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ilikereadingactually · 18 days

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Lake of Souls

Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie

what can i even say about this?? i have already established my deep love for Ann Leckie's work, and this collection lives up to all possible expectations. it's spectacular. every single story is an absolute BANGER.

the first section, standalone stories unrelated to her novels, is brimming with surprises and delights. each new premise and scenario presented me with characters i understood and loved immediately, and took me on a journey of unexpected turns. fabulous for any speculative reader honestly, but so particularly wonderful to me and my adhd brain! the imagination and unpredictability of each story kept me absolutely glued, and opened doors into worlds that felt fully realized. i could easily read a novel in every single world Leckie created here, but the stories are also satisfying--i don't NEED a novel in any of them, they are perfectly satiating morsels of lembas bread.

and in the second section we get stories in the Imperial Radch universe, two of which i had actually read before during the deepest dives of my Radch obsession, but which were fantastic to revisit. again, the worldbuilding and character development both stand out as Leckie's greatest strengths, giving insight into times and places outside the scope of her novels with tantalizing bits of in-universe history and folklore. i spent some time yelling out loud about them.

the third section, i now have to confess, i haven't read yet--because they're stories set in the universe of The Raven Tower, which i also have not had time to read yet in between galleys and library books with due dates, and i'd prefer to go into the novel not knowing anything about the world. but i can't imagine, at this point, that any story in this section is going to somehow alter my love for this collection, which is already deep and abiding. looking forward to sneaking in a read of The Raven Tower and then coming back to this!!

the deets

how i read it: an e-galley from NetGalley, which i wanted to read immediately but had to prioritize other deadlines first, so it was sitting approved on my shelf for months calling to me T^T

try this if you: love SFF at its most speculative and imaginative, are compelled by well-developed characters, dig themes of language and translation and the meeting/clashing of cultural norms, or are into Leckie's other work (obv)!

some bits i really liked: it was super hard to choose, so here's connected bits that made me laugh and one that made me holler "BREQ PLEASE" out loud in my empty apartment

"And you left me behind," continued Great Among Millions. "Alone. They asked and asked me where you were and I did not know, though I wished to." It made a tiny, barely perceptible stomp. "They put me in a storeroom. In a box." ... "Eye of Merur," said the first of the Thirty-Six. "We're glad you're back." "They're glad you're back," whispered Great Among Millions, just behind Het's right shoulder. "They didn't spend the time in a box."

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"She commands me," said Seven-Brilliant-Truths. "And I obey. Sister understands." "Yes," said Sister Ultimately-Justice, not even blinking.

pub date: April 2, 2024! That's tomorrow!!!!! Go get your copy!!

#books and reading #bookblr #booklr #book recs #book reviews #lake of souls #ann leckie #sf short fiction

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therefugeofbooks · 7 months

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A few years ago, I was really into reading classical dystopian novels, and I liked Fahrenheit 451 a lot. Recently, with all the talk of book banning, I decided to revisit this book. While it was still an enjoyable read, I have to admit that it didn't quite live up to my memory of it.

#booklr #books #book photography #fahrenheit 451 #ray bradbury #books and food #books and coffee #rereading is reliving #book reviews #the refuge of books

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fxnfiction · 1 year

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presenting: my 2023 year of reading queer literature (part 1).

next few months focus will be on sapphic books, so swing over some recommendations!

enjoy my funky commentary, im in a weird mood. all my opinions!

#it’s been a long weekend and I’ve had a brain cell so here we are #im on my audiobook grind #queer literature #books #rwrb #red white and blue #Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe #a marvellous light #the charm offensive #carry on #boyfriend material #husband material #if this gets out #Delilah green doesn’t care #love hate & clickbait #firstprince #snowbaz #book reviews

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intersexbookclub · 5 months

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Discussion summary: Left Hand of Darkness

Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic in science fiction that explores issues of sex/gender in an alien-yet-human society where the aliens are just like us except in how they reproduce. These aliens, the Gethenians, can reproduce as either male or female. They spend most of their lives sexually undifferentiated. Once a month, they go into heat (“kemmer”) and their sexual organs activate as either male or female (it’s essentially random).

