Wednesday Reading
Mar. 4th, 2020 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asakiyumeRecently finished: The Boy Who Was Mistaken for a Fairy King, a novella by H. L. Fullerton. You know the meme "Did . . . did a [X] write this?"? Well this story is best described by that meme: "Did . . . did a fairy write this?" Truly. Charming is charming but odd is also odd. Anyway, give it a try! I'd like to see what other people think.
Currently reading: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I loved Children of Time, and I'm enjoying this sequel just as much. In Children of Time you followed two storylines: a human storyline, with desperate survivors of an apocalypse traveling in a generation ship, looking for a place to settle, and a spider storyline, as spiders gradually evolve and become intelligent. Maybe I should say three storylines, because there's also the perspective of the human scientist, from the technological apex of Earth civilization, who's inadvertently responsible for spurring the spiders on their evolutionary journey.
It's hard to talk about Children of Ruin without giving spoilers for Children of Time, but what I can say is that this time, the non-human, Earth-origin creatures that enter the mix are octopuses, and Tchaikovsky does a **great** job of showing just how different their intelligence is--not centralized, like human or spider intelligence--and hugely performative. It's marvelous. There are also some actual aliens in this one who are--at least at the stage of the story I'm at--simultaneously extremely terrifying and yet endearing, too. How can you not feel something for creatures whose tagline is "We're going on an adventure," and mean it in all sincerity? And yet, at this stage of the story, each time you encounter that phrase, you feel cold dread.
Additionally, the humans and spiders from the last book are players in this one. Some plot elements and story structures are similar, but the story doesn't feel like a retreat, more like a very satisfying variation on a theme--so far.
Currently reading: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I loved Children of Time, and I'm enjoying this sequel just as much. In Children of Time you followed two storylines: a human storyline, with desperate survivors of an apocalypse traveling in a generation ship, looking for a place to settle, and a spider storyline, as spiders gradually evolve and become intelligent. Maybe I should say three storylines, because there's also the perspective of the human scientist, from the technological apex of Earth civilization, who's inadvertently responsible for spurring the spiders on their evolutionary journey.
It's hard to talk about Children of Ruin without giving spoilers for Children of Time, but what I can say is that this time, the non-human, Earth-origin creatures that enter the mix are octopuses, and Tchaikovsky does a **great** job of showing just how different their intelligence is--not centralized, like human or spider intelligence--and hugely performative. It's marvelous. There are also some actual aliens in this one who are--at least at the stage of the story I'm at--simultaneously extremely terrifying and yet endearing, too. How can you not feel something for creatures whose tagline is "We're going on an adventure," and mean it in all sincerity? And yet, at this stage of the story, each time you encounter that phrase, you feel cold dread.
Additionally, the humans and spiders from the last book are players in this one. Some plot elements and story structures are similar, but the story doesn't feel like a retreat, more like a very satisfying variation on a theme--so far.
