The Land of Nowhere

Perhaps the Stars, Ada Palmer. I finished the series! The endgame was powerful in its own way, though I think personally I'm more invested in the middlegame. Interesting to see which characters, and which societal institutions, I did and didn't remember what had happened to. I don't have much to say that's not spoilery, so have a picture of Jules Verne's tomb instead (which I'd seen mentioned on discord as thematically relevant to the series):

By <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tropique" title="User:Tropique">Tropique</a> - <span class="int-own-work" lang="en">Own work</span>, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Some Friendlier Sky, AMarguerite (AO3 sign-in required). Reread -- I rec'd this Cosette/Courfeyrac AU on kate_nepveu 's Les Mis post, and then I had to reread it, and it was as good as it was the first time! I have to say I am mainly here for Cosette and Blanchefleur's bookclub, and don't care so much about the boys on the barricade, but it was good, thoughtful fun. It is really good at writing about the 1830's in a way that feels relevant to modern times!

Ivanhoe, Walter Scott. This was one of the books discussed by the characters in the above fic, and never having read it I thought I'd give it a try. I'm halfway through it and will probably finish, but I can see how it was a victim of its own success -- there's so much historical fiction since that's like this that it doesn't really stand out. As advertised, it does have Jewish characters, although the fact that it draws chapter epigraphs from The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice does help manage expectations -- Scott understands the dynamics of how anti-Semitism plays out, but Isaac of York still comes across as a bit too in love with money to come across as a fully realized character rather than a stereotype.

Henry VI, Part III, William Shakespeare. And we're finally done with this disaster king (who it was a lot of fun to chew the scenery with)! Also OMG this play has so much plot -- despite being part III -- and no comic relief, I think this is before Shakespeare learned to write comic relief. (OK, there are some scenes in part II which I think are intended to be comic relief, but the humor hasn't aged well, apart from the line about killing all the lawyers.)

System Collapse, Martha Wells. I'd just been remarking the other week that Murderbot would love to be a TV/movie producer, so this was great! Apart from that one bit it didn't really stand out to me, but I'm looking forward to where the series goes for me.

The Will to Battle and Perhaps the Stars, Ada Palmer. Rereads. Finally back to these after taking a break to catch up on Murderbot. it appears I still don't have that much to say about The Will to Battle, but I think that's partly because it's overshadowed by Perhaps the Stars, whose epicness I'm particularly enjoying, even in the bits that aren't as self-consciously epic. (OMG! I have so much book! I'll probably be interrupting my reading again to travel, but I'm not in a rush to get through it.)

The Will to Battle, Ada Palmer. This is really good! Rereading book 2, it struck me as well-constructed but gave me fewer feels than I expected -- this book made up for that! The description of the 2454 Olympics is a magnificent set piece. Also we finally get to meet a character who's been semi-invisible up to this point, and who might be one of my favorite characters (kind of feels like a Mary Sue/self-insert type character, but I enjoy that). There are a lot of mysteries set up here, and I have only foggy theories at best -- rereading book 1, though, a lot of things made a lot more sense after the reveals of book 2, so I have to assume there are hints that I've been missing?

Anyway Utopia is the best (even if I doubt I'd take their oath), and I hope they are in fact on top of this 196883-dimensional chess game. Though, everyone in this world is just implausibly good at psychohistory/predicting the future, and you have to roll with it. Such a contrast to our current state of pandemic modeling; though some of that can be explained by improvements in technology/surveillance. The politics shown still feel more like LARP politics than real politics, but that's fun to read.

Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer. This was my first reread of book 1 since I first read book 2, so mainly this time around I was noticing all the foreshadowing I'd missed for books 2 and 3. On to the next book!

I've also been reading short stories from the New Decameron Project, and generally enjoying them! The most recent one, Haunted House" by Elizabeth Wein, was pretty good.

Also Marie Brennan (swan_tower) posted fanfic for her own book Turning Darkness into Light, and it was really good in a fanficcy way!