Here's a summary of the discussions we had on 2023-08-25 and 2023-09-01 about the book:

HIGH LEVEL REACTONS

Michelle (@scifimagpie): even though it was written by a cis straight perisex woman there is a queerness to the writing that feels true and that she nailed. There is a queerness to the soul of this book that still holds up, that's true and good, and I cannot but love and respect that.

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): this book is such a commentary on 1960s misogyny. Genly is a raging misogynist. It takes a whole prison break and crossing the arctic for Genly to realize a woman or androgyne can be competent 👀

Dimitri: [Having read just the first half of the book] I wonder if it keeps happening, if Genly keeps going "woaaaah" [to the Gethenians’ androgyny] or if he ever acclimates. It's been half the novel my guy

vic: yeah a book where a guy is destroyed by seeing a breast makes me want queer theory

vic: [it also] makes me feel good to see how much has changed [since the 1960s]

THE INTERSEX STUFF

A thing we appreciated about the book was how being intersex is contextual. The main character of the book, Genly Ai, is a human from a planet like Earth, who visits Gethen to open trade and diplomatic relations.

On his home planet, and to Earth sensibilities, Genly is perisex - he is able to reproduce at any time of the month and is consistently male.

But on Gethen, Genly becomes intersex. On Gethen, the norm is that you only manifest (and can reproduce as) a given sex during the monthly kemmer (heat/oestrus) period.

The Gethenians understand Genly as living in “permanent kemmer”, which is described as a common (intersex) condition, and these people are hyper-sexualized and referred to as Perverts.

At this point it’s worth noting that depiction is not the same as endorsement. Michelle pointed out the book is very empathetic to those in permanent kemmer. LeGuin does not appear to be endorsing the social stigma faced by these people, merely depicting it, and putting a mirror to how our own society treats intersex people.

Throughout the book, Genly is treated as an oddity by the Gethenians. He is hyper sexualized. He undergoes a genital inspection to prove he is who he says he is.

When Genly is sent to a prison camp and forcibly given HRT, he does not respond “normally” to the hormones, the effects are way worse for him, and the prison camp staff don’t care, and keep administering them even if it’ll kill him.

Two of us have had the experience of having hyperandrogenism and being forced onto birth control as teenager, and relating to the sluggishness of the drugs that Genly experienced, as well as the sense that gender/sex conformity was more important to authority figures (parents, doctors) than actual health and well-being.

Another scene we discussed the one where Genly is in a prison van en route to the gulag, and a Gethenian enters kemmer and wants to mate with him and he declines. He is given multiple opportunities over the course of the book to try having sex with a Gethenian, and declines every time, and we wondered if he avoided it out of trauma of being hyper-sexualized & hyper-medicalized & having had his genitals inspected.

We discussed the way he described his genital inspection through a trauma lens, and how it interacts with toxic masculinity - in vic’s terms, Genly being "I am a manly man and I have don't trauma"

Those of us who read the short story, Coming of Age in Karhide, noted that once the world was narrated from a Gethenian POV, the people in permanent kemmer were treated far more neutrally, which gave us the impression that Genly as an unreliable narrator was injecting some intersexism along with his misogyny

WHY IT MATTERS TO READ THIS BOOK THROUGH AN INTERSEX LENS

Elizabeth: I’ve encountered critiques of this book from perisex trans folks because to them the book is committing biological essentialism, and dismissing the book as a result. I think they’re missing that this book is as much about (inter)sex as it is about gender. I think they’re too quick to dismiss the book as being outdated or having backwards ideas because they’re not appreciating the intersex themes.

Elizabeth: The intersex themes aren’t exactly subtle, so it kind of stings that I haven’t seen any intersex analyses of this book, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of perisex trans analyses that all miss the huge intersex elephants in the room.

Also Elizabeth: I’ve seen this book show up in lists of intersex books/characters made by perisex people, and I’ve seen Estraven listed as intersex character, and it gets me upset because Estraven isn’t intersex! Estraven is perisex in the society in which he lives. Genly is the intersex character in this story and people who misunderstand intersex as being able to reproduce as male & female (or having quirky genitals smh) are completely missing that being intersex is socially constructed and based on what is considered typical for a given species.

