Hugos reading!
This was excellent! I've mentioned before that "weird and on a spaceship" is apparently a sub-genre of mine and this is no exception. Reynolds tells an emotional rollercoaster of a story that somehow manages to tell the story of a galaxy through the story of a spaceship. It's not...hopeful per se, but it is the story of coming back from despair and I like it best for that alone.

Now that all five books are finally out, I want to reread them in chronological order and compare that to publication order. I wonder how that would change my view of the characters and how they evolve.
Also, still amazing! What's so great about Gladstone is that the conceit never gets old (epic fantasy with late stage capitalism!) as you get used to it and the stories themselves never feel like gimmicks, but like fully realized fantasy stories that ask complex questions about good and evil and agency without ever slackening the pace.
This has become one of those series where I need to get paper copies of it to lend out.

I read more reviews of this book than I can count on one hand, which was probably a mistake because I kept reading the book and judging the other reviewers' reactions rather than my own. And it's not like I needed to read the reviews - I knew I was going to like it. I like Foz's writing, I knew it was my kind of epic fantasy (by which I mean sharply focused, cleverly plotted, and feminist).
Anyway, about that. The thing about an Accident of Stars, and I was looking for this because of all the reviews, is that the characters in the text take feelings seriously. Anger, frustration, fear, sheer shock and overwhelmingness are stock feelings of epic fantasy, but Foz lets her characters work through them, find support in one another, and never makes her characters less for having feelings.
Anyway, I liked it and it slots into the same category as [b:Every Heart a Doorway|25526296|Every Heart a Doorway (Every Heart a Doorway #1)|Seanan McGuire|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1431438555s/25526296.jpg|45313140] in how both texts are thinking about portal fantasies, but more than that, the value of transportive fantasy and of escapism in the Tolkienian sense (See Le Guin's paraphrase of Tolkien here since that has become the famous version of the quote: http://www.thetolkienist.com/2014/01/03/not-a-tolkien-quote-fantasy-is-escapist-and-that-is-its-glory/)
Anyway, these books both talk about the ways in which reality is broken and implicitly ask the following question: despite the dangers of the fantasy worlds, would you give them up to live a lesser, reduced version of yourself that is always hemmed in by our current (racist, sexist) society? And the answer, as it is for so many readers, is no.

Nobody does odd retelling like McKillip and this one was definitely odd. But fun and compelling and weirdly funny. The incongruities between Arthurian legend and modern technology were handled perfectly and going back to rediscover all the places and hints McKillip dropped in is surprisingly fun. The story felt a bit odd until I worked out the Arthurian bits, so I'm not sure how much it rewards the unfamiliar reader, but I enjoyed it a lot. Its sense of humor reminded me of Riddlemaster of Hed.

So this was a perfectly good work of epic fantasy that was...I won't go so far as to say ruined, but definitely made unpleasant by patriarchy. Spoilers ahoy!

Staveley's mistake is in thinking that attitudes towards women, sexual orientation, inheritance, etc. are fundamental aspects of human nature rather than contingent attitudes that develop in concert with society. Because the world he created is by no means feminist, but it has both a long history of accepting women in combat and pretty good birth control. And those two pretty important facts play no role whatsoever in the rest of Staveley's world building.

I'll give the three most egregious examples.

1) The misogyny addressed to and eventual murder of a female cadet. Ha Lin is the love interest of one of the main characters so, naturally, she's assaulted, beaten, and killed. And I get the justification in the plot (to a degree), but there's the meta problem of killing off a female character in order to goad a male character into taking action. Women function as plot points, not people. Moreover, there's no reason that misogyny in the ranks of a co-ed force would look the same as one that is all-male or recently co-ed. Delany talks about this - if you put children and young adults in situations where gender is mostly irrelevant, gender becomes mostly irrelevant. The awkwardness imposed by society disappears outside of society. So it's jarring to see Staveley transplant the misogyny he expects to see in a situation where it doesn't belong.

2) A female soldier visits a female whore and the latter is found dead later that day. It took literally a third of the book for our intrepid heroes to figure out another reason why the soldier might have visited her other than to kill her. FFS, seriously? No idea why she might have gone? The plot only works if you believe Valyn never thinks and isn't fit to command his big toe, much less be the the leader he's selected to be. Or if you can't see past heteronormativity.

3) If a girl is raised in a temple devoted to sensual pleasure, even if she isn't a priestess, she won't be completely terrified of OR oblivious to sex. She'll be fine with it. Even if Kaden is a hopeless dork, there's no reason for her to panic and drink herself into a stupor. She knows what she's doing, she was raised around women who must understand the female (and male) body in order to perform their worship. Again, this only makes sense if you buy into the idea that sex (and pleasure) is something women give to men rather than something women and men can enjoy together. Her fear only makes sense in the context of sex as a service women provide men, that women would prefer not to do, but do because they must. Which makes no sense whatsoever for a girl raised around priestesses of sex. You can't think that way if you believe in female desire.

4) I know, I said 3, but there are words that can go before "breasts" other than "full". Every woman has full breasts. Forget the fact that it's mostly an extraneous detail that serves, in reality, as a method of telling the reader that they are supposed to view the character as an object, might we imagine an attractive woman without full breasts? Or is that too adjectivally complicated?

The worst part is that I want to know what happens next. The story itself, even though it doesn't really deviate from the surprises one anticipates from a work of epic fantasy, is pretty good. But it's definitely an example of "I wish I could go to this restaurant and enjoy the food without being periodically punched in the face". (See [a:Ann Leckie|3365457|Ann Leckie|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1402526383p2/3365457.jpg] here if you're unfamiliar with my reference: Real Heart, Artificial Heart)

I am so glad this series is finally back (and available in print again because I've been waiting years to give it to people to read).
This seems to be the weekend for 4th book cliffhangers. Anyway, I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed reading this series as much as I enjoyed listening to the earlier versions and I can't wait to find out what happens next.
Well, obviously, I can. But you know.

I say this series is for people who liked GoT, but what I really mean is that it's for people who were dissatisfied with GoT and wanted fewer point of view characters, more heart and sympathy with the character, more women really wielding power, and all around better.
And battles. Wexler will make you love the logistics of battle so long as you're even a teeny bit interested in the first place. He writes an excellent mix of the historical and fantastical and I can't believe I have to wait another year for the conclusion.

It's not that I'm not a superhero person, it's just that I'm much more a riff on superhero person. I love the stories that talk about the perpetually kidnapped sidekicks and the experience of living in a world with supers and the absurdity of it all. Not simply the fourth wall breaking style of deadpool, but the narratives that take such a world seriously and actually look at what it's like.
And Superior does that beautifully. It's not a subversive story—it hits all the right narrative beats and doesn't break the rules of the genre—but it adds depth, nuance, and sweetness to the origin story. Not the origins of the superhero, just the story of how people are good.

Oh hai sequel. I've been waiting for you nearly a year. So good you guys! It makes me want to go back and reread the first one except I'm not sure I could handle the emotions.
Still everything I want my epic fantasy to be - brilliantly conceived, seriously about world building, tightly focused in pov while still managing to be truly epic in scope. I loved it.

Well, that was a thing.
I don't think it's a thing I've internalized as canon, though. It didn't feel like reading a HP book. I just wasn't invested in it the way I was with the earlier books. Maybe I got old? Maybe the theatrical medium requires a visual element to properly enliven the characters? (Who'd'a thunk?)
There's a series of thoughts here about fanfiction as a descriptive term versus a stylistic one, but I'm too tired to work them out right now. Note to self - think thinky thoughts later.