Beth’s
Comments
(group member since Sep 01, 2016)
Beth’s
comments
from the The Long Way... To a Common Orbit flash group group.
Showing 1-20 of 54
On the phone app, there's an option to reveal all spoilers at the bottom of a review, but I'm not sure how it's dealt with on the forums. (view spoiler)
The part where Owl visits Jane in the sim got the waterworks going the hardest for me. I loved the ending, too.
I'm greedy and now that I'm a whole few days away from reading the second book, I want more news about the third... aside from the all-but-blank GR page that tells us it's a thing that will exist.
What a cuddly book!! :) The epilogue reminded me of the historical romance novels that skip a year or two to show our happy couple surrounded by bairns. Nothin' wrong with that.Arielle said: "it is so far from being sickly sweet, which is nice for cynical readers (guilty)"
Also guilty! Angry Planet didn't manage to get under my skin--which made me think the cynic in me had won out after all, especially considering others' responses to it--but this one sure did. Haven't gotten this weepy over a book in ages.
MrsJ said: "I also think that it's a deliberate choice of Chambers - that she is intentionally creating a very realistic universe in all its hypocritical and complicated glory - and then NOT focusing on that."
Agreed! The Enhanced's planet stuck out in this regard. You know the basic situation, a dystopia created to support a utopia (topical!), but the attention is entirely on how Jane deals with her life there.
Speaking of Jane, the thought cropped up--not sure from where, either one of these threads or a review--that Jane earned her happy end. I had this thought too, but then right afterward thought... well, okay, but she deserved to be happy regardless of whether she "earned" it.
She's a determined person, for sure, and that determination made her able to escape her circumstances. But, as is said explicitly in the novel at least once, the other Janes, and all the other girls, deserve happiness too, and I'd add that that is true regardless of how strong, or weak, their determination is.
Good thoughts, that this story leans more on cooperation than heroics, and has a more feminine and/or Eastern vibe to it.
You don't have to look very far to find cooperation-based narratives in manga and anime, although most of what's translated that has that kind of framework skews young and action-y. Fruits Basket immediately comes to mind as a story about characters with terrible pasts, about found family and hope. (And also isn't an action story, more of an urban fantasy, sort of?)
I agree with you, MrsJ. There was the part where she tried to convince Pepper to let her be a house AI, the battle over whether to let her get Wi-Fi access to the grid, etc. But now she's settling in to the idea of having a limited body and even preferring it.Lines like this...:
"I don't know what I want."
Pepper laughed. "Sweetheart, none of us ever do."
...ought to be cheesy, but it kinda got me, too.
Also: Sidra, you sneaky rascal. And sneaky author, too. I didn't realize (view spoiler)
In morbid moments I sometimes call my body the meat carrying my soul around, which isn't too different, maybe.On to the recent chapters! I thought it was darkly ironic that practically the first thing that Jane comes across in her new situation is (view spoiler).
The scene where (view spoiler) was very cool and also mildly terrifying. But I'm also scared of flying even a few miles above the ground, much less thousands.
I'm somewhat disappointed with the lack of characterization for (view spoiler).
In Sidra's section, considering the "closing the circle" imagery of the three parts' titles, I have a good guess about where the reveal about (view spoiler) will go.
MrsJ's spoilered text was exactly what I was going to post here.Between that, and Jane (view spoiler), things really feel like they're coming to a head.
Someone, I think MrsJ again, mentioned that Jane would almost certainly have scurvy from living solely on mushrooms and dog meat for years. In one of Jane's sections not far from this Sidra one, it's mentioned that she's skinny, is sleepy and sluggish, has lost at least one tooth, and her injuries are not healing well, so she definitely is showing long-term symptoms of being malnourished.
I knew who was behind that door well before Jane opened it. :D
All right, book, you got me. Just one of those things when you're reading right along and the tears start dripping. This was the scene where (view spoiler). Trying to figure out why a scene has that effect can siphon its power in hindsight, so I won't try to over-analyze it. The chapter carried forward the thought that Jane, at this stage, is a very lonely young girl who has been without real human company for years. The "funeral" was quite good, too.
"She would die someday--no getting around that. But nobody would find her bones in the scrapyard. She wasn't going to leave them there."
Sidra's sections here weren't quite as good, for a number of reasons I'll get into once I get to review time. I was pleased to see Sidra and Tak interacting more like real friends (although I'm still not terribly attached to the relationship), and the end of the chapter in the AI shop, where Sidra (view spoiler), was nicely striking.
I think so too, MrsJ. Maybe it's because she's building a friendship outside her immediate household.I had a minor issue with the relationship between Rosemary and Sissix in Planet--it felt more like a session at a negotiating table than something that developed spontaneously. The scene between Sidra and Tak in the field/park--whether it ends up as a friendship or romance is undetermined right now--has a similar stiffness or over-formality to it. "I'll ask you a question, then you ask me one."
I did like this quote, though, telling us why Sidra's point of view consistently refers to her "body" as "the kit":
"I was housed in a ship. I'm now housed in a body kit. My place of installation changes my abilities, but it's not mine. It's not me."