WHAT THE BOOK DOESN’T HANDLE WELL

The body descriptions. As Dmitri put it: “ Like "his butt jiggled and it reminded me of women" ew. It was intentional but I had to put the book down. It reminded me of transvestigators and how they take pictures of people in public.” 🤮

Not pushing Genly to reflect on how weird he is about other people’s bodies. We all had issues with how Genly is constantly scrutinizing the bodies of other humans to assess their gender(s) and it’s pretty gross.

vic asked: “how much of this is her reproducing violence without her knowing it? A thing I didn't like was how he always judging and analyzing people's bodies and realizing others treat him that way. And I wish there was more of his discomfort about this, that it made him feel icky.”

Dimitri added: “I really wanted him to have a moment of this too, for him to realize how much it sucks to be treated this way. As a trans person it's so uncomfortable. What are you doing going around doing this to people?”

Using male pronouns as default/ungendered pronouns. Élaina asked why Genly thinks a male pronoun is more appropriate for a transcendent God and pointed out there’s a lot to unpack there.

OTHER POSITIVES ABOUT THE BOOK

Genly’s journey towards respecting women, that he still had a ways to go by the end of the book. vic pointed out how “LeGuin was straight, and she loves men, and is kinda giving them the side-eye [in this book]. Her writing about how Genly is childish makes me really happy. It’s kind of hilarious to watch him bang his head against the wall because he’s so rigid.”

To which Dmitri added: “I agree with the bit on forgiving men for stuff. I don't know how she [LeGuin] does it but she really lays it all out. She gives you a platter of how men are bad at things, how they make mistakes that are pretty specific to them. She has prepared a buffet of it.”

Autistic Estraven! As Michelle put it: “autistic queer feels about Estraven speaking literally and plainly and Genly not getting it”

The truck chapter. Hits like a pile of bricks. We talked about it as a metaphor for the current pandemic.

The Genly x Estraven slowburn queerplatonic relationship

The conlang! Less is more in how it gets used

MIXED REACTIONS

The Foretelling. For some it felt unnecessary and a bit fetishy. For others it was fun paranormal times.

Pacing. Some liked how the book really forces you to really contemplate as you go. Others struggled with a pace that feels very slow to 2023 readers.

WORKS WE COMPARED THE BOOK TO

Star Trek (the original series) - we wondered if LHOD and Genly Ai were progressive by 1960s standards, and TOS came up as a comparison point. We were all of the impression that TOS was progressive for its time but all of us find it pretty misogynist by our standards. The interest in extra-sensory perception (ESP) is something that was a staple of TOS that feels very strange to contemporary viewers and also cropped up in LHOD

Ancillary Justice - for being a book where characters’ genders are all ambiguous but the POV character is actually normal about how they describe other characters’ bodies.

The Deep - for being another book in a situation where being able to reproduce as male and female is the norm. The Deep was written by an actually intersex author, and doesn’t have the cisperisex gaze of scrutinizing every body for sex. But oddly LHOD actually winds up feeling more like a book about intersex people, because it features a character who is the odd one out in a gonosynic society. In contrast, nobody is intersex in the Deep - everybody matches the norms for their species, which makes the intersex themes in the work much more subtle.

Overall, as vic put it, “there's something to be said about an honest depiction that's not great, especially when there's no alternatives”. For a long time there weren’t many other games in town when it came to this sort of book, and even though some things now feel dated, it’s still a valuable read. We’d love to see more intersex reviews & analyses of the book!

#intersex book club #book summaries #book reviews #left hand of darkness #the left hand of darkness #ursula k. le guin #intersex books #intersex literature #queer books #queer literature #queer fiction #queer scifi #intersex

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brandyschillace · 7 months

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First novel!

