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Reading Wednesday
Sep. 9th, 2020 06:01 pm Just finished: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. Fuuuuuuuuck I loved this one. I was spoiled for the ending (as in I read something about it back when it first came out—I think maybe Tor published the last chapter as a short story or something? Also it's right there in the title) but it still managed to be heartwrenching in a way that felt authentic. The whole plot was a well-engineered steel trap that is no less deadly for its inevitability.
If I have one critique, it's the bits where he breaks the tight third-person POV to give an omniscient view of the larger battles. It's the only place where the writing falters a bit, and I wonder if it might have been useful to have one or two other POV characters.
Anyway, I put a hold on the sequel.
Currently reading: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. I gather this is one of those books you're supposed to read to be a serious person? A co-worker loaned it to me. It starts out as bog-standard misery porn—a kid growing up in the South in poverty, and of course she's also being sexually abused because that seems to be the theme of books that people recommend to me lately—but it is really beautifully written. And about halfway through it gets a lot more interesting, mainly because the angry but gospel-obsessed pre-teen version of Bone, the protagonist, is a much more lively character than the child version, who just suffers.
If I have one critique, it's the bits where he breaks the tight third-person POV to give an omniscient view of the larger battles. It's the only place where the writing falters a bit, and I wonder if it might have been useful to have one or two other POV characters.
Anyway, I put a hold on the sequel.
Currently reading: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. I gather this is one of those books you're supposed to read to be a serious person? A co-worker loaned it to me. It starts out as bog-standard misery porn—a kid growing up in the South in poverty, and of course she's also being sexually abused because that seems to be the theme of books that people recommend to me lately—but it is really beautifully written. And about halfway through it gets a lot more interesting, mainly because the angry but gospel-obsessed pre-teen version of Bone, the protagonist, is a much more lively character than the child version, who just suffers.
