january 2021 reading wrap up

[braintransplant]

 

ancillary justice by anne leckie

rating: 5 stars

summary: what if you were a ship who was also 30 people except all of them died sans the one and you were the only person in the entire galaxy who knew that the fate of the universe was in jeopardy?

comments: OHHHH MY GOD…...this is a perfect sci fi novel to me. sorry to noura who reminded me to read it like 15 times in 2020 and i put it off until i finished finals because she was right this book was so up my alley it's insane. i especially loved the political tension + long history that the story was built on. anne leckie fully took advantage of the premise re: flipping back and forth between breq/justice of toren’s multiple bodies in such a fun and unique way without ever being confusing. this was non-linear so i also got that slow-creep feeling of everything finally coming together at just the right moment. the non-POV characters are loveable and flawed and wonderful to me...awn and seivarden in particular. breq’s grief and rage and pain is so huge...i love how it drives the plot forward. breq might be one of my favorite protagonists of all time! i dont know how to explain her honestly. anyways. tense, gender-y, full of dynamics, and partially taking place on an icy planet….yeah this is The One. i dont even know how to express how much i enjoyed this!!!!

highlight: (spoilers!!) “It was my job, to protect the citizens of Ors. I took it seriously. I did it to the best of my ability. I failed, that once. But not because of you.” She turned her head, looked straight at Anaander Mianaai, and said, “I should have died rather than obey you, in the temple of Ikkt. Even if it wouldn’t have done any good.” / “You can fix that now, can’t you,” said Anaaner Mianaai, and gave me the order to fire.
pages: 384

the tiger flu by larissa lai

rating: 2.5 stars

summary: what if you were the clone of a clone used in fucked up state-sponsored experiments and the government was trying to get people to upload their brain to a spaceship while everyone else dies of the tiger flu?

comments: the premise of this was really cool, and i like the post-running-out-of-fossil-fuels dystopian setting, but i just couldn't love this book. the off-beat writing style really got in the way of communicating the intelligence of the two main characters for me, and the world-building was spotty/poorly done to the point that by the climax of the novel, i was only barely grasping what was going on. also, way too many dream sequences that did nothing for the plot or emotional narrative. a lot of tech/world-specific stuff was mentioned but never properly explained or described, so it was really hard to picture it or understand its purpose. however, kirilow, one of the protags, was cool which is mostly what kept me reading until the end. its just that everything else made me actively dislike this book. sadly, i do not recommend it.

highlight: N/A

pages: 330

the dispossessed by ursula k le guin

rating: 4.5/5 stars (i’m waffling on the 5 here, because the beginning was really difficult to get into, but now with the perspective of the whole story, i understand and like the beginning quite a lot! yet i can’t deny that it almost convinced me i wasn’t going to like the book.)

summary: what if you were a brilliant physicist on an antiauthoritarian communist planet consisting of a people exiled 200 years ago from a capitalist hellhole planet? and each considered the other their moon? and you went to the place your ancestors were exiled from because you hoped that you could save each other, somehow?

comments: i feel like i read this at exactly the right time...re: fascist uprising in USA. ursula k le guin’s writing in this book gave me hope in leftist organization again. i was really moved!! the narrative was slow to start, but once it got rolling, it was really rolling. i mean, any story that has a moment where one person asks another if the room they are currently standing in is bugged is a good one to me. and shevek is a really great protagonist! i feel like he changed so much throughout the book, but it all made sense, even when it was contradictory. i like that he was hopeful and cynical, intelligent and stupid, insightful yet blind. a protag written with less skill or complexity couldn’t have carried this book the way shevek did. the side characters were all wonderful as well...shevek’s wife takver, the servant on urras named efor, the colleague at a-io named oiie, even the hainish man at the end, ketho, who appeared for about 3 or 4 pages nearly made me cry. side note that i got very excited every time the hain were mentioned in this book...i mean it is part of the hainish cycle after all, but i just think the whole concept of this set of books (loosely interrelated by both the presence of the hain and the idea that all the groups of humans in the books are descended from hain) is so cool. i just like this book! i like to think about it!

highlight: The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our own. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as is mine. (...) None of us is rich. None of us is powerful. If it is Anarres you want, if it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands. You must come to it alone, and naked, as the child comes into the world, into his future, without any past, without any property, wholly dependent on other people for his life. You cannot take what you have not given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make it. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

pages: 387

star wars: a new hope by george lucas (and presumably 500 ghostwriters)

rating: 3 stars

summary: what if you were an orphaned desert farm boy who ended up getting onto the death star, off of the death star, and destroying the death star all in one day?

comments: well i had fun...the writing was not particularly good or bad, it was just there. the space battle at the end to blow up the death star was definitely the best part, though i liked that we spend longer with luke going about his life on tatooine in the beginning as well. unfortunately, i love luke skywalker!! he is so fun and naive...also for some reason darth vader was coming across very comedically in this novelized version like “i find your lack of faith disturbing” had me dying. i don’t know what else to say really...its star wars. its corny and the characters are mostly flat and the relationships are not believable but its FUN! i now feel like i could easily rewrite this book to be significantly better as a standalone, which is probably just my hubris, but: we dont need obi-wan, luke should know he has a twin somewhere, leia should be force sensitive, and luke should actually enjoy water-reclamation farming on tatooine. also the events need to be stretched out over a week or so instead of all being in one day. ugh i can see it in my mind!!!!!!

highlight: N/A

pages: 255

star wars: the empire strikes back by some guy

rating: 2.75?

summary: what if you hallucinated a dead guy who told you to go to a planet that allegedly does not exist so you can train to kill some other guy who turns out to be your dad?

comments: hm...this started off strong and went downhill! i liked the beginning with the rebel base on the ice planet of hoth (go figure) but then it was just kind of boring once they left. the strength of the relationships among the main 3 make more sense now because 3 years have passed, but this writing did not convince me that han/leia have strong feelings for each other. also leia has serious Written By A Man disease in this one...all she does is kiss han and do things “shyly.” yoda was fun though. and i did amuse myself by interpreting vader and palpatine’s relationship as bdsm but even that could not make this book very good. the vader dad reveal also has ZERO impact because the writing and story are so weak. mostly this sequel has furthered my belief that luke should have stayed a spunky rebel pilot with mild force abilities he barely knows how to use forever!!!!

highlight: “I will not fail you,” Luke said. “I’m not afraid.” / Yoda was not so optimistic. “You will be, my young one,” he warned. “Heh. You will be.”

pages:  210