Everything about this worked for me. The voice is just so enthralling, and the story, ostensibly? A memoir about her early life, and the Characters that are her father and mother. Not so much a rumination as to why she is the way she is, but just telling a really good story about them—eventually elucidating what these phantoms she has actually are, sure. It’s just non-stop enthralling in its verisimilitude, and so myopic in its doing that it becomes eminently relatable. Or, at least, I felt so, likening various deeds to my own experiences, not to mention the mythos of remembrance of one’s own childhood. 

This was actually a lot more solid than what I expected. Still not really exceptional in any respect, and very much overwritten (as is the <not so> fine tradition of the fantasy genre; no wonder Sanderson takes this over later).

It also doesn’t read like that much of a LoTR clone either. An unexpected, happy surprise. There’s a lot more outright rumination of the nature of gender alongside the Big Bad. It isn’t as cut and dry as in the tried and true big fantasy series, and I like that a lot. I’m not entirely convinced the characters are entirely dynamic, but that kind of character growth happens over books in these things. Not to say no one learns and grows, but it’s just by the things happening, and not particularly at any other craft level. 

I only own this particularly book, so I really have to weigh whether I’d continue.I’ll tell you what helps a lot though: The new audiobook narration from Rosamond Pike, who brings this far more to life than my brain could find the voice of the text. She narrates it like it’s Shakespeare and goes hard, making it extremely enjoyable and distinctive. For one narrator to cover so many characters, that’s a feat in of itself, but to just bring it, really augments the reading that much further, breathing new life into what might otherwise been a somewhat overtired read, to be honest. 

The thing is, I have watched the tv series and boy howdy is this last season cool. It’s what made me want to pick this up. So, I am more than slightly tempted to pick up the next (audio) book. 

Found this a bit more slippery than Bunny, which was so entrancing and so able to hold up to intense scrutiny regarding what was Actually happening. I found the lack of being able to “decode” events a bit disappointing, and, to be honest, the conflation of words slightly annoying at times. 

But, and it is a very big one (for me), thematically this was more intriguing and compelling than Bunny, so it managed to carry it away and through very easily, in the end. And I am always a sucker for the unhinged, I find. Mostly, the sole let down is my expectations, since Bunny is an all time favourite and (I think?) what introduced me to this little, but growing, sub-genre, conflagration of a tropes… whatever exactly this I kind of lit is.

Extremely readable historical fiction ostensibly told by Uhtred himself. The conversational aspects are actually double-sided though. On the one hand, it allows for some compelling, even fast-paced story telling. On the other, because he’s forced to learn to read and write and it’s fairly heavily insinuated what we’re reading is his account, there’s a dissonance created with the device. Uhtred comments on things he really wouldn’t for the benefit of the reader, and it only grows when his ostensible recollections become more like omniscient wonderings that no longer compartmentalize the character. 

Having seen the show, I knew all of the plot beats already, and not much more, weirdly, was added to the story in this medium. It’s very cinematic and rarely do we get all that much insight into the times and lives of the people. When we do, again, it creates some dissonance, as Uhtred basically goes out of his way from telling a camp fire story, to explaining granular idiocentric historical details.   

It’s a very fun, almost short, good time, though. With the book end events very much feeling like more-or-less a pin holding in the tale, and not like a self contained fully fledged plot I’d prefer from series. 

Most of the time, I find it hard to appreciate literary intersections with genres, but especially with science fiction, because they almost as a truism seem preoccupied with exploring things that genre has retread a thousand times already. Think Klara and the Sun, for instance, with the concept more fleshed out in even movies, such as Bicentennial Man, let alone offerings on the page. 

This, though, felt actually novel and more so, even more interesting. Poetry that proves to be the scaffolding A.I needs to form consciousness would be compelling enough, but this, with its wild time jumps forward in time, deigns to explore the core of it via humanity and its subsequent intersections with this intersecting technological advancement. 

Then the changes in authors and the commencement of narrative being diegetic and a kind of ongoing mystery, really make this hard to put down. And manages to partake in the scifi toolkit too: exploring the human condition, rather than have the scifi concept a mere intersection for other literary endeavours—which is what really make most literary intersections truly lacking, and fundamentally flawed when interacting with genre. 

On all fronts, this is successful and what I would call “good” literature.  

