Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 17
January 15, 2024
A Succession of Bad Days, by Graydon Saunders
In a world rendered post-apocalyptic by thousands of years worth of warring Dark Lords, a group of adult students attend magic school to learn how to do civil engineering with magic. They spend the first quarter of the book using magic to build a house they can live in for the rest of their time at school. Later, they build bridges and canals.
This isn't quite as relaxing as it sounds, because if they don't master their innate power, it will fry their brains. The only way to avoid getting their brains fried is to transform themselves into a "metaphysical form," which is a sort of magical expression of their inner selves and/or the form they want to be. They can still keep a normal-looking form for social occasions, but their real self is now a coil of flame, a sunless sea, etc, immortal unless something kills them. Also, in order to get formally licensed as an independent sorcerer, they need to do a senior project which is a work of original magic.
In between, they drink a lot of tea (some of it lethal), cook and eat (some of their food is created from memories), fall in love, practice making magical explosives, and help out the community by doing stuff like creating hot tubs out of pure sapphire, fixing a dam, and making innovative anti-mosquito spells.
Either this premise appeals to you or it doesn't. It greatly appeals to me. I love books based on process (doing a thing) rather than conflict. Of course process-based books often include conflict, just as conflict-based books often include process, but typically one dominates, and in western books, it's nearly always conflict. (If it's 50-50, you get Dick Francis.)
I LOVED this book. It's very weird and also somewhat difficult, but I found it extremely worthwhile. It's cozy but also appealingly strange, it has a very cool magic system which involves a lot of science, the ensemble cast is very likable, the worldbuilding is incredible, there's a pleasant amount of dry humor, there's a lot of beautiful and/or cozy elements but also some excellent understated horror, and it's centrally about people trying to do the right thing and maintain a just community against extreme odds. It has a very uplifting feeling overall. Enormous amounts of competence porn if you like that.
It's the sort of book bound to attract a following whose numbers are inversely proportional to their enthusiasm. If you like John M. Ford, Pamela Dean, C. J. Cherryh, and/or Gene Wolfe, this might be very much up your alley.
In this world, lots of people have a little bit of magical power, and a very few people have immense amounts of it. Power tends to corrupt, corrupt people tend to murder potential rivals, and so anyone powerful who might have not been a tyrant tends to die before they grow up. The result is a quarter of a millennia of immensely powerful sorcerers casually mutating and enslaving the population, and fighting incredibly destructive battles with each other. The world is now overrun with horrifying magically created plants and animals called weeds; people spend a lot of time weeding.
But the book's setting is the Commonweal, a small and beleaguered island of non-horribleness in a world otherwise consisting of assorted Dark Lords and their horrible kingdoms. (They're not actually called Dark Lords in the book, but that's basically what they are.) The Commonweal has used some elaborate magic and the offer of a life that's not fucking awful to lure in several former Dark Lords to play well with others, and established an equality-based society. However, due to all the fallout of the rest of history, famine and invasion are ever-present threats.
To be more specific, the setting is the second Commonweal, which has been isolated from the first as the result of an invasion in the previous book. (Yes, there's a previous book; I'll get to that shortly). The majority culture here are the Creeks, who are not exactly human. In fact I'm pretty sure none of the characters are exactly human. Among other interesting cultural differences, the use of gendered pronouns indicates a sexual or romantic relationship with the person you're calling "she" or "he," so we don't always know what gender characters are.
A Succession of Bad Days is narrated by Edgar, who just had a magical parasite removed. It turns out that the parasite has been feeding on their power and also their ability to learn. With it gone, Edgar has quite a lot of power - enough that Edgar needs to start learning to control it, or it will destroy them.
Edgar joins a class consisting of Dove (an ex-sergeant who was deeply traumatized in a recent battle; iron-willed and possessed of absurd amounts of magical potential), Chloris (prim and proper by Creek cultural standards, which are not ours; not happy to be there), Zora (a teenager who likes to create illusory wings; the least powerful of them and an absolute sweetheart), and Kynefrid (who has already studied magic a bit; this is not an advantage.) Edgar is sweet, earnest, and generally a cinnamon roll. Edgar is also deeply, deeply strange.
Their teachers are Wake, a necromancer and ancient eldritch horror in a human suit; Blossom, who likes to blow shit up, looks like a cute teenager, and is actually a coil of flame in human form; and Halt, an unfathomably ancient former Dark Lord who typically appears as a sweet grandma who knits, drinks tea, and rides a giant fire-breathing battle sheep named Eustace. If you have enough magical power, you can perceive her as a giant spider. If you have an absolutely absurd amount of magic power, you can just barely glimpse the unfathomable horror behind the spider...
Together, they build a house, borrow an ancient forest, build a canal, navigate some interesting local politics, and grapple with the implications of becoming sorcerers in a community which both needs them and was specifically created to limit their political power.
I should note that this is actually the second book in the series. The first is The March North, and is the reason why it took me so long to get to this one. I made a number of very determined attempts to read The March North and could not make heads or tails of it. I think I understood about one sentence out of every three. Luckily, it turns out that you do not actually have to have read The March North to read A Succession of Bad Days.
The March North is the story of an attempted invasion of the Commonweal, resulting in the second Commonweal splitting off from it. Dove, Halt, and Blossom are in it. I may take another whack at it after I read more books in the series and hopefully have more context.
The prose style of A Succession of Bad Days is uhhh unique. Many commas are involved, nesting like birds at spring. It's very clearly a deliberate choice, is often quite beautiful, and sometimes understatedly funny. But. It reads like it was originally written in a different language, then translated into English by someone determined to preserve as much of the original syntax as possible. Add to that a tendency to imply rather than state, show events that only make sense in light of information learned 100 pages later, and an enormous amount of technical vocabulary, and you can see why I'm calling it difficult.
All this is also true of The March North, except that the style tends more toward the terse, the narrator explains absolutely nothing because they already know what's going on, and they culturally and personally minimize emotional expression which makes it additionally hard to know what's important and what isn't. Edgar wakes up with no idea what's going on and is very curious, and has lots and lots of feelings, so despite their tendency to use commas as all-purpose punctuation, they're a much easier narrator to follow.
A Succession of Bad Days is the first part of the students' story, which concludes in Safely You Deliver. I loved that too. I'll review it separately because I have a LOT of questions specific to it.
If you've read A Succession of Bad Days, let's talk here! Spoilers for this book (but not the later ones) are fine in comments. No need to use rot13. If you read the book later and want to discuss, please start commenting whenever, and I'll come talk with you.
You can buy this book, along with the rest of the series to date, on Apple, Google Play, Kobo, and probably other places. You cannot buy it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. There is no print edition.
Spoilers! Questions! Hopefully the author will appear and shed some (possibly gnomic) light!
( Read more... )
comments
This isn't quite as relaxing as it sounds, because if they don't master their innate power, it will fry their brains. The only way to avoid getting their brains fried is to transform themselves into a "metaphysical form," which is a sort of magical expression of their inner selves and/or the form they want to be. They can still keep a normal-looking form for social occasions, but their real self is now a coil of flame, a sunless sea, etc, immortal unless something kills them. Also, in order to get formally licensed as an independent sorcerer, they need to do a senior project which is a work of original magic.
In between, they drink a lot of tea (some of it lethal), cook and eat (some of their food is created from memories), fall in love, practice making magical explosives, and help out the community by doing stuff like creating hot tubs out of pure sapphire, fixing a dam, and making innovative anti-mosquito spells.
