Recent reading

[luzula]

Writing up two books that I read (or didn't read) for book club. I feel like I am turning into the grumpy person who just complains and nitpicks...

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor (2015)
This is sort of like X-Men, in that there are people who are experimented upon and then they get superpowers. I finished it, but I wasn't that into it. I kept getting thrown out by issues related to the worldbuilding. The main example was Phoenix's wings: she has a thirty-foot wingspan and can't ride in an airplane because they won't fit. But she can ride in a car just fine, and when she has a burka on, the wings fit underneath so well that everyone just thinks she is a hunchback? This makes no sense to me. Maybe the wings magically change size or something, but no reference is made to that, and it just seems...careless.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (2019)
I dropped out of this early--I could not stand Gideon's character voice. Or rather, it makes no sense to me (worldbuilding-wise) combined with the setting.

Comments

[china_shop]

I listened to about half a chapter of Gideon in audiobook, but I kept getting distracted and gave up. But I actually think it's kind of cool that it's written in a specific internet dialect, like it might be a "translation" from whatever language they speak in the distant future -- maybe that's the best way to convey the appropriate amount of meme-iness for the world-building? Idk. :-)

[luzula]

I don't mind the thing where modern slang stands in for whatever the slang the future has, it's just that she was the only one using it?

Ah well. Clearly this is an authorial choice that really works for some people, and for others, not.

[china_shop]

Oh, I hadn't heard that part. Interesting. Secret body-sharing time-traveller?

[luzula]

Well, I only read 40 pages of it, so maybe my impression isn't completely reliable...