Tuesday, July 07, 2020

Meh, Nice, So Close!

2 fantasies and 1 mixed collection of short stories.

1st up, "The Raven Tower" by Ann Leckie, 2019, 402 pages, 109k words. I enjoyed Leckie's Ancillary sci-fi trilogy, I figured I'd give this a go. So this world has gods, which are potentially immortal beings who can make things happen by the force of their will if they have enough power from prayers and offerings stored up. They can also eat one another and acquire power that way. Interesting, I guess.

The narration of the book is odd. The main character of the book is a warrior aid of the heir to the throne. They present as a man but may or may not be a woman. This has nothing to do with the plot. The narrator is an apparently somewhat omniscient being who we later find out is a god who addresses itself to the main character??? There's a meandering plot, and a somewhat abrupt conclusion. So overall, meh.

Next up, "Sooner Or Later Everything Falls Into The Sea" by Sarah Pinsker, 2019, 357 pages, 97k words. A very enjoyable collection of 13 stories. Several have music themes, Pinsker is also a musician. A story about a generation ship dragged a little, which made me remember how the 1st date I went on with my wife of 44 years was in June 1968 to see "2001: A Space Odyssey", and we were so proud to have figured out that the trip to Jupiter dragged in the movie because a trip to Jupiter would be a boring, drug out journey. So 100x that for a generation ship.

The last story was particularly clever, a murder mystery at a convention of 1000 or so of the different multiverse versions of the inventor of the multiverse gate, a lot of whom are named Sarah Pinsker. Nice!

3rd and last, "The City We Became" by N.K. Jemison, 2020, 479 pages, 130k words, "The Great Cities Trilogy #1". I read 1 of her fantasy trilogies years ago, and recently gave a short story collection of hers 5 stars, which I almost never do.

I had read the prologue to this book I think on tor.com and like the premise: cities that reach a certain size and/or complexity and/or je ne sais quoi become sentient and exist on many planes in the multiverse. This is the story of New York's birth. But there is an Enemy who opposes the cities, whom it up to the cities' avatars to fight. Very fast paced, very hip characters, very New York, was going for another 5 star rating but then - Jemisin did something that just didn't seem right to me. If you want to know what, read past the spoiler alert. Still, very enjoyable, I went on and bought her other recent trilogy, each volume of which won the Hugo Award, 3 years in a row - unheard of. Fun new word: "broccoliesque". So close!

****************** SPOILER ALERT *****************
At one point, Jemisin brings H.P. Lovecraft into the mix, in a painting sent by the Enemy which portrays a scene from Lovecraft and outs his horrible racism and xenophobia. But then at the climax of the book, it is revealed that the Enemy is a city from a different dimension - it is fact Lovecraft's sunken city R'lyeh, trying to overlay New York and thus establish a bridgehead into our universe.

That just struck me as wrong. After rightfully and righteously calling out Lovecraft's racism and xenophobia, to then borrow one of his best known memes as a major plot element seemed totally incongruous.

Maybe it's just me. Still, a great read.

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