Recent reading
Aug. 22nd, 2023 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxFinished Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee, a fantasy novel set in a near-future Britain where the knights of the Round Table sleep, immortal, until resurrected to fight for Britain in times of peril. In this case, the peril is climate change, dragons, and non-Arthurian immortals/billionaires willing to damn everyone else to make their own escape from a dying earth, by draining the earth's magic to relocate their plush hotel of an offshore bunker to the faerie otherworld. I really enjoyed this one! I'm charmed by how Kay seems to be a favorite among modern authors of Arthuriana, although the real main character of the book is Mariam, a student nurse turned eco-warrior who finds herself flung into a world of dragons and women in ponds handing out swords and spends the second half of the book off on her own quest to save the world while Kay and Lancelot are busy having an enemies-to-reluctant-allies arc.
Slightly tangentially, this book had me musing on the line between fantasy and sci-fi: although this book is definitely, solidly fantasy, there were a few elements that felt more sci-fi, especially the reveal that, technically, the immortal Arthurian knights are not being resurrected via magical tree, but they're actually a succession of clones, regenerated with all the memories of all their prior selves?! And, like, it's still being done by magical tree, so does that outweigh the inherent sci-fi-ness of CLONES...?
Anyway, go readskygiants' review, which is better than mine.
Read HMS Surprise and about half of The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian— I spent most of the past week on a sailing trip, so I decided to commit to the theme and brought a couple of Aubrey-Maturin books to read. I happened to pick two that were heavy on the romantic drama of Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, and Diana Villiers, who breaks his heart about five times before they get their act together.
HMS Surprise just has a delightfully bananas plot in general; to quote a Tumblr post: "really can't emphasize enough that the main plot of HMS Surprise is that Jack rescues a fragile and sickly Stephen after days of brutal torture at the hands of the French and attempts to nurse him back to health only to spend the rest of the book in steadily rising panic as Stephen climbs the ratlines, does drugs, calls his ex, gets his dick out in public, starts a duel, buys a sloth, gets shot, proposes to his ex, blows his cover, drinks bird shit, kills a man, gets marooned, breaks the law, and almost adopts a nine year old"— which completely misses the part where Stephen performs open-chest surgery on himself, as a result of getting shot in said duel over his ex (Diana), and also the part where Jack gets the sloth inebriated ("Jack, you have debauched my sloth!"). On the other hand, the "almost adopts a nine year old" subplot is actually super weird— like, something about the way O'Brian writes (both in terms of writing her as a character and writing about her via other characters) the nine-year-old Indian girl in question, Dil, is just... super uncomfortable??— and also completely devastating, because Stephen and Diana make plans to basically co-adopt this spunky little girl to save her from being forced into sex work, but before they can put their plan into motion, Dil is murdered, while being mugged for the silver bracelets that Stephen bought her because they were the thing she wanted more than anything. TToTT
Read Still Alive: A Wild Life of Rediscovery by Forrest Galante, a conservationist and host of Animal Planet's Extinct or Alive, a series about trying to track down animals that have been declared extinct. I hadn't heard of him or his show before picking up this book at random, but it was a quick, interesting read (although, I suspect, best taken with a grain of salt vis-a-vis Galante's self-promotion). Coincidently, at one point, I got to a part about the extinction of the great auk on the Faroe Islands immediately after flipping to Still Alive from a scene in The Surgeon's Mate where Stephen geeked out over seeing a great auk, which put the latter in a new, sadder context.
Slightly tangentially, this book had me musing on the line between fantasy and sci-fi: although this book is definitely, solidly fantasy, there were a few elements that felt more sci-fi, especially the reveal that, technically, the immortal Arthurian knights are not being resurrected via magical tree, but they're actually a succession of clones, regenerated with all the memories of all their prior selves?! And, like, it's still being done by magical tree, so does that outweigh the inherent sci-fi-ness of CLONES...?
Anyway, go read
skygiants' review, which is better than mine.Read HMS Surprise and about half of The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian— I spent most of the past week on a sailing trip, so I decided to commit to the theme and brought a couple of Aubrey-Maturin books to read. I happened to pick two that were heavy on the romantic drama of Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, and Diana Villiers, who breaks his heart about five times before they get their act together.