Either this premise appeals to you or it doesn't. It greatly appeals to me. I love books based on process (doing a thing) rather than conflict. Of course process-based books often include conflict, just as conflict-based books often include process, but typically one dominates, and in western books, it's nearly always conflict. (If it's 50-50, you get Dick Francis.)
I LOVED this book. It's very weird and also somewhat difficult, but I found it extremely worthwhile. It's cozy but also appealingly strange, it has a very cool magic system which involves a lot of science, the ensemble cast is very likable, the worldbuilding is incredible, there's a pleasant amount of dry humor, there's a lot of beautiful and/or cozy elements but also some excellent understated horror, and it's centrally about people trying to do the right thing and maintain a just community against extreme odds. It has a very uplifting feeling overall. Enormous amounts of competence porn if you like that.
It's the sort of book bound to attract a following whose numbers are inversely proportional to their enthusiasm. If you like John M. Ford, Pamela Dean, C. J. Cherryh, and/or Gene Wolfe, this might be very much up your alley.
In this world, lots of people have a little bit of magical power, and a very few people have immense amounts of it. Power tends to corrupt, corrupt people tend to murder potential rivals, and so anyone powerful who might have not been a tyrant tends to die before they grow up. The result is a quarter of a millennia of immensely powerful sorcerers casually mutating and enslaving the population, and fighting incredibly destructive battles with each other. The world is now overrun with horrifying magically created plants and animals called weeds; people spend a lot of time weeding.
But the book's setting is the Commonweal, a small and beleaguered island of non-horribleness in a world otherwise consisting of assorted Dark Lords and their horrible kingdoms. (They're not actually called Dark Lords in the book, but that's basically what they are.) The Commonweal has used some elaborate magic and the offer of a life that's not fucking awful to lure in several former Dark Lords to play well with others, and established an equality-based society. However, due to all the fallout of the rest of history, famine and invasion are ever-present threats.
To be more specific, the setting is the second Commonweal, which has been isolated from the first as the result of an invasion in the previous book. (Yes, there's a previous book; I'll get to that shortly). The majority culture here are the Creeks, who are not exactly human. In fact I'm pretty sure none of the characters are exactly human. Among other interesting cultural differences, the use of gendered pronouns indicates a sexual or romantic relationship with the person you're calling "she" or "he," so we don't always know what gender characters are.
A Succession of Bad Days is narrated by Edgar, who just had a magical parasite removed. It turns out that the parasite has been feeding on their power and also their ability to learn. With it gone, Edgar has quite a lot of power - enough that Edgar needs to start learning to control it, or it will destroy them.
Edgar joins a class consisting of Dove (an ex-sergeant who was deeply traumatized in a recent battle; iron-willed and possessed of absurd amounts of magical potential), Chloris (prim and proper by Creek cultural standards, which are not ours; not happy to be there), Zora (a teenager who likes to create illusory wings; the least powerful of them and an absolute sweetheart), and Kynefrid (who has already studied magic a bit; this is not an advantage.) Edgar is sweet, earnest, and generally a cinnamon roll. Edgar is also deeply, deeply strange.
Their teachers are Wake, a necromancer and ancient eldritch horror in a human suit; Blossom, who likes to blow shit up, looks like a cute teenager, and is actually a coil of flame in human form; and Halt, an unfathomably ancient former Dark Lord who typically appears as a sweet grandma who knits, drinks tea, and rides a giant fire-breathing battle sheep named Eustace. If you have enough magical power, you can perceive her as a giant spider. If you have an absolutely absurd amount of magic power, you can just barely glimpse the unfathomable horror behind the spider...
Together, they build a house, borrow an ancient forest, build a canal, navigate some interesting local politics, and grapple with the implications of becoming sorcerers in a community which both needs them and was specifically created to limit their political power.
I should note that this is actually the second book in the series. The first is The March North, and is the reason why it took me so long to get to this one. I made a number of very determined attempts to read The March North and could not make heads or tails of it. I think I understood about one sentence out of every three. Luckily, it turns out that you do not actually have to have read The March North to read A Succession of Bad Days.
The March North is the story of an attempted invasion of the Commonweal, resulting in the second Commonweal splitting off from it. Dove, Halt, and Blossom are in it. I may take another whack at it after I read more books in the series and hopefully have more context.
The prose style of A Succession of Bad Days is uhhh unique. Many commas are involved, nesting like birds at spring. It's very clearly a deliberate choice, is often quite beautiful, and sometimes understatedly funny. But. It reads like it was originally written in a different language, then translated into English by someone determined to preserve as much of the original syntax as possible. Add to that a tendency to imply rather than state, show events that only make sense in light of information learned 100 pages later, and an enormous amount of technical vocabulary, and you can see why I'm calling it difficult.
All this is also true of The March North, except that the style tends more toward the terse, the narrator explains absolutely nothing because they already know what's going on, and they culturally and personally minimize emotional expression which makes it additionally hard to know what's important and what isn't. Edgar wakes up with no idea what's going on and is very curious, and has lots and lots of feelings, so despite their tendency to use commas as all-purpose punctuation, they're a much easier narrator to follow.
A Succession of Bad Days is the first part of the students' story, which concludes in Safely You Deliver. I loved that too. I'll review it separately because I have a LOT of questions specific to it.
If you've read A Succession of Bad Days, let's talk here! Spoilers for this book (but not the later ones) are fine in comments. No need to use rot13. If you read the book later and want to discuss, please start commenting whenever, and I'll come talk with you.
You can buy this book, along with the rest of the series to date, on Apple, Google Play, Kobo, and probably other places. You cannot buy it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. There is no print edition.
Spoilers! Questions! Hopefully the author will appear and shed some (possibly gnomic) light!
( Read more... )
comments
January 11, 2024
And Falling, Fly, by Skyler White (DNF)
Her fist-size nipples spiral hypnotically.
Olivia is a fallen angel of desire, which means she's a vampire. She feeds via "quills" in her mouth, which make cuts so small and sharp that people don't even notice them, but need to be frequently sharpened. This can only be done by grinding her quills against the quills of another angel-vampire. She can also bite people harder with "full fang," draining "several quarts" of blood which doesn't harm them so long as they get a blood transfusion within a couple hours. She and other vampire-angels pay $8000 a pop to hunt people whose blood has been tested for drugs/blood-borne diseases.
Like other vampangels, she has no vagina.
This book has some pleasingly batshit angpire worldbuilding, but unfortunately Olivia is only half the narration. The other half is the story of tormented neuroscientist Dominic, who is plagued by visions of past lives. He is extremely boring. His assistants are named Peter and Paul, in case we missed the religious themes.
I assume Dominick's love causes Olivia to grow a vagina, but I didn't get that far.
Berkley marketed the book as dark fantasy, not paranormal romance, which explains why it goes on for so long before Dominick and Olivia meet - I gave up before they did, but flipping ahead, it looks like it's about a quarter of the way in. For either genre, it's weird.
