Recent books
Apr. 10th, 2018 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackInitiation, Chris Babu
YA dystopia, the protagonists live in the crappy zone of "New America", an enclave comprising New York, after everywhere fell to some pandemic and other things. And there's an "an initiation", where they can volunteer to attempt, which can promote them to one of the other zones. Which turns out to involve passing along the old subway from the crappy zone to the best zone, and at each station facing some sort of mental or physical challenge.
The fact they have this system seems contrived (as does a lot of other stuff), but the process of the protagonists getting past it is really tense! The challenges work very well, the puzzles are sometimes ones I'm familiar with, but sometimes not. The physical challenges were pretty scary, which I rarely say! Just close enough to something I could theoretically do to be terrifying, when more extreme things common in fiction are just quite abstract to me.
The friends and family stuff early on was good too.
I still think this system makes NO SENSE. They address it several times, but it still doesn't seem convincing that they *have* this test no-one's intended to pass. It's not surprising it exists (e.g. see the horrible "intelligence tests" that are impossible but look superficially plausible used to deny people rights in various places), but everyone is already segregated by zone, no-one would find it *more* unfair if they just didn't have it.
Artemis, by Andy Weir
A pretty good yarn, I loved seeing his vision for what a Moon city would look like. But I wasn't convinced all the worldbulding made sense, or that he'd done the best job he could writing a female character.
Provenance, Ann Leckie
More aliens! I'm really glad, I wanted more aliens. And a view from outside the Radsch. Everything else was very well done, although I didn't love it as much as I loved the protagonist of the previous trilogy.
Clocktaur book 2, Ursula Vernon
Only half way through, but, you know, about as good as the first one :)
Wow, I haven't had much time for reading for a while, but I've gone through quite a lot recently.
YA dystopia, the protagonists live in the crappy zone of "New America", an enclave comprising New York, after everywhere fell to some pandemic and other things. And there's an "an initiation", where they can volunteer to attempt, which can promote them to one of the other zones. Which turns out to involve passing along the old subway from the crappy zone to the best zone, and at each station facing some sort of mental or physical challenge.
The fact they have this system seems contrived (as does a lot of other stuff), but the process of the protagonists getting past it is really tense! The challenges work very well, the puzzles are sometimes ones I'm familiar with, but sometimes not. The physical challenges were pretty scary, which I rarely say! Just close enough to something I could theoretically do to be terrifying, when more extreme things common in fiction are just quite abstract to me.
The friends and family stuff early on was good too.
I still think this system makes NO SENSE. They address it several times, but it still doesn't seem convincing that they *have* this test no-one's intended to pass. It's not surprising it exists (e.g. see the horrible "intelligence tests" that are impossible but look superficially plausible used to deny people rights in various places), but everyone is already segregated by zone, no-one would find it *more* unfair if they just didn't have it.
Artemis, by Andy Weir
A pretty good yarn, I loved seeing his vision for what a Moon city would look like. But I wasn't convinced all the worldbulding made sense, or that he'd done the best job he could writing a female character.
Provenance, Ann Leckie
More aliens! I'm really glad, I wanted more aliens. And a view from outside the Radsch. Everything else was very well done, although I didn't love it as much as I loved the protagonist of the previous trilogy.
Clocktaur book 2, Ursula Vernon
Only half way through, but, you know, about as good as the first one :)
Wow, I haven't had much time for reading for a while, but I've gone through quite a lot recently.