UNBOXING! With my cat Darwin to help. Just got the ARC for my book (coming out with Harper Collins this winter). It’s a mystery novel—sort of gothic, with murder and crumbling estates—and the protagonist is neurodivergent! (I’m autistic, myself). Ready for an openly ND citizen-detective? Message me if you’d like an ARC (I have 25 of them). Preview video on my YouTube https://youtu.be/ryJC_w-orzo?si=mXX36CE46wqrcI88

youtube

#book reviews #booksbooksbooks #books #bookblr #books and reading #mystery #thriller #gothic #author #neurodivergent #neurospicy #neurodiversity #being autistic #actually autistic #autism #autistic author #detective #cozy mystery #Youtube

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booklovers-hub · 6 months

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🗣️: They're just fictional characters from books!

*Calmly* Me: You are just a sack of blood surrounded with flesh. What's your point?

#bibliophile #book #book club #book reviews #currently reading #book recommendations #bookblr #books #books & libraries #chaotic academia #dark academia #dark romance #dark fantasy #book ideas #book blog #booklover

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maddiesbookshelves · 4 months

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A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan

The memoirs of Lady Trent narrate the life and research of Isabella Trent, world-renowned naturalist now an old woman, whose wit and humor are merciless towards imbeciles. In the first tome, Isabella, first as a young girl and then a young woman, challenges class and period conventions to satisfy her scientific curiosity and accompany her husband on an expedition in search for dragons in Vystrana...

I was scared that the memoirs format was going to be boring to read, but it was actually the best way to tell the life story of a woman who has lived so many adventures, I really liked it. The good thing about memoirs is that it allowed Isabella's personality to shine, especially her humor, and to have some hindsight on what happened. The teases about future events that she reveals later in the series really make you want to read what's next

Volume 1 introduces themes and ideas that I thought were fleshed out better later in the series, and what I considered as small flaws (a lot of things were repeated so many times I started thinking "yeah, okay, I get it") are way less prominent

As for Brennan's worldbuilding, it's deceptively simple at first glance (Victorian era but make it fantasy), but actually had so many details that make it extremely rich. Everything is inspired by countries/cultures from the real world, but Brennan mixed a lot of them and I thought it was really well executed. And the further along you get in the series, the more details sprinkled in the first 3 books come together to form the final picture. When I got to the end of book 4, I wanted to scream because of how delightful and well put together the reveals were

French version under the cut

Les mémoires de lady Trent racontent la vie et les recherches d'Isabelle Trent, naturaliste mondialement connue et désormais vieille dame, dont l'esprit et le style empreints d'humour s'avèrent sans pitié pour les imbéciles. Dans le premier volume, Isabelle, petite fille puis jeune femme, brave les conventions de sa classe et de son temps pour satisfaire sa curiosité scientifique et accompagner son mari lors d'une expédition à la recherche des dragons de Vystranie...

J'avais peur que le format des mémoires soit un peu ennuyant à lire, mais en fait c'était la meilleure façon de raconter la vie d’une femme qui a vécu autant d’aventures, j’ai beaucoup apprécié. L'avantage des mémoires c'est que ça permettait au personnage d'Isabelle de nous dévoiler sa personnalité, notamment son humour, et d'avoir du recul sur certains évènements. Les références à des évènements qu'elle nous dévoile plus tard dans la série donnait vraiment envie de lire la suite

Le tome 1 introduit des thèmes et des idées que j’ai trouvées mieux développées dans les tomes suivants, et ce que je considérais comme de petits défauts (pas mal de choses sont répétées de nombreuses fois donc au bout d’un moment je me disais "oui, c’est bon, j’ai compris") sont beaucoup moins présents

En ce qui concerne le monde créé par Brennan, il paraît relativement simple au premier abord (époque victorienne mais version fantasy), mais en réalité, énormément de détails le rendent extrêmement riche. Tout est inspiré de pays/cultures du monde réel, mais mélange pas mal de trucs et j’ai trouvé que c’était très bien fait. Et au plus on avance dans la série, au plus les détails disséminés dans les ~3 premiers tomes s'emboîtent et le tableau final se précise. Quand je suis arrivée à la fin du tome 4 j'avais envie de hurler tellement les révélations étaient croustillantes et bien amenées

#the memoirs of lady trent #lady trent #a natural history of dragons #memoirs of lady trent #marie brennan #books #book series #book reviews #booklr #booklr community #book recs #book recommendations

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