What are you reading these days?

I've been reading quite a bit this week, and everything has been pretty good.

I read through all three of The Locked Tomb books -- Gideon The Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, and Nona the Ninth. These are space fantasy novels, kind of puzzle-box style books that hinge on the unfolding of some central mystery. Gideon is a relatively straightforward murder mystery, does what it says in the blurb: "Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless Emperor! Skeletons!" It's a debut novel, and a very good one; author Tamsyn Muir writes in a very strong and, for me, instantly charming voice (that of the titular Gideon, an indentured swordswoman forced to pretend to be her biggest hater's bodyguard and companion). The prose, particularly when Muir is describing great masses of bones or necromantic gore, can be astonishingly beautiful, and the murder mystery is tight and engaging -- with the caveat that we're stuck in Gideon's perspective, and Gideon is kind of a himbo, so our understanding is severely limited for most of the novel. There are some rough edges; the pacing feels a bit wonky, and the fight scenes are too long, and I really am not a fan of all the memes in this book, but it's a very strong opener to the series.

Harrow The Ninth, the sequel, marks a sharp and surprising turn towards surrealism that the series never goes back on. In it, our new protagonist, Harrowhark (Gideon's enemy-turned-lover from the last book) has undergone some serous brain damage, and the story follows her trying to figure it all out while failing to ascend to semi-godhood. This is a fantastic novel, certainly the best in the series so far, maybe one of the best fantasy books I've read, period, but it left me feeling exhausted, with a splitting headache. The novel is, weirdly, written in second person, except that half of it is flashbacks to the first book from Harrow's perspective, except the flashbacks are obviously factually wrong. And the book is full of time-jumps, dream sequences, worldbuilding from dubiously reliable narrators, framing devices that stick around for only a couple chapters, and answers to questions lingering from the last book that only create more questions. So even though, by the end, we the readers get a lot of satisfying answers, the journey to get there feels a bit like being gaslit and a bit like having brain surgery. And then the epilogue courteously does its best to throw everything into confusion again. Harrow manages all this with astonishing deftness; it's like watching someone juggle axes with their eyes closed. Upon fishing it I felt with certainty that I will never write anything even close to as good as this -- Muir has supplemented her strong characters and prose with a compelling world and complete structural mastery. Shame that it's all a bit miserable.

Lastly, Nona the Ninth, which continues Muir's trend of telling her story from the least informed perspective possible. Gideon was kinda dumb, Harrow had brain damage, and now Nona is a woman who essentially cannot retain information -- nineteen years old, friends with a gang of middle schoolers who, correctly, think she is dumb. The last two books were high stakes stories full of necromancers and cosmic horrors and God; the third considerably lowers the stakes, telling a deeply personal story about a girl who has lost her identity, found a family, and is having the worst birthday of all time. In some sense this is much less exciting, much smaller; however, I found Nona was maybe my favorite book of the trilogy. It adds an incredible amount of texture and humanity to Muir's world, and its mystery is the most subtle and satisfying so far; if Harrow delights in confusing the reader with a thousand big questions, Nona's opening acts ask maybe a dozen little ones, so subtly that I often wasn't even aware that they were intended to be questions until they were answered in, again, a tremendously satisfying finale.

As of now, The Locked Tomb isn't complete. There's supposed to be one more book, which is supposed to come out next year (has been supposed to come out next year for the last three years, apparently). But for what it is so far, I think it's an extraordinary series. Witty, baffling, and unapologetically queer, with a tremendously compelling world and cast of characters, if this thing hold up on reread when the last book comes out, it might well be my new favorite fantasy series.

I tend to be a real stickler for narrative efficiency in the books I read, which is why I was surprised to love China Mieville's Embassytown as much as I did. This is a book full of details and plot threads that do nothing and go nowhere, except insofar as they add texture to the world, which as a result is marvelously deep and unique. The Locked Tomb has a lot of blood and gore and bones but I was surprised to find that Mieville's story, an exploration of two societies with fundamentally incompatible ways of communicating, was to me significantly darker. By creating a world with so much 'unnecessary' detail and depth, the collapse of that world, those symbiotic societies, becomes incredibly painful, heart-wrenching, and bleak. And Mieville's commentary on language, and our relationship to it; how we shape it and how it shapes us, was deeply compelling (and went well beyond the usual sci-fi "what if Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but true?"). When the book managed, against the odds, to have a happy ending, I found myself crying with relief. This is one that I can recommend without caveats; try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, and just experience the thing for yourself. I found it so, so rewarding.

I've been struggling to read books lately, in part because I have this rule that I have to read one nonfiction book for every fiction book I read, and as a transgender woman, nonfiction often feels pretty bleak, and in a way that doesn't get wrapped up by the time you hit the acknowledgements page. But, shock of all shocks, it turns out that I was able to read four extremely engaging and compelling novels in a single week with one easy trick: reading books that i actually wanted to read! Hoping to keep this up for at least a couple more weeks.

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves.
Man who cannot die is 80,000 years old, now works for the US army and just wants a mortal life.

With Stormlight 5 coming out next month, I started the Stormlight Archive. I've had these books for a couple of years now, but I wanted to read all 5 in one go.

I'm almost finished with Words of Radiance, and I'm loving it so far! It's epic, but with a manageable amount of characters to keep track of.

I also have the 'in between' books laying around (Edgedancer, Dawnshard, Sunlit Man), so I doubt I'll be ready when the book gets here.

In addition to Kindred for the Tildes book club, I read New From Here by Kelly Yang. My daughter read it and asked me to read it.

It is about a Chinese / American family living in Hong Kong at the start of the COVID outbreak. The story is told from the point of view of the family's younger son, who has ADHD. The family comes to America because they think it will be safer. The central theme of the story is how the crisis of the COVID pandemic and their displacement brings them together.

I had pretty mixed feelings about the book. The mother in particular is a pretty terrible role model. I found the resolution of conflicts to be a little simplistic, even for a middle grade novel. I think there was room for more nuance in the story. Apparently it is based on the author's actual experiences, so maybe that makes it different? I don't know.

To be fair, thinking about those days at the beginning of the pandemic was not a pleasant trip down memory lane, so that may be coloring my response as well.

Now I'm only A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher. It's good so far, but it's going to be one of the dark ones.

"Artemis" by Any Weir ( author of the Martian ).

The story is interesting bed time reading. I wouldn't call it a work of art. Instead I call it "Mark Watney goes to the moon". The protagonist is written completely the same as in The Martian. Zero character differentiation. Worst example I've seen of a male author writing a woman character since Heinlein.

Lessons in chemistry (a novel focused on a woman scientist in the 1950s).

Kindred by Octavia Butler for tildes book club.

Til we have faces by c s Lewis. Thanks @chocobean.