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frasersimons
Same great art, though very different panelling, and a more straight forward story than Red. Tells the story of how the carpenter came to be on the rock in Red.
I tried getting into this, but decided to put it down because, as good as the prose work was, and it was absolutely excellent. I just didn’t want to be in the head of a horny teenager anymore. It makes sense for the character and was beginning to see some themes, mostly regarding racism to indigenous people, but there wasn’t a plot hook I cared about. Them getting black out drunk and being absolute assholes to each other just holds no appeal, and I’ve yet to read something where a party led to anything kind of fiction I’d want to consume.
The last story is a 5 star read and the first, though not bad by any means, lacks cohesion even as it’s trying to tie together some of the more disparate threads from other volumes. There really does feel like a lack of through line and overall arc due to how the content was generated.
It shines as the last volume threads together the stories and presents a coherent and interesting arc that continues to the next volume. It may feel more traditional compared to the disjointed stories, where the reader just finds Hellboy in medias res and goes with it in a short story manner, but the change by this volume is a very welcome one—at least for me.
It shines as the last volume threads together the stories and presents a coherent and interesting arc that continues to the next volume. It may feel more traditional compared to the disjointed stories, where the reader just finds Hellboy in medias res and goes with it in a short story manner, but the change by this volume is a very welcome one—at least for me.
This is a hard sell for most people. But I actually think it was far ahead of it’s time and primed for readers to discover it again. On the face of things, initially, this looks like a Harry Potter grown up almost interesting idea.
Tom Taylor is the son of a famous writer who penned Harry Potter-alike stories that swept the world by storm, just as they did in our own world. Then the author disappeared, abandoned his Real son, Tom. And so we find Tom years later, living off of signings in the convention circuit, suffused with daddy issues. At a convention, though, it comes to light that he may not be who he thinks he is, as someone dredges up evidence that the child stand-in for Tom in pictures was a Romanian child of a housekeeper. So who is Tom?
But then things get surreal. Yes, the who-is-Taylor story isn’t all that compelling. But the factions are quickly introduced, and the story becomes more about story itself. What is the purpose of story in culture and what “power” that holds, if any, and who controls that story—or narrative.
This becomes wonderfully unique and enticing. And because I’ve read it before I know where it’s going and the anticipation is killing me. One of my most favourite series of all time and no other work comes close to packaging these ideas like this.
Tom Taylor is the son of a famous writer who penned Harry Potter-alike stories that swept the world by storm, just as they did in our own world. Then the author disappeared, abandoned his Real son, Tom. And so we find Tom years later, living off of signings in the convention circuit, suffused with daddy issues. At a convention, though, it comes to light that he may not be who he thinks he is, as someone dredges up evidence that the child stand-in for Tom in pictures was a Romanian child of a housekeeper. So who is Tom?
But then things get surreal. Yes, the who-is-Taylor story isn’t all that compelling. But the factions are quickly introduced, and the story becomes more about story itself. What is the purpose of story in culture and what “power” that holds, if any, and who controls that story—or narrative.
This becomes wonderfully unique and enticing. And because I’ve read it before I know where it’s going and the anticipation is killing me. One of my most favourite series of all time and no other work comes close to packaging these ideas like this.
Tegan and Sara chronicle their high school years, primarily centering how they came to their music, but surprisingly, though maybe it shouldn’t be, really digging deep about their queer journeys. Showcasing the homophobia of their friends and parents and teachers, and their struggle to understand who they were coming into. It feels genuine and sometimes pretty raw—especially when they’re so open about the chasms and rifts between one another. They fought a lot and took drugs and sometimes treated their parents and others with a kind of viciousness reserved for the ignorance teenagers sometimes embody. This context of why that all was occurring is really impactful.
On top of that, the narration by both is fantastic, there are old tape tracks peppered in throughout, and there’s a 20 minute interview at the end too. And it seems like they may have written their chapters separately and then coalesced a book from it, and that lends it a kind of specificity and unique expression I haven’t encountered in other memoirs. Really, stand out great-fantastic.
On top of that, the narration by both is fantastic, there are old tape tracks peppered in throughout, and there’s a 20 minute interview at the end too. And it seems like they may have written their chapters separately and then coalesced a book from it, and that lends it a kind of specificity and unique expression I haven’t encountered in other memoirs. Really, stand out great-fantastic.
