 2021-05-26 07:07 pm (UTC)Magic for Liars I have not read (I love magic schools, but I'm worried that would just up my chances of bouncing off it, given my track record with Gailey; though the fact that I did not hate Upright Women makes me cautiously consider it might be worth a try) and had not heard anything about The Echo Wife. Having looked up a writeup of it, I can see how it could be insightful in a horrible way.
I think fundamentally my problem with the Gailey I've read is that I find their constructs (characters, worlds) simplistic and too black and white for my taste. Admittedly, that could be partly because I've mostly read their early work; if they're outgrowing this tendency, that would be reassuring.
(I couldn't tell from Upright Women, because, like you, mostly it felt like it was Not For Me -- just, interested in the various aspects of its premise in pretty much inverse proportion to the parts *I* was interested in as a reader.)
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Date: 2021-05-26 11:46 pm (UTC)I'd be curious to hear how Cahn thinks Magic for Liars stacked up versus A Deadly Education, since both of them are clearly playing off the Harry Potter series. Magic in HP is a fantasy about being "special" that I think I definitely had as a child as well. Of course, Harry gets to enjoy that (he's super-special) and resent it (he's still locked out of the ultra-privileged inner circle of old Wizarding families that Draco comes from) at the same time, which also rings true to my childhood experiences. Novik and Gailey both seem interested in more adult takes on it.
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Date: 2021-05-27 05:50 am (UTC)I agree that the unreliable part of STET is neat, and I thought the whole concept was a very interesting one, and the gradual darkening is well done. And I liked it better on this read than I did on my first. But the thing that made me not really like it on my first read was that I thought the editor character was so clueless as to be effectively unbelievable. To be fair, I think Gailey set themself too hard a task here, by writing something where the reader was supposed to be able to pick up what is going on, but the editor (who is supposed to know Anna much better than the reader, given the clues in the text) is just like "hmm this note seems out of place"?? Speaking of which, who gives someone a text to edit on AI cars whose daughter just got killed by one??
Um. It's also possible my strong opinions on this might be flavored by having kids :)
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Date: 2021-05-28 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-29 05:19 pm (UTC)Heh, now I'm wondering about writing the story where the editor itself is an AI, which would neatly solve the problem of the editor being clueless in that particular human-emotional-subtext way. Could easily become even more too over-the-top, though, I suppose :)
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Date: 2021-05-31 05:10 am (UTC)Now THAT actually sounds really cool!
The editor doesn't work for me in "STET". The author -- I could find her plausible, but I feel like I'm supposed to also find her in the right in this exchange, and, like, no. I mean, obviously I sympathize, given the tragedy (as a parent, moreover), but the particular choice of tragedy just feels both implausible and emotionally manipulative, so I can't even fully do that.
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Date: 2021-05-31 05:14 am (UTC)Magic for Liars stacked up versus A Deadly Education, since both of them are clearly playing off the Harry Potter series.
This further intrigues me about Magic for Liars. (I enjoyed the reading experience of A Deadly Education and am looking forward to the sequel -- and am a fan of Novik overall -- but it was also the opposite of what I look for in a magic school story specifically; I really liked El and the writing, but the school itself was too terrible for me to like the book as a magic school story.)
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Date: 2021-05-26 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-26 04:59 am (UTC)Our library does not have a great e-book selection but does have a much better paper copy selection, which means I have a built-in reason not to get too distracted: when they come in I only have three weeks to read them before they have to go on to the next person :P (Also I figured out how to crochet and read at the same time, so that's helping as well, lol!)
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Date: 2021-05-26 12:39 pm (UTC)My library's ebook selection is not amazing either, but it does at least have some stuff, and in the context of the pandemic and how it's going in my region, I like to avoid going into buildings when I don't have to - so I haven't gotten physical books from the library in basically forever at this point. Alas.
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Date: 2021-05-27 05:52 am (UTC)