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Culture consumed
Jul. 18th, 2019 08:41 amThings of note
Books
I'm going to be judging the Aurealis Award for Children's Fiction again this year, so I've deliberately avoided fiction for younger readers lately, on the grounds that there is about to be a whole mountain of it taking over my study. Plus, the end of Game of Thrones left me in a mood for BIG SPRAWLING EPIC FANTASY, which rarely happens.
Titles of note:
City of Lies by Sam Hawke, in which two siblings (the brother: food taster and antidote maker to the leader of their nation; his sister: barred from that profession by chronic illness, she is trained in administration and something very much akin to espionage) deal with murder and rebellion and the long-term impact of colonisation.
Sam is an Australian author -- I met her at Continuum, she was great -- but this is published by Tor and getting the sort of push you usually see reserved for Americans. It won a whole pile of awards, so I probably don't need to tell you it's bloody good -- but it is. I loved the worldbuilding, the politics and the way Hawke very carefully reveals the nature of her metaphor, rather than infodumping at the beginning.
I must confess that I found the romances a tiny bit half-baked, but they weren't at all the point of the story. And I couldn't speak to the portrayal of the brother's OCD, except that the depiction of the sister's undiagnosable chronic illness, and the way people treat her, was extremely accurate, right down to her constant frustration at being infantilised.
I thought City of Lies would be my favourite book of 2019, but then I read...
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
A space opera which combines my favourite parts of Ninefox Gambit with the best bits of the Imperial Radch books. It has the sort of plotting and worldbuilding that had me constantly wanting to put my tablet down and shout at someone, THERE IS EPIC POETRY ABOUT URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE! AND A MURDER FLOWER! AND A MORALLY AMBIGUOUS OLDER WOMAN IN A POSITION OF POWER!
A lot of the buzz around it emphasised Martine's interrogation of imperialism, which had me braced for the tedious 101 level infodumps of Ancillary Justice. But this was a lot more sophisticated than that, and also more fun to read. I was totally on board even before Nineteen Adze, QUEEN OF MY HEART, swept onto the scene and attempted to hijack the heroine.
There's a PLUCKY AND COMPETENT HEROINE! And her reluctant partner-in-crime/not-remotely-reluctant love interest, who keeps on telling herself she's only here because of her OVERWHELMING PROFESSIONAL AMBITION! A DYING SPACE EMPEROR! COMPETING HEIRS! A CLONE CHILD! POLITICAL DISCOURSE VIA POETRY! ONE TINY SPACE STATION THAT JUST WANTS TO BE LEFT ALONE (but not too much alone)! An ELDRITCH THREAT LURKING ON THE EDGE OF KNOWN SPACE! HEAD PEOPLE! DID I MENTION NINETEEN ADZE?
I'm fighting the urge to grab each and every one of my friends and shout at them enthusiastically until they give in and agree to read it, because that only puts people off. But if you're in the mood for some A+ space opera with linguistic nerdery, I can't recommend A Memory Called Empire highly enough.
TV
While @indeed was away overseas, I finished the first two season of Enterprise. They were ... not entirely terrible. But I'll be covering that on the next episode of the podcast; the short version is that T'Pol Deserves Better.
Now she's back, and we're two episodes away from finishing season 6 of The Good Wife. And it really cannot be over fast enough -- this whole season feels like an extended exercise in kicking characters while they're down, setting them up to fail, and driving wedges between them along the way. It's been painful to watch, with very few bright spots. Even Alicia's wig is flatter than usual.
And the worst bit -- I can't believe I'm about to say this, given how keen I am for Kalinda to just leave already, but ... okay. I've never thought Kalinda was actually a competent investigator, but we're told she is, so I accepted it as one of the rules of the series. Like how we're meant to accept that Peter and Eli are good at politics, or how anyone at all is a good lawyer.
So it's unfair -- cheating -- that suddenly it's Kalinda's incompetence that forces her to leave. The rules changed, and all of a sudden the writers stopped letting her win.
And that was satisfying at first! Finally, I thought, they've noticed that she's a terrible girlfriend -- especially to women -- and causes more damage in the course of her work than she can fix! But it just kept on piling up and up and up.
I'm glad to see her go -- I think she should have left by the end of the fourth season at the latest -- and I won't miss Archie Panjabi's "acting" (*big eyes* *sad expression* *breathy voice*) -- but she deserved better.
Not that anyone else was treated well this year. Alicia gives a bunch of answers as to why she's running for office, but none of them are convincing, and ultimately she has set her life on fire for a position she's not allowed to keep. And I can't see a good reason for that, save that the writers started telling one story, only to realise too late that they didn't like it.
I've heard that season 7 is mostly better. And then, finally, we can move onto The Good Fight. But first -- @indeed has never seen TNG, so we're doing a highlights tour ahead of Star Trek: Picard.
