jack

Gideon the Ninth

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 09:30:54 GMT

I reread Gideon the Ninth and half way through Harrow the Ninth. I posted a lot of recap and musings on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10104135617416710&id=36912084

Should be public to everyone, but you can always comment here if you don't use Facebook

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Conspiracy of Truths, Alexandra Rowland

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 21:45:21 GMT

I kept putting this off because it looked really good but there wasn't an ebook.

The cover

E.g. see on goodreads: www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34328664-a-conspiracy-of-truths It's so beautiful, it somehow conjures the exact feel of the book, of illustrated manuscripts (even though there aren't any, it evokes a monastic tradition)

The premise

The main character is a Chant, belonging to an order of wandering story-tellers and lore-preservers. At the start of the book, he's been arrested for witchcraft in an overly-bureaucratic country he's never been in before, and constantly complaining how his trial is run.

The characters are amazingly vivid: his advocate who doesn't get on with him but takes his case because it's prestigious, looking for a boring cushy job, or looking to support her family, depending how you look at it; his assistant, young, earnest, well meaning, slowly learning the role of a chant; several rulers of the country, stern, or wavering, or mysterious, or flighty but cunning.

It's reminiscent of other books that bring a monastic tone into a fantasy world, even though the wandering chant has no connection to other chants.

The good

The way they describe the story telling, trying to keep the heart of each story, but being open about how the details vary according to the listener, and that they try to preserve as much good stories as they can, but they know the history will be lost.

It does an excellent job imagining a fantasy world that's not male dominated: there's three notable male characters, and at least eight women. Similarly, there's passing mentions to diseases which are not understood, but are recognisable to a modern reader, but the world doesn't have an unrealistic level of knowledge about them, but isn't just "you never meet people like that" either.

It's clear there's a variety of cultures in different countries with different mores about all these things, so it's not just "everyone has modern sensibilities", but also the book is set in a culture which isn't aggressively bigoted about things modern readers wouldn't agree with either, which is a nice balance.

The main character spends most of the time in prison, but the book manages amazingly well to tell his story, while also telling the story of the political upheavals in the country, mostly inadvertently triggered by him.

The less good

Some things just didn't ring quite true. I didn't know enough to say if I was right, but I felt like the monetary system (including paper money, and a government controlled mint), the political system (kind of corrupt, but run on elections), and level of technology (I'm not sure) didn't all fit together quite right. And some of the politics felt a bit too pat when I looked back. But fwiw, they FELT right, the book wove a story where it all felt like a real place with real characters and things actually happening, not conjured into existence by authorial fiat.

The annoying

I often rant about annoying things in books I otherwise like, but this book wins my occasionally-awarded "some books don't have anything annoying about them but that doesn't mean they're perfect but no-one believes me until I exhibit some examples" award.

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Library at Mount Char

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 21:39:46 GMT

There is an emperor of the world. Like this modern, real world, except this guy magically underpins the very fabric of the universe. He took over, about 6000 years ago, overthrowing some other ruler about who little is known. He has powerful allies, beasts, planets, sometimes humans but not usually.

His power is in magic, mostly in the form of knowledge. The language of beasts. Incredible healing arts. The ability to walk the lands of the dead and resurrect others or possibly yourself. Stored in a vast library.

For complicated reasons, he has an identity as a regular human in a suburb somewhere. Hosts barbecues, etc. His neighbours are, unbeknownst, some protective camouflage, if any enemy finds him.

He ends up adopting twelve children, and raising them, each being taught one of twelve major fields of study. There is a lot of being sent off to live with powerful sea creatures, or live in the woods with deer, or study endlessly under his guidance until you know whole books.

The novel skips through the early years, and then the bulk of it is what happens when the emperor goes missing and his children try to deal with it: there is a lot of one of the quieter ones trying to juggle multiple balls of intrigue amongst all the others.

I loved, loved, loved, loved the worldbuilding. It was a marvellous marrying of a traditional academic-y magic education, like things from Dark Is Rising, or Earthsea, or Once and Future King, with an almost urban fantasy setting of these ridiculous people trying to juggle alliances and also get familiar with mainstream american society.