"If the future couldn't change the past, we wouldn't bother with it..."
MUSOS lends itself very well to the subjective reader. It follows, in an Elsby stream-of-consciousness prose style that conflates the internal and external world of the narrator, a man who may-or-may-not have murdered a woman named Laura. Mystery ensues. The natural questions a reader poses to the fiction as it works on him become focal points as the fiction enters a lot of tangents that interrogate those assumptions. Who is Laura becomes when is Laura? Is this happening now? Is it all in the narrator's head? Is Laura "real", or is she every girl and woman this man has interacted with?
Skipping around, there is a pattern that emerges with the structure. It reaches back to the formative years, and the first sexual encounter the man has ever had, and, gradually, what emerged in my reading was that this guy, like most men out there when disassembled, operates from one core emotion: shame. It is the centrifugal, unexamined, and interrogated force that he is a slave to.
"...It's an atemporal verb, like the universe is rational. The universe is not currently being rational; it is rational despite the time. Eternity is coming, not like a wave about to crash over a cityscape, but like a wave in which we all are and always have been drowning."
Like much of Elsby's fiction, it's difficult to "like" her characters, but very easy to understand them (by the end). The nonchalance with which many men negotiate their every interaction is showcased in a liminal space--both within the head of the man and, presumably, some of the actions we can assume are in real life--that drives home a quiet, but pronounced and memorable, lasting horror of the socialized operating system of the modern man.
Tucked within that is a philosophy of entropy and temporal principles that drive home a different kind of scare: the future of this man, as it concerns his interactions with women, anyway, is inevitable. And perceptible by people around him. Though the narration is dominant over memory and real events (if those exist in the framework of the narration), making other characters such as Laura herself share a connection with the narrator's mind. Answering questions as they are thought. Anticipating his moves. Yet also, sometimes, behaving as and creates a dissonance that can't be reconciled even in this state of unrealiableness the narration never strays from. This creates a sickening complicit narrative for the people he interacts with, and we see often men constructing complete fictions about the target of their obsessions. The reader slips into exactly that as they try and construct the truth from the only information provided.
"I looked behind her at the window, and I saw my own face twice. Once was my reflection in the centre of the glass, enhanced by the darkness outside. Twice was a crude outline of my head, which she had drawn in magic marker on the bottom right-hand corner of the glass."
MUSOS lends itself very well to the subjective reader. It follows, in an Elsby stream-of-consciousness prose style that conflates the internal and external world of the narrator, a man who may-or-may-not have murdered a woman named Laura. Mystery ensues. The natural questions a reader poses to the fiction as it works on him become focal points as the fiction enters a lot of tangents that interrogate those assumptions. Who is Laura becomes when is Laura? Is this happening now? Is it all in the narrator's head? Is Laura "real", or is she every girl and woman this man has interacted with?
Skipping around, there is a pattern that emerges with the structure. It reaches back to the formative years, and the first sexual encounter the man has ever had, and, gradually, what emerged in my reading was that this guy, like most men out there when disassembled, operates from one core emotion: shame. It is the centrifugal, unexamined, and interrogated force that he is a slave to.
"...It's an atemporal verb, like the universe is rational. The universe is not currently being rational; it is rational despite the time. Eternity is coming, not like a wave about to crash over a cityscape, but like a wave in which we all are and always have been drowning."
Like much of Elsby's fiction, it's difficult to "like" her characters, but very easy to understand them (by the end). The nonchalance with which many men negotiate their every interaction is showcased in a liminal space--both within the head of the man and, presumably, some of the actions we can assume are in real life--that drives home a quiet, but pronounced and memorable, lasting horror of the socialized operating system of the modern man.
Tucked within that is a philosophy of entropy and temporal principles that drive home a different kind of scare: the future of this man, as it concerns his interactions with women, anyway, is inevitable. And perceptible by people around him. Though the narration is dominant over memory and real events (if those exist in the framework of the narration), making other characters such as Laura herself share a connection with the narrator's mind. Answering questions as they are thought. Anticipating his moves. Yet also, sometimes, behaving as and creates a dissonance that can't be reconciled even in this state of unrealiableness the narration never strays from. This creates a sickening complicit narrative for the people he interacts with, and we see often men constructing complete fictions about the target of their obsessions. The reader slips into exactly that as they try and construct the truth from the only information provided.
