Reading Friday (I ain't even sorry)

I've been having the headcold from hell lately and I fell like my IQ is in the single digits as is my attention span, measured in seconds. So my reading hasn't been the best this past week.


What did you finish reading

"The Magician and Laplace's Demon", by Tom Crosshill (available for free at Clarkesworld): This is a story about a supercomputer wanting to learn magic, except, and here's the catch: magic doesn't work if you're observing it. Essentially:

Quantum mechanics holds no sway at macroscopic scales, I wrote.
Not unless you’re a magician, came the answer.

If I'm being entirely honest, it was the title that caught my eye first. It's a very good title, that contrasts science-fiction (via "Laplace's Demon" its significance to quantum physics) and fantasy ("the magician"). It does a bunch of interesting things with magic-as-quntum-physics, although not as much as I would have liked. Or, well, that's being unfair. I've done a fair amount of conceptualisation of magic-as-quantum-physics, so (with one exception) none of it was a surprise to me (and believe you me I was kicking myself for the exception, because HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT? Probably because I'd never actually involved computers in my conceptualisation, but still). That said, it's all fairly well done, even the ending, even though I did see it coming a bit in advance.

Despite not being entirely new to me and being a bit confusing on the how of the computer current form and general existence (no, I am sorry, nobody builds a sapient machine and sets it to add fucking integers, not even by mistake), I greatly enjoyed it and would reccomend it.

I'm counting this as the "nameless protagonist" square on the Serious card ofhamsterwoman's reading bingo.

Which brings me at 1/25 for the Serious card, 0/25 for the Mix 'n' Match card and 4/25 for the Random card.

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What are you reading

I'm stalled out No progress was made on: The Art of War, Darshan, The Kick-Ass Writer, La véritable histoire de Carthage et de Hannibal, Gustav Adolf Mossa: L'oeuvre symboliste: 1903-1918 and Les Fleurs du Mal, mostly because I am an idiot and have picked up two new books! Because I do have kind of deadlines on thos books, so.


Métronome, by Lorànt Deutsch: This is subtitled "L'histoire de France au rythme du métro parisien" and as that subtitle suggests, it is indeed about French History as told via the names of Parisian metro stations. I've read the introduction and the first chapter ("Cité") so far (it is a paper book, okay, and not one of the lightest ones) and for the moment, French history looks an awful lot like Parisian history.

It's pretty interesting and also I apparently live above dead Romans!

(Note to self: this Pilier des Nautes business is worth looking into.)


I'm also reading the... program, I guess, for the current Opéra de Paris run of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail (L’Enlèvement au sérail / The Abduction from the Seraglio) which I saw yesterday with a friend and IT WAS AMAZEBALLS. Fucking brilliant omg. Need to tell y'all about it in detail.

Anyway, the program contains the distribution, the entire text of the opera in English/French/German and some texts that provide context both for the opera itself and this particular representation. It's super interesting! I love that the director pretty much explicitly says that she wanted to present a feminist reading of the text.


The Daylight War, by Peter V. Brett: I'm roughly 75% of the way in and I think I'm developping Stockholm Syndrome. Or maybe it's just that I've accepted that there are certain characters I cannot give a single shit about and that for the most part this book is going to be terribly awful and I can now relax and enjoy the not awful bits.

Except, you know, that I aggressively DO NOT CARE about Arlen Bales of Tibbet's Brook aka the Painted Man aka Par'Chin aka the Deliverer (jury's still out, but lol, like it's going to be Jardir) aka the main character. I keep looking for a fuck to give but not finding one, which is a bit of a problem, because see above re: main character. But the more he develops Super Special And Awesome Superpowers Like No One Else Has (Or Has Ever Had Before), the less I care. MLy caring is literally in the negatives now, given that I care less about characters I care about when they're in a scene with him.

Speaking of not caring, my caring about Rojer is fast approaching zero too. I used to like him, iirc, but this book his character has also become somewhat of a Dude fantasy (he has two wives, who are expected to be summissive to him and yet are fully experienced at "pillow dancing"). I was okay with him having Awesome Unheard-of Powers before, if barely, but now it's all a great big blob of meh (the wives, coincidentally, share his superpower, somehow, except possibly theirs doesn't work without his). Yaaaaaay.

Also, while I'm on the subject of "pillow dancing": Inevera starts being taught it age eleven and by age thirteen we get this lovely gem: "She was thirteen, but already she had woman's body, lithe yet curved." Wow. Could we not sexualise the barely-teenaged? Thank you.

About the LGBT characters: the lesbians are still evil(-ish), in that they're on Inevera's side in the present day (which makes them on the 'bad' side, because they're not pseudomedievaleuropean) and have aout five liens of dialog there and in that they bully Inevera in her flashbacks (and one of them STILL only has five lines, pretty much total). Yay. The gay dude(s) are Inevera's brother, who showed up again, and his lover who seems like an okay guy and they live happily ever after HAHAHAHAHA JUST KIDDING Soli gets called (what i assume from context are) homophobic slurs by his (and Inevera's) dad before said dad kills him. But hey, at least, his lover really did love him.

He sneered. "Strike. Do it!" A madness came into his eyes, and Inevera realized he wanted her to. He was begging for it.
Inevera shook her head. "Begone from here. I will not kill you for loving my brother, even if it has made you a fool."

Aww. Ain't that sweet.

There are also the gay cousins who are gay with each other and are trying to marry their sisters to each other, which NOPE NOPE NOPE. (And yeah, they're still not pseudomedievaleuropean, hpw did you guess?)

