Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 53
June 13, 2022
Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Lynesse Fourth Daughter is an insignificant princess determined to save her kingdom from a threat it doesn’t believe in by awakening the ancient sorcerer Nyrgoth Elder.
Nyr Illim Tevitch is a depressed, physically modified anthropologist who put himself into cryogenic sleep after he never got picked up by his colleagues from his post on a lost colony planet.
Together, they struggle with culture shock, extreme language barriers, and Nyr’s clinical depression to fight an alien or possibly a Lovecraftian horror.
Elder Race is a very fun novella which puts some new spins on old ideas. Nyr uses a dissociation module to escape from his depression and self-hatred; he and Lynesse never quite get on the same page in terms of language, so she only understands what he’s saying in terms of her own cultural lens for it. He's in a science fiction story about a lost colony, and she's in an epic fantasy. (At one point, delightfully, the story splits into separate columns so we can see what he says and what she hears in side-by-side comparison.) Their enemy is suitably horrific, and their relationship is touching.
There are, shockingly, almost no bugs.
It’s very good as is, but it suggests so many fascinating things that don’t get explored at all that I wish it was a full novel.
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Nyr Illim Tevitch is a depressed, physically modified anthropologist who put himself into cryogenic sleep after he never got picked up by his colleagues from his post on a lost colony planet.
Together, they struggle with culture shock, extreme language barriers, and Nyr’s clinical depression to fight an alien or possibly a Lovecraftian horror.
Elder Race is a very fun novella which puts some new spins on old ideas. Nyr uses a dissociation module to escape from his depression and self-hatred; he and Lynesse never quite get on the same page in terms of language, so she only understands what he’s saying in terms of her own cultural lens for it. He's in a science fiction story about a lost colony, and she's in an epic fantasy. (At one point, delightfully, the story splits into separate columns so we can see what he says and what she hears in side-by-side comparison.) Their enemy is suitably horrific, and their relationship is touching.
There are, shockingly, almost no bugs.
It’s very good as is, but it suggests so many fascinating things that don’t get explored at all that I wish it was a full novel.
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June 12, 2022
Dictation software for Mac?
Does this even exist in a form usable for writers? Dragon no longer works on Macs.
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The Kitchen Madonna, by Rumer Godden. Illustrated by Carol Barker
An English Protestant family hires Marta, a Catholic refugee from Ukraine, to be their cook/nanny. She unexpectedly bonds with their older child, the bright but withdrawn Gregory. When Marta mentions that she misses having a Madonna icon in the kitchen, Gregory sets out to get her one.
This is a lovely, sensitively written book about process, first of searching for a Madonna and then, in great detail, of making one. Marta is glad to have a home and a job, but she went through a lot of trauma and she's in a strange land where she doesn't fit in. Gregory begins the project as an act of love but ends up teaching himself craft and art for the sake of the work itself, and possibly on the path to becoming an artist.
The illustrations are great and conclude with an amazing full-color reproduction of the Madonna, meticulously detailed. I couldn't stop looking at it.
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This is a lovely, sensitively written book about process, first of searching for a Madonna and then, in great detail, of making one. Marta is glad to have a home and a job, but she went through a lot of trauma and she's in a strange land where she doesn't fit in. Gregory begins the project as an act of love but ends up teaching himself craft and art for the sake of the work itself, and possibly on the path to becoming an artist.
The illustrations are great and conclude with an amazing full-color reproduction of the Madonna, meticulously detailed. I couldn't stop looking at it.
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June 11, 2022
Went to a March For Our Lives protest
Screamed at a Don’t Tread On Me flag waving gun nut, "TAKE THAT SNAKE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR AAAAAAAAASSSSS!!!!!!"
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June 10, 2022
Biggles Follows On, by W. E. Johns
“Stiffen the crows!”
The story begins when Biggles’ buddies bring him the news that von Stalhein has been spotted in London, undoubtedly up to no good. They better do something immediately, like report him!
Biggles’ response is to launch into an impassioned defense of spies in general, von Stalhein in particular, and to shoot down the suggestion that they report him or that von Stalhein should get an office job. He comes of a proud Prussian family and that would be beneath his dignity! (Bertie, who is a lord, points out that it wasn’t beneath his dignity.)