The first caveat (and content warning) is, their upbringing is very abusive, both emotionally and physically, both from their father and some of the other siblings, including some occasions of torture and sexual violence. This is very well written, and it doesn't linger on it gratuitously, but it was still pretty heavy.

The second caveat is, I loved the worldbuilding and inter-sibling politics more than the overarching change-the-whole-world stuff. Some parts of that worked very well (when the emperor's rule overlaps with mundane politics, for instance). Others were ok, but just felt like they were too much for the book to carry.

So, if you like the magical library and people training in specialities with animals and learned other powers, this is a book you might REALLY REALLY REALLY like, or you might not.

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Worth the Candle

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 13:30:14 GMT

Worth the Candle is another loooong webfic, adjacent to several rationalist stories, but much less in-your-face about it.

It chronicles the main character, a teenage GM whose best friend has just died, thrust into a secondary world that seems inspired by a giant mash-up of all his different roleplaying campaigns.

It covers the basic ground of levelling up and dealing with immediate quests in a fun way, but I love the way the various characters grow and become much more complicated.

It wins the Anton Macgyver award for the "most surprisingly beneficial potential use of an apparently useless special power" :)

And the as-yet-unnamed award for portraying a realistic, relevant therapy session, not just someone shouting at the protagonist what's obvious they're fucking up but it was glossed over, but verbalising the realistic and difficult details of the relationship between the main character and the character he's dating, which should have been obvious but weren't, and don't immediately go to "fixed" or "fixed, backsliding, fixed, backsliding", but are clear they're things they can work on, but it will be difficult.

Thanks to DRM for making me aware of it.

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Perilous Waif

Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:09:16 GMT

Welcome to more random ebook reviews. This is by someone who also wrote a couple of books which were a bit more male-geek-wishfulfilment-y become-powerful-mage-by-munchkin'ing have lots of women throwing themselves at you, where I enjoyed some of the ideas, but cringed a lot at some of the bits. This had some of the downsides, but a lot of interesting stuff.

Alice is fitting in poorly in the orphanage in an authoritarian get-back-to-nature world. Her body is extensively enhanced beyond human with various implausibly space-opera-ish enhancements, but most have not grown in properly without the right nutrients, which no-one has been giving her. She escapes just ahead of some brainwashing (which might expose, well, if her brain is not-exactly-traditional-human either) and ends up eventually hitching a ride on an independent merchant ship and getting into many further scrapes from there.

I enjoy the "protagonist has all the awesome superpowers" thing but there's a reasonable amount of "does she learn to leverage her advantages well" which is what I enjoy even more. Nice although not super memorable secondary characters and overall plot. Some reasonable resolved mysteries.

What I found interesting was the physics -- the premise is several layers of hyperspace, in each of which a position corresponds to a known position in our space, but in which distance is progressively smaller. Each has its own variant of physics based on the same principles, but possibly with different universal constants or initial distribution of matter. Alpha layer is normal-ish. Beta is mostly anti-matter (which is ok in deep space, the space opera deflector shields are quite good). Gamma is used for travel by ships which aren't powerful enough to manage the final transition. Delta has reversed gravity and is full of plasma because matter never formed. There are also several *sub* layers where distances are *longer*, which are studied but not usually used. Spaceship tactics include managing layer transitions.

And the society too. Super-human (level 5+), human equivalent (level 4), and intelligent-but-more-limited-than-human AI (level 3) exist in various combinations (human brains uploaded or transplanted into mechanical or biological android bodies, or AIs in that variety of body, etc). Human-equivalent AI have the same rights as humans in many places but are not always treated that way. Level 3 are treated as an underclass most places (the protagonist is not ok with this!) Level 2 are treated like animals or machines (which seems about right). Level 5 are banned after a bunch of wars about it. People expect it to be possible to make ever-more-powerful AIs but no-one has yet. But all this just exists, putting much more weight behind moral questions about the subject than many books which obsensibly tackle the subjects more head on.

