Book Reviews, Part 1

I find new reading material mainly by lurking on discord servers, skimming blogs, and seeking out recommendation lists. So I appreciate projects like Paperback Picnic or Throne of Salt's book reviews. They're like a box of chocolates, except instead of sweets I'm being provided with new stories.

Anyway, I'm not a big review-writer myself, but I keep a log, and for purely self-interested reasons I think more people like me should share what they've been reading. So I'm going to be the change I want to see in the world by posting stuff I've enjoyed in the last 3-ish years.

If you have books you would like to recommend, or a lead on review archives yet untapped, maybe consider posting a comment. Or pinging me over discord, sending a carrier pigeon, making words appear in the dust on my windowsill, whatever floats your boat.

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Adrian Tchaikovsky:

Sometimes it feels like this guy is phoning it in, and sometimes he's great. Here I include only the ones I liked.

- Children of Time &c

Extremely good. Look it up; if the premise seems the least bit appealing to you, you should stop bothering with my dumb blogpost and read this instead.

- City of Last Chances &c

Has a lot of multithreaded plots, such that it's really more about the city as a whole than about any individual character, but IMO all the threads were interesting in their own right.

In City of Last Chances it feels very much like Tchaikovsky is taking notes from TTRPGs, probably by way of LARP, which is mentioned in his author bio. I'm not really an OSR person, just stuck here forever, but in OSR jargon I think it'd be called a powderkeg.

There are currently two sequels, which are set in different places and have a more linear feel. The second book is pretty good, if not quite up to the standard set by the first. The third is once again good, but slightly less good than its predecessor, and at this point I think the series might be starting to outstay its welcome.

- Cage of Souls

Mediocre plot-wise but the world it takes place in is cool. It's set at the end of time, where the planet is polluted and desiccated, there's one known human city, and everyone lives in the shadow of sci-fi technology they know very little about. One running theme is that life will continue to exist in some form even post-human-extinction, and there are some alien and not-so-alien creatures which are positioned as 'successors.'

I've only just started Alien Clay, and I suspect I won't like it as much, but there seems to be a lot of shared subject matter? It might be a rehash, or maybe Tchaikovsky just has a thing for heterodox academics sent to prison in a hellish environment.

- Elder Race

The best of the novellas. Short and sweet. Expert System's Brother is also decent.

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The Zahir, Borges

Borges is good in general, but this one Got me, maybe because I'm very prone to hyperfocusing, developing obsessions, making objectively small and inconsequential things into my entire world. For Borges I think this story might be about love, maybe of the unrequited parasocial variety? But for me it's about things which have permanently reshaped my brain. Fantasy novels, TTRPGs, video games, a friend's intensely elaborate paracosm that I've been gaming in since high school.

I don't know if others would find the same significance in it, but it's so short that you might as well read it and find out.

A Deadly Education (just the first one), Naomi Novik

I feel kind of weird about including this one, because it's extremely YA, and if you look at online reviews it seems the attempt at internationalism has holes large enough to drive a bus through. But when I read it I did in fact enjoy it. It feels dense, conceptually, like there's a lot of setting per page. It's also in conversation with Harry Potter, which I found fun, YMMV.

The sequels are Fine, but they lose most of these qualities, and in doing so they retroactively make it feel like the first book had less depth. Also, the romance is better when it might plausibly not be a romance, and in the second and third books that headcanon is no longer tenable.

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Susanna Clarke:

- Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell

Very, very slow. But compelling once you've dug into it, and also quite substantial. I tend to tear through books in an a day or two once I've hit my stride, but this one kept me going for at least a week, maybe more.

Anyway! This is sort of noted in-story, but being surrounded by one's own fragment of timeless and eternal night is not really a curse. If you're a fey being with the power to immure people in darkness, please consider doing that to me, it'd be rad.

- Piranesi

This has become the book I recommend to acquaintances who aren't really into fantasy or sci-fi. It's unique, well-told, and much faster than Strange & Norrell, but still rich with delicious delicious Themes.

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Zelazny:

- Chronicles of Amber

The classic. This series is a product of its era, and it's obvious that Zelazny was writing it by the seat of his pants. If you're willing to overlook those faults, it's pretty good. Might be worth reading the first few just to take inspiration from the politics-and-feuding-amongst-a-family-of-magical-immortals, if you're into that sort of thing.

- A Night in Lonesome October

A novella about a bunch of archetypal gothic horror characters trying to prevent or facilitate the unsealing of the great old ones, told from the perspective of an animal familiar. Much like City of Last Chances above, this one feels like a TTRPG scenario, and part of the reason I'm so fond of it is that it seems like the mechanics would actually be pretty solid.