"I looked behind her at the window, and I saw my own face twice. Once was my reflection in the centre of the glass, enhanced by the darkness outside. Twice was a crude outline of my head, which she had drawn in magic marker on the bottom right-hand corner of the glass."
What a fun concept for a novel. Framed as a pseudo memoir of absurdism and surrealism, and magical powers, so, you know, a memoir in a tongue-in-cheek way. Who knows how much “happened”, and really, who cares? It truly is a fabulous story. Equal parts fun and crippling sad, with excellent foreshadowing for the ending, I think. “Real” memoirists could adopt a similar structure and be better for it. This meandered not a bit and hit on all the things, well, a novel would! (Because that’s what it is. To be clear).
It’s just so good. I wish my school library had stuff like this. I feel like the mental health aspect is covered so well and with the kind of empathy you seem to reliably be able to expect from Oseman. I’ll never miss a volume of this.
And it’s stories like this that will make me a likely lifetime reader of her work.
And it’s stories like this that will make me a likely lifetime reader of her work.
In this 10 seconds in the future novel, very much feeling and navigating like a contemporary piece, we follow Bushra Batal. An analyst for a middle tier corporation, doing data projection. Above menial labour… but not by that much, seems to be her standard of living. When her immediate supervisor is fired because she stands in for a meeting, she is promoted into a company she doesn’t understand, nor really know how to navigate. It is intimated that her title and money is contingent on her become complicit in she-doesn’t-even-know-what.
As it spirals, fixers purporting to be authority figures show up. Her former supervisor and friend dies under suspicious circumstances. Another company seems to be trying to poach her. The boss can’t be found. A shadow figure is giving her task lists and circumnavigated emails with odd language. The city has protestors that break into riots, as the job last handled enters a crisis that sparks the powder keg of the city.
This is one the more interesting, what I would call new wave cyberpunk, novels to come out in recent months. It’s not commercial fiction, but neither is it literary. I’d say it’s upmarket, subversive and innovative of genre fiction. It isn’t concerned with frenetic pacing or creating a foreign lexicon the genre is somewhat known for. Instead, it targets well known short falls and corrects them. The main characters are marginalized, privilege is established immediately. There isn’t any sex and drugs and gun fights to stoke the pacing, it’s simply about Bushra attempting to figure out what the heck is going on.
In a world where you can trust no one—especially corporations. And every figure that enters your life seems to eventually yield information that recontextualizes what you thought you knew about them, and your an immigrant, disconnected, low paid, high skilled worker, the dissent, or “punk” aspect is navigating to a point of not being complicit and implicated and scapegoated. Forget about storming the megacorp and taking it down. Who is the actual bad guy? Who are my best interests aligned with at the moment?
A significant portion of the book is Bushra simply trying to get to a location, using the only ride share program still running. Getting rerouted and caught up in the microworld formed by cops versus protestors, acting as a small boot camp for the ways in which authority reframes what is happening to manipulate outcomes. All the while she is just trying to get someplace self.
A.I, or AGI, cyrpotocurrencies, or blockchain, also are in the limelight, somewhat. In a nuanced and interesting conversation about who is using blockchain for what. The possibilities, the pitfalls. Right now, if you’re like me, you probably just know the financial aspects. It’s fascinating and great at onboarding the reader to its tech aspects.
Plot wise, overall, it’s a significantly quieter story than most cyberpunk, and that’s what makes it exceptional. The ending is perfect and elevated it from a 4.5 rounded down, to up. I think it does a great job of depicting and embodying the marginalized when lots of cyberpunk has white people fetishizing the marginalized in often laughably inauthentic, bombastic plot lines. This is the opposite. It’s organic and well written.
Though, does still feel like a debut. There is some connective tissue, particularly around the behaviours of side characters that feels a bit too hand wavy. The only person you’ll ever really end up knowing is Bushra. The prose work vacillates between getting the job done to quite well done descriptions that are sparse and also fleeting, leaving you wonder about time and place is one of the few times the seams show. Dialogue ranges to the realistic, with verbal pauses, ticks, etc. range to annoying verisimilitude, but that’s just going to depend on taste. I prefer a more tonally cogent, rather than archetypical blow-off-valve humour characters in a really rather serious plot. Again, speaks to taste.