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Rants about Anathem

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 12:38:49 GMT

I really enjoy anathem. I enjoy the premise of organisations devoted to pure thinking. I enjoy a book which plays with practical implications of weird philosophy. I enjoy the general hopeful attitude. But every time I read it I also find MORE AND MORE which makes me incredibly cheesed off:

( Rants )

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Borderline, Mishell Baker

Tue, 30 May 2017 13:32:54 GMT

I'm rereading Borderline in preparation for reading Phantom Pains.

(Be warned that although these are not dwelt on unnecessarily during the book, and I didn't notice any notable bad handling, the main character suffered emotional abuse and a suicide attempt before the book starts.)

I love the basic concept. The main character, struggling to cope with borderline personality disorder, is recruited by an ad-hoc agency dealing with various supernatural stuff. More like negotiating stuff than SWAT raids. I'm being deliberately vague because I like the way the main character finds out about this stuff so I want to avoid spoilers.

Writing about a character whose perceptions shift so radically is really hard. Whenever you're dealing with a main character's flawed perception, you need a balance between, narrative presents their point of view at least superficially plausibly, and yet sooner or later gives enough information that the reader can tell its skewed. But when "this person is great" and "this person is horrible" can abruptly switch places without warning, it's really hard to carry the reader along. Somehow it feels like it doesn't really "count" if the main character believes it but I don't. Borderline handles this well (although not so well I didn't notice).

The supernatural worldbuilding is also really interesting (spoilers below), although it did feel sometimes like it hadn't been fleshed out enough.

I followed the author on twitter and was really pleased when she was nominated for a Nebula.

( Minor spoilers )

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Expanse series, James S A Corey

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 16:12:49 GMT

I read the first book, Leviathan Wakes, a little while back, and recently got round to reading the second and third. Someone online said book #5 was really good, so we'll see what I think.

What I really like is the setting -- medium future solar system SF, when Mars has been settled, and Earth and Mars are the solar system's superpowers, but humans are still scattered round the belt and a few other places doing mining and research and so on, with a varying tension in how they're loyal to the inner planet governments they have almost no connection with.

It's old school in a way I like, to imagine humanity will eventually make inroads into the solar system, rather than assuming it will never happen, or will only happen by some magic alien tech which is dropped onto us. It feels like, it's at an *earlier* phase than some other books, in that we've settled *one* other planet, and some other asteroids and moons, and the situation is evolving from there.

Earth and Mars have military spaceships, bu they're like aircraft carriers -- they've rarely been tested seriously against OTHER serious military spaceships, only against smaller stuff. And they really exist as a last line of defence for the settled planets which might be futile.

Of course, into the middle of this, they DO drop some alien technology, which is simultaneously an incomprehensible physics-defying threat, but also automated and uncontrolled and potentially an opportunity if you're VERY VERY careful.

The second and third books are about as good as the first (which is good but not superb for a series :)). They still talk about the settled human places and the politics between, though it's evolved a lot. And I wish there were more of it. The alien tech is still there, not sidelined, still central to the plot of each, in what happens next, but not completely obviating the existing worldbuilding.

A few minor details bother me. "No lightspeed delay" is not impossible like "free energy" it's impossible like "garble warble farble" -- you need to say what it MEANS before you can attempt to claim it's something which has happened. *Different* details bothered other friends.

The second and third books are *better* at a varied representation. The first book focuses on Miller, a hardboiled detective archetype, and Holden, who has almost the same personality but runs a spaceship instead of being a detective. The second and third keep Holden but have (I think), an even mix of male and female viewpoint characters, many of which I really like. Although I feel it's still playing catch-up in some ways, like one fo the viewpoints in the third book is an antagonist, who doesn't feel as equal as the others.

And the viewpoints are not always very distinct -- when it's describing what's going on, it's easy to forget who's in theory seeing it. And I feel like something's missing it's hard to put my finger on. Like each character has stuff that happens, but it's not always much of an *arc*, it's sometimes hard to fit "challenges met and overcome" into the plot of the book.

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Recent media

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 11:45:09 GMT

Caped anthology

A collection of superhero short stories. Not a must-read, but I found all were a good read in a different way.

Archivist Wasp, book

Which was on the wiki of "potential hugo nominations" with a great title. I loved the basic setting, a post-apocalyptic world, where the protagonist is honoured/trapped as the archivist, ghost-hunter, forced each year by the priest to fight to the death to keep her role as intermediate to the supernatural. Straining to keep the community safe from dangerous ghosts, and to record what scraps of information she can, to add to the archives for future archivists.

