Reading Wednesday
Jul. 31st, 2019 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: Witness, I Am by Gregory Scofield. I don't read tons of poetry these days, let alone know how to review it intelligently, but this one was incredible. It's mainly about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, a subject with which the author is tragically familiar. The depth of suffering over generations is such an overwhelming topic that perhaps poetry is one of the best mediums through which to explore it. I'd highly recommend this.
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller. I wanted to like this one more than I did. It starts out with an epic image: A woman arrives in a floating Arctic city riding an orca with a polar bear at her side. How can you go wrong with that? (Also she's queer but we don't find that out until later). Unfortunately the novel itself doesn't live up to that promise. I don't really know why—the worldbuilding is great, with a global stream of refugees fleeing homes that have been destroyed by climate change and winding up in said cyberpunk city, complete with an underground podcast, controlled by an AI and a mysterious group of shareholders. But the characters and plot did nothing for me. Things just sort of happened for no reason and none of ten bazillion point-of-view characters' voices felt distinct or compelling. The orcamancer was rad though.
Cleopatra In Space, Vol. 1: Target Practice by Mike Maihack. A young friend loaned me this comic because, as she put it, "Cleopatra has a raygun and there are talking cats." Which. Yes. That's quite excellent. I'm really into the comics Scholastic has been putting out; they're adorable, and this one is no exception. My only issue with it is that there is a cargo cult in the opening, which is a gratuitous anti-indigenous stereotype to which genre writers appear to be addicted. It is 2019, why are we still doing cargo cults in our writing? (Well, the comic came out in 2014, but we knew better then, too.) The rest of it is awesome.
Currently reading: I just finished the last one last night before I passed out, so—I will have to sort through my books to see what to read next.
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller. I wanted to like this one more than I did. It starts out with an epic image: A woman arrives in a floating Arctic city riding an orca with a polar bear at her side. How can you go wrong with that? (Also she's queer but we don't find that out until later). Unfortunately the novel itself doesn't live up to that promise. I don't really know why—the worldbuilding is great, with a global stream of refugees fleeing homes that have been destroyed by climate change and winding up in said cyberpunk city, complete with an underground podcast, controlled by an AI and a mysterious group of shareholders. But the characters and plot did nothing for me. Things just sort of happened for no reason and none of ten bazillion point-of-view characters' voices felt distinct or compelling. The orcamancer was rad though.
Cleopatra In Space, Vol. 1: Target Practice by Mike Maihack. A young friend loaned me this comic because, as she put it, "Cleopatra has a raygun and there are talking cats." Which. Yes. That's quite excellent. I'm really into the comics Scholastic has been putting out; they're adorable, and this one is no exception. My only issue with it is that there is a cargo cult in the opening, which is a gratuitous anti-indigenous stereotype to which genre writers appear to be addicted. It is 2019, why are we still doing cargo cults in our writing? (Well, the comic came out in 2014, but we knew better then, too.) The rest of it is awesome.
Currently reading: I just finished the last one last night before I passed out, so—I will have to sort through my books to see what to read next.
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