This is the same Skyler White who co-wrote The Instrumentalists with Steve Brust - a book which I made several determined attempts at, but never got past the first chapter.
comments
Olivia is a fallen angel of desire, which means she's a vampire. She feeds via "quills" in her mouth, which make cuts so small and sharp that people don't even notice them, but need to be frequently sharpened. This can only be done by grinding her quills against the quills of another angel-vampire. She can also bite people harder with "full fang," draining "several quarts" of blood which doesn't harm them so long as they get a blood transfusion within a couple hours. She and other vampire-angels pay $8000 a pop to hunt people whose blood has been tested for drugs/blood-borne diseases.
Like other vampangels, she has no vagina.
This book has some pleasingly batshit angpire worldbuilding, but unfortunately Olivia is only half the narration. The other half is the story of tormented neuroscientist Dominic, who is plagued by visions of past lives. He is extremely boring. His assistants are named Peter and Paul, in case we missed the religious themes.
I assume Dominick's love causes Olivia to grow a vagina, but I didn't get that far.
Berkley marketed the book as dark fantasy, not paranormal romance, which explains why it goes on for so long before Dominick and Olivia meet - I gave up before they did, but flipping ahead, it looks like it's about a quarter of the way in. For either genre, it's weird.
This is the same Skyler White who co-wrote The Instrumentalists with Steve Brust - a book which I made several determined attempts at, but never got past the first chapter.
comments
January 7, 2024
Book Resolution
Many people are making book resolutions. Here is mine.
I resolve to read whatever I want, however I want. If I feel like whittling down the number of books that have been lurking unread for 20 years, I will do that. If I feel like reading the entire Anthony Award longlist, I will do that. If I feel like making a poll, I will do that. If I feel like diving into contemporary horror, I will do that.
Rec me a book?
comments
I resolve to read whatever I want, however I want. If I feel like whittling down the number of books that have been lurking unread for 20 years, I will do that. If I feel like reading the entire Anthony Award longlist, I will do that. If I feel like making a poll, I will do that. If I feel like diving into contemporary horror, I will do that.
Rec me a book?
comments
January 3, 2024
Dear Candyheartsex creator...
My AO3 name is Edonohana. Thank you for creating for me!
I am very open to treats. If you have any questions, please ask the mods to check with me.
I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you make for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all styles of art beyond what's listed in my DNWs. In writing, I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, lengths, etc. I enjoy both shipfic and gen. I am fine with sex if it suits the story, or no sex if that suits the story.
General Likes: Hurt-comfort, action/adventure, horror (especially folk & cosmic), canon-divergence AUs, domestic life, survival situations, mysterious alien technology, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, difficult choices, Groundhog Days and Peggy Sues, miniature things, food, and animals.
( General DNWs )
( Cat in the Mirror - Mary Stolz - Fic )
( Dark Tower - King - Fic or Art )
( Dragonriders of Pern - Fic or Art )
( Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin - Fic or art )
( Marvel Comics (X-Men/New Mutants) Fic or Art )
( The Stand - King - Fic )
( Tillerman Chronicles - Cynthia Voigt - Fic )
comments
I am very open to treats. If you have any questions, please ask the mods to check with me.
I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you make for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all styles of art beyond what's listed in my DNWs. In writing, I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, lengths, etc. I enjoy both shipfic and gen. I am fine with sex if it suits the story, or no sex if that suits the story.
General Likes: Hurt-comfort, action/adventure, horror (especially folk & cosmic), canon-divergence AUs, domestic life, survival situations, mysterious alien technology, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, difficult choices, Groundhog Days and Peggy Sues, miniature things, food, and animals.
( General DNWs )
( Cat in the Mirror - Mary Stolz - Fic )
( Dark Tower - King - Fic or Art )
( Dragonriders of Pern - Fic or Art )
( Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin - Fic or art )
( Marvel Comics (X-Men/New Mutants) Fic or Art )
( The Stand - King - Fic )
( Tillerman Chronicles - Cynthia Voigt - Fic )
comments
January 1, 2024
My Yuletide stories
I had a great Yuletide. I got three wonderful stories, and the collection seemed exceptionally good. I'm still reading through my long list of bookmarks.
I wrote four stories this Yuletide.
Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Leather and Steel. 1896 words. Explicit. Laurana/Kitiara.
My favorite Dragonlance pairing! I think all you need to know to read it is that Laurana is an elf, Kitiara is human, and they're on opposite sides of a war.
This was a pinch hit. Here's the request that made me lunge to snap it up: Honestly, i want these two to just have it out. Tanis is boring and they should realise that. I envision them in a battle, which takes a turn for the... kinky, to be honest. Not enemies to lovers exactly, more like enemies to enemies who sometimes have amazing hate sex. Kit would have no issues teaching this elf a lesson in who is boss, and i feel like Laurana would give back as good as she got.
The Fall of the House of Usher - TV
This is a stylish, gruesome, quotable updating of a bunch of Poe stories into a family saga. If I'd had time, I'd have treated every single request for it.
If you want to read my stories without having seen the series, probably all you need to know is that Verna (an anagram of raven) is a morally ambiguous supernatural being, Arthur Pym ends up as the Usher family's ruthless lawyer/hit man, and Madeline and Roderick Usher met Verna in a bar once and made a deal with her, with disastrous results.
Click to see an iconic image of Verna.
a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime. Arthur Pym & Verna. 1585 words.
An Arctic cosmic horror story. I love cosmic horror but I'd never written Arctic horror before. I had a lot of fun taking the show's hints about their first meeting and creating a story around them. Especially the bit about the hollow world, an old pulp fiction trope that I love and no one seems to do any more now.
There's another take in the collection on the same prompt, The Margin, which I recommend if you like mine.
the miraculous lustre of her eye. Madeline Usher/Verna. 1954 words. Explicit.
Power plays, sex magic, and totally literal flirting with Death.
I love writing dark FF, so it was a treat for me to get to write two of them this Yuletide.
Piranesi - Susannah Clarke
The Sixth Statue. 1890 words.
Matthew Rose Sorensen explores the House. This was my assignment. The request was for House exploration and "Do other animals ever visit?" I never get tired of creating statues for this fandom.
comments
I wrote four stories this Yuletide.
Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Leather and Steel. 1896 words. Explicit. Laurana/Kitiara.
My favorite Dragonlance pairing! I think all you need to know to read it is that Laurana is an elf, Kitiara is human, and they're on opposite sides of a war.
This was a pinch hit. Here's the request that made me lunge to snap it up: Honestly, i want these two to just have it out. Tanis is boring and they should realise that. I envision them in a battle, which takes a turn for the... kinky, to be honest. Not enemies to lovers exactly, more like enemies to enemies who sometimes have amazing hate sex. Kit would have no issues teaching this elf a lesson in who is boss, and i feel like Laurana would give back as good as she got.
The Fall of the House of Usher - TV
This is a stylish, gruesome, quotable updating of a bunch of Poe stories into a family saga. If I'd had time, I'd have treated every single request for it.
If you want to read my stories without having seen the series, probably all you need to know is that Verna (an anagram of raven) is a morally ambiguous supernatural being, Arthur Pym ends up as the Usher family's ruthless lawyer/hit man, and Madeline and Roderick Usher met Verna in a bar once and made a deal with her, with disastrous results.
Click to see an iconic image of Verna.
a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime. Arthur Pym & Verna. 1585 words.
An Arctic cosmic horror story. I love cosmic horror but I'd never written Arctic horror before. I had a lot of fun taking the show's hints about their first meeting and creating a story around them. Especially the bit about the hollow world, an old pulp fiction trope that I love and no one seems to do any more now.