Then she meets a pre-apocalypse (or contemporary-with-apocalypse) ghost, much stronger than any other, and they flee together, passing through the ghost underworld, and... Well, I liked the start but got bored, so I didn't finish it.

Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi

I loved the premise here, all about life in a mostly-post-uplift solar system. The inner planets are ruled by some of the cabal who were uplifted first, now effectively Gods. The Oubliette is one of the few havens for non-uplifted, but ruled by a massive shared exo-memory, people share or refuse permissions from. Other humans live in the Oort cloud. Jean Le Flambeur is an anti-hero thief, with unspecified ties to the "gods", broken out of a virtual prison to recover... something from Oubliette.

When I first read it, I completely bounced off it. On second reading, all that mostly made sense to me, and I was really interested in it. But I wasn't sure how consistent it could be, if it would be kept up for the following books or not. I will probably try them at some point.

And it constantly felt like they waved "quantum" around as magic, and I'm not sure, if my understanding is lacking, or the book's is.

Better Call Saul

The prequel series to Breaking Bad, about Jimmy McGill (later aka Saul Goodman), an ex-huckster small-time lawyer trying to make good, and torn between his impulses to "be basically decent", "screw everything up" and "open his mouth at the wrong time". From the reviews it sounded like I would enjoy it more than BB, and I quite enjoyed the first half-a-dozen episodes, but then I mostly lost interest.

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Brief Review: A Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 16:53:19 GMT

http://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/girl-intercorrupted/

Yudkowsky wrote another story. A short one!! Apparently that's a genre in Japan? It tries to be, the plot of a book, but hustles through each chapter with much less filler than a normal novel.

A young woman who is heavily into internal things including online kinky things, is the prophesied hero summoned into another dimension to save the world. The characterisation of the main character is not perfect, but is better than I feared.

The focus on the rules of magic, the implications and subversions thereof, are the most interesting bit. I didn't think it was as interesting as HPMOR or some of Scott Alexander's stories, but it was worth reading if you like that sort of thing.

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Thoughts on Flex

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 14:58:19 GMT

Flex is theferrett's novel. I'm always excited when someone I read online has a traditional novel published.

The central characters: the protagonist Paul Tsabo, an ex-cop insurance investigator who loves methodical paperwork, his reserved young daughter, his ex-wife are very movingly painted, and much more involved with the main character and the plot than most families in urban fantasy. I was really moved by his description of how paperwork makes civilisation.

In the acknowledgements at the end, he describes specific improvements to the novel people suggested, not just that they helped a lot, that was really interesting.

He does what I always try to do, to make a magic system that's dramatic and cool and full of cool ideas (make something from a videogame! make anything from paperwork!) but also clear what's going on so it's clear when the hero has an instant-win button and when he doesn't. Not out of arbitrary pedantry, but so there's actually any form of tension in the story whatsoever. Ferrett describes why this usually makes a better story very very well here: Avoiding Doctor Strange Syndrome. And he does it much better than most books. Although, unfortunately, I felt he didn't succeed as well as I'd hoped: in the vast majority of scenes, it was clear what the possibilities were, what was easy, what was possible with a cost etc, so naturally you didn't even think about it. But some of the big "this is how the magic system works" moments I felt relied too much on "some sense of fairness drawn from the practitioner's subconscious", when honestly, it could have been made up either way and made as much sense.

Did other people post reviews yet?

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Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 10:06:43 GMT

Santa Olivia is an urban fantasy by author Jacqueline Carey, used to writing the high-fantasy Kushiel books. Except it's not technically urban fantasy because the changes are covert genetic modification which is enhanced strength and speed described as "a bit like being a werewolf" rather than magic, but it feels very much the same.

A plague ravages north and central america, and war reignites over the depopulated border territories, and American throws up a permanent military cordon is thrown up north of the border. But it traps in a small town, where the survivors of the plague aren't allowed out either way, and are kept secret from the outside, and the town exists in an uncomfortable symbiosis with the army base.

