Recent reading

[luzula]

Imago by Octavia Butler
Aaaggh. Well, this is really successful in describing creepy yet well-meaning (on their terms) aliens. Like, they literally go: "Yes, human, I know you said no, but with my superior perceptions I could tell that you actually wanted to say yes! Aren't you glad now that I impregnated you/linked my tentacles to your nervous system and had mind-sex with you/chemically bonded with you for life without telling you the consequences first? :D" And yet I think the worst thing they do is actually that they are going to let their spaceship lifeforms expand and eat Earth's whole biosphere and then depart after several centuries, leaving Earth a barren rock (okay, they keep genetic records of everything, but that doesn't even remotely compensate for it). And despite this you still don't feel that they are evil--they just have a...very alien morality. Which does somewhat overlap with human morality, so that they are horrified by some of the actual bad things that humans do.

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
Well, that was weird. Like, you think you start out reading one book, but she keeps changing the characters on you, like peeling off layers. And yet, it all made sense at the end! I think. I enjoyed it a lot--it felt like DWJ in her most out-of-left-field mode. Ha ha, the Bannus was like a gleeful fanfic-writing machine that got to act out all of its AUs.

Comments

[skygiants]

Hexwood is SO WEIRD and it is possibly my favorite, or at least one of my favorites, and I've read it so often now that I have to consciously remind myself that the first half the book doesn't make sense the first time you read it because it's completely out of order and you don't know who anyone is yet and ALSO DWJ is just like "OK, what tropes haven't I hit yet? -- ah yes, OK, now it's an office rom-com! now he's a dragon! now it's Arthurian AND ALSO aliens are trying to make them do it!" God bless.

[luzula]

I didn't read it when I was younger, and I think I am more attached to the DWJ I read as a kid. But I did like it a lot! As you say, it's confusing in the beginning, but it makes sense to me in retrospect.

Unlike Fire and Hemlock which did not make sense to me (though of course it's very possible that it does actually make sense and I just don't understand it). And I was put off by the romance in that book, so there's that too.