![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseI would nominate this month for a special "moving hurts, I need comfort fiction" award, but I may need to save that for April. Also, my definition of comforting reading is pretty nonstandard.
Downbelow Station (C. J. Cherryh): You know how some books smack you in the back-brain and you probably shouldn't talk about them in public? Hi, DbS! I missed you. I missed the way I think of '80s hair and the Cold War whenever I read you. I missed the way I'd not pay attention and then have my expectations handed to me, in pieces, on a platter. I missed the way every single narrator in this story is morally compromised, except Satin and the Konstantins and Elene. Everyone. Vassily, Signy, Vittorio, Jon - oh Jon, be careful when people ask you what do you want - Ayres, Josh (BTW, Reseune? DIAF.), Mazian - have I forgotten anyone? Traitors, the downtrodden turned to evil convenience, cowards, the other side, outright villains. People.
For a long time, I liked the way the scariest Fleet captains are the minorities: the chick and the black guy. I thought this was a deliberate narrative choice for a long time, but now I'm not so sure. I missed trying to remember if the novel I read was the one written (answer: not really?) and how much I love the shades of gray. I really do love the closing structure, when Damon challenges Mallory and says, "we believed in you", and somehow, that's what finally shakes her conscience loose. With some help from booze and bad memories, but still. The entire novel is betrayal piled on lies, so that one moment warmed my heart to an inordinate degree. I have been okay with DbS's compromised morality in ways that would probably fascinate psychologists since I hallucinated a cut scene liberated from Barrayar. (Seriously: Cordelia and Bothari in the graveyard slid right into Damon and Josh at the gym. I don't know why, I was 17 and discovering situational ethics.)
In a lot of ways, Cherryh and Bujold frame a spectrum of fictional morality for me, light grays to charcoals, so it makes sense that I'd try to mash them together. Bujold explicitly frames the question of people verus principles at one point. Cherryh's characters get very angstful about following principles, but default to "if you don't know where you're going next, well, go there with your friends / crew / liege lady / people" in a crunch. And when they don't, there's a lot of angst and death and hurt feelings. And death.
Would I recommend this to anyone on the street? Oh my gosh no. But I think if you're keen on certain types of science fiction you'd like it.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Richard Bach): Narrator meets Messiah and learns (relearns?) eternal wisdom. This is part of an unintentional accidental March-April trilogy about knowing thyself and the power of belief which I think makes for interesting metaphor, but which I take less seriously when applied to my life. So I coexist with this sort of mindset uneasily. Bach was apparently a major figure on the '70s scene, but other than wiki, I don't have much context for this one.
Nebula Awards 23 (Ed. Michael Bishop): I picked this up because it had a Kim Stanley Robinson story I'd never read, "The Blind Geometer". In retrospect, this slightly prefigures the espionage subplot in KSR's "Science in the Capitol" trilogy. Connie Willis's "Schwartzchild Radius" assumes I care about the characters; it's a clever idea wrapped in the wrong packaging to catch my interest. "Forever Yours, Anna" is an example of clever packaging (time travel puzzle) wrapped around an idea that didn't work for me (romantic shenanigans). Walter Jon William's "Witness" is about McCarthyism breaking people, now with superheroes. I am disappointed to say that "The Glassblower's Dragon" (Lucius Shepard), a story about rekindling a sense of wonder out of ennui, did not speak deeply to me. I've read Pat Murphy's "Rachel in Love" previously and skipped it this time. I liked Pat Cadigan's "Angel" for all the wrong "questionable relationships with aliens" reasons. I may have skipped some stories, or they failed to make an impression (good or otherwise) on me.
The Alienist (Caleb Carr): Thriller uncovering a serial murderer in 1896. This is excellent plane reading, playing on modern takes of then-emerging (?) forensics. I'd guess there's a bunch of anachronisms - the women who wants to be the first female police, the pre-Freudian psych - but I was having such a good time I didn't really care.
Star Wars: Allegiance (Timothy Zahn): Let me explain my mindset by sharing the text message I sent a long-suffering third party when I bought this:
Mara Jade may or may not be Zahn's most favorite original character ever, but she's one of mine. Let's see: beautiful Force-sensitive assassin with a tragic past and badass ninja skills. So I am totally okay with a novel about Mara, stormtroopers questioning the letter vs the spirit of Imperial law, Leia Organa and Han Solo: The Early Years, and Luke the Baby Jedi, d'awww. Zahn set my expectations for what a SW novel should look like, so it's no surprise I am generally delighted when I get a new dose. Bonus points if you get Vader and Mara sniping at each other. Cough. The one drawback was a deja vu moment about two-thirds through; I must have read a preview somewhere.
Numbers games: 5 total. 4 new, 1 reread; 5 fiction (1 short story collection).
