4 More

The latest reads:

1. "The Vanished Birds", by Simon Jiminez, 2020, 457 pages. I thought this was going to be a serial novel, with a constantly changing narrator, but it does wind up with a fairly limited recurring cast. Good, realistic characters. But they adopt a technology that reminded me of Ziegler in "Moulin Rouge", when he signs the deeds over to The Count even knowing that Satine is dying of TB. Designing a system with a single, personal point of failure is not good design. This was a decent read.

2. "The Enchanted Castle", by Edith Nesbit, 1907, 235 pages. I came across a mention of this book as an alternative to the Narnia stories. Nesbit was apparently a popular children's author in the 1st 1/4 of the 20th century. The story has some whimsical fun, but very British in feel. It will not be going to my granddaughter, which was who I was reading this for.

3. "One Man", by Harry Connolly, 2019, 569 pages. I like Connolly's writing, lots of action. The historical plot threads are interwoven nicely. I look forward to more in this series.

4. "Finna", by Nino Cipri, 2020, 97 pages. This came across as something cheesy, made-for-SyFy-channel fluff. And lo, originally this was a screenplay in a writing class. The review calling it an "anti-capitalist adventure" is really a stretch. The 2 main characters in McJobs say "That's capitalism for you" or some such thing to each other as a joke - pretty weak for an anti-capitalism theme.

   1 of the characters is a (queer?) female, the other is a transgender person who identifies as they/them/theirs. I really dislike the they/them/theirs. It is immediately ambiguous between singular and plural usages. I thought of the French 3rd person impersonal pronoun "on" - you could translate that to Engish as "one" - "give it to one" - but that still has ambiguities.

   They should have gone with new, unique words designed just for this purpose. Didn't Anne Leckie have such pronouns in the Ancillary books? Other sci-fi authors as well. Ze/zir/zirs maybe? If we're going to add new language, let's do the best job we can.