There's another take in the collection on the same prompt, The Margin, which I recommend if you like mine.
the miraculous lustre of her eye. Madeline Usher/Verna. 1954 words. Explicit.
Power plays, sex magic, and totally literal flirting with Death.
I love writing dark FF, so it was a treat for me to get to write two of them this Yuletide.
Piranesi - Susannah Clarke
The Sixth Statue. 1890 words.
Matthew Rose Sorensen explores the House. This was my assignment. The request was for House exploration and "Do other animals ever visit?" I never get tired of creating statues for this fandom.
comments
December 31, 2023
Yuletide Recs, Part 3
DON'T NEED TO KNOW CANON
Pseudo-Edo SciFi Art - Yamaguchi Akira
Two stories were written this Yuletide based on this set of very cool paintings of futuristic/steampunk Edo-period Japan. I recced one last post, and I'm back to rec the other this post. They're both excellent and quite different from each other.
View of the Island of Kyushu, Temporal Express. 1082 words.
Beautifully written, full of beautiful images, and dreamlike in the very best way; steampunk time-traveling Japan by way of Ray Bradbury. Like the other story, this one would not be out of place in Clarkesworld or Strange Horizons.
NEED TO KNOW CANON
The 101 Dalmatians - Dodie Smith
What's in a Name? Nanny Cook, Nanny Butler, Dalmatian puppies. 2121 words.
The story of Nanny Cook, Nanny Butler, and how they deal with a house full of Dalmatians (Quite well, thank you very much.) Exactly in the tone of the book, sweet and whimsical with unexpected dashes of practicality.
Piranesi - Susannah Clarke
These stories both capture the heartbreaking/heartwarming aspects of the book, the beauty and the loss and the loneliness and the hope.
The Waters below the Nineteenth Eastern Hall. 1465 words.
Piranesi discovers a new set of statues in the Drowned Halls.
Beloved Child. 1101 words.
Piranesi/Matthew Rose Sorensen reunites with his family, accompanied by Sarah Raphael.
The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Fist Fights and Fan Fiction: The Complicated Legacy of Eugenides & Irene
A delightful metafiction in a version of our present world in which Eugenides and Irene definitely existed, but the exact details of their reign are a matter of dispute. Full of great little Easter eggs - check out the surnames of some of the people cited - and has a story going on in both present and ancient past timelines.
If you enjoy any of these stories, please give the authors a comment or kudos, or say so here if you don't have an AO3 account.
How was your Yuletide this year?
comments
Pseudo-Edo SciFi Art - Yamaguchi Akira
Two stories were written this Yuletide based on this set of very cool paintings of futuristic/steampunk Edo-period Japan. I recced one last post, and I'm back to rec the other this post. They're both excellent and quite different from each other.
View of the Island of Kyushu, Temporal Express. 1082 words.
Beautifully written, full of beautiful images, and dreamlike in the very best way; steampunk time-traveling Japan by way of Ray Bradbury. Like the other story, this one would not be out of place in Clarkesworld or Strange Horizons.
NEED TO KNOW CANON
The 101 Dalmatians - Dodie Smith
What's in a Name? Nanny Cook, Nanny Butler, Dalmatian puppies. 2121 words.
The story of Nanny Cook, Nanny Butler, and how they deal with a house full of Dalmatians (Quite well, thank you very much.) Exactly in the tone of the book, sweet and whimsical with unexpected dashes of practicality.
Piranesi - Susannah Clarke
These stories both capture the heartbreaking/heartwarming aspects of the book, the beauty and the loss and the loneliness and the hope.
The Waters below the Nineteenth Eastern Hall. 1465 words.
Piranesi discovers a new set of statues in the Drowned Halls.
Beloved Child. 1101 words.
Piranesi/Matthew Rose Sorensen reunites with his family, accompanied by Sarah Raphael.
The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Fist Fights and Fan Fiction: The Complicated Legacy of Eugenides & Irene
A delightful metafiction in a version of our present world in which Eugenides and Irene definitely existed, but the exact details of their reign are a matter of dispute. Full of great little Easter eggs - check out the surnames of some of the people cited - and has a story going on in both present and ancient past timelines.
If you enjoy any of these stories, please give the authors a comment or kudos, or say so here if you don't have an AO3 account.
How was your Yuletide this year?
comments
December 29, 2023
Yuletide Recs, Part II
DON'T NEED TO KNOW CANON
Pseudo-Edo SciFi Art - Yamaguchi Akira
This is a set of very cool paintings of futuristic/steampunk Edo-period Japan.
Prime Time. 1613 words.
A deeply cool, extremely clever science fiction story with a take on time travel I've never seen before, complete with trippy tenses and some unexpected emotional punch. Like its inspiration, it melds some old-fashioned aspects (the story's format) with futuristic ones, and creates something cool and new that you can keep looking at and discovering new things. It wouldn't be out of place in Clarkesworld. One of the comments thinks it should be nominated for a Hugo and I agree.
"Hey Diddle Diddle"
Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
The Other Side. 1200 words.
A strange and unexpectedly beautiful story, with the quirky playfulness of the original rhyme, lovely prose, and a kind of existential eeriness. This is another one that I could easily see in a magazine, and is the sort of thing Yuletide is all about, for me.
Goncharov
This is a movie that doesn't exist directed by Martin Scorsese. That's all you need to know to read the hilarious and all too believable story about the 2023 remake. And if you haven't heard of Goncharov, do read the article I linked - it's weird, funny, and kind of heartwarming in a very fannish way.
Goncharov (2023).
NEED TO KNOW CANON
Arcadia - Tom Stoppard
Anything's Possible. 3134 words.
NOTE: Major character death. But the same sort that's in the play, where the dead co-exist with the living. The present characters from the play reunite at the funeral of one of their own, which is also attended by his ghost. It's in the format of a play, and it really feels like a short sequel to it. The dialogue is fantastic, and it's smart and emotional and involves card games and statistics - so, very Stoppard.
Equus - Peter Shaffer
The Sacrifice. 2179 words.
Martin Dysart returns to Greece. Incredibly well-written, with an intense atmosphere of building dread. It really captures and evokes the themes and atmosphere of the play.
The Expanse - TV
Pyriscence. 2862 words. Amos Burton & Praxidike Meng.
Amos comes to visit Prax and Mei after the end of the series. A heartwarming look at all three of them living and growing and changing and enjoying each other's company, exactly what I would have loved to see on the show itself. Excellent Prax voice.
Sunshine - Robin McKinley
under our skins. 1190 words. Mel, Original Characters.
Mel during the Wars, told through the eyes of a tattoo artist. Great structure, very clever, excellent worldbuilding, and it tells a story too.
Watership Down - Richard Adams
El-ahrairah and the River of Stone. 4360 words.
One story, told by four rabbits over multiple generations. A very cleverly structured story, absorbing and rewarding. It feels exactly like canon. I loved it.
I have four stories in the main collection. Can you guess what they are?
comments
Pseudo-Edo SciFi Art - Yamaguchi Akira
This is a set of very cool paintings of futuristic/steampunk Edo-period Japan.
Prime Time. 1613 words.
A deeply cool, extremely clever science fiction story with a take on time travel I've never seen before, complete with trippy tenses and some unexpected emotional punch. Like its inspiration, it melds some old-fashioned aspects (the story's format) with futuristic ones, and creates something cool and new that you can keep looking at and discovering new things. It wouldn't be out of place in Clarkesworld. One of the comments thinks it should be nominated for a Hugo and I agree.