The story charts one of the genetically modified soldiers, a woman from the town who falls in love with him, but is primarily about her son and daughter.

The werewolf character is described as literally missing the emotion of fear, not typically a good thing, and this is tackled head on in how it might apply to a child of all ages.

There's a recurring boxing subtheme, which I found handled very well. I think that was where I picked up the recommendation; someone said the boxing had been researched and was reasonably realistic.

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Edge of Tomorrow

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 14:24:43 GMT

( Minor spoilers )

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Southern Gods

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 09:33:26 GMT

Looking at the cover of Southern Gods tells you what I enjoyed about it.

I don't normally read horror, but I'm glad I read this, at least the first half.

The first half is dripping with flavour. It reminds me of To Kill a Mocking Bird post-WWII with blues and voodoo. A loan shark is sent on not-his-usual-job, to find someone who's disappeared in post-WWII American South. A pirate radio station plays unearthly blues music, which is haunting, but also dangerous.

It feels real in the way many books don't. The record producer isn't just fulfilling a roll, he's scrambling to get a dominant position in the emerging blues market, by bribing all the tiny radio stations to play his music. His assistants, one of whom have disappeared, are normal family men, doing their job of driving round the south schmoozing each little DJ or radio-station owner.

The record producer panics when he hears the rise-up-from-the-grave-and-murder music, and cuts it off, but manages to record some using his recording booth, and is willing to risk finding it to see if he can harness the magic in the music for less-ominous ends.

When a shadowy creature appears, it's really terrifying.

Unfortunately, when the second half gets more specific, it breaks the magic for me. The mythos is tied explicitly into the lovecraftian mythos, which rather broke my suspension of disbelief. It even uses the word "godshatter", which really, really broke my suspension of disbelief -- it's a good concept, but to me it just doesn't how the several-hundred-years-ago church would have described it. And there's an abrupt transition from scary to "beat them up".

And there were a few other problems, like the relationship between white estranged-daughter and black housekeeper, who were closest friends as children, is nice, but develops the daughter at the expense of the housekeeper.

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Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, third reading

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 10:55:54 GMT

( Read more... )

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Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 23:19:26 GMT

Second in the stormlight saga. I thought it was very comparable to the first one, with the same strengths and the same weaknesses. The characters evolve further, and interact with each other more. We discover more about the magic system and mythology, which is what I really like about Sanderson. I like some of the characters, but many of the characters and emotions felt a bit flat to me, like someone trying to describe emotions second-hand.

I like that we get to play more with the magic system. Shallan exploring what she can do is one of the most Sanderson-y bits that works really well.

I don't know if he can keep this up for 10 books! Few people set out to write an arc of 10 books. He's doing well so far, but it's definitely ambitious.

( Read more... )

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Cryoburn

Wed, 22 Jan 2014 14:47:47 GMT

( Cryoburn )

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Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 16:59:28 GMT

At the weekend, we met a friend from Australia with a young child, who introduced us to one of the cutest children's books I've seen, Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy, about a dog and friends.

Schnitzel von Krumm
with a very low tum,
Bitzer Maloney
all skinny and bony,
Muffin McLay
like a bundle of hay,
Bottomly Potts
covered in spots,
Hercules Morse
as big as a horse,
and Hairy Maclary
from Donaldson's Dairy
Went off for a Walk

I love the poetry of the words, introducing a two-year-old to a expressive if advanced vocabulary, and the vividness of the dogs names and pictures.

The complete text is at: http://www.murphsplace.com/crowe/charlie/hairy-story.html

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The Rook (Daniel O'Malley)

Sat, 07 Sep 2013 12:08:29 GMT

Several people recommended the Rook as British urban fantasy and when I'd heard enough different people recommend it, I decided I had to read it. I enjoyed it an awful lot, although I was left with a feeling that not enough had actually happened by the end.

( Premise (minor spoilers), and what I liked and didn't like )

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Thousand Names, Djanjo Wexler

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 13:03:28 GMT

Sharpe in Secondary-world fantasy

Thousand Names is a fantasy novel that draws heavily on napoleonic memoirs, similarly to Sharpe or Hornblower (but land-based). I've wanted something like that for a long time so I'm glad I found it.