Indeed, von Stalhein is up to no good, enticing British guardsmen to desert and join an “international brigade.” Biggles gets enlisted to figure out what exactly he’s up to and stop him.
Biggles and von Stalhein have several meetings in which they basically flirt before regretfully recalling that they are on opposing sides. I should mention that the adverb most commonly used to describe von Stalhein is “suavely.”
The climax occurs in China, which I was worried about but in fact the level of racism is surprisingly low. There’s a major Chinese character, a medical student who assists in a rescue, who is portrayed very sympathetically, without use of phonetic dialect, and is not a national stereotype but an actual character who insists on being parachuted in because he’s always wanted to try that.
This book has a more modern/realistic feel than many of them. Spies are resentful and underpaid, and the whole story is more in the tradition of Le Carre than James Bond.
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The story begins when Biggles’ buddies bring him the news that von Stalhein has been spotted in London, undoubtedly up to no good. They better do something immediately, like report him!
Biggles’ response is to launch into an impassioned defense of spies in general, von Stalhein in particular, and to shoot down the suggestion that they report him or that von Stalhein should get an office job. He comes of a proud Prussian family and that would be beneath his dignity! (Bertie, who is a lord, points out that it wasn’t beneath his dignity.)
Indeed, von Stalhein is up to no good, enticing British guardsmen to desert and join an “international brigade.” Biggles gets enlisted to figure out what exactly he’s up to and stop him.
Biggles and von Stalhein have several meetings in which they basically flirt before regretfully recalling that they are on opposing sides. I should mention that the adverb most commonly used to describe von Stalhein is “suavely.”
The climax occurs in China, which I was worried about but in fact the level of racism is surprisingly low. There’s a major Chinese character, a medical student who assists in a rescue, who is portrayed very sympathetically, without use of phonetic dialect, and is not a national stereotype but an actual character who insists on being parachuted in because he’s always wanted to try that.
This book has a more modern/realistic feel than many of them. Spies are resentful and underpaid, and the whole story is more in the tradition of Le Carre than James Bond.
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June 9, 2022
Biggles Buries a Hatchet, by W. E. Johns
"Suffering Icarus!"
Biggles learns that his old enemy/crush, the German spy Erich von Stalhein, is being held in a gulag on a wretched little island because he refused to kill Biggles! Biggles agrees to rescue him on the condition that no post-rescue conditions be put on von Stalhein. It would be mean and unfair, Biggles explains, to rescue him only on the condition that he provide British intelligence with information.
At this point (post-war) Biggles is living with Algy, Ginger, and someone named Bertie, whose intro book I apparently missed and so am assuming is Wooster. Honestly, he acts exactly like Bertie Wooster if he was a fighter pilot.
The prison island is very vividly awful. The briefing mentioned that large crabs are dried and ground to flour to make a kind of bread and it only goes downhill from there. Biggles & friends meet up with a Russian with a very well-justified grudge, who plots to kill the camp commander with an axe – not because he’s just that angry, but because all he has is an axe.
The rescue of von Stalhein is very clever and suspenseful, and he and Biggles have some good moments together.
This is one of the darker books in the series, mostly because of the well-evoked setting and the vivid depiction of ordinary people driven to despair. They can rescue von Stalhein and one other prisoner, but the larger situation is out of their hands.
Have a Biggles/von Stalhein h/c fic in which they find the one cozy spot on the entire island.
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Biggles learns that his old enemy/crush, the German spy Erich von Stalhein, is being held in a gulag on a wretched little island because he refused to kill Biggles! Biggles agrees to rescue him on the condition that no post-rescue conditions be put on von Stalhein. It would be mean and unfair, Biggles explains, to rescue him only on the condition that he provide British intelligence with information.
At this point (post-war) Biggles is living with Algy, Ginger, and someone named Bertie, whose intro book I apparently missed and so am assuming is Wooster. Honestly, he acts exactly like Bertie Wooster if he was a fighter pilot.
The prison island is very vividly awful. The briefing mentioned that large crabs are dried and ground to flour to make a kind of bread and it only goes downhill from there. Biggles & friends meet up with a Russian with a very well-justified grudge, who plots to kill the camp commander with an axe – not because he’s just that angry, but because all he has is an axe.
