For a book that seemed to be received so positively initially, around the time of release, it seems like all I’ve read lately are reviews that are disappointed by how boring it is and confused by why it was so well-liked. You might say my expectations were pretty low. So I had to laugh as I realized I was enjoying it. A Discovery of Witches is EXCESSIVELY academic. Not just in the subject matter, which obviously is, but in the whole tone and writing approach. […]
Rolling in with a late Cannonball on a hate read
So, about three weeks before starting Red Queen, I finished a book called Morning Star, the final book of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy. That series was about a class of humans called Reds who had been born into slavery, in a society that coded humans by color and where each color was assigned a particular role in Society, with Golds on top. The protagonist, Darrow, infiltrated the Golds with the aim of initiating a revolution that would hopefully lead to a more equal society. […]
“Sci-fi about language”: a heady entry in a favorite subgenre
I have a niche interest in “sci-fi books about language” (give me all your recommendations!) and so this one came my way. China Miéville is a pretty highbrow author, and this is a pretty literary SF book. It is pretty focused on its own theoretical linguistics and the xenology behind language. It doesn’t go so much for major character development or plot, but it’s not annoying in the way that it can be when a fictional structure is just a lazy device to deliver a […]
Bee biology re-imagined through the language of human dystopia
The Bees is a very weird and cool book that’s a third-person narrative of a literal bee, navigating the dystopian politics of her hive. There are a lot of tropes in here that are not exactly unique to this book among the glut of other dystopian fiction, but the framing of the insect colony is novel. While, naturally, some liberties are taken with facts, the structure and major events of the novel are based on known entomology of bees and how hives operate. All that […]