Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.
House of Suns is what really great sci-fi tries to be: it takes some fascinating ideas (generally technological), sprinkles in interesting characters (although some authors seem to find that optional), and goes from there.
It seems no matter the culture, myths and legends get weird. Norse mythology is absolutely no exception to that.
In this story, we have a novelization of the story of Angrboda. Wife of Loki. Mother of monsters. She’s been around a while (it’s mythology, even she doesn’t know how long) and she just wants to be left alone.
I like seeing a slightly more ‘raw’ Norse mythology, especially than you get from (for example) the Marvel universe(s).
It’s kind of a bonkers story. You never know what’s going to happen. Being built on myths, the world is flexible at best. Rules are made to be broken. And that’s before you have gods et al with the ability to rewrite reality / see the future / move from world to world.
I really enjoyed it. Worth a read.
Onward!
Hopping between worlds–with one big caveat. If you visit a world where another you is still alive, you die.
Why have I survived? Because I am a creature more devious than all the other mes put together. Because I saw myself bleeding out and instead of checking for a pulse, I began collecting her things. I survive the desert like a coyote survives, like all tricksters do.
It’s a fascinating premise, especially when you dig just a bit deeper: Who are the people most likely able to jump? Who’s the most likely to have died on other worlds?
It’s a story about privilege. About a world built for the rich and powerful–by those who have nothing or less; those that pay everything and get nothing.
And Cara is stuck right in the middle of it.
Cartography, at its heart, was about defining one’s place in the world by creating charts and measurements. Nell had lived her life by that idea, that everything could be mapped according to references and thereby understood. But she could see now that she had been paying attention to the wrong references.
It was not a map alone that made a place real.
It was the people.
This is a tricky one to review. It’ll take some minor spoilers.
In a nutshell (if you want to completely avoid spoilers), it’s a decent book with a fascinating premise that could have done so much more for the actual execution.
Zeroes, not Heroes.
That was fun.
In a nutshell, it’s the story of six American teenagers who discover they have superpowers. And fairly atypical ones too. A Voice that says exactly what needs to be said–for better or for worse. Being immediately forgotten. Crashing electronics all around you. Controlling mobs. Leadership (somehow different from mobs). Seeing through others’ eyes.
Maybe Flicker’s power made her think differently than most people. She saw the world from so many perspectives, and seeing was half of enlightenment.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
Take the extremist end of the American Protestant religious right. Give them everything they want (plus some) over the span of years (if not months).
Men have taken absolute power. In a world with (dramatically) declining birth rates, women are owned by the state. Their bodies are nothing more than a vessel for their wombs. They can’t travel alone, can’t be seen, can’t own property.
Like any good story of this sort, it takes a potential problem–an idea–and turns it up to eleven. It goes steps further than anything we’ve seen in modern times–or at least differently. The closest analogue I’m aware of is probably the events around the Iranian Revolution in 1979. By 1981, hijab were mandatory (there’s more to the history there; even before, hijab were seen as a method of protest against Westernization). Given this book was released in 1985, it seems… potentially related.
It’s… terrifying.
All the more so, for all those men (often in positions of power) that even today see it less as a cautionary tale and more something to aspire to.
Oy.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Stories always begin the same way: There was and there was not. There is possibility in those words, the chance for hope or despair.
Take Persian mythology and worldbuilding, more than a touch of fairy tale feel, a cursed princess, demons, div (what in a Euro-centric story would be probably be fae), a touch of romance, and the spark of revolution.
The first time you share tea, you are a stranger.
The second time you share tea, you are an honored guest.
The third time you share tea, you become family.
So… what do you call a slice of life story when the protagonist dies at the end of the first chapter?
Whatever you do, Under the Whispering Door is a delightful example thereof.
Wallace starts out a kind of terrible person.
The machine had broken down, and though no one was infallible, Wallace needed to switch out the part for a new one. He’d worked too hard to let it fail now. Last year had been the most profitable in the firm’s history. This year was shaping up to be even better. No matter what condition the world was in, someone always needed to be sued.
And then he dies.
Take one part Princess Bride (a modern fairly tale for a grown up audience), one part Hoid as the narrator (even more Wit-like than in Stormlight), and add in weird world–Sanderson style. It’s funny. It’s touching. And it’s a delight to read.
Voilá. Tress of the Emerald Sea.
It’s a really good book.
Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster.
Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.
A questionable phrase when applied to the original book. Full of hubris. A coward. Not really a ‘good’ person, sure. But a monster?
Well, in Dean Koontz’s version… yeah. Victor Frankenstein (now Victor Helios)–totally the monster.