"Hey Diddle Diddle"
Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
The Other Side. 1200 words.
A strange and unexpectedly beautiful story, with the quirky playfulness of the original rhyme, lovely prose, and a kind of existential eeriness. This is another one that I could easily see in a magazine, and is the sort of thing Yuletide is all about, for me.
Goncharov
This is a movie that doesn't exist directed by Martin Scorsese. That's all you need to know to read the hilarious and all too believable story about the 2023 remake. And if you haven't heard of Goncharov, do read the article I linked - it's weird, funny, and kind of heartwarming in a very fannish way.
Goncharov (2023).
NEED TO KNOW CANON
Arcadia - Tom Stoppard
Anything's Possible. 3134 words.
NOTE: Major character death. But the same sort that's in the play, where the dead co-exist with the living. The present characters from the play reunite at the funeral of one of their own, which is also attended by his ghost. It's in the format of a play, and it really feels like a short sequel to it. The dialogue is fantastic, and it's smart and emotional and involves card games and statistics - so, very Stoppard.
Equus - Peter Shaffer
The Sacrifice. 2179 words.
Martin Dysart returns to Greece. Incredibly well-written, with an intense atmosphere of building dread. It really captures and evokes the themes and atmosphere of the play.
The Expanse - TV
Pyriscence. 2862 words. Amos Burton & Praxidike Meng.
Amos comes to visit Prax and Mei after the end of the series. A heartwarming look at all three of them living and growing and changing and enjoying each other's company, exactly what I would have loved to see on the show itself. Excellent Prax voice.
Sunshine - Robin McKinley
under our skins. 1190 words. Mel, Original Characters.
Mel during the Wars, told through the eyes of a tattoo artist. Great structure, very clever, excellent worldbuilding, and it tells a story too.
Watership Down - Richard Adams
El-ahrairah and the River of Stone. 4360 words.
One story, told by four rabbits over multiple generations. A very cleverly structured story, absorbing and rewarding. It feels exactly like canon. I loved it.
I have four stories in the main collection. Can you guess what they are?
comments
December 28, 2023
Orphan Island, by Laurel Snyder
I bought this book in the library book sale, based on a logline about orphans surviving on an mysterious island. Little did I know what I was in for.
I HATED this book. It's not a realistic or even unrealistic survival story, it's a preachy allegory that doesn't even make sense on its own terms AND has unnecessary plotlines that seem set up only to frustrate the reader by going nowhere AND has a bad message AND appears to advocate letting toddlers use filleting knives.
There are nine children on the island. There are always nine children on the island. Every year, an otherwise empty boat arrives with a toddler. The toddler gets off the boat. The oldest child on the island gets in the boat, and the boat takes off by itself. That child is never seen again. And so the cycle continues.
The kids have no idea why this is happening, but regard it as a normal fact of life and have been told that if a child ever refuses to get on the boat, the sky will fall. Who told them this? Older kids. Who told those kids? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The book opens with the arrival of a new toddler, Ess, who speaks in obnoxious phonetic baby talk, "Whah dis?" and "Ess sooze" (shoes). I HATE baby talk.
Deen, the oldest child, gets in the boat over the tearful protests of the next-oldest child, Jinny. Now Jinny has lost her best friend and is stuck as the primary caretaker for Ess. Lucky for Ess, the island is a paradise. Food is extremely easy to get, there are bees but they don't sting, there are snakes but they don't bite, the sunrises depict beautiful flowers opening and stuff like that, and if you jump off the cliffs a gentle wind will blow you back. None of the kids ever get sick or hurt, except for very minor scrapes.
So clearly, we're dealing with either Heaven or a constructed environment. At first, all signs point to "constructed environment." There's a library of real books from our world, and Jinny marvels over such strange things as "movies" and "candy."
None of the kids have any idea what's off the island or if the books are describing real things, because they all arrived when they were so young that they couldn't explain anything, and by the time they're old enough to talk coherently, they don't remember anything before their arrival.
( Minor spoiler )
This is why I kept reading - I was curious WTF was going on with the island and why. Virtual reality? A carefully maintained super-playground? A long-term science experiment? A generation ship? This is all a dream while Jinny's in a coma in the real world?
The kids have very limited knowledge about the world, as they all arrived as toddlers and were taught by preteen kids who were also taught by preteen kids. So a lot of the names for things are ones they made up, because they don't know what the real names are. (This is why their names are all spelled oddly.) Sometimes I liked this, like "jellyblobs" for sea anemones. Other times I did not like it, like "wishing" for peeing/pooping, and the toilet being a "wish cabin" BARF FOREVER into the wish basin.
This also fails to have a point. In books like Piranesi or The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, we see how specific people construct knowledge in different ways depending on who they are and what they have to draw from. In Orphan Island, it's all just cute or twee and not drawn from anything specific beyond not knowing how to spell.
But all is not well in cutesy paradise. Jinny is resentful over being stuck with Ess, worried that Ess will get hurt, and doesn't want to get in a boat and sail off to somewhere totally unknown and possibly to her death. None of the other children think those are reasonable concerns for Jinny to have, and everything in the narrative supports the other kids.
When Jinny tries to teach Ess the things the older kids are supposed to teach their toddler charges, Ess doesn't seem to learn them very well, Jinny gets impatient, and the other kids lecture Jinny on how it's very important that Ess learn and Jinny needs to teach her better. (Note that Jinny is the oldest kid, and she's like eleven. In fact, she comes across as the youngest short of Ess, because everyone else is smarter and more competent and calmer than her.)
I hesitate to say that I have a literal trigger for anything in literature, but if I do, it's when a character is criticized or punished or mocked for being unable to do something when they've never been taught how to do it and there's no reason why they should know how to do it, and the narrative seems to think this is fine. (I don't mind if the narrative clearly thinks this is unfair.) How is Jinny supposed to teach Ess how to read? She clearly has no idea. The other kids, disgusted with her inability to do so, take over and successfully teach Ess to read, but we don't know how they do it because it happens off page.
Similarly, Jinny fails at teaching Ess how to swim, largely because she's worried that toddler Ess could drown. The other kids tell her that's impossible, and one of them tosses Ess in the ocean. This successfully teaches her how to swim!
Jinny is worried that if she tries to teach Ess to scale and gut a fish with a sharp filleting knife, she might cut herself. Remember, Ess is a LITERAL TODDLER who talks like "Dinny, pease stay?" The other kids tell Jinny she's being overprotective and to let Ess use the knife. Of course, Ess is fine.
The lessons are so bad here that I started to feel like I was being gaslit by a book. Okay, sure, in this specific situation the kids are clearly being protected by something and it does seem impossible for them to get hurt, not to mention that toddlers are somehow magically capable of the physical coordination to SCALE AND GUT A FISH, so Jinny actually is being overprotective, buuuuut...
If this was black comedy, I would probably like it. But it's not, and Jinny is presented as being clearly in the wrong. That's not to say that I like Jinny. I actually couldn't stand her. I just hated the other kids even more. Needless to say, none of the characters came across as actual kids.