Yeah, I thought it was good, too. It's been four years since she got to the ship, and there are stresses showing up, and not just psychologically, the cussing and adolescent brattiness. I think she needs to escape from the planet soonish. The non-food supplies are dwindling to nothing, and the shuttle's propulsion and life-support systems are degrading and eventually it won't be able to support life in space....
So squeaky-clean kids' edutainment exists in the far future, eh? Reassuring, sort of.This section with "Big Bug" was poignant for me. I had wondered how well Jane could do without the physical comfort she used to have with 64, and she seems to miss it and actively seeks something akin to it here, by holding Manjiri's hand, and petting Pinch's head.
I keep expecting the other shoe to drop, and for Sidra to be outed. (That may still happen, because of the spoiler below?) I'm awed by the tech levels here, that can create artificial skin that doesn't have an "uncanny valley" effect when you touch it, that bleeds, and that is structured so that it can have a tattoo with no issue. (view spoiler) A couple of quotes that I thought were nice:
"...Are we going for an anchor or a compass? A memory to ground you, or a spark to move you forward?" (from a Sidra section)
"Somehow, outside, looking at the stars, everything was a little better." (from a Jane section)
Going into the tattoo thing a little more, on the personal side. I don't have a tattoo and don't intend to get one. At least part of that was because I'm an introvert and thought that only extroverts would want one. Showy display, intended to draw in an audience. The quote above was cool because it helped me understand why an introvert might want one. I haven't changed my mind, but can see the motivation more clearly now. :)
I agree with Carol. After all, this is a kid who got freaked out by the sky the first time she saw it, and didn't know what a planet was. Her experience before (view spoiler) had been limited to the interior of the facility.
There was a mention of a similar concept earlier. (I'm only at about the halfway mark as of now.) After a conflict-heavy event which I won't spoil here, Sidra longs for her previous life as a ship's AI. In her ponderings, she thinks about how downloading herself into a body and agreeing to have her memories erased was a selfless or self-abnegating decision, done for the benefit of the crew of the ship. These selfless, self-abnegating AIs are also identified as female, "she."...
A few thoughts about the last handful of sections:- The argument with Pepper and the question of memory: the scene with the argument just tickled me, maybe because Sidra spent the entire thing "as a camera," presumably standing on a piece of furniture. In other sections, her behavior has been childlike, curious and innocent. Here she is being childish, acting out against something she doesn't like! The difference between the chemical processes of a human brain reconfiguring themselves for more memories, vs. an AI that has a limited amount of memory space, was interesting, and I think the level of detail was just right, not too hard-SF.
- Sidra feeling a kind of kinship with a non-intelligent travel AI: very cute, especially the part where she affectionately pats its "head."
- The scrap heaps outside the sorting building in Jane's sections inevitably bring Wall-E to mind for me. The setting definitely has a post-apocalyptic, survivalist vibe.
- "...maybe you're a misfit, too. Doesn't mean you're not deserving. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be here. Lovey's gone, and that's horribly sad. You're here, and that's wonderful." Aw. ♥ I don't think we'd heard anything about Blue's background previous to this, aside from his being from a similar background as Pepper--(view spoiler)--and we get another tiny corner of it here. I'm hoping to see more!
Go for it! It's intended to be useful. :)
In order to help my own hapless brain in negotiating the threads for this book, I did a Kindle search on the quotes used in the thread openers to get the approximate Kindle location associated with each one. This is mainly for my own reference but I hope this will help others who are also using the e-book.Format:
[Page number] -- [search text] -- [Kindle location]
unknown, "Jane 23, Age 10" -- questions like that were off -- 254
unknown, "Part 1 Drift: Lovelace" -- gnawing at her pathways -- 357
18 -- dock were thick -- 468
26 -- sweaty from whatever -- 601
39 -- her neck and her hands -- 787
71 -- all anticipating entry -- 1279
85 -- anything to sneak --1501
125 -- the art district -- 2114
158 -- the piece of furniture -- 2656
163 -- Jane ate her mushrooms -- 2738
192 -- the most annoying way -- 3174
206 -- their interstellar kin -- 3401
244 -- running errands for Pepper -- 4023
249 -- cool in the sims --4096
272 -- shrink away from the strangers -- 4412
280 -- sleep was a long way -- 4517
295 -- kind of sleep that ached -- 4684
324 -- my processes are taking -- 5133
That's true! And while I was reading it, it did bring on the momentary thought that while this Aeluon saw her as human, there's still the possibility that someone else won't and she'll be outed as an AI.
After the scene in the bar area--which I found homey and charming--there was a long and dry info-dump about Aeluons from a crèche promoter. I kind of felt that anyone could have been in Sidra's position hearing this lecture--so there was a brief disconnect between character and situation/setting for me--although at the end of the chapter her inner thoughts about wanting to belong brought things back together fairly well.On Jane's side, we've just met Owl and I'm for sure interested in what's going on there!
