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Nov. 2nd, 2016 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardGonna try to do reading Wednesday at least through November, a month when I am trying to be better at doing things on a regular basis.
What I'm currently reading
Rereads of Stories of the Raksura: Volume Two: The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below and The Wizard Hunters, both by Martha Wells -- I'm on another reread kick (which I've been on this year even more than usual), and they're both comfort reads. I've been rereading the Raksura series in the weirdest backwards and inside-out order ever.
What I've just finished reading
The Siren Depths by Martha Wells -- I said my Raksura reread was in the weirdest order ever -- and A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston, which really didn't work for me at all. Johnston does a thing in the book where no one has names except for the king, who turns out to be possessed by a demon. I think what she was trying to do was play into the ~legendary aspect of it, which gets lampshaded further in the epilogue when the narrator -- who in the epilogue seems to me to no longer me the female MC, but the king? -- is like, "yeah, this story got misinterpreted as it got retold, like how people now think that this was about the cleverness of the girl! SUCKERS, NO IT WASN'T." Instead of the story being about the cleverness and story-telling ability of the girl (also not named here!), it's about, I think, the love and faith of her people and family, who elevate her into being a smallgod because she volunteered to go to the king to be his bride. Except she didn't! She just assumed her sister would be chosen and so put herself forwards alongside the other girls of the village, and was picked out of the lot. (I suspect I'm also starting to have sort of a backlash at "powerful man picks unexpected girl out of group of girls put forward for his choice" -- I didn't like it in Naomi Novik's Uprooted either.) And just...I'm honestly really disturbed at how the storytelling was taken out of the story. It's still there in a way, but not as storytelling, not really. I can see why people would like this book, but it super doesn't work for me even a little.
What I'm reading next
I've got a couple of books on slow reread, which means I started them but I'm not actively reading them -- Star Wars: Maul - Lockdown by Joe Schreiber and Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, which I've been meaning to reread for a while. I've also got The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu and An Ancient Peace by Tanya Huff out of the library, if I ever stop doing rereads for long enough to read one of them.
What I'm currently reading
Rereads of Stories of the Raksura: Volume Two: The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below and The Wizard Hunters, both by Martha Wells -- I'm on another reread kick (which I've been on this year even more than usual), and they're both comfort reads. I've been rereading the Raksura series in the weirdest backwards and inside-out order ever.
What I've just finished reading
The Siren Depths by Martha Wells -- I said my Raksura reread was in the weirdest order ever -- and A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston, which really didn't work for me at all. Johnston does a thing in the book where no one has names except for the king, who turns out to be possessed by a demon. I think what she was trying to do was play into the ~legendary aspect of it, which gets lampshaded further in the epilogue when the narrator -- who in the epilogue seems to me to no longer me the female MC, but the king? -- is like, "yeah, this story got misinterpreted as it got retold, like how people now think that this was about the cleverness of the girl! SUCKERS, NO IT WASN'T." Instead of the story being about the cleverness and story-telling ability of the girl (also not named here!), it's about, I think, the love and faith of her people and family, who elevate her into being a smallgod because she volunteered to go to the king to be his bride. Except she didn't! She just assumed her sister would be chosen and so put herself forwards alongside the other girls of the village, and was picked out of the lot. (I suspect I'm also starting to have sort of a backlash at "powerful man picks unexpected girl out of group of girls put forward for his choice" -- I didn't like it in Naomi Novik's Uprooted either.) And just...I'm honestly really disturbed at how the storytelling was taken out of the story. It's still there in a way, but not as storytelling, not really. I can see why people would like this book, but it super doesn't work for me even a little.
What I'm reading next
I've got a couple of books on slow reread, which means I started them but I'm not actively reading them -- Star Wars: Maul - Lockdown by Joe Schreiber and Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, which I've been meaning to reread for a while. I've also got The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu and An Ancient Peace by Tanya Huff out of the library, if I ever stop doing rereads for long enough to read one of them.