Oh and also Jinny is explicitly being condescended to and lied to by the other kids - at one point they explain to her that her lost bestie Deen, who she'd thought was an advocate of letting her do things her own way, had secretly told them that the key to smooth relations with Jinny was to let her THINK she was getting her own way, but actually to manipulate her so she only thought that was true UGH UGH UGH.
ANYWAY. So what's up with these boats? Let's leave aside the possible science fiction explanations and look at it as allegory. The children arrive when they're very young and know and remember nothing. They're cared for by others. When they're older but just before they hit puberty, they get in them again and sail away. The allegory seems like the arrival is birth, and the departure is leaving the golden, protected, beautiful land of childhood behind and entering into the uncharted and scary waters of adolescence.
But that is not a good allegory for adolescence. (Even apart from very few people thinking of their childhoods as perfection even if they were happy!) The children have no idea where they're going or whether they'll ever see any of their friends again or even if they'll survive. Adolescence is kind of an unknown, but not to that extent. You're still allowed to see your younger friends! The departure feels much more like an allegory for death.
So is Jinny's desire to not get on the boat an allegory for a child afraid of becoming a teenager? Or is it an allegory for a person refusing to face death? This is a children's book, mind, so if it's the latter that's a little disturbing.
Orphan Island feels like a preachy, message-y book. But what's the message? Well...
( Are you fucking SERIOUS )
In conclusion, fuck the baby talk, fuck the misspelled names, and fuck wishes that come out of your ass.
My favorite review from Goodreads: "We listened to this on audiobook, and upon completion my children wanted to stop the vehicle and put the discs under the car and run them over. [...]
We ranted for at least a half an hour. We woke up the next morning and one of my son's first words were, "I'm still angry about the book."
[image error] [image error]
comments
I HATED this book. It's not a realistic or even unrealistic survival story, it's a preachy allegory that doesn't even make sense on its own terms AND has unnecessary plotlines that seem set up only to frustrate the reader by going nowhere AND has a bad message AND appears to advocate letting toddlers use filleting knives.
There are nine children on the island. There are always nine children on the island. Every year, an otherwise empty boat arrives with a toddler. The toddler gets off the boat. The oldest child on the island gets in the boat, and the boat takes off by itself. That child is never seen again. And so the cycle continues.
The kids have no idea why this is happening, but regard it as a normal fact of life and have been told that if a child ever refuses to get on the boat, the sky will fall. Who told them this? Older kids. Who told those kids? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The book opens with the arrival of a new toddler, Ess, who speaks in obnoxious phonetic baby talk, "Whah dis?" and "Ess sooze" (shoes). I HATE baby talk.
Deen, the oldest child, gets in the boat over the tearful protests of the next-oldest child, Jinny. Now Jinny has lost her best friend and is stuck as the primary caretaker for Ess. Lucky for Ess, the island is a paradise. Food is extremely easy to get, there are bees but they don't sting, there are snakes but they don't bite, the sunrises depict beautiful flowers opening and stuff like that, and if you jump off the cliffs a gentle wind will blow you back. None of the kids ever get sick or hurt, except for very minor scrapes.
So clearly, we're dealing with either Heaven or a constructed environment. At first, all signs point to "constructed environment." There's a library of real books from our world, and Jinny marvels over such strange things as "movies" and "candy."
None of the kids have any idea what's off the island or if the books are describing real things, because they all arrived when they were so young that they couldn't explain anything, and by the time they're old enough to talk coherently, they don't remember anything before their arrival.
( Minor spoiler )
This is why I kept reading - I was curious WTF was going on with the island and why. Virtual reality? A carefully maintained super-playground? A long-term science experiment? A generation ship? This is all a dream while Jinny's in a coma in the real world?
The kids have very limited knowledge about the world, as they all arrived as toddlers and were taught by preteen kids who were also taught by preteen kids. So a lot of the names for things are ones they made up, because they don't know what the real names are. (This is why their names are all spelled oddly.) Sometimes I liked this, like "jellyblobs" for sea anemones. Other times I did not like it, like "wishing" for peeing/pooping, and the toilet being a "wish cabin" BARF FOREVER into the wish basin.
This also fails to have a point. In books like Piranesi or The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, we see how specific people construct knowledge in different ways depending on who they are and what they have to draw from. In Orphan Island, it's all just cute or twee and not drawn from anything specific beyond not knowing how to spell.
But all is not well in cutesy paradise. Jinny is resentful over being stuck with Ess, worried that Ess will get hurt, and doesn't want to get in a boat and sail off to somewhere totally unknown and possibly to her death. None of the other children think those are reasonable concerns for Jinny to have, and everything in the narrative supports the other kids.
When Jinny tries to teach Ess the things the older kids are supposed to teach their toddler charges, Ess doesn't seem to learn them very well, Jinny gets impatient, and the other kids lecture Jinny on how it's very important that Ess learn and Jinny needs to teach her better. (Note that Jinny is the oldest kid, and she's like eleven. In fact, she comes across as the youngest short of Ess, because everyone else is smarter and more competent and calmer than her.)
I hesitate to say that I have a literal trigger for anything in literature, but if I do, it's when a character is criticized or punished or mocked for being unable to do something when they've never been taught how to do it and there's no reason why they should know how to do it, and the narrative seems to think this is fine. (I don't mind if the narrative clearly thinks this is unfair.) How is Jinny supposed to teach Ess how to read? She clearly has no idea. The other kids, disgusted with her inability to do so, take over and successfully teach Ess to read, but we don't know how they do it because it happens off page.
Similarly, Jinny fails at teaching Ess how to swim, largely because she's worried that toddler Ess could drown. The other kids tell her that's impossible, and one of them tosses Ess in the ocean. This successfully teaches her how to swim!
Jinny is worried that if she tries to teach Ess to scale and gut a fish with a sharp filleting knife, she might cut herself. Remember, Ess is a LITERAL TODDLER who talks like "Dinny, pease stay?" The other kids tell Jinny she's being overprotective and to let Ess use the knife. Of course, Ess is fine.
The lessons are so bad here that I started to feel like I was being gaslit by a book. Okay, sure, in this specific situation the kids are clearly being protected by something and it does seem impossible for them to get hurt, not to mention that toddlers are somehow magically capable of the physical coordination to SCALE AND GUT A FISH, so Jinny actually is being overprotective, buuuuut...
If this was black comedy, I would probably like it. But it's not, and Jinny is presented as being clearly in the wrong. That's not to say that I like Jinny. I actually couldn't stand her. I just hated the other kids even more. Needless to say, none of the characters came across as actual kids.
Oh and also Jinny is explicitly being condescended to and lied to by the other kids - at one point they explain to her that her lost bestie Deen, who she'd thought was an advocate of letting her do things her own way, had secretly told them that the key to smooth relations with Jinny was to let her THINK she was getting her own way, but actually to manipulate her so she only thought that was true UGH UGH UGH.
ANYWAY. So what's up with these boats? Let's leave aside the possible science fiction explanations and look at it as allegory. The children arrive when they're very young and know and remember nothing. They're cared for by others. When they're older but just before they hit puberty, they get in them again and sail away. The allegory seems like the arrival is birth, and the departure is leaving the golden, protected, beautiful land of childhood behind and entering into the uncharted and scary waters of adolescence.
But that is not a good allegory for adolescence. (Even apart from very few people thinking of their childhoods as perfection even if they were happy!) The children have no idea where they're going or whether they'll ever see any of their friends again or even if they'll survive. Adolescence is kind of an unknown, but not to that extent. You're still allowed to see your younger friends! The departure feels much more like an allegory for death.
