Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: The First Thousand Trees by Premee Mohamed. This was really good, and I felt speaks to a growing need in the post-apoc/dystopia genre for the kind of books that ask "okay, but what do we do now?" It could very well be a story of a city boy who gets repeatedly shown by rural folk how incompetent he is, but it goes deeper, probing the flaws of the kind of society that prides itself in a hardworking, hard-living ethos. What that means for people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, neurodiverse people, and so on.

Did I mention it was set in Alberta? Lool.

And of course it's beautifully written, and other than the fictional fungus, absolutely realist in its depiction of the climate crisis, because Premee is both a fantastic prose stylist and a scientist. 

I want to go back and read the first two now, but I know things that you may not know about what she has coming out next, which is even more up my alley.


Currently reading: A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang. I've been meaning to read Ai Jiang for ages and I'm most of the way through this one, which doesn't disappoint. It's about a princess of an oppressed people forced to marry a king in order to stop the palace's incursion into her people's territory. Her mother and sisters have gone to the palace before her, never to be seen again. She has one younger sister left and she is determined to kill the king and end these sacrificial marriages—and the destruction of her lands—once and for all.

Oh did I mention that they're all trees? They're all trees. 14/10 worldbuilding, no notes. The reveal that they're trees comes pretty early and I won't spoil anything else but I was like. Good job. That's weird af. I'm here for it.

Comments

[frandroid]

I keep hearing good things next to this writer's name..

The Star Wars RPG had some plant-based characters, that's always been fascinating to me. (I was more of a rulebook reader than a player)

[sabotabby]

I love plant people. Underused concept given Tolkien’s influence on the genre.

[petra]

Shades of Giancondo Belli's "La mujer habitada," which I read in Spanish in college, and which I deeply failed to understand until the second class meeting when someone said, "Ella es un árbol."

At which point I had to laboriously reread the first several chapters, because I had been lost at ... forest.

[sabotabby]

Ahahahaha.

[thatjustwontbreak]

I'm sold, hearing that they'll all trees. Hell yeah.

[sabotabby]

I’m kind of glad I didn’t know that going in though I think that would have made me read it faster.

[dissectionist]

Currently reading Mohamed’s “The Annual Migration of Clouds”, but just slapped a hold on that second book!

[sabotabby]

I need to read those too.

[sovay]

It could very well be a story of a city boy who gets repeatedly shown by rural folk how incompetent he is, but it goes deeper, probing the flaws of the kind of society that prides itself in a hardworking, hard-living ethos. What that means for people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, neurodiverse people, and so on.

Fine; that sounds great. I approve of your tree theming.

[sabotabby]

It's not even my theme! It's the theme of the Aurora novellas this year. So far I've read three and all three have to do with trees.

[sovay]

It's not even my theme! It's the theme of the Aurora novellas this year. So far I've read three and all three have to do with trees.

I can't complain about that!

[asakiyume]

Woah! They're trees!

Me: prosaic and dense: how do they move around (like, how does she go to this other territory)?

[sabotabby]

They're tree people, like Ents, and travel on the wind. They have feet and such, they're just all twisty branches and roots.

[asakiyume]

Ah, okay! Thanks!