Otherwise, I really liked this and think it’s one of the more intelligent offerings in this intersection in some time. Absolutely recommend. It’s a pocket book found at Carona Samizdat, 375 pages long, not including the introduction.
As it spirals, fixers purporting to be authority figures show up. Her former supervisor and friend dies under suspicious circumstances. Another company seems to be trying to poach her. The boss can’t be found. A shadow figure is giving her task lists and circumnavigated emails with odd language. The city has protestors that break into riots, as the job last handled enters a crisis that sparks the powder keg of the city.
This is one the more interesting, what I would call new wave cyberpunk, novels to come out in recent months. It’s not commercial fiction, but neither is it literary. I’d say it’s upmarket, subversive and innovative of genre fiction. It isn’t concerned with frenetic pacing or creating a foreign lexicon the genre is somewhat known for. Instead, it targets well known short falls and corrects them. The main characters are marginalized, privilege is established immediately. There isn’t any sex and drugs and gun fights to stoke the pacing, it’s simply about Bushra attempting to figure out what the heck is going on.
In a world where you can trust no one—especially corporations. And every figure that enters your life seems to eventually yield information that recontextualizes what you thought you knew about them, and your an immigrant, disconnected, low paid, high skilled worker, the dissent, or “punk” aspect is navigating to a point of not being complicit and implicated and scapegoated. Forget about storming the megacorp and taking it down. Who is the actual bad guy? Who are my best interests aligned with at the moment?
A significant portion of the book is Bushra simply trying to get to a location, using the only ride share program still running. Getting rerouted and caught up in the microworld formed by cops versus protestors, acting as a small boot camp for the ways in which authority reframes what is happening to manipulate outcomes. All the while she is just trying to get someplace self.
A.I, or AGI, cyrpotocurrencies, or blockchain, also are in the limelight, somewhat. In a nuanced and interesting conversation about who is using blockchain for what. The possibilities, the pitfalls. Right now, if you’re like me, you probably just know the financial aspects. It’s fascinating and great at onboarding the reader to its tech aspects.
Plot wise, overall, it’s a significantly quieter story than most cyberpunk, and that’s what makes it exceptional. The ending is perfect and elevated it from a 4.5 rounded down, to up. I think it does a great job of depicting and embodying the marginalized when lots of cyberpunk has white people fetishizing the marginalized in often laughably inauthentic, bombastic plot lines. This is the opposite. It’s organic and well written.
Though, does still feel like a debut. There is some connective tissue, particularly around the behaviours of side characters that feels a bit too hand wavy. The only person you’ll ever really end up knowing is Bushra. The prose work vacillates between getting the job done to quite well done descriptions that are sparse and also fleeting, leaving you wonder about time and place is one of the few times the seams show. Dialogue ranges to the realistic, with verbal pauses, ticks, etc. range to annoying verisimilitude, but that’s just going to depend on taste. I prefer a more tonally cogent, rather than archetypical blow-off-valve humour characters in a really rather serious plot. Again, speaks to taste.
Otherwise, I really liked this and think it’s one of the more intelligent offerings in this intersection in some time. Absolutely recommend. It’s a pocket book found at Carona Samizdat, 375 pages long, not including the introduction.
Wonderful world building, as usual with Lai. Biopunk post-cyberpunk that shows a hierarchy of engineered beings that allows the privileged to co-opt parts that fail of theirs by doubles, but outside of that basic framework more types of beings exist. When a seek to break their oppression things begin to unravel.
The marketing copy is actually far more apt at describing what happens than I ever could be. It’s immersive and incredible. The narrator was perfect. Lai has a gift for using accessible words in creating a foreign ecosystem of references that initiative but indicative of the futuristic, wild setting. Absolutely loved it and recommend.
The marketing copy is actually far more apt at describing what happens than I ever could be. It’s immersive and incredible. The narrator was perfect. Lai has a gift for using accessible words in creating a foreign ecosystem of references that initiative but indicative of the futuristic, wild setting. Absolutely loved it and recommend.