The rescue of von Stalhein is very clever and suspenseful, and he and Biggles have some good moments together.
This is one of the darker books in the series, mostly because of the well-evoked setting and the vivid depiction of ordinary people driven to despair. They can rescue von Stalhein and one other prisoner, but the larger situation is out of their hands.
Have a Biggles/von Stalhein h/c fic in which they find the one cozy spot on the entire island.
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June 8, 2022
The Easy Life in Kamusari, by Shion Miura
When Yuki, a sweet but directionless teenager, finishes high school in Tokyo, his parents enroll him in a forestry program without asking him first. Next thing he knows, he’s living in Kamusari, a village so rural that it has no phone service or internet, and learning how to nurture saplings, fell trees, and speak the Kamusari dialect known for the phrase “naa-naa,” meaning “take it easy.”
This book is in the intersection of two of my very favorite genres, which I think of as “process books” and “secret garden books.” By process, I mean books focusing on how a thing is done rather than on plot, as in process rather than product. Dick Francis’s books have a lot of process in them. Secret garden books are about exploring and nurturing/fixing up a small and often hidden or remote place; as it blossoms under your care, so do you.
The Easy Life in Kamusari is about village life, learning the forestry trade, and how both of those change Yuki. It’s a coming of age story, but the emphasis is more on what shapes him than on how he’s shaped. The main character is really Kamusari itself, a quirky little village straight out of a Miyazaki movie. It’s ambiguously magical; all the magical events have alternate realistic explanations, but the magical explanations make more sense and seem more plausible than the realistic ones. The villagers take all this as a matter of course.
The forestry details are apparently all meticulously accurate (the book has a list of sources at the back) and they’re fascinating even if you don’t care about forestry, in much the same way that Dick Francis made me care about the liquor and gemstone trades for the space of a book. Nothing hugely dramatic happens – a child is lost and found, a once-every-forty-eight-years festival is celebrated, Yuki falls in love – but it’s all charming and atmospheric and engrossing. The best way I can think to describe it is My Neighbor Totoro meets All Creatures Great and Small, only with forestry rather than veterinary medicine.
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This book is in the intersection of two of my very favorite genres, which I think of as “process books” and “secret garden books.” By process, I mean books focusing on how a thing is done rather than on plot, as in process rather than product. Dick Francis’s books have a lot of process in them. Secret garden books are about exploring and nurturing/fixing up a small and often hidden or remote place; as it blossoms under your care, so do you.
The Easy Life in Kamusari is about village life, learning the forestry trade, and how both of those change Yuki. It’s a coming of age story, but the emphasis is more on what shapes him than on how he’s shaped. The main character is really Kamusari itself, a quirky little village straight out of a Miyazaki movie. It’s ambiguously magical; all the magical events have alternate realistic explanations, but the magical explanations make more sense and seem more plausible than the realistic ones. The villagers take all this as a matter of course.
The forestry details are apparently all meticulously accurate (the book has a list of sources at the back) and they’re fascinating even if you don’t care about forestry, in much the same way that Dick Francis made me care about the liquor and gemstone trades for the space of a book. Nothing hugely dramatic happens – a child is lost and found, a once-every-forty-eight-years festival is celebrated, Yuki falls in love – but it’s all charming and atmospheric and engrossing. The best way I can think to describe it is My Neighbor Totoro meets All Creatures Great and Small, only with forestry rather than veterinary medicine.
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June 7, 2022
The Book of Lamps and Banners, by Elizabeth Hand
Cass lands in London without her beloved Konica, which she gave away in Hard Light, intending to meet up with Quinn, her obsession, love interest, and former hit man from Available Dark.
Given this timeline, it can’t be later than 2012 as the Iceland financial crisis is still going on, but she arrives in a London that seems eerily 2020, with a novel virus spreading from China and emboldened neo-Nazis marching in the streets.
It’s as good a way as any to deal with a timeline that was current when the series began and is now way behind, but it also fits in weirdly well with the plot of the book, in which Cass gets entangled with an ancient book bound in human skin that contains a code that can reprogram the human brain, which a programmer wants to use for her app intended to cure PTSD but which actually triggers it.
