Reading Wednesday
May. 13th, 2026 06:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: Nothing
Currently reading: Five Points On an Invisible Line by Su J Sokol. This is the sequel to Invisible Line, and follows the main characters: Laek, Janie, and their kids Siri and Simon, three years after they fled the US and settled in Montreal. They're now joined by Philip, Laek's best friend and former colleague, who had been devastated when he left because he'd been in love with Laek the entire time. Much of the book feels very slice-of-life, with the adults navigating poly relationships and the immigration system, while the kids figure out their identities, except that lurking beneath the surface, everyone except for Simon is involved in some kind of clandestine revolutionary activity and can't tell anyone else about it.
It's a really cool story. There's a tension in genre writing where deep down, everyone kind of wants the trauma to matter, but the tight pacing required to actually create a readable story often doesn't allow enough space for it, and so you get stories where characters just shrug off the physical and emotional costs of fighting the good fight. Otherwise, you have characters spending the whole time talking about their feelings and processing. This to me strikes a good balance; it is absolutely about dealing with trauma, and specifically dealing with the trauma of state violence, but it's also compulsively readable and full of cliffhangers.
Currently reading: Five Points On an Invisible Line by Su J Sokol. This is the sequel to Invisible Line, and follows the main characters: Laek, Janie, and their kids Siri and Simon, three years after they fled the US and settled in Montreal. They're now joined by Philip, Laek's best friend and former colleague, who had been devastated when he left because he'd been in love with Laek the entire time. Much of the book feels very slice-of-life, with the adults navigating poly relationships and the immigration system, while the kids figure out their identities, except that lurking beneath the surface, everyone except for Simon is involved in some kind of clandestine revolutionary activity and can't tell anyone else about it.
It's a really cool story. There's a tension in genre writing where deep down, everyone kind of wants the trauma to matter, but the tight pacing required to actually create a readable story often doesn't allow enough space for it, and so you get stories where characters just shrug off the physical and emotional costs of fighting the good fight. Otherwise, you have characters spending the whole time talking about their feelings and processing. This to me strikes a good balance; it is absolutely about dealing with trauma, and specifically dealing with the trauma of state violence, but it's also compulsively readable and full of cliffhangers.