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The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, &c, Catherine Valente

Yes, it's in theory a children's book, but it's genuinely amazing even as an adult. Charming, whimsical, ideas you get the urge to steal, the works. The sequels are also very good, albeit in the samey, watered-down way that sequels so often are, up until the first part of The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, which stabbed me in the heart.

I want to like Valente's other stuff, but I tried Radiance and couldn't stand it, so maybe the children's fiction nature of this series is load-bearing. I'll have to give it another go at some point.

Un Lun Dun, China Mieville

Another children's book. Not as good as Circumnavigated Fairyland, but still weird and fun.

The Night-Bird's Feather, Jenna Moran

Great, weird, aesthetic setting, lovely cast of characters, well-written, et cetera. It is maybe a little didactic, which I imagine could be grating, but I enjoyed it and recommend it.

Technically shares a setting with Chuubo's Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine, but honestly, NBF stands on its own, and I wasn't especially satisfied when I went to dig for more.

Exhalation, Stories of Your Life & Others, Ted Chiang

Lumping these together because they're all short stories. They're good, and often manage to immerse you in an interesting world despite being so very brief. Off the top of my head, my favorites were probably... Exhalation itself, Understand, the one about the tower of Babel, and maybe 72 Letters.

Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon

Do you like alien lifeforms? Unusual modes of being? This book has alien lifeforms, and also some transcendental stuff involving alternate physics and the Demiurge at the end. It's about a human narrator psychically projecting into the cosmos, where he hops from planet to planet, follows the history of the universe into the distant future, and joins with other psychic projections to search for God. It's not really a traditional narrative, but it's still very fun.

...also it feels like it's part of a microgenre alongside All Tomorrows. I'm still looking for a third example, maybe throw me a comment if anything comes to mind.

The Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins

This one makes a lot of questionable decisions. A lot. But as is thus far the theme of these reviews, I really like nonstandard fantasy worlds with a lot of conceptual density, and it turns out that I'm willing to look past some flaws if you give me one of those to toy with. Library at Mount Char is good in that way, even if (spoiler alert) it leaves you wondering why anyone would think "it was necessary to test the worth of my successor" justifies all abuse and forgives all sins.

Neal Stephenson:

- The Diamond Age

- Anathem

The Diamond Age is great so long as you ignore the ending, and maybe all the stuff related to the Drummers. Anathem is also great, and I was only tempted to ignore a few pages of epilogue.

Come to think of it, Anathem reminds me of Norrell & Strange, in that it's long, meaty, and very much a philosophy piece (like how N&S is a period piece). Anyway, rare case where Stephenson mostly sticks the landing.

Permutation City, Greg Egan

Really a philosophical idea dressed up as a story, with a nothingburger ending. It's a cool idea, though.

50 Purchases From the Goblin Market

1. Creature which resembles a telepathic and prehensile wig. It feeds on dandruff.

2. Rag doll which is legally your firstborn child.

3. Goblin coins. Indistinguishable from the real thing except that they have the taste and melting point of chocolate.

4. A foul breeze. The smell is intense enough to cause nausea; it has the personality of a very dumb and very loyal dog.

5. The deed to a bridge, location unspecified.

6. Goblin fruit. Sort of a carrot-ish potato pumpkin thing. If you eat the seeds they start growing in your stomach.

7. An evil kitten.

8. Broken shards of mirror-glass. If you're cut by one you have to put your hands on your head and hop in a circle or it's seven years of bad luck.

9. Stepladder cursed to fail you when you need it most.

10. A homunculus. Knee-height, will follow orders if they're written on a piece of paper and fed to him. Contradictory instructions cause indigestion.

11. Use of a magic chariot for seven days and seven nights. On the eighth day it breaks free of all earthly ties and flies into the sun.