Modern Nazis fetishize ancient lore, musicians remix old folk songs for their latest releases, and old trauma never dies. Cass was raped and stabbed as a young woman, and everything came, not to a halt, but to the screeching skid before the crash. The assault lasted maybe twenty minutes if that, but her entire life since then has been stuck in that moment.
Past is present, old is new, and Cass has been trapped in time since the punk era, so it works surprisingly well for time to shift from 2010 to 2020 without remark.
I was doubtful about the rape backstory in the first book, but I’m completely onboard with it by now. It carries through the series and it’s very well-done and plausible.
There was one part of this book I did not enjoy, and that was Quinn. Cass is hitting bottom with her substance abuse, and Quinn is another addiction. Unfortunately, he’s an addiction with opinions. He spends the entire book telling her she’s delusional when she’s actually right. This isn’t quite as maddening as it could be, as he does have reasons to think that, he’s genuinely concerned about her drug use, and she ignores him anyway. But he’s still the person saying “Don’t do the thing we’re reading the book to see you do,” with a side of gaslighting. I really hope this is the last we see of him.
( Read more... )
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Given this timeline, it can’t be later than 2012 as the Iceland financial crisis is still going on, but she arrives in a London that seems eerily 2020, with a novel virus spreading from China and emboldened neo-Nazis marching in the streets.
It’s as good a way as any to deal with a timeline that was current when the series began and is now way behind, but it also fits in weirdly well with the plot of the book, in which Cass gets entangled with an ancient book bound in human skin that contains a code that can reprogram the human brain, which a programmer wants to use for her app intended to cure PTSD but which actually triggers it.
Modern Nazis fetishize ancient lore, musicians remix old folk songs for their latest releases, and old trauma never dies. Cass was raped and stabbed as a young woman, and everything came, not to a halt, but to the screeching skid before the crash. The assault lasted maybe twenty minutes if that, but her entire life since then has been stuck in that moment.
Past is present, old is new, and Cass has been trapped in time since the punk era, so it works surprisingly well for time to shift from 2010 to 2020 without remark.
I was doubtful about the rape backstory in the first book, but I’m completely onboard with it by now. It carries through the series and it’s very well-done and plausible.
There was one part of this book I did not enjoy, and that was Quinn. Cass is hitting bottom with her substance abuse, and Quinn is another addiction. Unfortunately, he’s an addiction with opinions. He spends the entire book telling her she’s delusional when she’s actually right. This isn’t quite as maddening as it could be, as he does have reasons to think that, he’s genuinely concerned about her drug use, and she ignores him anyway. But he’s still the person saying “Don’t do the thing we’re reading the book to see you do,” with a side of gaslighting. I really hope this is the last we see of him.
( Read more... )
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May 25, 2022
Dear Summer of Horror creator...
I hurt my wrist recently and am limiting typing. As a result, new requests will be shorter than older requests. It doesn't reflect how much I want something!
Thank you for creating for me! If you have any questions, please check with the mods. 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 POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, etc. I love stories of all lengths.
Don't worry about whether you're hitting the selected sub-genres exactly, or straying into subgenres I didn't request. They're there as inspiration, not as limits. You have full permission to choose horror types other than the ones I requested, or to broadly interpret the ones I did request, so long as you don't hit a DNW.
Similiarly, I don't care if a story is sexually graphic or not. Whatever suits the story is fine. Likewise, I will say if I ship characters, but I won't be disappointed if a pairing is & rather than /, or ambiguous.
I would enjoy any art treats for any fandoms where I did not request art if any of my prompts inspire you visually. I would prefer that art not be sexually graphic or extremely gory - bloodspatter is fine, gouged eyes is not. I would adore a Lisa Frank-style monster or ghost for any canon I requested that has monsters or ghosts; I like scary/creepy monsters/ghosts as well as adorable monsters/ghosts. Ghost monsters are also good. I love Tarot cards and Art Nouveau and characters mirroring each other in some way and art that's symbolic/iconic rather than representational, like guns and roses and an iconic saying for Dark Tower instead of the characters. I do also like character art!