The main viewpoint character is the dutiful but tired captain, left in charge of a remote garrison in a previously-occupied province. But the main character is a Sherlock-esque ambitious young intellectual colonel who arrives with the instructions to recapture the province. The characterisation wanders a bit, but it does a reasonable job of pitting experience against brilliance and showing the advantages and disadvantages of both.

My biggest complaint is that it doesn't really add anything to that. The scenes are almost always dealing with magic or military tactics identical to muskets/cavalry/artillery in our world, it doesn't try to answer "what if wizards were common on the battlefield".

Otherwise, it's a good but not outstanding fantasy/army novel.

Details good and bad

Lots of details ring very true: standard soldier's life is full of late pay and annoyances and waiting for baggage trains, rather than great fights between good and evil. Most people are loyal to the people they know, not to abstract ideals. The people on both sides of the conflict are characterised and realistic.

Other things are a bit generic. They constantly complain that they have the dregs of the army (they even use Wellington's angry/affectionate term "scum of the earth"), but it's most of the way through the book before they actually have any practical problems with people being less that utterly professional.

Bechdel test

It passes the Bechdel test, which is pretty good going. Assuming a woman spending 100% of the time pretending to be a man counts, but I think it does. I'm not entirely happy with the characterisation of the female characters, but there is a variety of them, with varied backgrounds and motivations.

Vaguely arabic desert nomads

On the plus side, the nomads had reasonable motivations and fought effectively. On the minus side, they were the only group which didn't have any viewpoint characters, or any individual characters at all other than the faceless leader.

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Mike Shevdon: Road to Bedlam

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:10:08 GMT

Road to Bedlam is the sequel to Sixty-One Nails, about British Feyre. Unfortunately, while it still brought some good ideas, it managed to do less of what I enjoyed than the first book :(

The good

What I really liked is the feeling of feyre as alien, even when most of the characters are feyre. The revulsion to iron feels like a real thing, that despite feyre and human being equally people, and despite occasionally needing to resort to iron as a defence, it still feels deeply, gut-wrenchingly wrong.

Being able to hear truth is accepted as how feyre work, they have the usual courtesies, but it's more obvious when someone doesn't mean them, but it's a start to endless intrigues feyre are famous for, where they have to tell just enough of the truth.

The bad

Unfortunately, several things ruined the mood a bit for me, though I don't know whether other people would care.

Now we know a bit more about how the different courts work, the shadowy mysterious scary antagonist from the first book feels more like a generic antagonist who's not that creepy, just dangerous and annoying.

Despite the good setting with reading truth, etc, it ends up not mattering that much. The antagonist is lying through his teeth by my standards, even though what he says is literally true and reasonably without loophole, and I could tell that and so could the protagonist, and they end up at the crucial point together anyway, so it didn't matter much how much he trusted him.

Despite spending some time at the courts, the protagonist seems to be almost entirely untutored in magic. There's good reasons not to train him too much, but it leads to some moments of veering between "I've no idea how to do really basic stuff, or even if it's possible" and "I can do stuff no-one's ever done before."

There's too many occasions when someone says "just trust me", when there seems a dangerously high chance of people getting separated, and knowing what's going on being helpful. They all individually make sense, but they a bit give the plot a feeling of floating around loose for half the book, while you wait, not to find out what happens, but partly waiting for someone to ask the obvious questions.

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BUG (Big Ugly Guy)

Thu, 30 May 2013 22:30:59 GMT

BUG (Big Ugly Guy) is a children's book about a boy bullied at school, who learns how to make a Golem to protect himself, even though he's warned that it will go horribly wrong and the golem will become violent. And he makes a lot of friends and starts a band, with some of them and with the golem as drummer. And it goes horribly wrong in various ways, but mostly comes out ok in the end, and everyone except the golem and the bully are happy.

I enjoyed it, but it didn't push the same buttons for an adult who's already familiar with narrative structure as some children's books do.

In fact, I was a lot more interested in various peripheral thoughts.

It's very strange to read stories of serious bullying, because I constantly think "ok, bullying happens, but when people are put in hospital, surely the police will take an interest?" But I know perfectly well there's lots of places where there is no authority.

