Victoria Goddard
Aug. 8th, 2022 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsThe Return of Fitzroy Angursell
4/5. A direct sequel to The Hands of the Emperor from a different POV, with a different tone, doing a very different thing. I really liked this one, though I think it would be confusing and somewhat unrewarding to start here. This book runs on improbable coincidences and – he would never call it this, but – providence. Also known as wild magic. It made me laugh out loud more than once. It’s about a person who has been so constrained, so controlled for so long that, when given freedom, he alternately runs to flood and freezes up. This book is about trying to ride that out, and reconnecting with friends of your old self who aren’t always great about understanding your new self, but you all love each other lots and so will keep trying. A re-found family book, if you will. Also trauma processing and magic. Lovely.
The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul
3/5. Sequel to the previous. A different POV of a few events from Hands of the Emperor and then after. I . . . this is awkward. I went in arms wide open to love Pali, since I apparently love all her other characters. And I just . . . didn’t. She’s hard to love, to be fair – she’s rigid and, in her word, “heartless.” Which is both an unfair assessment and accurate. But it means she has a particularly hard time not, you know, being an enormous asshole to a number of people, most centrally someone who really doesn’t need her crap. And I just was not really here for her journey of, IDK, being slightly less of an asshole.
It's one of those things where I had to interrogate my reaction because I’ve grumbled to myself about the lack of women in this universe, and then here I go disliking one of the most prominent women and finding her supposed old romance with redacted totally unconvincing and frankly off-putting. Was I just retreading the old sexist thought patterns so endemic to, say, slash fandom? Maybe, though I will say in my defense that I find her towering dislike of Cliopher both completely sensible from her perspective, and kind of funny, and honestly one of the most charming things about her, and I look forward to how that is either resolved or not resolved, however messily that is.
4/5. A direct sequel to The Hands of the Emperor from a different POV, with a different tone, doing a very different thing. I really liked this one, though I think it would be confusing and somewhat unrewarding to start here. This book runs on improbable coincidences and – he would never call it this, but – providence. Also known as wild magic. It made me laugh out loud more than once. It’s about a person who has been so constrained, so controlled for so long that, when given freedom, he alternately runs to flood and freezes up. This book is about trying to ride that out, and reconnecting with friends of your old self who aren’t always great about understanding your new self, but you all love each other lots and so will keep trying. A re-found family book, if you will. Also trauma processing and magic. Lovely.
The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul
3/5. Sequel to the previous. A different POV of a few events from Hands of the Emperor and then after. I . . . this is awkward. I went in arms wide open to love Pali, since I apparently love all her other characters. And I just . . . didn’t. She’s hard to love, to be fair – she’s rigid and, in her word, “heartless.” Which is both an unfair assessment and accurate. But it means she has a particularly hard time not, you know, being an enormous asshole to a number of people, most centrally someone who really doesn’t need her crap. And I just was not really here for her journey of, IDK, being slightly less of an asshole.
It's one of those things where I had to interrogate my reaction because I’ve grumbled to myself about the lack of women in this universe, and then here I go disliking one of the most prominent women and finding her supposed old romance with redacted totally unconvincing and frankly off-putting. Was I just retreading the old sexist thought patterns so endemic to, say, slash fandom? Maybe, though I will say in my defense that I find her towering dislike of Cliopher both completely sensible from her perspective, and kind of funny, and honestly one of the most charming things about her, and I look forward to how that is either resolved or not resolved, however messily that is.