So is Jinny's desire to not get on the boat an allegory for a child afraid of becoming a teenager? Or is it an allegory for a person refusing to face death? This is a children's book, mind, so if it's the latter that's a little disturbing.
Orphan Island feels like a preachy, message-y book. But what's the message? Well...
( Are you fucking SERIOUS )
In conclusion, fuck the baby talk, fuck the misspelled names, and fuck wishes that come out of your ass.
My favorite review from Goodreads: "We listened to this on audiobook, and upon completion my children wanted to stop the vehicle and put the discs under the car and run them over. [...]
We ranted for at least a half an hour. We woke up the next morning and one of my son's first words were, "I'm still angry about the book."
[image error] [image error]
comments
Orphan Island, by Laurel Snyder (the answer to my last poll)
I bought this book in the library book sale, based on a logline about orphans surviving on an mysterious island. Little did I know what I was in for.
I HATED this book. It's not a realistic or even unrealistic survival story, it's a preachy allegory that doesn't even make sense on its own terms AND has unnecessary plotlines that seem set up only to frustrate the reader by going nowhere AND has a bad message AND appears to advocate letting toddlers use filleting knives.
There are nine children on the island. There are always nine children on the island. Every year, an otherwise empty boat arrives with a toddler. The toddler gets off the boat. The oldest child on the island gets in the boat, and the boat takes off by itself. That child is never seen again. And so the cycle continues.
The kids have no idea why this is happening, but regard it as a normal fact of life and have been told that if a child ever refuses to get on the boat, the sky will fall. Who told them this? Older kids. Who told those kids? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The book opens with the arrival of a new toddler, Ess, who speaks in obnoxious phonetic baby talk, "Whah dis?" and "Ess sooze" (shoes). I HATE baby talk.
Deen, the oldest child, gets in the boat over the tearful protests of the next-oldest child, Jinny. Now Jinny has lost her best friend and is stuck as the primary caretaker for Ess. Lucky for Ess, the island is a paradise. Food is extremely easy to get, there are bees but they don't sting, there are snakes but they don't bite, the sunrises depict beautiful flowers opening and stuff like that, and if you jump off the cliffs a gentle wind will blow you back. None of the kids ever get sick or hurt, except for very minor scrapes.
So clearly, we're dealing with either Heaven or a constructed environment. At first, all signs point to "constructed environment." There's a library of real books from our world, and Jinny marvels over such strange things as "movies" and "candy."
None of the kids have any idea what's off the island or if the books are describing real things, because they all arrived when they were so young that they couldn't explain anything, and by the time they're old enough to talk coherently, they don't remember anything before their arrival.
( Minor spoiler )
This is why I kept reading - I was curious WTF was going on with the island and why. Virtual reality? A carefully maintained super-playground? A long-term science experiment? A generation ship? This is all a dream while Jinny's in a coma in the real world?
The kids have very limited knowledge about the world, as they all arrived as toddlers and were taught by preteen kids who were also taught by preteen kids. So a lot of the names for things are ones they made up, because they don't know what the real names are. (This is why their names are all spelled oddly.) Sometimes I liked this, like "jellyblobs" for sea anemones. Other times I did not like it, like "wishing" for peeing/pooping, and the toilet being a "wish cabin" BARF FOREVER into the wish basin.
This also fails to have a point. In books like Piranesi or The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, we see how specific people construct knowledge in different ways depending on who they are and what they have to draw from. In Orphan Island, it's all just cute or twee and not drawn from anything specific beyond not knowing how to spell.
But all is not well in cutesy paradise. Jinny is resentful over being stuck with Ess, worried that Ess will get hurt, and doesn't want to get in a boat and sail off to somewhere totally unknown and possibly to her death. None of the other children think those are reasonable concerns for Jinny to have, and everything in the narrative supports the other kids.
When Jinny tries to teach Ess the things the older kids are supposed to teach their toddler charges, Ess doesn't seem to learn them very well, Jinny gets impatient, and the other kids lecture Jinny on how it's very important that Ess learn and Jinny needs to teach her better. (Note that Jinny is the oldest kid, and she's like eleven. In fact, she comes across as the youngest short of Ess, because everyone else is smarter and more competent and calmer than her.)
I hesitate to say that I have a literal trigger for anything in literature, but if I do, it's when a character is criticized or punished or mocked for being unable to do something when they've never been taught how to do it and there's no reason why they should know how to do it, and the narrative seems to think this is fine. (I don't mind if the narrative clearly thinks this is unfair.) How is Jinny supposed to teach Ess how to read? She clearly has no idea. The other kids, disgusted with her inability to do so, take over and successfully teach Ess to read, but we don't know how they do it because it happens off page.
Similarly, Jinny fails at teaching Ess how to swim, largely because she's worried that toddler Ess could drown. The other kids tell her that's impossible, and one of them tosses Ess in the ocean. This successfully teaches her how to swim!
Jinny is worried that if she tries to teach Ess to scale and gut a fish with a sharp filleting knife, she might cut herself. Remember, Ess is a LITERAL TODDLER who talks like "Dinny, pease stay?" The other kids tell Jinny she's being overprotective and to let Ess use the knife. Of course, Ess is fine.
The lessons are so bad here that I started to feel like I was being gaslit by a book. Okay, sure, in this specific situation the kids are clearly being protected by something and it does seem impossible for them to get hurt, not to mention that toddlers are somehow magically capable of the physical coordination to SCALE AND GUT A FISH, so Jinny actually is being overprotective, buuuuut...
If this was black comedy, I would probably like it. But it's not, and Jinny is presented as being clearly in the wrong. That's not to say that I like Jinny. I actually couldn't stand her. I just hated the other kids even more. Needless to say, none of the characters came across as actual kids.
Oh and also Jinny is explicitly being condescended to and lied to by the other kids - at one point they explain to her that her lost bestie Deen, who she'd thought was an advocate of letting her do things her own way, had secretly told them that the key to smooth relations with Jinny was to let her THINK she was getting her own way, but actually to manipulate her so she only thought that was true UGH UGH UGH.
ANYWAY. So what's up with these boats? Let's leave aside the possible science fiction explanations and look at it as allegory. The children arrive when they're very young and know and remember nothing. They're cared for by others. When they're older but just before they hit puberty, they get in them again and sail away. The allegory seems like the arrival is birth, and the departure is leaving the golden, protected, beautiful land of childhood behind and entering into the uncharted and scary waters of adolescence.
But that is not a good allegory for adolescence. (Even apart from very few people thinking of their childhoods as perfection even if they were happy!) The children have no idea where they're going or whether they'll ever see any of their friends again or even if they'll survive. Adolescence is kind of an unknown, but not to that extent. You're still allowed to see your younger friends! The departure feels much more like an allegory for death.
So is Jinny's desire to not get on the boat an allegory for a child afraid of becoming a teenager? Or is it an allegory for a person refusing to face death? This is a children's book, mind, so if it's the latter that's a little disturbing.
Orphan Island feels like a preachy, message-y book. But what's the message? Well...
( Are you fucking SERIOUS )
In conclusion, fuck the baby talk, fuck the misspelled names, and fuck wishes that come out of your ass.
My favorite review from Goodreads: "We listened to this on audiobook, and upon completion my children wanted to stop the vehicle and put the discs under the car and run them over. [...]
