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landofnowhereA lot of reading happened this week, because I remembered on Friday that my online book club meeting to discuss Spinning Silver was on Monday evening, so then I had to acquire and reread the book over the weekend.
Turning Darkness into Light, Marie Brennan. This was excellent -- it's a sequel to the Lady Trent books, about Lady Trent's granddaughter. It definitely leans on those books a lot for the worldbuilding, and contains spoilers for some elements of the original series. I wonder if it would work as a standalone for those who don't want five books of field biology adventures before getting to the linguistics.
I was a bit disappointed that the mystery was solved and the plot wrapped by means of more action scenes and less philology than I expected. The way the book was set up as a compilation of different sources made it possible for the alert reader to figure out the plot twist before the characters did, which was fun if a little distancing.
I was expecting the protagonists to figure out that the ending chapters were fake because it was more easily comprehensible than the earlier parts. But then the real ending chapters didn't have any hard-to-translate bits either. And I suppose I was disappointed that Aaron Mornett, despite having zero professional ethics, was still brilliant enough to be able to write a convincing fake. But then sometimes terrible people can also be smart.
I also didn't think that "the later tablets don't have gold in them" was that much of a smoking gun -- maybe they just ran out of gold. I would expect the remaining Hadamites aren't convinced, and assume that the ending Audrey&co published was fake, and probably over time develop some elaborate conspiracy theories. I did appreciate that the book found a way to let us know that carbon dating technolog
y hadn't yet been discovered.
Minor points: given that this is set in an analogue early 20th century, I would have expected to have seen more of a transition from the "gentleman/woman scholar" model of academia to a more college/university-based model. But that didn't seem to have happened.
One of the characters, Cora Fitzarthur, is clearly written as being on the autism spectrum, though it would have been anachronistic for the book to state it outright. I appreciate that, in some respects, she probably has better social skills than the protagonist. Also there's a great bit where she figures out how to make accommodations for the needs of another character who does poorly in hot weather.
Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik: This is a really great book, and I appreciated it more the second time around. I've just gone on forever about Turning Darkness into Light, though, and also I got to talk about this one at book club, so I won't spend as long on it. Definitely worth rereading, because I was able to follow the ending better and see stuff that I hadn't before. Structurally, I really like how the book uses the "three impossible tasks" thing repeatedly.
Furies of Calderon, Jim Butcher. Have only read a little bit more of this one in between reading other books, will write about it when I've read more.
Turning Darkness into Light, Marie Brennan. This was excellent -- it's a sequel to the Lady Trent books, about Lady Trent's granddaughter. It definitely leans on those books a lot for the worldbuilding, and contains spoilers for some elements of the original series. I wonder if it would work as a standalone for those who don't want five books of field biology adventures before getting to the linguistics.
I was a bit disappointed that the mystery was solved and the plot wrapped by means of more action scenes and less philology than I expected. The way the book was set up as a compilation of different sources made it possible for the alert reader to figure out the plot twist before the characters did, which was fun if a little distancing.
I was expecting the protagonists to figure out that the ending chapters were fake because it was more easily comprehensible than the earlier parts. But then the real ending chapters didn't have any hard-to-translate bits either. And I suppose I was disappointed that Aaron Mornett, despite having zero professional ethics, was still brilliant enough to be able to write a convincing fake. But then sometimes terrible people can also be smart.
I also didn't think that "the later tablets don't have gold in them" was that much of a smoking gun -- maybe they just ran out of gold. I would expect the remaining Hadamites aren't convinced, and assume that the ending Audrey&co published was fake, and probably over time develop some elaborate conspiracy theories. I did appreciate that the book found a way to let us know that carbon dating technolog
y hadn't yet been discovered.
Minor points: given that this is set in an analogue early 20th century, I would have expected to have seen more of a transition from the "gentleman/woman scholar" model of academia to a more college/university-based model. But that didn't seem to have happened.
One of the characters, Cora Fitzarthur, is clearly written as being on the autism spectrum, though it would have been anachronistic for the book to state it outright. I appreciate that, in some respects, she probably has better social skills than the protagonist. Also there's a great bit where she figures out how to make accommodations for the needs of another character who does poorly in hot weather.
Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik: This is a really great book, and I appreciated it more the second time around. I've just gone on forever about Turning Darkness into Light, though, and also I got to talk about this one at book club, so I won't spend as long on it. Definitely worth rereading, because I was able to follow the ending better and see stuff that I hadn't before. Structurally, I really like how the book uses the "three impossible tasks" thing repeatedly.
Furies of Calderon, Jim Butcher. Have only read a little bit more of this one in between reading other books, will write about it when I've read more.