Lanna Michaels (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lannamichaels) wrote2024-03-09 08:57 pm
lannamichaels) wrote2024-03-09 08:57 pm
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Three books
- The Left-handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix: this book is fine, I guess. But it says something about it that after finishing it and starting my write up, I couldn't remember the protagonist's name. Sharon? Susan? (I was about to say "it's Sharon, I looked" but then I actually looked and discovered it was Susan.) I remembered Merlin and Vivian, the booksellers. I remembered various other booksellers. But the demigod on a quest to find her father... oh well. This book is perfectly fine and not very memorable. Would have liked to see Merlin transition, but I have hope that maybe fic has already done that and provided Merlin/Susan femslash.
I feel like I have read Garth Nix before but none of the titles in the beginning sound familiar. Was there someone with a similar name, who published scifi books between the mid-90s and, like, 2001? - Consolation Songs: Optimistic Speculative Fiction For A Time of Pandemic, edited by Iona Datt Sharma: An excellent short story collection. Some of the stories were not to my taste but overall, it was great. The two stand out highlights were:
1) This Is New Gehesran Calling by Rebecca Fraimow, which is a wonderful story about pirate radio uniting a diaspora community. It was my absolute favorite, it definitely deserves its status as a Yuletide fandom
2) Storm Story by Llinos Cathryn Thomas, which takes place on a generation ship that travels on water in search of Land and is narrated very nicely by a young magician, very excellent on how the limited knowledge of a POV character can shape worldbuilding. - Demigod 12 by Gail Carriger: A light, enjoyable sequel where Phex And His Band Go On Tour, and Phex continues to be exploited by the Alien-Pop Powers That Be.
The blurb on the back makes it sound like there's something sinister and I was nervous about what kind of tonal shift was going to happen, so I feel the need to mention that there is nothing sinister going on. It continues the plot point from the first book of obsessed fans attacking the band members, but treats this like it's an untreatable condition and also sadly inevitable, a side effect of how fantastic this music is. There is no twist; what you do find out is that the Dyesi have three life stages and the ones we see are the middle ones. The adult life form is called imago, and the imago character lets it be known that the imagos do not take this whole divinity thing seriously at all, it's just stuff the nymphs get up to, and they've based it on the natural acoustics of the Dyesi's home cave systems and how the adults can sing sounds to convey instructions to the nymphs, and that became domes and pantheons. So. The sinister plot is that there is no sinister plot. They are not hiding that people become "fixed". That is well-known, although not, it seems, formally acknowledged, in the way that real life pop music industries also don't want to air their dirty laundry. There is no mystery of the Dyesi in this book; I suspect their life stages are not a secret and Phex just doesn't know much about them and doesn't spend time on Space Wikipedia.
Phex achieves excellent character growth and the romance with him and Missit remains the best part of this.
Note: the first chapter is where the not-really-informed-consent physical alteration surgeries occur; this is all theoretically agreed to, but the band members do not know in advance what's going to happen to them and did not agree to all the details, even the one that was buried in their contracts. It's unclear how many of the changes are permanent and how many are reversible; some will fade over time. One character's eye lid shape is changed. One character is upset about a change that was in the contract and he didn't realize would happen; it is reversible but it was not explained to him that it would be reversible when they told him about it and he discovers that something he thought he was born with was actually a surgical modification done to him by his society and then lied to about. No one is upset about anything else. I don't think you'll miss anything important if you skip this chapter.
As in the first book, a side character's terminal illness is a plot point, but more in the effect it has on the people in his life, and how it leads to Phex's exploitation as his understudy. There are no details on the illness itself. It remains possible that this illness can be cured/recovered from.
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I think the book I think is some kind of dystopia where the part that I remember is only 1 student from some number of non-elite schools gets to advance to the next tier of schooling, and so it's basically a competition of who can cheat and hack the system to get themselves that one spot.
I think the author's name was in green on the cover.
Those also might have been two different books, but I'm more confident on the green text than the plotline.
...Yeah. It's been a while. (I could also tell you exactly where the scifi bookshelf it was! ...In a library that has since been extensively renovated and rearranged.)
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Not Vernon Vinge, but a name very close to his on the shelf. But not a 'V' last name. Maybe.
I can recall that the book was a space war fleet book, humans versus aliens, but it was unique (for me) that parts of the book were from the aliens' pov. There was a second book in the series that I never read.
(And is anyone surprised why I don't post this to any book finding forums...)
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But you *should* post this somewhere. It's remarkable how often people can find what ought to be obscure.
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Personally I've always confused Garth Nix with, for no apparent reason, Steven Brust.
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I'm pretty sure there's only one Garth Nix. I've always found his books to be extraordinarily hit or miss.
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