wednesday reads and things
Dec. 4th, 2024 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
isisComing to you live from Scottsdale AZ, where we rented a VRBO near our favorite mtb trails there and invited friends to join us for Thanksgiving and biking.
What I've recently abandoned reading:
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - okay, maybe it's a Great Book but it's not a very enjoyable one.
Service Model by Adrien Tchaikovsky - kind of like a mashup of Murderbot and Nier: Automata and Locked Tomb, in which a valet robot wants only to serve humans, but it seems that humans may have mostly killed themselves off in some sort of decadent apocalypse, and also it's laced through with meme references and jokes, and it just ended up boring. I was amused by the section titles (though I didn't figure them all out) but that's about it.
What I've recently finished reading:
The Wake of the Flood by![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Teratornis, a 43K Horizon Zero Dawn/Highlander gen crossover. The author goes to great pains to make it readable to someone who knows only one of the canons, and since a lot of it is basically Aloy explaining to Methos what the world is like now, and Methos explaining to Aloy why he could survive the Faro Plague, it's not too confusing. Also not too exciting - maybe it's just the pacing, there is a plot but it felt like insufficient build-up and punch at the end. But it suited my mood for dipping tentatively into HZD fic again.
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, which - I went in pretty much blind, knowing only that a lot of my fandom friends liked it, and I was delighted by it. It starts out with fairly unpleasant characters being the ones the reader is expected to sympathize with, but...they grow. They learn, and change, and some of them are still unpleasant but also trying to do the right thing, and I really like characters who are very much not completely good or completely evil but some petty and understandable combination of both. I had no idea of the twist going in (other than I was squinting at the text thinking, "this seems to be wrapping up, but I'm only 40% through?!" and then holy shit) and it is one of the devices I love love love, so that worked for me as well. I am not feeling particularly fannish about it but there aren't many stories out there (and some of them are written by YOU!) so I can sort through them easily enough.
What I've recently finished watching:
We got through S1 of The Diplomat before leaving, and I enjoyed it (mostly). Cecelia is a bit OTT, and Hal is also OTT in his own way, but the characters are really great and I particularly like Kate trying hard to break out of the box everyone wants to put her in and, you know, actually KICK ASS and GET THINGS DONE.
I guess when we get back home we'll go on to S2, and then maybe the latest Outlander, and...?
What I'm still playing
I miss Aloy! Shall get back to Horizon Forbidden West when I get home. I'm looking for Alva in the ruins of San Francisco right now so I think I'm getting close to the DLC stuff? (It's funny how you take the boat across the bay, and if you had a mount it's left behind, but look, all these FIRE CLAWSTRIDERS walking around a predetermined path that brings them right next to the tall grass you can hide in! I had to call B in to see my new (flame-breathing, mechanical T-Rex) horsie.
What I've recently abandoned reading:
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - okay, maybe it's a Great Book but it's not a very enjoyable one.
Service Model by Adrien Tchaikovsky - kind of like a mashup of Murderbot and Nier: Automata and Locked Tomb, in which a valet robot wants only to serve humans, but it seems that humans may have mostly killed themselves off in some sort of decadent apocalypse, and also it's laced through with meme references and jokes, and it just ended up boring. I was amused by the section titles (though I didn't figure them all out) but that's about it.
What I've recently finished reading:
The Wake of the Flood by
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, which - I went in pretty much blind, knowing only that a lot of my fandom friends liked it, and I was delighted by it. It starts out with fairly unpleasant characters being the ones the reader is expected to sympathize with, but...they grow. They learn, and change, and some of them are still unpleasant but also trying to do the right thing, and I really like characters who are very much not completely good or completely evil but some petty and understandable combination of both. I had no idea of the twist going in (other than I was squinting at the text thinking, "this seems to be wrapping up, but I'm only 40% through?!" and then holy shit) and it is one of the devices I love love love, so that worked for me as well. I am not feeling particularly fannish about it but there aren't many stories out there (and some of them are written by YOU!) so I can sort through them easily enough.
What I've recently finished watching:
We got through S1 of The Diplomat before leaving, and I enjoyed it (mostly). Cecelia is a bit OTT, and Hal is also OTT in his own way, but the characters are really great and I particularly like Kate trying hard to break out of the box everyone wants to put her in and, you know, actually KICK ASS and GET THINGS DONE.
I guess when we get back home we'll go on to S2, and then maybe the latest Outlander, and...?
What I'm still playing
I miss Aloy! Shall get back to Horizon Forbidden West when I get home. I'm looking for Alva in the ruins of San Francisco right now so I think I'm getting close to the DLC stuff? (It's funny how you take the boat across the bay, and if you had a mount it's left behind, but look, all these FIRE CLAWSTRIDERS walking around a predetermined path that brings them right next to the tall grass you can hide in! I had to call B in to see my new (flame-breathing, mechanical T-Rex) horsie.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-05 02:43 am (UTC)And Some Desperate Glory really worked for me, and I didn't expect it to. Very much enjoyed even the weirdly likeable (but why?) characters.
I will add that I still think about both books. They have a lot to say about the times we live in. It's why I read speculative fiction, I suppose.
Sounds like you are having fun, happy holidays :)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-07 05:34 pm (UTC)Hah, yes, I think that people who dismiss SFF as genre-iffic brain candy miss this - that what makes good SF good is that it's a mirror of our real world held far enough away that it can be considered without our local preconceptions. I felt like Service Model was doing this too much on the nose, and other robot-fiction has done it more interestingly; I thought Some Desperate Glory did this extremely well, especially in the back end as the story got more into the implications of autocracy and humanity (er, "person-ness") vs de-person-ing, very relevant topics.
It was a great trip but I'm happy to be home!
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Date: 2024-12-05 04:20 am (UTC)Enjoy AZ!
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Date: 2024-12-07 06:51 pm (UTC)AZ was lovely and warm and sunny and full of prickly things!
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Date: 2024-12-08 12:47 am (UTC)I just looked at the wikipedia article on Continuum and it sounds odd but interesting!
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Date: 2024-12-08 12:55 am (UTC)I was listening while using my elliptical, but I still want pages! Especially if I want to skim some parts. I really like Continuum on the plot level, although some of the dialogue is clunky enough to generate what I call Canadian Clairvoyance. that's when, like in Orphan Black, you know what the next few lines are going to be.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-07 11:36 pm (UTC)It definitely has "SF written by a dude" vibes, and also it has a few weird plot goofs (like, things are established to work a certain way, and then things which are actually not all that important but are cool end up working a slightly different way). But I enjoyed it? Maybe you will, I dunno.
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Date: 2024-12-05 05:20 pm (UTC)I'm sorry to hear that you weren't taken by Service Model -- Tchaikovsky is one of those authors where I haven't read a bunch by him, but at least one thing I enjoyed (Elder Race) and one thing I wasn't particularly taken by (Ogres) so I'm always looking for more data points before I actually go read more :)
(btw, I hope you got my DM -- I'm always a little unsure as to whether it got sent to the person I intended to or whether it just got sent to myself)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-12-05 05:29 pm (UTC)I saw you wrote some fic, shall have to get around to reading it!
I have had similar experiences with Tchaikovsky and so completely understand. I liked Elder Race, Children of Time series, and Shards of Earth series; didn't like And Put Away Childish Things or Empire in Black and Gold.
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Date: 2024-12-10 08:50 pm (UTC)As I said above, you may (or may not!) enjoy Recursion by Blake Crouch.