january 2022 reading wrap-up

 

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin

rating: 3.75 stars

summary: The only way to stop being chased by your shadow is to turn around and chase it back.

comments: Hehehe I FINALLY started this series. Several people have said that I will really like the sequel (The Tombs of Atuan) so I am looking forward to that!! Overall I liked this book - it's trapped in the 3 star range forever because unfortunately it is children’s literature and I am not a child so naturally I wanted more; more darkness, more conflict, more depth. Which isn’t to say that UKLG did not expertly execute the existing darkness/conflict/depth of this book! I love true name magic fuckery. I love the weird little wizard school. I love Ged’s first wizard master that he comes to love dearly despite thinking he’s totally lame as a child. I read a review of this about how reading Earthsea at this point in time can make it feel played out, but only because UKLG invented so many wizard school/wizard tropes that are popular today. And also subverted so many things that eventually became tropes in such interesting ways. It's very clear that when this book came out, it was totally fresh - or that if this was the first kid wizard book I ever read, it would have been. And I wish it was fresh to me! But it isn't. And I STILL liked it, which is a testament to its general good-ness. Ged is a fun protag and I can’t wait to see where this series goes. Several moments genuinely touched my heart. It sounds like I’m ragging on this book but I genuinely think it was quite good!! UKLG’s imagery is as powerful as always; an endless ocean suddenly turning into sand, Ged sparring with dragons, a dilapidated shack on a tidal shoal. I also really loved that there is no Big Bad Evil. There’s no Voldemort figure, there's no nebulous, faceless force working to destroy the world. The evil Ged has to defeat is that which is already in his heart. OH URSULA I MISS YOU EVERY DAY.

highlight: 

• “For I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, ‘til you gave it back to me.”

• “I would keep you here with me, for I have what you lack, but I will not keep you against your will. Now choose between Re Albi and Roke.” / Ged stood dumb, his heart bewildered. He had come to love this man Ogion who had healed him with a touch, and who had no anger: he loved him, and had not known it until now.

• “Lord Gensher, I do not know what it was  – the thing that came out of the spell and cleaved to me –” / “Nor do I know. It has no name. You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of light and dark, life and death, good and evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was a ruin? You summoned a spirit from the dead, but with it came one of the Powers of the unlife. Uncalled it came from a place where there are no names. Evil, it wills to work evil through you. The power you had to call it gives it power over you: you are connected. It is the shadow of your arrogance, the shadow of your ignorance, the shadow you cast. Has a shadow a name?” / Ged stood sick and haggard. He said at last, “Better I had died.” / “Who are you to judge that, you for whom Nemmerle gave his life?”

pages: 183

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

rating: 4.25 stars

summary: If you found life from another world, could you recognize it at all?

comments: Speaker for the Dead blew my fucking mind when I was 13 years old so naturally I wanted to reread it and see how I feel now that I have critical thinking skills and the unfortunate knowledge that OSC is a raging sexist/racist/homophobe. It never fails to stun me how he is Like That and then wrote a series about how every life has value. But I digress! While reading the first half of this book something I couldn’t quite put my finger on was putting me off. Eventually I narrowed it down to a couple things. The treatment of women overall in this book (and series?) is a bit weird. Almost every adult woman who is not an ascetic monk is in love with Ender in some way by the end of the novel (Jane, Novinha, his sister in a weird fucked up way and I’m not a freak for saying this because he refers to his separation from Valentine as ‘being widowed’). Ender also sees a photo of Novinha when she is 14 and he is 30(?), ‘falls in love’ with her, and marries her at the end of the book when they are both adults because of time-space age fuckery. I was also put off by the treatment of the alien race (pequeninos) for the first 2/3rd, but that is mostly a purposeful narrative decision which highlights how the people on Lusitania don’t actually see them as equals, and is corrected. There are also a few moments where it is unclear whether it is the narrative itself or the inner monologue of Ender/other POV characters who refer to one character’s bionic eyes/blindness/disability as ‘monstrous.’ So there's all that. And yet…somehow…Speaker for the Dead still got me. I cried two times. I ended up loving Ender again after wondering if he was becoming a Gary Sue. I loved Ela, I loved all the pequeninos, I loved the climactic arc of the treaty being created. The 40-50 pages post-treaty are honestly a little boring IMO but I didn’t mind so much because of the last few pages where they finally plant the hive queen on Lusitania and Ender bawls his fucking eyes out. The reveal that Pipo and Libo’s deaths were actually the pequeninos trying to do them a high honor by thinking that humans also had a third life is soooo fucked up and good. Anyways. Ender is so compelling as a protagonist. There's probably valid criticism of how in-universe he’s the greatest military commander who ever lived, a famous prophet, and also the only person with access to the most powerful AI in the world, which gives him a bit too much deus ex machina, but who cares. It's sick as hell. Also the fact that Ender falls in love with Jane, the deviated form of an artificial intelligence porgram that was designed to psychologically torture him as a child, cannot be overlooked for its inspiredness and hilarity. 

highlights:

• “Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are  in every hand.” / “Human,” said the speaker, “tell your people not to grieve for what they did in ignorance.” / “It was a terrible thing,” Human said. “It was our greatest gift.”

• “Will he always come between us?” / “Yes,” Ela said. “Like a bridge, he’ll come between us.” 

• “I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn't want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home.”

• “I imagine it feels like bathing in ice to the person touching her. But how does it feel to her? Cold as she is, it must surely burn like fire.”

pages: 382