Its substance was known to me. The crawling infinity of colours, the chaos of textures that went into each strand of that eternally complex tapestry…each one resonated under the step of the dancing mad god, vibrating and sending little echoes of bravery, or hunger, or architecture, or argument, or cabbage or murder or concrete across the aether. The weft of starlings’ motivations connected to the thick, sticky strand of a young thief’s laugh. The fibres stretched taut and glued themselves solidly to a third line, its silk made from the angles of seven flying buttresses to a cathedral roof. The plait disappeared into the enormity of possible spaces.

Any time you ask about modern ‘weird fiction’ / weird ecologies / weird cities. China Miéville and Perdido Street Station almost always come up. Turns out… that’s for a good reason. Why in the world did I take so long to read this book?

Overall, this book really shines when it comes to weird¹ worldbuilding. Half-bird, half-human creature? Not that weird. Half-bug creatures? Where the women have a scarab beetle instead of ahead and the males are non-sapient grubs? Weird. Frog people? Re-animates and constructs? Plant people? All living together in a grimy steam-powered, airship and tech and magic driven mess of a metropolis?

Weird¹.

And wonderful.

Overall, this was exactly the sort of book that I love and I’m glad to see there are other books in the same world, if not with the same characters. I want more!

Conversely, if you’re not into weird fiction, more than a touch of body horror, or a book where everyone necessarily get a happy ending (or even survive the story)… maybe skip this one. It’s dark. And that’s sort of the point.

Side note: I listened to this on audiobook and I loved the narration. Perhaps my favorite thing? Whenever the narrator said Issac’s full name. Grimnebulin! 😄

Art is something you choose to make… it’s a bringing together of… of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.

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Well that’s a surprisingly fun book!

In a nutshell:

The year is A.D. 793; Jack and his sister have been kidnapped by Vikings and taken to the court of Ivar the Boneless and his terrifying half-troll wife; but things get even worse when Jack finds himself on a dangerous quest to find the magical Mimir’s Well in a far-off land, with his sister’s life forfeit if he fails.

I started out reading this since it’s a great (and rare) fit for the 2024 Book Bingo ‘Bard’ square, since both Jack and his mentor are explicitly called ‘Bards’ (even if, interestingly music is a relatively small part of their training), but it ends up being so much more.

It’s got Vikings–including digging into what makes them who they are and how they think differently from the people Jack grew up with.

Just say no to pillaging.

It’s got monsters–the Vikings for one, along with Trolls (sometimes more human that anyone), dragons, ravens, and giant spiders.

“Norns keep the tree Yggdrassil alive. Without them, nothing would exist… They show up when you’re born and decide what kind of life you’re going to have."
“I guess they were in a rotten mood when I came along,” Jack said. He loaded up the water bag and supplies.
“Me too,” Thorgil said gravely.

Look around you…Feel the wind, smell the air. Listen to the birds and watch the sky. Tell me what’s happening in the wide world.

It’s got magic. Bardic magic. Shapeshifting. Talking to animals. Calling up / banishing storms. Norse mythology. Norns. Yggdrasil.

“It’s my fault," said Rune. “He’s untrained and likely to overdo things.”
“Like turning the queen bald. That was a good trick, though.” Olaf smiled.”

I’ve absolutely no idea if it’s particularly historically accurate (barring the above of course :)), but it’s a fun read and I greatly enjoyed it. Now I really want to know what happens next!

Side note: Great fun for an audiobook, lightly accented. Just enough to get into the feel of the book all the more!

Second side note: I totally caught the Jack and Jill reference from when we first learned her birth name. But man. Them just outright using that as an in universe poem was fun.

That one has been on my list for years now. It’s just got such a fun title!

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

Now, having read it… I think that I enjoyed it?

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We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

This year book bingo has a ‘Underground’ category–and I’ve been meaning to actually go back and read more Verne. Seemed like a great chance to check out Journey to the Center of the Earth!

In a nutshell, it’s a quintessential Jules Verne adventure. A student and professor find an old manuscript purporting to describe a path to the very center of the Earth… and off they go to Snæfellsjökull (Icelandic is such a lovely language) and down into the Earth.