HMS Surprise just has a delightfully bananas plot in general; to quote a Tumblr post: "really can't emphasize enough that the main plot of HMS Surprise is that Jack rescues a fragile and sickly Stephen after days of brutal torture at the hands of the French and attempts to nurse him back to health only to spend the rest of the book in steadily rising panic as Stephen climbs the ratlines, does drugs, calls his ex, gets his dick out in public, starts a duel, buys a sloth, gets shot, proposes to his ex, blows his cover, drinks bird shit, kills a man, gets marooned, breaks the law, and almost adopts a nine year old"— which completely misses the part where Stephen performs open-chest surgery on himself, as a result of getting shot in said duel over his ex (Diana), and also the part where Jack gets the sloth inebriated ("Jack, you have debauched my sloth!"). On the other hand, the "almost adopts a nine year old" subplot is actually super weird— like, something about the way O'Brian writes (both in terms of writing her as a character and writing about her via other characters) the nine-year-old Indian girl in question, Dil, is just... super uncomfortable??— and also completely devastating, because Stephen and Diana make plans to basically co-adopt this spunky little girl to save her from being forced into sex work, but before they can put their plan into motion, Dil is murdered, while being mugged for the silver bracelets that Stephen bought her because they were the thing she wanted more than anything. TToTT
Read Still Alive: A Wild Life of Rediscovery by Forrest Galante, a conservationist and host of Animal Planet's Extinct or Alive, a series about trying to track down animals that have been declared extinct. I hadn't heard of him or his show before picking up this book at random, but it was a quick, interesting read (although, I suspect, best taken with a grain of salt vis-a-vis Galante's self-promotion). Coincidently, at one point, I got to a part about the extinction of the great auk on the Faroe Islands immediately after flipping to Still Alive from a scene in The Surgeon's Mate where Stephen geeked out over seeing a great auk, which put the latter in a new, sadder context.
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Date: 2023-08-22 08:46 pm (UTC)I saw a film noir a couple of years ago which ended up feeling very science fictional to me because of the way it treated the question of memories, which was an interesting experience.
("Jack, you have debauched my sloth!")
I am fairly confident that The Surgeon's Mate was the first Patrick O'Brian I ever read, probably because it's the one that was in the basement of the Harvard Book Store at the time, and I had not been prepared for that line.
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Date: 2023-08-22 09:27 pm (UTC)I am fairly confident that The Surgeon's Mate was the first Patrick O'Brian I ever read, probably because it's the one that was in the basement of the Harvard Book Store at the time, and I had not been prepared for that line.
Do you mean HMS Surprise? That's the one with the debauched sloth— I think it's one of the funnier books in the series (except for whichever one has Jack disguised as a dancing circus bear in order to sneak across enemy territory??) which makes the whole Dil storyline so much more WTF.
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Date: 2023-08-22 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-08-23 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-22 09:53 pm (UTC)I feel like I've said this before, but I have a friend whose sister is also Awful Diana, and my household's explanation for it is that friend's parents must be absolutely huge Patrick O'Brian fans because why else would you name your daughter Awful Diana.
(See also "Fucking Diana," "Bloody Diana," etc.)
"They could have named her Preserved Killick," I said once recently when she was living up to her name, and my family said no, no they probably could not. I feel this is not very open-minded.
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Date: 2023-08-23 12:28 am (UTC)...was "Sophie" already taken?? Or, heck, "Aubrey"?
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Date: 2023-08-23 12:32 pm (UTC)Also, the "*gestures in round table*" line you quote in your review is so good but the one that got me was:
"“Look, comrades,” says Tarquin. “It’s mostly targeting the forces of capitalist oppression. Perhaps the dragon is an ally of the revolution?”
Leo shakes their head. “Dragons are inherently bourgeois.”"
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Date: 2023-08-23 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-08-23 04:12 pm (UTC)Also: for nonfiction, may I recommend Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt by Steven Johnson?
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Date: 2023-08-23 04:52 pm (UTC)And yeah, so I read the Scott Lynch book because it was rec'd as part of pirate book club and so... I did really enjoy it, but having it recommended specifically as a pirate book was a bit of an interesting experience, given how long it takes them to turn to the high seas!
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Date: 2023-08-23 05:00 pm (UTC)I must have read more pirate fiction/nonfiction than this but no other titles are coming to mind...? I will update you if they do.
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Date: 2023-08-23 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-24 02:59 am (UTC)