Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: Nothing.

Currently reading: A Drop Of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. This continues to be really fun. I wish there was more Ana, but her more distant presence in this is balanced by just how weird and gross the worldbuilding is. All magic in this world is drawn from the blood of leviathans, giant eldritch horrors that live in the sea and during the wet season, come on shore to try to kill everyone, and the murder plot revolves much more around the technicalities of this than the first book did. I'm here for weird body horror and squishy stuff so this works for me.

I am a wee bit confused over Din's motivations; he wants to join the Legion, which is the division of the military that blows up leviathans, rather than investigating crimes with Ana, which is a fairly major switch from the first book. But he can't do it because he's deep in debt to an insurer who covered his now-dead father's medical bills, and the job is so dangerous that the insurer would never be able to collect. Which, do not get me wrong, is a cool motivation! But it does seem like a break from the way his character is initially presented, and so far the only reason for the switch seems to be that he hooked up with a soldier at the end of the first book.

Anyway I just got to the part where he goes inside the Shroud, which is a giant cyst in the water where they extract leviathan blood, inhabited by augurs, who are altered to be incredibly good at working with vast amounts of data but go insane after three years and can only communicate by tapping. It's super cool.

Comments

[greylock]

I am a wee bit confused over Din's motivations

He's a guy. I am sure he is confused!!!

I am not not familiar with this writer or series so I will look it up.

[sabotabby]

The first one won the Hugo last year. Complete dark horse; the guy has written tons but no one had ever heard of him, somehow. I was shocked at how good it was.

Anyway, yes, Din thinks with his dick in this, which is odd as that wasn't the case for the first book.

[selki]

I had heard of and read his earlier series (City of Stairs, etc.). It was surprising to me to hear of others talking about him as though he was new. :-)

[sabotabby]

It just reminds me of how big the SFFH field is; someone can be wildly popular in some circles and a complete unknown in another (I had never heard of Sanderson until I started hanging out on Discord and Reddit in 2020, despite having been a fantasy reader my whole life.)

I think there's a certain Type of book that has won awards in recent years and maybe that's not what he writes? Despite the cosmic horror backdrop, the actual stories are very small-scale.

[snickfic]

All the worldbuilding in those is so fun, I say as someone who also loves body horror and megafauna and squishiness. I LOVED the augurs and would definitely read more about them, although I suspect they might a trick that'd be hard to sustain for long periods, narratively.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, and I think they worked in such a small dose here because they were so weird and haunting; knowing more would take away some of the mystery. But of course I crave more because they were so cool.