As a staple of the cyberpunk subgenre, I can see why it’s been slotted in as such, especially with the authors forward. It’s not entirely what I expected, though, as it goes so far in the future as to be outright transhumanism and have aliens; pretty atypical inclusions generally, but especially for “foundational” works. 

Either way, once situated I found I enjoyed it quite a bit. It almost felt as zany as Snowcrash, though nowhere near as prescriptive in themes, but in how… strange the characters and the technology intersect with them. It’s also very sweeping in terms of time scale. Long-lived, redefining our concept of a human life, accomplishments, and condition, I think this, I guess collection of stories compiled, have the central themes down. As you might expect it’s fairly technophobic, but more balanced than you’d expect, possibly. 

This was not quite up to my expectations established from the excellent Luminaries—but it was also by no means a let down, either. It has got its finger on the pulse of the moment: intersectional polarizations of class and identity culminate into a pressure cooker type drama centered on a seemingly innocuous “anarchist” gardening collective, “invading” peoples’ property to plant. When a tycoon offers them solvency to “keep doing what they’re doing”, well things get complicated and spiral fairly quickly.

Read this mostly for the characters and themes, not the plot, and you’ll be pleased, I think. Everyone feels vibrant and deliberate, playing into the plot at key points, while fleshing out the ideologies. To some degree it requires that the characters be ideologues because of this, but actually, because there’s so much poured into them they don’t feel like condensed ideas at a macro level butting heads. 

She’s a weird and wild one. Books that have explicit sexuality at the centre of them can go one way or the other for me: they can be a rare access to a kind of communication I don’t really “get”, personally… Or, they can really play into the aspects I don’t get, and just feel completely obtuse and myopic. This kind of skirted the line, depending. Especially because Absurdism is the commodity here you really need to be buying; and I did, again, mostly. 

More than any grander themes or character work, this ended up being something I admired and enjoyed because it is very rare that absurdism works, and it does work in spades here. I snorted and outright laughed, and that’s difficult to get me to do; more so with literature. In a way, I was thinking this must be how people who like Snow Crash must feel. So, I can appreciate that.

Beyond that, though—I’m not sure I’m totally sold. People navigating life via invasive technology and the primary nexus being sexuality (which, does make sense; every advancement gets fed into the sex industry), also inherently makes it lack gravity, for me. Omnipresence was given the face of an annoying tech bro that should have felt a lot more villainous, but because Hazel’s dad is sandwiched between sex dolls and a dude can’t get a boner without thinking about dolphins, it’s all just… lacking… punch? 

Still, the fact that this works at all (again, especially for me), is quite the magic trick; so props. 

French again writes very successfully about almost hyper real characters embodying another house. Rather than the tree, as you might expect, the result of the miscommunications, assumptions, adolescent dynamics, and other miscreant coming-of-age byproducts, fill the lived in feel of the Ivy House and its secrets. 

What made this so successful was the quality of the writing, which once again feels upmarket, as the story itself may develop into something like genre, but begins as a free wheeling pin ball where I had absolutely no idea where it was going nor what kind of story was being told. It was dark ( to be expected from French), and foreboding, due to the hindsight of our unreliable, heavily solipsistic narrator; the myopia of which helps to foster the growing tension of the peripheral, as we learn more and more about just how little he actually cares for and understands other people, including those close to him. 

As it develops into a murder mystery alongside the narrators inability to make sense of things due to a head injury and his lack of actual memory regarding, well who knows how much of his past really, along with the tandem mystery of why he was hurt at the start - things develop rather slowly but satisfyingly. The kind of ending you’d expect from French too. Always a good thing. I find her very reliable and have never been proven wrong on that front yet. 

Luscious language and a very strange, flighty narrative made this whole thing completely gripping throughout. So many balls out of left field along with the questioning of the narrator; an (ostensible?) Buddhist priest maneuvering through a world that looks, feels alien to them for surprisingly reasons. And an at once trite, yet soulful and human analysis between themselves and again, ostensible?, twin - who, again, navigates the world in a completely foreign way—yet also sometimes bridges the gaps in understanding through their unusual, intuitive communication. 

Sprinkled throughout are moments of history and culture running parallel to the almost New Weird plot. Again, it just makes it completely compelling and gripping. Read this like a fast fever.