reading Wednesday
Dec. 28th, 2022 02:20 pmRecently finished:
Balefire and Deosil, by Jordan L. Hawk. The last books of the Widdershins main series, which I recently realized I never finished. They were okay. I feel about them the way I feel about Hawk's books in general: Hawk has some interesting ideas and his stories have good potential that is not, alas, fulfilled. Neither Hawk's storytelling structure nor his prose really does it for me. Ruthanna Emrys works in a similar kind of niche (Lovecraftian, but explicitly committed to un-Othering and community building) more effectively. Her books are notably less queer, though.
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, by Becky Chambers. I've liked a lot of Chambers' other books without loving any of them. I even liked A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which put a lot of people off as preachy and slight. Crown-Shy, the sequel to that book, really is preachy and slight. I've previously said that I wish more books were plotless meanders, but now I'm thinking I should add caveats to that. Crown-Shy is relentlessly lacking in conflict; there are no disagreements stronger than a misunderstanding that can be resolved with a conversation or by an unstated agreement to disagree. Nobody has bad intentions, nobody is even greedy or selfish or thoughtless in normal human ways. Nothing mars Chambers' utopia, and the more she explains it (like the way it has a "money" system that is somehow completely delinked from any form of exploitation), the more irritatingly implausible I find it. If you asked a conservative (not a hardcore right-winger, but a respectable centrist conservative) to write a parody of a "politically correct" novella, the result might be a bit like this. I read it on Christmas day, when I was in the mood for something hopeful and gentle, and still found it a bit much.
On a very different note: Something is Killing the Children, vols 1 and 2, written by James Tynion IV, art by Werther Dell'edera and Miguel Muerto. A powerful, brutal story. It's marred for me by a bit too much brutality: I don't really need quite this much on-page violent death of children, or indeed anybody. But I do like the characters and I want to know what happens, so I'll keep on for now. (This is not a dig at the quality of the comic; I just have a problem with really graphic bloody horror. It came up a lot for me with the old Hellblazer, too--I loved it but I wished it could have been less nastybloodygory.)
I haven't yet started the spinoff series House of Slaughter, but I have the first volume and it looks like it might be a little more my kind of thing--less pure horror and more "highly morally ambiguous secret monster-fighting organization."
Currently reading:
The Department of Truth, by James Tynion IV, art by Martin Simmonds and Aditya Bidikar. Speaking of highly morally ambiguous secret monster-fighting organizations. Though the monsters in this case are conspiracy theories, in a world where a critical mass of belief has the power to reshape reality. I'm enjoying this one a lot, in a painful sort of way (it has all the contemporary political resonance you might imagine). I'm not a very skilled visual reader, so I'm finding the dark, fragmented art kind of challenging. But it's beautiful in its horrific way and I like looking at it. I'm partway through volume 2 and looking forward to more. (Though not to the upcoming dilemma of whether to read new issues as they come out or wait for trades. I prefer TPBs in every respect except the wait.)
I'm also still plugging away at Moby Dick. I've managed to get through chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale," which I think is what broke me on the last attempt. It looks like there will be some narrative now, after many chapters of Ahab pondering, other characters pondering upon Ahab, and Melville/Ishmael discoursing upon color. (I have a slight advantage over a lot of contemporary readers tackling this book in that I have actually read [bits of] Sir Thomas Browne, so I have context for what Melville's doing here. [Another important piece of context, I'm sure, is Tom Jones, but I've only ever managed the first few chapters.] But I think Melville's prose loses a lot of its pithiness and charm while he rambles all over the place, while Browne's doesn't. Nevertheless, I'm interested to see where Melville's going with this whole elaborate framework he's building of "diabolical forces are waiting to push through the surface of the world and hurt you," especially since Melville is only lightly tethering it to conventional Christianity. Maybe it's just the influence of other things I've been reading, but it does seem a bit like early cosmic horror.
Reading next: More Moby Dick, more Department of Truth, and probably starting House of Slaughter. (Thank you,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
delphi, for reccing these comics to me!)