Downbelow Station (C. J. Cherryh): You know how some books smack you in the back-brain and you probably shouldn't talk about them in public? Hi, DbS! I missed you. I missed the way I think of '80s hair and the Cold War whenever I read you. I missed the way I'd not pay attention and then have my expectations handed to me, in pieces, on a platter. I missed the way every single narrator in this story is morally compromised, except Satin and the Konstantins and Elene. Everyone. Vassily, Signy, Vittorio, Jon - oh Jon, be careful when people ask you what do you want - Ayres, Josh (BTW, Reseune? DIAF.), Mazian - have I forgotten anyone? Traitors, the downtrodden turned to evil convenience, cowards, the other side, outright villains. People.
For a long time, I liked the way the scariest Fleet captains are the minorities: the chick and the black guy. I thought this was a deliberate narrative choice for a long time, but now I'm not so sure. I missed trying to remember if the novel I read was the one written (answer: not really?) and how much I love the shades of gray. I really do love the closing structure, when Damon challenges Mallory and says, "we believed in you", and somehow, that's what finally shakes her conscience loose. With some help from booze and bad memories, but still. The entire novel is betrayal piled on lies, so that one moment warmed my heart to an inordinate degree. I have been okay with DbS's compromised morality in ways that would probably fascinate psychologists since I hallucinated a cut scene liberated from Barrayar. (Seriously: Cordelia and Bothari in the graveyard slid right into Damon and Josh at the gym. I don't know why, I was 17 and discovering situational ethics.)
In a lot of ways, Cherryh and Bujold frame a spectrum of fictional morality for me, light grays to charcoals, so it makes sense that I'd try to mash them together. Bujold explicitly frames the question of people verus principles at one point. Cherryh's characters get very angstful about following principles, but default to "if you don't know where you're going next, well, go there with your friends / crew / liege lady / people" in a crunch. And when they don't, there's a lot of angst and death and hurt feelings. And death.
Would I recommend this to anyone on the street? Oh my gosh no. But I think if you're keen on certain types of science fiction you'd like it.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Richard Bach): Narrator meets Messiah and learns (relearns?) eternal wisdom. This is part of an unintentional accidental March-April trilogy about knowing thyself and the power of belief which I think makes for interesting metaphor, but which I take less seriously when applied to my life. So I coexist with this sort of mindset uneasily. Bach was apparently a major figure on the '70s scene, but other than wiki, I don't have much context for this one.
Nebula Awards 23 (Ed. Michael Bishop): I picked this up because it had a Kim Stanley Robinson story I'd never read, "The Blind Geometer". In retrospect, this slightly prefigures the espionage subplot in KSR's "Science in the Capitol" trilogy. Connie Willis's "Schwartzchild Radius" assumes I care about the characters; it's a clever idea wrapped in the wrong packaging to catch my interest. "Forever Yours, Anna" is an example of clever packaging (time travel puzzle) wrapped around an idea that didn't work for me (romantic shenanigans). Walter Jon William's "Witness" is about McCarthyism breaking people, now with superheroes. I am disappointed to say that "The Glassblower's Dragon" (Lucius Shepard), a story about rekindling a sense of wonder out of ennui, did not speak deeply to me. I've read Pat Murphy's "Rachel in Love" previously and skipped it this time. I liked Pat Cadigan's "Angel" for all the wrong "questionable relationships with aliens" reasons. I may have skipped some stories, or they failed to make an impression (good or otherwise) on me.
The Alienist (Caleb Carr): Thriller uncovering a serial murderer in 1896. This is excellent plane reading, playing on modern takes of then-emerging (?) forensics. I'd guess there's a bunch of anachronisms - the women who wants to be the first female police, the pre-Freudian psych - but I was having such a good time I didn't really care.
Star Wars: Allegiance (Timothy Zahn): Let me explain my mindset by sharing the text message I sent a long-suffering third party when I bought this:
BORDERS@DETROIT HAS NEW ZAHN SW NOVEL MLIA. ALSO A FIRE ENGINE RED MONORAIL. Moving = awesome. PS The Alienist is CRACK.I bring this up to indicate the 10-year-old kid maturity that Zahn's novels bring out in me. Also, I believe I have blown my monthly capslock allowance on this review.
Mara Jade may or may not be Zahn's most favorite original character ever, but she's one of mine. Let's see: beautiful Force-sensitive assassin with a tragic past and badass ninja skills. So I am totally okay with a novel about Mara, stormtroopers questioning the letter vs the spirit of Imperial law, Leia Organa and Han Solo: The Early Years, and Luke the Baby Jedi, d'awww. Zahn set my expectations for what a SW novel should look like, so it's no surprise I am generally delighted when I get a new dose. Bonus points if you get Vader and Mara sniping at each other. Cough. The one drawback was a deja vu moment about two-thirds through; I must have read a preview somewhere.
Numbers games: 5 total. 4 new, 1 reread; 5 fiction (1 short story collection).