From that, it’s one adventure after another. Down caves, running out of food and water, nearly dying–and all manner of completely scientifically improbable findings along the way.

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

I think the biggest difficulty in this book is probably entirely tied up with the fact that it’s 160 years old. It’s just written in a very different style. People just … don’t talk like that. But it does make it feel amusingly old-timey, which I actually like. (I wonder how much of that is the translation?)

Worth a read. Going to have to read a few more of these!

Yeah, this definitely fits this year’s ‘Judge A Book By Its Cover’ on the [[2024 Book Bingo]]. I mean… look at it! I love the title and have a soft spot for the illustrated manuscript style.

And then on top of that, it’s actually quite a delightful book as well. Win win!

I mention this because that’s how the world changes. It’s either so quick that we never know what hit us, or so gradual that we don’t notice.

In a nutshell, it’s the story of an alternate history Earth. Take a roughly medieval european tech level empire and an army corps of engineers (they build bridges) out on their own. Add a force somehow conquering everything, leaving said engineers really the only remaining hope. And then stick them in a city, the only hope to hold off against a siege.

But what really shines (for me–and your milage really may vary on this one) is the tone. The main character is competant (perhaps too much so at times) and wonderfully snarky.

I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it.

Things that have always been done? About to be undone–in the name of defending the city.

My belief is, either you understand things or you understand people. Nobody can do both. Frankly, I’m happier with things. I understand stuff like tensile strength, shearing force, ductility, work hardening, stress, fatigue. I know the same sort of things happen with people, but the rules are subtly different. And nobody’s ever paid for my time to get to know about people.

Yeah… he knows people better than he claims.

The people turn out to be—well, people; a collective noun for all those individual men and women, none of them perfect, some of them downright vicious, most of them monumentally stupid. As stupid as the emperor, the great hereditary lords, the priestly hierarchs, the General Staff and the Lords of the Admiralty, the merchant princes and the organised crime barons.

Anyways. You’ll know right away if you like this book or not. I loved it. Give it a try.

Of the people, by the people, for the people. I can’t remember offhand where that quote comes from; it was something to do with some bunch of wild-eyed idealists overthrowing the tyrant so they could become tyrants themselves. No good will have come of it, you can be sure. The people; God help us.

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No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

A haunted house? Let’s do SCIENCE!

Well, that’s the claim. Mostly, it’s a vehicle to get all our main characters in one place, plus a bit of conflict later on.

Other than that, we have character introductions. They’re some weird folks–the best kind for these stories. And then the house as character. It’s impressive how you can get such a feel for a place with only minimal (initial) description. And then the caretakers of the house. Quite the characters those two are.

And then… things get creepy. There’s little jumping out of the page to scare you. It’s not that sort of story. But it’s creepy nevertheless. Perfecting that evermounting sense of dread. And at that, it’s quite well done.

I think that I enjoyed this book more having listened to the audiobook. It’s a slow burn and… hard to describe just why it’s so intriguing?

Worth a try.

Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long.

The third book of [[The Memoirs of Lady Trent]]. First she went to studing dragons in rocky mountanious islands–and almost died. And then she spent some time studying river dragons deep in the jungle–and almost died.

And now she’s off on a voyage around the world–akin to Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle–to study dragons. Only to almost die not once, not twice, but at least three times. Assuming I didn’t miss any.

Oh, and have all manner of other adventures along the way.

“I have never attempted to hide that I have had two husbands in my life. I have, however, neglected to mention that in between them, I had a wife.”

In any case.

“That should be my epitaph when I die: ‘she did not have to do it’.”

I’m still loving riding along with the titular Lady Trent on her adventures and learning all about how dragons work in this world right along with her. And this time, she’s actually bringing her son along, which gives a whole new dimension to the journeys–for the most part.

A fun book. I expect if you’ll like the first two, you’ll continue to enjoy this one.

Onward!

“You’d think it would be easier to face death as you get older, but it doesn’t work that way. You get more attached to life, to people you love and things that are worth living for.”

Wow.

I first read Jade City and Jade War a few years¹ ago–before the third and final book was out. So when I finally got a chance for a re-read (re-listen this time), I figured I’d give it a chance.

And oh, does this book ever deliver. If you’re like me and have read the first two and not this–what are you waiting for?

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