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Summer 2024 Reading
Sep. 2nd, 2024 05:26 pmThe Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Shannon Chakraborty) (2023): I had a tough time with the audiobook - earnest dedication plus definitions plus slow-ish start - and switched to ebook when my hold came in. Overall reaction: "...it was fine." ( Massive spoilers. )
The novel checks some boxes - fantasy that's not European-centric, middle aged female protagonist, queer representation - in a pleasant way. I found the definitions section superfluous; if less than ten definitions are too complex to be in-clued during the novel text, well, something isn't right. I got all the understanding I needed from context.
So would I rec this for awards? Probably not. Would I rec it as a pleasant read? Yes.
A Memory Called Empire (Arkady Martine) (2019): "This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own..." slight sigh at the earnestness "...(And for Grigor Pahlavuni and Petros Getadarj, across the centuries.)"
This was another hard novel for me to get into. Somewhere in the last ten years, my patience with sf/f taking itself Very Seriously and being widely applicable to the human condition got a little strained. Sometimes the work speaks deeply to a very small subset of people, and that's okay! Sometimes you just need Muppets and an increasingly beat-up astronaut who will not stop referencing pop culture the rest of the crew doesn't know to make your point.
(I don't know why I have Farscape on the brain, except... oh yeah, I just figured it out. More on that later.)
My first try was in hardcopy after it was nominated for the Hugo, but I stalled before Mehit got on-planet in the Teixcalaan empire. This time I listened to the audiobook, read by Amy Landon, on the theory it's a lot harder to stall on a three and a half hour drive repeated multiple weeks running, and made it into chapter two before taking a break for an expectation adjustment.
The next stop was wiki. AnnaLinden Weller, better known under her pen name Arkady Martine... was born and grew up in New York City. Her parents are classical musicians of Russian Jewish heritage: her mother is a professor of violin at Juilliard and her father played for the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera; she has described herself as an "assimilated American Jew".
Well. That might be a start on that "devouring culture" thing.
Expectations adjusted, I charged through the rest of the novel.
Mahit Dzmar, at twenty six, is summoned to the Teixcalaan capital world as the new Lsel Station ambassador, after the unexpected passing of her predecessor at forty (almost forty-one). The novel takes place in the eventful week of her arrival on Teixcalaan, where she is plunged into intrigue at the highest levels of an acquisitive empire that may have its sights set on Lsel Station as its next conquest.
The novel's near-ceaseless motion has positively Cherryh vibes: within three days of arriving on-planet, Mahit's acquired massive sleep debt, culture shock, a murder investigation, an identity crisis, and some tid-bits about the previous ambassador's sex life that aren't making any of the above easier.
The identity crisis pulls in two directions: Mahit's negotiation of her Lsel identity in the capital of a culture she's studied and engaged with, both intellectually and culturally, since her pre-teen years; and her relationship with her imago, a piece of Lsel technology that gives her the memories and experiences of the person whose imago is implanted in the recipient. Mahit's fifteen-years-out-of-date imago of the previous ambassador was implanted in a rush job; further imago-related challenges manifest on Teixcalaan. Mahit would really like to lean on a friendly voice, as she plunges into Teixcalaan culture, politics, and current events, but that "imago line as friendly voice" thing doesn't go as planned.
After reading the novel, I looked up Pahlavuni and Getadar. Pahlavuni seems slightly better known, being involved with Byzantine religion during a time of upheaval (?). The first hit on Getadar was wiki; a number of the first page links were Martine, by penname or doctorate name, including this interview that validated the Cherryh vibes coming from A Memory Called Empire. "Thematically, A Memory Called Empire is a pretty direct response to the Foreigner series . . . I reread Cyteen every year or so, if that says anything."
Pahlavuni and Getadar add to the "devouring culture" thing, I guess.
Miscellaneous notes:
- where is the embassy staff? Sure, one Lsel citizen as ambassador, but where's the staff? Security, an office manager or errand-runner, anyone, local or from Lsel, who has worked at the Lsel embassy in the last ten years? Okay, great, Cherryh's Foreigner series is called out as inspiration, but that series went out of its way to set up a one person information channel. Empire just goes "the Lsel ambassador" and doesn't interrogate, lampshade, or otherwise explain the lack of support staff.
- "Yskander was so old!" Yskander was forty when he died. A twenty-six year old would think forty is old. It's a wonderfully age appropriate character moment.
