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Recent reading
Nov. 9th, 2022 10:37 pmUgh, very busy. Perhaps a life update soon, but for now, catching up on books.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune (2020) and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (2020) by Nghi Vo
For book club. I think we all enjoyed these, but I enjoyed them more intellectually than on a gut level. Actually I tried to listen to the first one as an audiobook some time ago, but that didn't work for me--piercing together what was going on really required me to read it with my eyes. We all disagreed with the blurb, which said that these books are high fantasy. I mean, the story of the first one absolutely could have been high fantasy, if it had been told in a different way. It would have been a brick of a book showing all the battles and the sweeping struggle between the two sides.
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (2022)
Novik's work is almost always compulsively page-turney for me, and this was no exception. I stayed up until 2 am to finish this, and I really shouldn't have. I was really impressed by the various world-building reveals, which I hadn't seen coming and which were set up very well in the earlier books. It all hangs together so well! Perhaps not the very end--( spoilers ) Okay, I'm going to stop picking that handwavy bit apart, because I enjoyed the creative world building a lot.
I also have thoughts about how the book talks about the unintentional consequences of everyday acts (how you get mals from everybody doing small bits of malia), and the knowledge that evil things are being done on which your own everyday life depends even if you aren't doing them yourself. Also, perhaps something was lost when El became so ridiculously superpowered--there was an interesting distinction earlier between having the capacity to do magic, versus the mana you needed to do it. Of course she has a huge capacity for the former, but there's never a moment where she lacks the latter. Also, Liesel, really? Did not see that coming, but I rather liked it.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune (2020) and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (2020) by Nghi Vo
For book club. I think we all enjoyed these, but I enjoyed them more intellectually than on a gut level. Actually I tried to listen to the first one as an audiobook some time ago, but that didn't work for me--piercing together what was going on really required me to read it with my eyes. We all disagreed with the blurb, which said that these books are high fantasy. I mean, the story of the first one absolutely could have been high fantasy, if it had been told in a different way. It would have been a brick of a book showing all the battles and the sweeping struggle between the two sides.
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (2022)
Novik's work is almost always compulsively page-turney for me, and this was no exception. I stayed up until 2 am to finish this, and I really shouldn't have. I was really impressed by the various world-building reveals, which I hadn't seen coming and which were set up very well in the earlier books. It all hangs together so well! Perhaps not the very end--( spoilers ) Okay, I'm going to stop picking that handwavy bit apart, because I enjoyed the creative world building a lot.
I also have thoughts about how the book talks about the unintentional consequences of everyday acts (how you get mals from everybody doing small bits of malia), and the knowledge that evil things are being done on which your own everyday life depends even if you aren't doing them yourself. Also, perhaps something was lost when El became so ridiculously superpowered--there was an interesting distinction earlier between having the capacity to do magic, versus the mana you needed to do it. Of course she has a huge capacity for the former, but there's never a moment where she lacks the latter. Also, Liesel, really? Did not see that coming, but I rather liked it.