We ranted for at least a half an hour. We woke up the next morning and one of my son's first words were, "I'm still angry about the book."
[image error] [image error]
comments
I HATED this book. It's not a realistic or even unrealistic survival story, it's a preachy allegory that doesn't even make sense on its own terms AND has unnecessary plotlines that seem set up only to frustrate the reader by going nowhere AND has a bad message AND appears to advocate letting toddlers use filleting knives.
There are nine children on the island. There are always nine children on the island. Every year, an otherwise empty boat arrives with a toddler. The toddler gets off the boat. The oldest child on the island gets in the boat, and the boat takes off by itself. That child is never seen again. And so the cycle continues.
The kids have no idea why this is happening, but regard it as a normal fact of life and have been told that if a child ever refuses to get on the boat, the sky will fall. Who told them this? Older kids. Who told those kids? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The book opens with the arrival of a new toddler, Ess, who speaks in obnoxious phonetic baby talk, "Whah dis?" and "Ess sooze" (shoes). I HATE baby talk.
Deen, the oldest child, gets in the boat over the tearful protests of the next-oldest child, Jinny. Now Jinny has lost her best friend and is stuck as the primary caretaker for Ess. Lucky for Ess, the island is a paradise. Food is extremely easy to get, there are bees but they don't sting, there are snakes but they don't bite, the sunrises depict beautiful flowers opening and stuff like that, and if you jump off the cliffs a gentle wind will blow you back. None of the kids ever get sick or hurt, except for very minor scrapes.
So clearly, we're dealing with either Heaven or a constructed environment. At first, all signs point to "constructed environment." There's a library of real books from our world, and Jinny marvels over such strange things as "movies" and "candy."
None of the kids have any idea what's off the island or if the books are describing real things, because they all arrived when they were so young that they couldn't explain anything, and by the time they're old enough to talk coherently, they don't remember anything before their arrival.
( Minor spoiler )
This is why I kept reading - I was curious WTF was going on with the island and why. Virtual reality? A carefully maintained super-playground? A long-term science experiment? A generation ship? This is all a dream while Jinny's in a coma in the real world?
The kids have very limited knowledge about the world, as they all arrived as toddlers and were taught by preteen kids who were also taught by preteen kids. So a lot of the names for things are ones they made up, because they don't know what the real names are. (This is why their names are all spelled oddly.) Sometimes I liked this, like "jellyblobs" for sea anemones. Other times I did not like it, like "wishing" for peeing/pooping, and the toilet being a "wish cabin" BARF FOREVER into the wish basin.
This also fails to have a point. In books like Piranesi or The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, we see how specific people construct knowledge in different ways depending on who they are and what they have to draw from. In Orphan Island, it's all just cute or twee and not drawn from anything specific beyond not knowing how to spell.
But all is not well in cutesy paradise. Jinny is resentful over being stuck with Ess, worried that Ess will get hurt, and doesn't want to get in a boat and sail off to somewhere totally unknown and possibly to her death. None of the other children think those are reasonable concerns for Jinny to have, and everything in the narrative supports the other kids.
When Jinny tries to teach Ess the things the older kids are supposed to teach their toddler charges, Ess doesn't seem to learn them very well, Jinny gets impatient, and the other kids lecture Jinny on how it's very important that Ess learn and Jinny needs to teach her better. (Note that Jinny is the oldest kid, and she's like eleven. In fact, she comes across as the youngest short of Ess, because everyone else is smarter and more competent and calmer than her.)
I hesitate to say that I have a literal trigger for anything in literature, but if I do, it's when a character is criticized or punished or mocked for being unable to do something when they've never been taught how to do it and there's no reason why they should know how to do it, and the narrative seems to think this is fine. (I don't mind if the narrative clearly thinks this is unfair.) How is Jinny supposed to teach Ess how to read? She clearly has no idea. The other kids, disgusted with her inability to do so, take over and successfully teach Ess to read, but we don't know how they do it because it happens off page.
Similarly, Jinny fails at teaching Ess how to swim, largely because she's worried that toddler Ess could drown. The other kids tell her that's impossible, and one of them tosses Ess in the ocean. This successfully teaches her how to swim!
Jinny is worried that if she tries to teach Ess to scale and gut a fish with a sharp filleting knife, she might cut herself. Remember, Ess is a LITERAL TODDLER who talks like "Dinny, pease stay?" The other kids tell Jinny she's being overprotective and to let Ess use the knife. Of course, Ess is fine.
The lessons are so bad here that I started to feel like I was being gaslit by a book. Okay, sure, in this specific situation the kids are clearly being protected by something and it does seem impossible for them to get hurt, not to mention that toddlers are somehow magically capable of the physical coordination to SCALE AND GUT A FISH, so Jinny actually is being overprotective, buuuuut...
If this was black comedy, I would probably like it. But it's not, and Jinny is presented as being clearly in the wrong. That's not to say that I like Jinny. I actually couldn't stand her. I just hated the other kids even more. Needless to say, none of the characters came across as actual kids.
Oh and also Jinny is explicitly being condescended to and lied to by the other kids - at one point they explain to her that her lost bestie Deen, who she'd thought was an advocate of letting her do things her own way, had secretly told them that the key to smooth relations with Jinny was to let her THINK she was getting her own way, but actually to manipulate her so she only thought that was true UGH UGH UGH.
ANYWAY. So what's up with these boats? Let's leave aside the possible science fiction explanations and look at it as allegory. The children arrive when they're very young and know and remember nothing. They're cared for by others. When they're older but just before they hit puberty, they get in them again and sail away. The allegory seems like the arrival is birth, and the departure is leaving the golden, protected, beautiful land of childhood behind and entering into the uncharted and scary waters of adolescence.
But that is not a good allegory for adolescence. (Even apart from very few people thinking of their childhoods as perfection even if they were happy!) The children have no idea where they're going or whether they'll ever see any of their friends again or even if they'll survive. Adolescence is kind of an unknown, but not to that extent. You're still allowed to see your younger friends! The departure feels much more like an allegory for death.
So is Jinny's desire to not get on the boat an allegory for a child afraid of becoming a teenager? Or is it an allegory for a person refusing to face death? This is a children's book, mind, so if it's the latter that's a little disturbing.
Orphan Island feels like a preachy, message-y book. But what's the message? Well...
( Are you fucking SERIOUS )
In conclusion, fuck the baby talk, fuck the misspelled names, and fuck wishes that come out of your ass.
My favorite review from Goodreads: "We listened to this on audiobook, and upon completion my children wanted to stop the vehicle and put the discs under the car and run them over. [...]
We ranted for at least a half an hour. We woke up the next morning and one of my son's first words were, "I'm still angry about the book."
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December 27, 2023
It gets worse!
To drive away the deep annoyance that was The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids, I decided to read a different book I bought at the same library sale. Based on the thumbnail description, I figured there was no way I could go wrong. I'd enjoy even a kind of mediocre book with that premise!
Ha. Ha. Hahahaha. Guess what I got? EVEN MORE OBNOXIOUS PREACHY SURREALISM!
Guess what the summary was.
View Poll: #30390
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Ha. Ha. Hahahaha. Guess what I got? EVEN MORE OBNOXIOUS PREACHY SURREALISM!
Guess what the summary was.
View Poll: #30390
comments