- Imago tech goes on the "humans really thought this would never be abused by the Opposition and/or Designated Bad Guys, ha ha," list, along with Union drug-learning tech, Hexarchate formation instinct, the protomolecule, the separate technologies corporate space bundled to make SecUnits... probably some Octavia Butler and the speciMen developments in Nnedi Okorafor's novels too.
- The city AI gives me "gun on the mantelpiece" vibes. Is it a thinking algorithmic AI? What biases are unthinkingly encoded in its algorithms? What biases were actively coded into it? Did Ten Pearl leave a sysadmin back door into the production code? Come back, city AI! Someone run a Turing test!
A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine) (2021): Read in audiobook, Amy Landon returning as narrator. "This book is for all the exiles..." not so quiet sigh at the earnestness, "(and for Stanislav Petrov, who knew when to disobey orders)."
Some people read the first novel and were blown away by Mahit's experiences in the first novel. I was in a much more neutral place at the end of the novel, but enthusiastic enough to load up the Desolation audiobook and give the cold open a try. "Well," I said, pausing after the prelude, "this can't be good," and cackled, because sometimes the cheap references targeted for people who probably haven't gotten into later novels of a completely unrelated series are the funniest.
( Everyone's here at once. So are the spoilers. )
I'm going to try to take Desolation on its own target goals. It starts its thesis as Exiles, Dude, Let's Talk About Exiles, and also quotes Tacitus and an academic tome on Incan-European first contact. But let's also talk about craft.
Usually I think of novels as being driven by plot or by character. Cherryh is my go-to for plot driving a novel; Bujold is the character-driven argument. However, theme can be a driver as well. This may explain why some novels absolutely baffle me: I can understand why plot drives what happens, I can grasp why characters drive what happens. But make theme the engine of story action and it's entirely possible I am going to miss the point, unless it's coupled to plot or character.
It's possible that Desolation is being driven by theme, which explains why it's so messy from other structural angles.
( Trust was a word you couldn't translate. But the atevi had fourteen words for betrayal. And more than fourteen spoilers. )
So, yeah, I'm not doing a great job at taking Desolation on its own goals. I have so many "why would you not put the [redacted] in your best shot at BSL-4 until biosafety concerns, including allergens, are ruled in/out," questions.
( Your mind is about to crack, and I cannot allow that, I was here first... true, the Ancients were here first, but... )
The novel checks some boxes - fantasy that's not European-centric, middle aged female protagonist, queer representation - in a pleasant way. I found the definitions section superfluous; if less than ten definitions are too complex to be in-clued during the novel text, well, something isn't right. I got all the understanding I needed from context.
So would I rec this for awards? Probably not. Would I rec it as a pleasant read? Yes.
A Memory Called Empire (Arkady Martine) (2019): "This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own..." slight sigh at the earnestness "...(And for Grigor Pahlavuni and Petros Getadarj, across the centuries.)"
This was another hard novel for me to get into. Somewhere in the last ten years, my patience with sf/f taking itself Very Seriously and being widely applicable to the human condition got a little strained. Sometimes the work speaks deeply to a very small subset of people, and that's okay! Sometimes you just need Muppets and an increasingly beat-up astronaut who will not stop referencing pop culture the rest of the crew doesn't know to make your point.
(I don't know why I have Farscape on the brain, except... oh yeah, I just figured it out. More on that later.)
My first try was in hardcopy after it was nominated for the Hugo, but I stalled before Mehit got on-planet in the Teixcalaan empire. This time I listened to the audiobook, read by Amy Landon, on the theory it's a lot harder to stall on a three and a half hour drive repeated multiple weeks running, and made it into chapter two before taking a break for an expectation adjustment.
The next stop was wiki. AnnaLinden Weller, better known under her pen name Arkady Martine... was born and grew up in New York City. Her parents are classical musicians of Russian Jewish heritage: her mother is a professor of violin at Juilliard and her father played for the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera; she has described herself as an "assimilated American Jew".
Well. That might be a start on that "devouring culture" thing.
Expectations adjusted, I charged through the rest of the novel.
Mahit Dzmar, at twenty six, is summoned to the Teixcalaan capital world as the new Lsel Station ambassador, after the unexpected passing of her predecessor at forty (almost forty-one). The novel takes place in the eventful week of her arrival on Teixcalaan, where she is plunged into intrigue at the highest levels of an acquisitive empire that may have its sights set on Lsel Station as its next conquest.
