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Books
Anders Björkelid: Ondvinter
I must admit to having been disappointed by this one. It's not that it's bad, as such - it's perfectly well written, with a nicely Scandinavia-feeling fantasy world - it's just. It's so - predictable, I suppose. Nothing in the book is really original - mystical prophecies? Check. Ancient fallen empires and secret groups carrying on ancient traditions from them? Check. Children raised unaware of magical secret kinships and stuff? Check. It's - dull.
Zen Cho: Sorcerer to the Crown
This is definitely a slow starter, but once we get to the last part of the book, it does pay off. And there's good worldbuilding and some lovely side characters (Mak Genggang the awesomest witch! Rollo thedragon dandy! Damerell! Aunt Georgiana!) The biggest problem I have with it, though, is that I never warmed to the female protagonist, Prunella. Oh well...
Bernard Cornwell: Sword Song
Maria Helleberg & Jørgen Lange Thomsen: Hvad døde de kongelige af?
A slightly different overview of the Danish royal line - and apparently the early viking/medieval kings might have had heart issues and a tendency to die relatively young and unexpectedly, and for a while there the Danish royal line manage to inbreed enough to produce kings who were scarily short, pale and occasionally insane. So yeah. I do think they should have left out the last couple of chapters - having a forensic investigator read historical documents and make educated guesses about people from the distant past is interesting, having the same man go: well, the king died in a modern hospital, so it's well-documented what he died of, but I didn't have access to those records, so this is my educated guess - not half as interesting. In fact kinda annoying.
Emmi Itäranta: Memory of Water
Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice
I was entertained. I was less wow'ed than I've seen some people be, but then, that might simply be because I've seen so many people be wow'ed. Still, I was entertained and I'll be getting my hands on the next book.
Marjorie M. Liu: Tiger Eye
Jacob Skyggebjerg: Hvad mener du med vi
This was disappointing. It's a story about seven women authors spending a week at a højskole writing, and then reading bits of their stories to one another, and hanging out and being social. It could have been a somewhat satirical Decamerone style thing, but it never quite manages that - the story bits are mostly dull, the book never quite manages to be funny, and frankly, at the points where I can see what the satire was supposed to be, it just feels kinda mean. Also boring. Mostly boring. Not wasting more time on that author.
Som et urværk
This is the usual mix of Danish sf short stories - some bad, some good. I found myself quite liking Flemming R.P. Rasch's clockpunk dystopia "Som et urværk", Jesper Goll's "Postludium", which is a story about a wonderdrug making people more intelligent and better - and unable to endure music in any form, and "Anne-Marie Træholt Rasmussen's "Et levende museum."
But my favourite story was Lise Andreasen's "Choris paidia". It's your basic fertility plummets disaster story - but the main character is a childfree woman, who chose to be sterilized pre-fertility disaster because she just doesn't want children. And what I like is that it isn't a hopeless ending, and we don't have the protagonist dragged off to get inseminated against her will, or something like that - the plot is that she's notified that due to new legislation she has to have her sterilization reversed. In other words, this world is already so far out that women's basic human rights are ignored and they're forced to have surgery against their will - I very much doubt that the forced inseminations and locking women up in special prisons to make sure they don't "accidentally" miscarry would be far behind, when they've already gotten that far. But the author doesn't go that way - instead she has her protagonist dig up some dirt on "Mrs. Prime Minister" and essentially blackmails her into changing the political course, choosing other, more humane ways of attempting to maintain the population level. And leaving our protagonist childfree still. The only thing I didn't really like about this story is how our protagonist is so surprised at the new law - this would be such a massive human rights and women rights violation that you'd think she'd have heard of it before - though I suppose the blame for that lies on the short story format's limitations.
Charles Stross: The Annihilation Score
Karin Tidbeck: Amatka
What the hell sort of place did these people colonize? Solaris?!
Comics
Brian Azzarello: Wonder Woman: War
Brian Michael Bendis: Guardians of the Galaxy: Angela
Brian Michael Bendis: Powers: Gods
Thierry Capezzone: På sporet af Kim
Deadpool Team-Up: Good Buddies
Gerry Duggan: Deadpool: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Jean van Hamme: XIII: La version irlandaise - the Kelly Brian story
Hermann: Old Pa Anderson
Mariko Tamaki: This One Summer
Yana Toboso: Black Butler 17.
Brian K. Vaughan: Ex Machina book 4.
Could somebody do this as a tv show? Please?
Mark Waid: SHIELD: Perfect Bullets
Total number of books and comics read this month: 23
Currently reading: Kim Newman's Dracula Cha cha cha
Total number of books and comics read this year: 74
Anders Björkelid: Ondvinter
I must admit to having been disappointed by this one. It's not that it's bad, as such - it's perfectly well written, with a nicely Scandinavia-feeling fantasy world - it's just. It's so - predictable, I suppose. Nothing in the book is really original - mystical prophecies? Check. Ancient fallen empires and secret groups carrying on ancient traditions from them? Check. Children raised unaware of magical secret kinships and stuff? Check. It's - dull.
