competencefantasy's Reviews (912)

The thematic work in the worldbuilding, the thoughts on fairness and who decides fairness, is fascinating. The this world verses other world divisions are structured more in a conventional portal fantasy way than the first novella (I have not yet read the ones in between). This story is very deeply a tragedy and is told with fairy tale beats. I found several of the characters as well as the world very intriguing. I think this one will stay with me a while.

My problem with this is that the prose is very utilitarian. I'm not doing as much picturing in my head of scenes or characters as I usually would. As a result, I'm not imprinted enough to sustain interest through the time jumps in the first half of the book. I do like the two women characters and their arcs, but I didn't have the focus for the Victor vs. Eli rivalry. The worldbuilding was enjoyable and the pace picked up at the end, but I think I would have preferred this as a tv show or similar.

This is the installment that made me decide I wanted to spring to own the audio volumes for these novellas rather than just borrow them. The author has a gift for the language of character motivations. There are many quotes that feel beautiful and poignant, while still retaining a simplicity of language. The characters are clearly drawn and memorable, yet their inner lives feel complicated. Even though this installment was almost pure portal fantasy with little aftermath, it still felt like it fleshed out the world(s)building. Love it.

This is a tough one. One of my favorite authors is writing an idea set with which I generally agree, through a style convention that I've never been able to get into. There's this flavor I get from a lot of older sci fi, a taste I get in the back of my throat, where no matter who the author is or what they're writing about I'm back in junior year english holding a copy of 1984. Everything maps onto the real world too closely. The gender roles debate is about gender roles. Capitalism vs socialism is about capitalism vs socialism. The answers to "who does this remind you of" are correct or incorrect. When Leguin's characters move within and interact with her world, she largely avoids this problem, which is impressive to me. For example at some points I was backhandedly reminded ot some things that had happened in a semiegalitarian group I have belonged to. However they also spend a lot of time explaining things to each other, gorgeous well developed explanations that in a fiction piece I would still prefer to infer. I think some of this is a function of the book's age; Leguin had to do more broad strokes worldbuolding because no one had done it for her. But I was still left craving something like a character study or slice of life novella that could assume the world and just write within it, rather than reminding me so many times that you can just take your fair share of food and not pay money for it.

This is a collection of very aggressive feminist poetry. A problem I often have with poetry is that I prefer a lot of structure, borderlining on old-fashioned, but am uninterested in older topics. I didn't have this problem here. The modern structuring worked and felt right to me, even when I looked at the poems on the screen of my phone. The poem, especially the early ones, were very impactful for me. What kept this from reaching 5 stars was the ending sections. It felt like a collection of not apologizing became apologetic. It was a weird time to bring up the limits of anger and empathy. I wish it could have married the anger to the empathy and love better, but to me it felt like the last section pushed the heat away.

Awwww. This is such an adorable little short story. It's in chatlog format between two AIs. I'm grading this on what it is. That's funny and cute.

It held my interest a lot better than I expected. However, I do wonder about some of the focus. There is a lot of emphasis on the military setup, including full descriptions of battles Arnold wasn't in but that were contextually relevent. The congressional and aftermath parts of the discussion leaned more to a summary style. Since the author is arguing several points related to those aspects it would be nice to see them paid more detail.