I love h/c and I think it would go well with horror for most of the canons I'm requesting.
I love evil houses and eerie locations and I am familiar with a bunch from the tagset; feel free to send any characters to the Overlook Hotel, the Marsten House, Hell House, the House from House of Leaves, the stair place from House of Stairs, the cube from Cube, Mid-World, Salem's Lot, and the Shimmer.
My AO3 name is Edonohana.
I have requested The Dark Tower, Punisher, The Stand, True Detective, and Us before. All prompts in previous exchanges are still valid and welcomed. You can find them by clicking on the "fic exchange letter" tag.
( General DNWs )
( Sundial - Catriona Ward )
( Revelator - Daryl Gregory )
( Biggles - W. E. Johns )
( Dark Tower )
( The Defenders (Punisher) )
( The Ritual )
( The Stand - Stephen King )
( True Detective )
( Us (movie 2019 )
( Watership Down )
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Thank you for creating for me! If you have any questions, please check with the mods. 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 POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, etc. I love stories of all lengths.
Don't worry about whether you're hitting the selected sub-genres exactly, or straying into subgenres I didn't request. They're there as inspiration, not as limits. You have full permission to choose horror types other than the ones I requested, or to broadly interpret the ones I did request, so long as you don't hit a DNW.
Similiarly, I don't care if a story is sexually graphic or not. Whatever suits the story is fine. Likewise, I will say if I ship characters, but I won't be disappointed if a pairing is & rather than /, or ambiguous.
I would enjoy any art treats for any fandoms where I did not request art if any of my prompts inspire you visually. I would prefer that art not be sexually graphic or extremely gory - bloodspatter is fine, gouged eyes is not. I would adore a Lisa Frank-style monster or ghost for any canon I requested that has monsters or ghosts; I like scary/creepy monsters/ghosts as well as adorable monsters/ghosts. Ghost monsters are also good. I love Tarot cards and Art Nouveau and characters mirroring each other in some way and art that's symbolic/iconic rather than representational, like guns and roses and an iconic saying for Dark Tower instead of the characters. I do also like character art!
I love h/c and I think it would go well with horror for most of the canons I'm requesting.
I love evil houses and eerie locations and I am familiar with a bunch from the tagset; feel free to send any characters to the Overlook Hotel, the Marsten House, Hell House, the House from House of Leaves, the stair place from House of Stairs, the cube from Cube, Mid-World, Salem's Lot, and the Shimmer.
My AO3 name is Edonohana.
I have requested The Dark Tower, Punisher, The Stand, True Detective, and Us before. All prompts in previous exchanges are still valid and welcomed. You can find them by clicking on the "fic exchange letter" tag.
( General DNWs )
( Sundial - Catriona Ward )
( Revelator - Daryl Gregory )
( Biggles - W. E. Johns )
( Dark Tower )
( The Defenders (Punisher) )
( The Ritual )
( The Stand - Stephen King )
( True Detective )
( Us (movie 2019 )
( Watership Down )
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May 23, 2022
Biggles & Co, by W. E. Johns
"We'll diddle the swine again!"
Post-war. Biggles is approached by a gold broker to form a tiny air company to fly gold overseas, as his gold keeps getting stolen and the pilots flying it murdered. Biggles at first refuses, then gets several anonymous threats and warnings not to do it, at which point he agrees.
The first half of the book is a delightful string of cat-and-mouse escapades, in which Biggles repeatedly foils the gold thieves by various clever means. Halfway through, his best friend Algy, who is part of the & Co, disappears. Biggles and the other & Co pilot, Ginger, go to the rescue.
( Read more... )
Great fun.
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Post-war. Biggles is approached by a gold broker to form a tiny air company to fly gold overseas, as his gold keeps getting stolen and the pilots flying it murdered. Biggles at first refuses, then gets several anonymous threats and warnings not to do it, at which point he agrees.
The first half of the book is a delightful string of cat-and-mouse escapades, in which Biggles repeatedly foils the gold thieves by various clever means. Halfway through, his best friend Algy, who is part of the & Co, disappears. Biggles and the other & Co pilot, Ginger, go to the rescue.
( Read more... )
Great fun.
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