12. An unbreakable, unfoolable, unopenable lock.

13. A witch's iron eyeteeth. Wickedly sharp, rattle alarmingly in the presence of bad juju.

14. Coin that always lands on its edge.

15. Novelization of your life up to this moment. The sequel was critically panned and is no longer in print.

16. A stolen bicycle.

17. Cardboard box which holds a very small and gullible angel.

18. Turkish delight.

19. A reanimated snake skull. Very bitey.

20. A perfect skipping stone.

21. Lava lamp with real molten rock inside.

22. Rubber bugs that come to life when you take them out of the tube.

23. A flaming axe, but the handle ignites instead of the blade.

24. Loaf of bread containing three rocks, a razorblade, and a spider.

25. Dead phoenix wrapped in a fire blanket.

26. Loom that weaves gold into straw.

27. A lemon.

28. Realistic fascimille of your own severed head.

29. Matchsticks which produce lots of oily smoke but no flame.

30. Fisheye paint. Distorts the apparent proportions of anything covered with it; has no effect on color.

31. Two-dimensional sword. Very sharp, very brittle, difficult to hold without losing fingers.

32. An ant farm with tunnels shaped like letters. The ants claim to be superhumanly intelligent, want out of the box.

33. Certificate of marriage to Old Man Winter.

34. An eleventh finger.

35. Parrot with an encyclopedic knowledge of swear words.

36. Divisibility cloak. Allows its wearer to harmlessly detach and reattach limbs.

37. A spell whose only function is to remove itself from the caster's memory.

38. Glowstick that emits gamma radiation.

39. Fake vampire teeth that give you the ability to heal by drinking blood. After each use, save or develop a dependence.

40. Scrap of paper which describes your worst enemy's worst sin.

41. A haunted dollhouse.

42. Paper-mache gorgon mask.

43. Indelible ink. Can't be erased, washed off, written over, or scraped away.

44. Bucket of holding filled with 64 cubic feet of molasses.

45. Magnificient robes struck by a curse of selective visibility.

46. A chitinous violin. It can play insect noises (crickets, cicadas, etc) but not any human music.

47. Talking lockpicks. Rude, judgemental, will briefly scream in pain if broken.

48. Violently explosive bubblegum.

49. Nutshell containing an infinitely spacious pocket dimension.

50. Canopic thimbles housing the mummified organs of a pixie queen.

1d20 Invisible Planets

 1. The vulture moon. Circles buzzard-like beneath the horizon and feeds on ghosts. Will trade you the thing you want most for the thing you most need.

2. A gas giant that's slightly out of phase with the known universe, detectable only by the manner in which its gravity distorts other orbits.

3. A star-cinder: It fell into the sea and guttered out. On stormy nights the leviathans dredge its corpse back up and parade it through the western sky.

4. A puzzle-box of planetary scale, now disassembled. The pieces were buried in nearby moons.

5. Hyperhyperborea: An ice giant visible to stargazers only in the uttermost north. It wobbles between past and future pole-stars, carrying the details of their conspiracy to overthrow Polaris.

6. A boltzmann planet that exists for an instant at a time, appearing and discorporating far too quickly to be seen.

7. Chiraldia: A planet made of frozen mercury that only exists in mirrors. To set foot there is to trade places with your reflection.

8. A comet formed from ice so pure and clear that it is undetectable to the naked eye.

9. Euryale: A dim, faraway planet that tutors witches and transforms infants born under its auspices into monsters. Astronomers who examine it too obviously or for too long tend to die in their sleep.

10. A rocky planet that is sending a message in morse code by varying its albedo. This operation is taking place on a geological time scale; the periods of darkness between dots and dashes last centuries.

11. Aculeata: A star that emits no visible light, but which is terrifically bright in the ultraviolet, such that its focused attention can cause sunburns and blindness. Believed to have made an ancient pact with bees.

12. A nameless, ruined world, inhabited only by a starving god. All thought that references it is devoured.

13. The planet that would exist in place of Mars, if a butterfly had flapped its wings five billion years ago. It houses a thriving post-scarcity civilization, observable only through a prism that refracts possibilities.

14. Rorschach: A black moon that creeps through the spaces between stars. People hold impromptu masquerades when it is high in the sky.

15. Passerine: A magnetic planetoid that the Earth swallowed whole in a fit of youthful hunger. When its strength waxes it takes control of birds and forces them to fly straight upwards until they die of exhaustion.

16. A star that wears a veil of dust to hide its beauty. Poets spend months training telescopes on its region of space, hoping that the rings and nebulae will part to afford them a glimpse of its splendor.

17. Chfled: A moon that shines in hell. It illuminates the crossroads and graveyards where devils work, and is seen most clearly by the hubristic, the foolish, and the desperate.

18. Meinong: A planet populated exclusively by impossible things. If something is done for the first time elsewhere, the version of it that exists on Meinong disappears: ergo, it might emerge from hiding if someone were ever to invent a whole-planet invisibility cloak.

19. A star that makes noise instead of light. On quiet nights you can hear it mumbling.

20. Skynest: A rogue planet steered through space by a species of telepathic moths. It stands behind the sun, waiting for the latest generation to emerge from their chrysalises so that they can disassemble and archive the Earth.