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kcaryths
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Heard good things about that book as well. I would up for Air by Geoff Ryman for August. Clarke winner and I have never read any of his books. If it's too difficult to get a hold of let me know and I can change gears.
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Maybe, but I am not so certain. There are other books which give off the cozy catastrophe feeling and maybe Christopher just wanted to lay out an alternate version. I'm not sure it means he automatically promotes it, so much as explores it. Of cours…
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It appears I added many additional letters to that word :D
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I'm jealous.
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I don't see a lot of unique material for a game here either.
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Is it promoting authoritarianism, or is it asking the question about whether authoritarisanism is the most relaistic ends of a situation like this?
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I would have thought it was a trad wife thing as well, but my wife is definitely not THAT! :D
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Yeah, I'm not likely to be super useful in a setting like this. I'd do my best, but I wouldn't be creating engines that run off of burning wood or repairing water wheels.
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Totally agree with @NeilNjae that it ends right where I think Christopher wants us to end up thinking about things. WHat happens next sort of doesn't matter because the de-evolution of man has already occurred no matter what sort of society is built…
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This is one aspect I wonder about. Would society really shift in this way with such a split between make and female, or would we retain more of the current setup that we have now. I'll have to read this book again with Hobbes in mind @NeilNjae - fir…
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Yeha, the comparisons to COVID were immediate for me. First, mocking other countries for their inability to control what happened, then some real nationalistic us vs them as things progressed. I mean, we're still dealing with it in some circles now.
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These guys reminded me a little bit of the two guys from The Dog Stars - though I liked the gritty gun guy (Bangley) from The Dog Stars more (liked in terms of the character - I don't know that I would really like to spend time with him). I do think…
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I think it's a fine setup. Nothing too radical to be honest. Many books feature crop failure as a part of an apocalypse, but this one makes it the main focus. As others have alreayd mentioned though, it's really just a convenient setup for a story w…
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I should also add though, that I read one other romantasy (I think it could be considered as such) book called The Everlasting by Alix Harrow. That book was fantastic and one of the best books I read in the past year. It also just won the Locus awar…
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It's become very apparant to me in the past couple months that these cozy type books where the conflict is basically sucked right out of the stories because you know everything will essentially work out in the end, just do not work for me. Maybe I a…
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The characters felt like products of a world that had already determined for them who they were going to be and how they would behave. I didn't feel like they really had much agency, and it left me feeling very unemotional and disconnected from them.
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When I compare this to the Becky Chambers book that I read this month, the "cozy" nature of it seems to try and lean less into some of the post-scarcity thinking, and more into just pure escapism. I didn't get the sense that it was trying …
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Personally I really didn't like this book, except as entertainment. I would read certain passages to my wife and there were times where we nearly had tears laughing so hard at it. I didn't feel like the stakes meant anything, the characters felt lik…
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I've read it but would definitely read it again. I quite like it.
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Should be starting it tomorrow.
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This book has landed in the same pile as Vajra Chandrasekera's Rakesfall which I also thought was a confusing mess and yet had people raving about it being one of their favourite books. I think I have come to terms that books that have high mental l…
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@Apocryphal you nailed it. I didn't realise how big of a frustration (or why I guess) that was until you pinpointed it. A real lack of internal consistency in that regards makes it difficult to feel like one can become immersed in the world. I read…
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I can only speak for myself, but even though I finished it I never once felt like the story got tied up into something that was coherent. The big reveal should have been one of those "Aha!" moments as the structure of the book had me think…
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I thought it was pretty visceral in many ways, which I often don't mind. However, the density of the prose mixed in with the weirdness of the concepts just made it such a slog. @RichardAbbott you described it well. Exhausting to read.
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I don't mind being dropped into the middle of a book and then having to work out what is going on, but the entire plot felt like I was being repeatedly dropped into confusion. There were moments where I thought I kind of knew where things were heade…
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In a confusing book of weirdness, I thought the characters were one of the parts that worked for me - at least relative to other parts. There were certainly some characters that I couldn't figure out but in general I thought many of them had some in…
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I'm down for it as well.
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(Quote) I was convinced to read one last year that turned out to be an excellent read, but I suspect there is a lot of variance in this sub genre (though perhaps that is true across the board!)
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Another thought about this book while I was reading it is that it is sort of like getting a glimpse into the inside of the creepy groups in post-apocalyptic tales that the protagonists usually run into. The cannibals, the cultists, the slavers - but…
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I deifnitely couldn't go down the rabbit hole as deep as this book did, but a situation with a small group living on the margins is a decent plot hook.