Recent reading

[luzula]

Westmark trilogy by Lloyd Alexander
For my fannish book club, my choice of book. I think I was the one who enjoyed this most of the book club crew, although it did have its flaws. I do think it makes it rather easy for itself by having two monarchs who are actually sympathetic to the republican rebels! The main enemies are the aristocracy and a power-hungry minister. Also the book does not answer my questions about the compatibility of magic and democracy, because there is no magic. Any others who have read this trilogy and have thoughts about it?

Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell
Woooooow. This is for sure going up on my top ten of the year! After reading this book I understand world politics and economics sooooo much better. What it does is to look at energy and how it's controlled in order to understand power struggles. I aim to write up a summary of this book for future reference; will do that later. Also, I wrote fanmail (well, fan-email) to the author and he wrote a very nice reply within a day!

Comments

[rachelmanija]

The Kestrel is possibly my favorite war novel of all time.

[luzula]

I thought it was interesting that for a YA/kids book, it had the main characters do pretty horrible things in the war. Like, they kill captured prisoners who are not even soldiers...

[isis]

Carbon Democracy sounds RTMI, thank you - I'm looking forward to your summary.

[luzula]

I had to search for the acronym, but now I get it. : ) Yes, I hope to get around to that...right now I am stuck graaaaading exams.

[jesse_the_k]

Carbon Democracy sounds great. I'm looking forward to the precis.

I snottily avoided Lloyd Alexander because I'd already read JRRTolkien when L.A's books came out and I thought they'd be derivative. (Wow, I sure was snotty for a kid.)

[luzula]

It's good to know others are interested, then I am more motivated to write it up!

Hee, I was far less discerning and read pretty much all the SF/F I could get my hands on.

[skygiants]

I seem to reread Westmark every 10 years, so I'm about due! I like them a lot -- they're not my favorite YA about revolution, but I really appreciate the tropes of governance they're digging into and how they poke at them, in a way that fantasies (even magic-less second-world fantasies) hardly ever do.

[luzula]

Well, they're set in a time period not a lot of fantasy is set in? It seems to be around the time of the French revolution, idea-wise. I mean, there's liberalism but not really any socialism.

I feel like the grown-up version of Westmark would correspond to Le Guin's Malafrena? Also set in a made-up European country, in the same time period, and also with a revolution by liberals.