Balefire and Deosil, by Jordan L. Hawk. The last books of the Widdershins main series, which I recently realized I never finished. They were okay. I feel about them the way I feel about Hawk's books in general: Hawk has some interesting ideas and his stories have good potential that is not, alas, fulfilled. Neither Hawk's storytelling structure nor his prose really does it for me. Ruthanna Emrys works in a similar kind of niche (Lovecraftian, but explicitly committed to un-Othering and community building) more effectively. Her books are notably less queer, though.
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, by Becky Chambers. I've liked a lot of Chambers' other books without loving any of them. I even liked A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which put a lot of people off as preachy and slight. Crown-Shy, the sequel to that book, really is preachy and slight. I've previously said that I wish more books were plotless meanders, but now I'm thinking I should add caveats to that. Crown-Shy is relentlessly lacking in conflict; there are no disagreements stronger than a misunderstanding that can be resolved with a conversation or by an unstated agreement to disagree. Nobody has bad intentions, nobody is even greedy or selfish or thoughtless in normal human ways. Nothing mars Chambers' utopia, and the more she explains it (like the way it has a "money" system that is somehow completely delinked from any form of exploitation), the more irritatingly implausible I find it. If you asked a conservative (not a hardcore right-winger, but a respectable centrist conservative) to write a parody of a "politically correct" novella, the result might be a bit like this. I read it on Christmas day, when I was in the mood for something hopeful and gentle, and still found it a bit much.
On a very different note: Something is Killing the Children, vols 1 and 2, written by James Tynion IV, art by Werther Dell'edera and Miguel Muerto. A powerful, brutal story. It's marred for me by a bit too much brutality: I don't really need quite this much on-page violent death of children, or indeed anybody. But I do like the characters and I want to know what happens, so I'll keep on for now. (This is not a dig at the quality of the comic; I just have a problem with really graphic bloody horror. It came up a lot for me with the old Hellblazer, too--I loved it but I wished it could have been less nastybloodygory.)
I haven't yet started the spinoff series House of Slaughter, but I have the first volume and it looks like it might be a little more my kind of thing--less pure horror and more "highly morally ambiguous secret monster-fighting organization."
Currently reading:
The Department of Truth, by James Tynion IV, art by Martin Simmonds and Aditya Bidikar. Speaking of highly morally ambiguous secret monster-fighting organizations. Though the monsters in this case are conspiracy theories, in a world where a critical mass of belief has the power to reshape reality. I'm enjoying this one a lot, in a painful sort of way (it has all the contemporary political resonance you might imagine). I'm not a very skilled visual reader, so I'm finding the dark, fragmented art kind of challenging. But it's beautiful in its horrific way and I like looking at it. I'm partway through volume 2 and looking forward to more. (Though not to the upcoming dilemma of whether to read new issues as they come out or wait for trades. I prefer TPBs in every respect except the wait.)
I'm also still plugging away at Moby Dick. I've managed to get through chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale," which I think is what broke me on the last attempt. It looks like there will be some narrative now, after many chapters of Ahab pondering, other characters pondering upon Ahab, and Melville/Ishmael discoursing upon color. (I have a slight advantage over a lot of contemporary readers tackling this book in that I have actually read [bits of] Sir Thomas Browne, so I have context for what Melville's doing here. [Another important piece of context, I'm sure, is Tom Jones, but I've only ever managed the first few chapters.] But I think Melville's prose loses a lot of its pithiness and charm while he rambles all over the place, while Browne's doesn't. Nevertheless, I'm interested to see where Melville's going with this whole elaborate framework he's building of "diabolical forces are waiting to push through the surface of the world and hurt you," especially since Melville is only lightly tethering it to conventional Christianity. Maybe it's just the influence of other things I've been reading, but it does seem a bit like early cosmic horror.
Reading next: More Moby Dick, more Department of Truth, and probably starting House of Slaughter. (Thank you,
delphi, for reccing these comics to me!)
