words from a flying cat

Three very good new to me books:

N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky.

Corinne Duyvis, On The Edge Of Gone.

Corinne Duyvis, Otherbound.

Cut for length, hints of squashing brainweasels, and a quote with minor spoilers.

I've also been catching up on some series by David Weber and other old favorite authors and by comparison they are ... okay? At their BEST, they postulate strong moral concepts such as 'you don't fight the enemy by BECOMING the enemy' but the missing people in them are so glaringly missing.

These first three are very good books. They address race and trauma and neourodivergence and gender in ways that don't feel hollow the way things written by cisallohet abled neurotypical white men often do. They have intense characters. On The Edge Of Gone had the best written autistic character I have ever read, bar none. The Fifth Season, first in the Jemisin trilogy concluding with this book, is probably the strongest science fiction novel of a genuinely racially diverse other world that I have ever read, and heartbreaking. These books are not easy but they are so, so, so worthwhile.

There is more to be said but I can't manage saying it. It's not a great brain day, and that is okay. I read a book. I made a reasonable decision about a planned activity that, while not ideal, does make sense. I checked my phone. I made and ate food. I think I'm still going to be up for a thing later. I am a worthwhile person and being me is okay even when I have a relatively unproductive day. I like productivity and gratitude lists, but it's also important to me to remember that what I'm feeling ungrateful and unproductive, I'm still pretty cool. And there is NO absolute measure of worth as a human being.

As Corinne Duyvis had to say:

If anyone gives you shit—well, I’m not signing up for any end of the world that my sister can’t be part of. We can’t survive by giving up all the reasons we want to survive. That’s not the way. Forget the cats? I like that you like cats! I like that you have this whole hierarchy of fruit that you can and can’t eat. I like that you’re faced with an interstellar spaceship and you decide that what it really needs is fewer typoes.