I could really use some positive LGBT representation over here, yo.

Speaking of Inevera! SHE IS TOTALLY MY FAVOURITE! There was a problem and her reaction was pretty much "Imma go and fix that shit so hard it ain't ever gonna break again". No way to know yet if it worked but so far it's doing okay on those fronts.

On the other hand, the narrative around her is really weird. There's the sexualisation of her thirteen year old self I mention above and then there's this: "She would never need to shave [her head] again, but continued her daily shaving of her legs and nethers." because why? Why would she, except that if she didn't she presumably wouldn't be "pretty enough" for the local author-insert Jardir to fuck? That's the only reason I can think of as to why we need to be told this, or that she regrew her hymen so she'd be a virgin when she married Jardir. Those were moments where I was genuinely jarred out of the text, because they really struck me as dude things to worry about.

I do love her relationship with her mother nad her brother (until he dies for being gay) and will all the other nie'dama'ting and dama'ting. Also Enkido. Enkido's great.

Okay, on to unpleasant things. (This paragraphs deals with rape, fyi.) Remember how last week I mentionned that the two main female characters were rape victims? At the time I wrote that, the main characters (as far as i could tell) were: Leesha, Renna (sort of main), Arlen, Rojer and Jardir, the latter three of which were men and not rape survivors (so made 2/2 female rape survivors and 0/3 male rape survivors). Well, there's good news and there's bad news. Good news! I'm fairly confident in saying that inevera is a main character and she hasn't bee raped that I know of (so far and it really pains me to have to add that qualifier), which makes 2/3 for female rape survivors. On the other hand, we've learned that Jardir has been raped (and Rojer was sexually assaulted), which puts the ratio at 1/3 (or 1.5/3) for male rape survivors. I'm not saying "yay, more rape!", I'm saying "in the fucked-up world they live in, men are also going to get raped". So it looks like things are a bit more balanced, right? Except not really. I hate to do this, but Jardir and Rojer were only assaulted/raped once each, which, compared to Renna's years of abuse at her father's hand, seems not that balanced. Especially given that Leesha's gangrape is remembered in song: "No guide she found through naked night / Just Jongleur travel wards / That could not hold the bandits back / As it did corelings hordes", which. Wow. And the song this is part of is supposed to be Rojer's masterpiece (it's okay, though, he makes a better one later). Isn't that sweet.

Yeah, for all the talk of Rojey being this AMAZING songster and stuff, his songs aren't even good!

And I have to admit that for all that we're shown repeatedly how evil the Krasians are (especially wrt the rights of women), Pseudo Medieval Europe really isn't that much better in a lot of ways.

Also, these people continue to be Too Fucking Dumb To Live, I swear. Look, it took me five minutes to figure out a way to fight demons without attack wards, why the fuck hasn't anyone in THREE HUNDRED YEARS thought of that? (That would be to paint repulsive wards on some surface and then slam a repulsive ward on each side of a demon's head, should normally, given the rules of magic in the book and unless I've misinterpreted something, blast their heads off.) Why is Renna going through the time onsuming process of eating demon meat when she could just, oh, I don't know, replace some of her bones by demon bones carved in the same shape? She'd heal and I can 100% guarantee it would get you demon powers a lot faster.

And I could really do without all the love triangles bullshit that's going around. Leesha's involved in two! TWO! One with Renna and Arlen (looks to be resolved, though, hopefully) and one with Jardir and Inevera.

(I'm shipping Darsy and Wonda, kind of. I JUST WANT WONDA TO BE HAPPY, OKAY. WONDA IS THE BEST and I could really have done without you imply that if you removed her facial scars she should be afraid of rape, Arlen.)

Going to finish this because I am a stubborn fuck. Might read the sequels if anyone thinks it'd be interesting to read me rage at them.


What are you reading next? (aka the to-read list)

A to-read list that is properly formatted, so I don't forget about books I wanted to read! Now updated with books I should have put on it a long time ago AND with recent recs I got.

Books that I have already: Prisoner (Echo's Wolf, Book 1) (Werewolf Marines 2) by Lia Silver, Darkness Over Cannae by Jenny Dolfen, Taking Stock by Scott Bartlett (yuleswap book 1), February by Lisa Moore (yuleswap book 2), The Demigod Diaries by Rick Riordan

Books that are out and that I haven't got: Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, by Garth Nix, Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie, Melting Stones and Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce, The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, The Beginning Place by Ursula Le Guin, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, Hostage by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown, the last two books of Kate Eliott's Spiritwalker trilogy, The Missing Queen by Samhita Arni (I'm told it's the Ramayana retld as a noir mystery), Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed and whatever's out of the Craft Sequence series.

Books that aren't out yet (and when they're out): The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan (Autumn 2015), The Sleeping Life (Eferum, #2) by Andrea K. Höst (2015), Benjamin January #14 by Barbara Hambly (no idea), Empire Ascendant by Kameron Hurley (Summer 2015? Still unsure if I'm even going to be reading this one), the Tris book by Tamora Pierce (2015), whatever Jenny Dolfen's next project is (THAT ART!) and probably Robert Jackson Bennett's next book.

I'm tempted to add Aliette de Bodard's The House of Shattered Wings to this, because post-Apocalypse murder mystery set in Paris? Yes please! Except, I'm a little leery of "Fallen angels" with a capital to "Fallen" becaus ethat strikes be as... a very 90s thing? Which is weird, because I was reading fuckall in English in the 90s. But still, it's got a very distinct 90s emogoth vibe to it.