Zen Cho: Sorcerer to the Crown
This is definitely a slow starter, but once we get to the last part of the book, it does pay off. And there's good worldbuilding and some lovely side characters (Mak Genggang the awesomest witch! Rollo the
Bernard Cornwell: Sword Song
Maria Helleberg & Jørgen Lange Thomsen: Hvad døde de kongelige af?
A slightly different overview of the Danish royal line - and apparently the early viking/medieval kings might have had heart issues and a tendency to die relatively young and unexpectedly, and for a while there the Danish royal line manage to inbreed enough to produce kings who were scarily short, pale and occasionally insane. So yeah. I do think they should have left out the last couple of chapters - having a forensic investigator read historical documents and make educated guesses about people from the distant past is interesting, having the same man go: well, the king died in a modern hospital, so it's well-documented what he died of, but I didn't have access to those records, so this is my educated guess - not half as interesting. In fact kinda annoying.
Emmi Itäranta: Memory of Water
Ann Leckie: Ancillary Justice
I was entertained. I was less wow'ed than I've seen some people be, but then, that might simply be because I've seen so many people be wow'ed. Still, I was entertained and I'll be getting my hands on the next book.
Marjorie M. Liu: Tiger Eye
Jacob Skyggebjerg: Hvad mener du med vi
This was disappointing. It's a story about seven women authors spending a week at a højskole writing, and then reading bits of their stories to one another, and hanging out and being social. It could have been a somewhat satirical Decamerone style thing, but it never quite manages that - the story bits are mostly dull, the book never quite manages to be funny, and frankly, at the points where I can see what the satire was supposed to be, it just feels kinda mean. Also boring. Mostly boring. Not wasting more time on that author.
Som et urværk
This is the usual mix of Danish sf short stories - some bad, some good. I found myself quite liking Flemming R.P. Rasch's clockpunk dystopia "Som et urværk", Jesper Goll's "Postludium", which is a story about a wonderdrug making people more intelligent and better - and unable to endure music in any form, and "Anne-Marie Træholt Rasmussen's "Et levende museum."
But my favourite story was Lise Andreasen's "Choris paidia". It's your basic fertility plummets disaster story - but the main character is a childfree woman, who chose to be sterilized pre-fertility disaster because she just doesn't want children. And what I like is that it isn't a hopeless ending, and we don't have the protagonist dragged off to get inseminated against her will, or something like that - the plot is that she's notified that due to new legislation she has to have her sterilization reversed. In other words, this world is already so far out that women's basic human rights are ignored and they're forced to have surgery against their will - I very much doubt that the forced inseminations and locking women up in special prisons to make sure they don't "accidentally" miscarry would be far behind, when they've already gotten that far. But the author doesn't go that way - instead she has her protagonist dig up some dirt on "Mrs. Prime Minister" and essentially blackmails her into changing the political course, choosing other, more humane ways of attempting to maintain the population level. And leaving our protagonist childfree still. The only thing I didn't really like about this story is how our protagonist is so surprised at the new law - this would be such a massive human rights and women rights violation that you'd think she'd have heard of it before - though I suppose the blame for that lies on the short story format's limitations.
Charles Stross: The Annihilation Score
Karin Tidbeck: Amatka
What the hell sort of place did these people colonize? Solaris?!
Comics
Brian Azzarello: Wonder Woman: War
Brian Michael Bendis: Guardians of the Galaxy: Angela
Brian Michael Bendis: Powers: Gods
Thierry Capezzone: På sporet af Kim
Deadpool Team-Up: Good Buddies
Gerry Duggan: Deadpool: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Jean van Hamme: XIII: La version irlandaise - the Kelly Brian story
Hermann: Old Pa Anderson
Mariko Tamaki: This One Summer
Yana Toboso: Black Butler 17.
Brian K. Vaughan: Ex Machina book 4.
Could somebody do this as a tv show? Please?
Mark Waid: SHIELD: Perfect Bullets
Total number of books and comics read this month: 23
Currently reading: Kim Newman's Dracula Cha cha cha
Total number of books and comics read this year: 74
From:
no subject
What the hell sort of place did these people colonize? Solaris?!
Ha ha, yeah. It was weird.
From:
no subject
Memory of Water - it's okay, but I found myself mostly arguing with the worldbuilding. It's - unconvincing. Drinkable water is supposed to be so very scarce, but society seems to basically keep using it for all sorts of silly things - not the tea, that makes sense, cultural importance to rare things and all - but. And it never managed to convince me that water was actually scarce, making the (admittedly very authoritarian and unpleasant) government come across as punishing people for things that never feel like they actually matter. Though I suppose that might be the author's intention, and the water has actually recovered just fine everywhere, and the rationing and scarcity is just the government's way of staying in power?
From:
no subject
The book is on my list of books-to-check-out, but I think you've just bumped it down a bit.
From:
no subject
The world is interesting enough, with a culture heavily influenced by Asia, and lots of knowledge lost to time and/or the authorities. And it's not a bad book, I just - never felt convinced. They've got water, it's just desalinated and rationed (in large enough portions that people bathe and wash and so forth in it - yes, people put out basins to collect extra water when it rains, but it never feels like the water shortage is as bad in the showing as we are told that it is) - I was just never convinced, I suppose.