Books
I'm going to be judging the Aurealis Award for Children's Fiction again this year, so I've deliberately avoided fiction for younger readers lately, on the grounds that there is about to be a whole mountain of it taking over my study. Plus, the end of Game of Thrones left me in a mood for BIG SPRAWLING EPIC FANTASY, which rarely happens.
Titles of note:
City of Lies by Sam Hawke, in which two siblings (the brother: food taster and antidote maker to the leader of their nation; his sister: barred from that profession by chronic illness, she is trained in administration and something very much akin to espionage) deal with murder and rebellion and the long-term impact of colonisation.
Sam is an Australian author -- I met her at Continuum, she was great -- but this is published by Tor and getting the sort of push you usually see reserved for Americans. It won a whole pile of awards, so I probably don't need to tell you it's bloody good -- but it is. I loved the worldbuilding, the politics and the way Hawke very carefully reveals the nature of her metaphor, rather than infodumping at the beginning.
I must confess that I found the romances a tiny bit half-baked, but they weren't at all the point of the story. And I couldn't speak to the portrayal of the brother's OCD, except that the depiction of the sister's undiagnosable chronic illness, and the way people treat her, was extremely accurate, right down to her constant frustration at being infantilised.
I thought City of Lies would be my favourite book of 2019, but then I read...
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
A space opera which combines my favourite parts of Ninefox Gambit with the best bits of the Imperial Radch books. It has the sort of plotting and worldbuilding that had me constantly wanting to put my tablet down and shout at someone, THERE IS EPIC POETRY ABOUT URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE! AND A MURDER FLOWER! AND A MORALLY AMBIGUOUS OLDER WOMAN IN A POSITION OF POWER!
A lot of the buzz around it emphasised Martine's interrogation of imperialism, which had me braced for the tedious 101 level infodumps of Ancillary Justice. But this was a lot more sophisticated than that, and also more fun to read. I was totally on board even before Nineteen Adze, QUEEN OF MY HEART, swept onto the scene and attempted to hijack the heroine.
There's a PLUCKY AND COMPETENT HEROINE! And her reluctant partner-in-crime/not-remotely-reluctant love interest, who keeps on telling herself she's only here because of her OVERWHELMING PROFESSIONAL AMBITION! A DYING SPACE EMPEROR! COMPETING HEIRS! A CLONE CHILD! POLITICAL DISCOURSE VIA POETRY! ONE TINY SPACE STATION THAT JUST WANTS TO BE LEFT ALONE (but not too much alone)! An ELDRITCH THREAT LURKING ON THE EDGE OF KNOWN SPACE! HEAD PEOPLE! DID I MENTION NINETEEN ADZE?
I'm fighting the urge to grab each and every one of my friends and shout at them enthusiastically until they give in and agree to read it, because that only puts people off. But if you're in the mood for some A+ space opera with linguistic nerdery, I can't recommend A Memory Called Empire highly enough.
TV
While @indeed was away overseas, I finished the first two season of Enterprise. They were ... not entirely terrible. But I'll be covering that on the next episode of the podcast; the short version is that T'Pol Deserves Better.
Now she's back, and we're two episodes away from finishing season 6 of The Good Wife. And it really cannot be over fast enough -- this whole season feels like an extended exercise in kicking characters while they're down, setting them up to fail, and driving wedges between them along the way. It's been painful to watch, with very few bright spots. Even Alicia's wig is flatter than usual.
And the worst bit -- I can't believe I'm about to say this, given how keen I am for Kalinda to just leave already, but ... okay. I've never thought Kalinda was actually a competent investigator, but we're told she is, so I accepted it as one of the rules of the series. Like how we're meant to accept that Peter and Eli are good at politics, or how anyone at all is a good lawyer.
So it's unfair -- cheating -- that suddenly it's Kalinda's incompetence that forces her to leave. The rules changed, and all of a sudden the writers stopped letting her win.
And that was satisfying at first! Finally, I thought, they've noticed that she's a terrible girlfriend -- especially to women -- and causes more damage in the course of her work than she can fix! But it just kept on piling up and up and up.
I'm glad to see her go -- I think she should have left by the end of the fourth season at the latest -- and I won't miss Archie Panjabi's "acting" (*big eyes* *sad expression* *breathy voice*) -- but she deserved better.
Not that anyone else was treated well this year. Alicia gives a bunch of answers as to why she's running for office, but none of them are convincing, and ultimately she has set her life on fire for a position she's not allowed to keep. And I can't see a good reason for that, save that the writers started telling one story, only to realise too late that they didn't like it.
I've heard that season 7 is mostly better. And then, finally, we can move onto The Good Fight. But first -- @indeed has never seen TNG, so we're doing a highlights tour ahead of Star Trek: Picard.
