What I finished: Dual Memory by Sue Burke. A book about a human refugee and a newly awakened AI teaming up to defend an island from raiders in a near-future Earth. A book where I was very much left wondering why I didn't like it more and realized it was mostly because of style. At its heart it's a hopeful book, but it was just...tense and oddly sterile. The book does a good job of showing how the main characters are vulnerable and constrained and at the mercy of uncaring systems that could turn on them. So as the plot unfolds, you're unsure if that is ever going to come to pass or not, and the way the human POV character is written is oddly detached, oddly arms-length. The human POV came across at first as being traumatized, and perhaps that's what it's meant to be all the way through (he certainly has reason to be traumatized), but it also could just be the way this author writes characters. The author seems to be an ideas person rather than a character person, from reviews of her other books. But it does make it harder to get a grip on the character and feel embedded in the world, when everything feels so detached and uncaring/uncared-for, and the main character's so passive. Still...the plot was good, and I wanted to see how it ended.
What I am currently reading: The Absolute at Large by Karel Čapek - still...going.... And I called it! The machine that makes god has now led to world war, on schedule. I am going to finish this by next Wednesday. I will.
How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball. ...I am enjoying this a lot less than I expected. Oddly this book seems to define "new" as "anything that's happened since the mid-1970s". So instead of feeling cutting edge, I'm almost 20% of the way in, and the author is dredging up and refereeing old academic pissing contests. I am bored. I started skipping pages. I would like to learn some actual correct cool biology now? Maybe it will get better now that we're out of the basic info about genes?
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher. I'd passed this book over before, because the synopsis just didn't grip me and I hadn't gotten into Kingfisher yet and didn't know how I'd like the writing. Now that I'm more familiar with her, I'm more willing to give the murder princess book a go.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2024-09-25 08:00 pm (UTC)Dual Memory by Sue Burke. A book about a human refugee and a newly awakened AI teaming up to defend an island from raiders in a near-future Earth. A book where I was very much left wondering why I didn't like it more and realized it was mostly because of style. At its heart it's a hopeful book, but it was just...tense and oddly sterile. The book does a good job of showing how the main characters are vulnerable and constrained and at the mercy of uncaring systems that could turn on them. So as the plot unfolds, you're unsure if that is ever going to come to pass or not, and the way the human POV character is written is oddly detached, oddly arms-length. The human POV came across at first as being traumatized, and perhaps that's what it's meant to be all the way through (he certainly has reason to be traumatized), but it also could just be the way this author writes characters. The author seems to be an ideas person rather than a character person, from reviews of her other books. But it does make it harder to get a grip on the character and feel embedded in the world, when everything feels so detached and uncaring/uncared-for, and the main character's so passive. Still...the plot was good, and I wanted to see how it ended.
What I am currently reading:
The Absolute at Large by Karel Čapek - still...going.... And I called it! The machine that makes god has now led to world war, on schedule. I am going to finish this by next Wednesday. I will.
How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball. ...I am enjoying this a lot less than I expected. Oddly this book seems to define "new" as "anything that's happened since the mid-1970s". So instead of feeling cutting edge, I'm almost 20% of the way in, and the author is dredging up and refereeing old academic pissing contests. I am bored. I started skipping pages. I would like to learn some actual correct cool biology now? Maybe it will get better now that we're out of the basic info about genes?
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher. I'd passed this book over before, because the synopsis just didn't grip me and I hadn't gotten into Kingfisher yet and didn't know how I'd like the writing. Now that I'm more familiar with her, I'm more willing to give the murder princess book a go.