The golem, Gully, was really touching in the flashes of humanity he shows. In fact, it's really depressing to see the story from his point of view. Being created to love exactly one person, alternately praised and shouted at when you try to protect them. Learning to be a drummer. And then committing suicide to stop yourself hurting him :(

I'm getting impatient with both eager young apprentices who don't listen to reason and old mentors who dispense gnomic advice. Sure, you can't always instil a general agreement about which actions are too risky/too cautious. But if there's some specific action at question, try talking about specifics and see if you actually disagree or are just talking past each other.

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Fan Fiction

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:41:21 GMT

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Most people already love Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality which is like Harry Potter would be if it was written by Eliezer Yudkowsky[1].

It's sometimes annoying in the ways you'd expect -- I found the first couple of chapters unbearably smug. But it's fascinating for the way it takes the Harry Potter world as a backdrop for presenting a scientific or rationalist worldview.

[1] Because it is Harry Potter written by Eliezer Yudkowsky :)

Harry Potter and the Natural Twenty

Harry Potter and the Natural Twenty is generally reminiscent of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality but with a DnD munchkinism in the place of rationality.

It's not thought-provoking in the same way, and some of the jokes are tediously obvious, but people who liked Methods often said they found it very enjoyable and funny.

Tales of Magic University (NSFW)

Tales of MU is not technically fanfiction, but it comes from that sort of culture.

It's an ongoing story about a girl who goes to university in a DnD-inspired world.

It intermittently features many common fanfictiony sort of faults, but I also found it very very endearing, and have kept reading all the way through.

If you like the "magic school" genre, it's a good example of it.

It also features a lot of the main character coming to terms with her sexuality, and BDSM, LGBT, polyamory, trans characters, etc, etc. and quite a lot of fairly graphic sex scenes.

Whately Academy Stories (sometimes NSFW)

Whately Academy is a shared-universe fiction writing project about a school for superheroes. Again, it's not technically fanfiction, but has the same sort of style.

There's so much of it, don't try to read all of it. The safest place to start is probably with "Intro" and "Ninja 1" which are about most of the main characters, and start with them settling in to the school. Some of the origin stories before that were rather harrowing, and might be offputting. From then on, I read all the Jade/Generator stories, and then the Ayla/Phase stories.

Some parts I found very annoying or simplistic, but a lot I found very very endearing -- I fell in love with most of the characters, and how they learn to use their fairly random powers in increasingly interesting ways, the intertwining stories show different aspects of them, and how they all grow into who they are in different ways.

All the main characters are transgender, and this is often handled well, but sometimes handled in ways that made me very uncomfortable. I can be more specific if it would help.

ETA: Further suggestions added much later
ETA: Also see https://www.drmaciver.com/2018/05/trashy-fiction-recommendations/
ETA: Also see https://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/1056721.html e.g. Time Braid by ShaperV (Sakrua-centred Naruto groundhog day fic which AFAICT if much better than trying to watch Naruto: Shippuden straight. Warning for some disturbing sex stuff.)
ETA: Also from above, Super Powereds by Drew Hayes

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Sixty-One Nails, Mike Shevdon

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:56:30 GMT

Mike Shevdon was one of many authors that I saw or heard mentioned at Eastercon and immediately wanted to try their books. Liv picked up his first one.

Good things

Sixty-one Nails is urban fantasy, about a slightly-older slightly-less-bachelor protagonist than usual, who is sucked into an underworld of Fae.

The Fae are well-written: the alienness, the necessity of being truthful if misleading, complicated pacts, aversion to iron, court politics etc all feel like they really matter, in a way that a lot of urban fantasy doesn't capture.

The lovely thing is that the plot is fast tangled up with an 800-year-old ritual of the law courts, paying a quit rent of hazel rods cut with two particular knives, one sharp, one blunt, that apparently is actually true.

Bad things

Lamentably, I didn't find the plot as engaging as the premise. Nothing was specifically wrong, but it felt like it had the necessary plot elements existing in a vacuum, lacking the background depth of some of the setting.

Gender

Fairly typical, some good female characters, but some things I didn't like.

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