The novel's near-ceaseless motion has positively Cherryh vibes: within three days of arriving on-planet, Mahit's acquired massive sleep debt, culture shock, a murder investigation, an identity crisis, and some tid-bits about the previous ambassador's sex life that aren't making any of the above easier.
The identity crisis pulls in two directions: Mahit's negotiation of her Lsel identity in the capital of a culture she's studied and engaged with, both intellectually and culturally, since her pre-teen years; and her relationship with her imago, a piece of Lsel technology that gives her the memories and experiences of the person whose imago is implanted in the recipient. Mahit's fifteen-years-out-of-date imago of the previous ambassador was implanted in a rush job; further imago-related challenges manifest on Teixcalaan. Mahit would really like to lean on a friendly voice, as she plunges into Teixcalaan culture, politics, and current events, but that "imago line as friendly voice" thing doesn't go as planned.
After reading the novel, I looked up Pahlavuni and Getadar. Pahlavuni seems slightly better known, being involved with Byzantine religion during a time of upheaval (?). The first hit on Getadar was wiki; a number of the first page links were Martine, by penname or doctorate name, including this interview that validated the Cherryh vibes coming from A Memory Called Empire. "Thematically, A Memory Called Empire is a pretty direct response to the Foreigner series . . . I reread Cyteen every year or so, if that says anything."
Pahlavuni and Getadar add to the "devouring culture" thing, I guess.
Miscellaneous notes:
- where is the embassy staff? Sure, one Lsel citizen as ambassador, but where's the staff? Security, an office manager or errand-runner, anyone, local or from Lsel, who has worked at the Lsel embassy in the last ten years? Okay, great, Cherryh's Foreigner series is called out as inspiration, but that series went out of its way to set up a one person information channel. Empire just goes "the Lsel ambassador" and doesn't interrogate, lampshade, or otherwise explain the lack of support staff.
- "Yskander was so old!" Yskander was forty when he died. A twenty-six year old would think forty is old. It's a wonderfully age appropriate character moment.
- Imago tech goes on the "humans really thought this would never be abused by the Opposition and/or Designated Bad Guys, ha ha," list, along with Union drug-learning tech, Hexarchate formation instinct, the protomolecule, the separate technologies corporate space bundled to make SecUnits... probably some Octavia Butler and the speciMen developments in Nnedi Okorafor's novels too.
- The city AI gives me "gun on the mantelpiece" vibes. Is it a thinking algorithmic AI? What biases are unthinkingly encoded in its algorithms? What biases were actively coded into it? Did Ten Pearl leave a sysadmin back door into the production code? Come back, city AI! Someone run a Turing test!
A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine) (2021): Read in audiobook, Amy Landon returning as narrator. "This book is for all the exiles..." not so quiet sigh at the earnestness, "(and for Stanislav Petrov, who knew when to disobey orders)."
Some people read the first novel and were blown away by Mahit's experiences in the first novel. I was in a much more neutral place at the end of the novel, but enthusiastic enough to load up the Desolation audiobook and give the cold open a try. "Well," I said, pausing after the prelude, "this can't be good," and cackled, because sometimes the cheap references targeted for people who probably haven't gotten into later novels of a completely unrelated series are the funniest.
( Everyone's here at once. So are the spoilers. )
I'm going to try to take Desolation on its own target goals. It starts its thesis as Exiles, Dude, Let's Talk About Exiles, and also quotes Tacitus and an academic tome on Incan-European first contact. But let's also talk about craft.
Usually I think of novels as being driven by plot or by character. Cherryh is my go-to for plot driving a novel; Bujold is the character-driven argument. However, theme can be a driver as well. This may explain why some novels absolutely baffle me: I can understand why plot drives what happens, I can grasp why characters drive what happens. But make theme the engine of story action and it's entirely possible I am going to miss the point, unless it's coupled to plot or character.
It's possible that Desolation is being driven by theme, which explains why it's so messy from other structural angles.
( Trust was a word you couldn't translate. But the atevi had fourteen words for betrayal. And more than fourteen spoilers. )
So, yeah, I'm not doing a great job at taking Desolation on its own goals. I have so many "why would you not put the [redacted] in your best shot at BSL-4 until biosafety concerns, including allergens, are ruled in/out," questions.
( Your mind is about to crack, and I cannot allow that, I was here first... true, the Ancients were here first, but... )
