Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: Cold Rising by Rohan O'Duill. This is a novella by a friend of mine with an excellent cover. It's the first book in the planned Cold Rush series (in which I've read a number of other unpublished stories, but this one is my favourite so I'm glad it was released first). It follows Olgo, an amoral enforcer for a multinational ?? multiplanet?? corporation whose CEO has had a recent religious reckoning. She sends them to Mars to ensure that UN labour practices are followed with their mining operations there. They end up accidentally inspiring a worker uprising, and after an act of terrorism, are trapped below the surface with Suong, a 12-year-old worker. 

This is one of those badass + child stories of which I am rather fond. Think The Last Of Us in the Expanse universe. It has a very classic hard SF feel to it but with more contemporary, gritty, working class character. Big recommend.

Design Graphics: Drawing Techniques for Design Professionals by Peter A. Koenig. This was pretty useful. I did almost all of the exercises in it. My one critique is that it leaps from very accessible beginner stuff to design professional stuff that's out of my wheelhouse without much of a ramp-up at all. But worth checking out and it won't take you long.

Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. I absolutely adored this one. It's a collection of bittersweet, haunting stories, illustrated in Tan's spectacular style, at once wistful and heartbreaking. The missile one was my favourite one. For me it really captures nostalgia for a painful childhood, and a certain liminal vibe that I've been experiencing pretty hard lately. Highly recommended and it'll take you like an hour, max.

The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe. This is a great big WTF of a book. The plot is dialed way back—basically Severian has learned nothing about saving the lives of hot women that he's supposed to torture and execute. This gets him in trouble and he has to flee yet again. Also he is maybe Jesus. And there are aliens (not a big reveal giving the last book). The giant from the last book is a mad scientist. I'm making it sound bad when it is actually bonkers in a good way. It's like sword and sorcery meets philosophy and theology meets ultraviolet prose and I'm here for it.

Currently reading: The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe. I just started reading this, but the opening SLAPS. 

Comments

[rydra_wong]

I'm making it sound bad when it is actually bonkers in a good way.

It's nothing like Moby Dick in style, but IMHO very similar in density and sheer WTF. Severian is Jesus, the whale is God, etc.

[sabotabby]

It's comparatively overwrought (positive) and overlaid with symbolism.

[rydra_wong]

True! Though I think Severian is much less prone to helpfully analysing the symbolism (or acknowledging the symbolism via denying it -- THE WHALE IS DEFINITELY NOT AN ALLEGORY) than Ishmael is.

Also I'm pretty sure Severian lies much more.

[sabotabby]

Important question: Which one is more of a dumbass?

[rydra_wong]

TRICKY.

[rydra_wong]

I mean, obviously Ishmael is a much more benign dumbass, being mostly a danger only to himself.

[sabotabby]

I almost said "and whales" but nah, he's really not.

[rydra_wong]

Yeah, I went through exactly the same thought process!

[rydra_wong]

I have pondered this question, and decided that it's Severian, given all the MAJOR IMPLIED REVELATIONS which he completely fails to fucking notice.

[dagibbs]

When I read this I thought "lictor" was a made-up "fantasy" word, but apparently not. It is an office of the Roman republic. But, they didn't carry swords -- they carried a fasces" (long bundle of thin sticks wrapped into a rod) within the borders of Rome (the city), and with an axe head inserted in the fasces if outside the borders of the city.

[sabotabby]

I can see why Wolfe (conservative though he was) didn't go with that. Terminus Est is much cooler.

[rydra_wong]

You know that Wolfe said somewhere that one of the sparks of the book was wanting to come up with a character design that would be easy for people to cosplay at cons? So that's where the torturer's costume comes from.

[sabotabby]

OMG I love that for him. Although a fuligin cloak might be a challenge unless you're Anish Kapoor.

(Next book is gonna have a completely iconic costume, mark my words.)

[dagibbs]

Yes, Terminus Est is much cooler.

[rydra_wong]

When I read this I thought "lictor" was a made-up "fantasy" word, but apparently not.

IIRC, almost all of the apparent "fantasy words" in Book of the New Sun turn out to be like that: archaic or obsolete terms which Wolfe has stolen and repurposed, or where he's used an obscure/archaic real word as the root for an invented term (e.g. "fuligin" coming from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fuliginous ).

See https://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.ObscureWords

ETA: also most of the "fantasy names" are the names of obscure Christian saints.

[dagibbs]

That does sound like the sort of thing Wolfe would do.