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picked up ancillary justice because it was cheap in a pile and... it's fine? feels a little assembled out of familiar influences, the cold planet from le guin, the ship minds from banks, the tense conversations from cherryh, bits of the plot from traveller campaign secret of the ancients. i slurped it up in a day and it was pleasant enough to read but didn't really leave much trace when i was done. Are the sequels more interesting?
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Dec 17, 2023 22:58
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Slyphic posted:Among Others, RP1 for book nerds This is the best description possible of that book and I hope you don't mind that I plan to steal it.
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Dec 17, 2023 23:05
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sebmojo posted:picked up ancillary justice because it was cheap in a pile and... it's fine? feels a little assembled out of familiar influences, the cold planet from le guin, the ship minds from banks, the tense conversations from cherryh, bits of the plot from traveller campaign secret of the ancients. i slurped it up in a day and it was pleasant enough to read but didn't really leave much trace when i was done. Are the sequels more interesting? I liked the concept of Justice of Toren but yeah Breq's story isn't as memorable. The second book is barely scifi, it's almost entirely set on a tea plantation/planet and IMO a terrible slog (a Goodreads review called it "Sense and Sensibility and Spaceships" and that stuck with me) while the third is better and more like the first.
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Dec 17, 2023 23:16
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Runcible Cat posted:This is the best description possible of that book and I hope you don't mind that I plan to steal it.
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Dec 17, 2023 23:50
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Precambrian Video Games posted:I liked the concept of Justice of Toren but yeah Breq's story isn't as memorable. The second book is barely scifi, it's almost entirely set on a tea plantation/planet and IMO a terrible slog (a Goodreads review called it "Sense and Sensibility and Spaceships" and that stuck with me) while the third is better and more like the first. I concur that the 2nd was a slog and the 3rd was better
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Dec 17, 2023 23:51
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sebmojo posted:picked up ancillary justice because it was cheap in a pile and... it's fine? feels a little assembled out of familiar influences, the cold planet from le guin, the ship minds from banks, the tense conversations from cherryh, bits of the plot from traveller campaign secret of the ancients. i slurped it up in a day and it was pleasant enough to read but didn't really leave much trace when i was done. Are the sequels more interesting?
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Dec 17, 2023 23:58
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Having heard the Hype I jumped on Ancillary Justice, but personally it left me completely cold.
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Dec 18, 2023 00:17
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Deptfordx posted:Having heard the Hype I jumped on Ancillary Justice, but personally it left me completely cold. I got bored and have always felt vaguely guilty about that.
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Dec 18, 2023 00:23
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I felt like a lot of the hype surrounding it was about its use of "she/her" as a gender neutral pronoun used for people of all gender expressions, which kind of lost its novelty after the first 50 pages, leaving a story I just could not connect with. It doesn't help The Left Hand of Darkness did it 50 years before to much more interesting effect.
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Dec 18, 2023 01:32
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I felt like a lot of the hype surrounding it was about its use of "she/her" as a gender neutral pronoun used for people of all gender expressions, which kind of lost its novelty after the first 50 pages, leaving a story I just could not connect with. It doesn't help The Left Hand of Darkness did it 50 years before to much more interesting effect. yeah it was kind of '  why I don't care about gender, why on earth do u' but was less relevant than other cultural signifiers like tea and gloves overall. So glad she decided against using 'they' as a gender free placeholder though, that would have been a nightmare (because you can ignore gender quite easily as it turns out, but ignoring singular/plural is exhausting to read unless done very carefully)
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Dec 18, 2023 01:42
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They has been a singular gender neutral pronoun for a very long time though.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:00
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sebmojo posted:yeah it was kind of ' Works fine in my (Grayson Saunders) Commonweal books, where everyone is they unless they’re loving.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:02
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sebmojo posted:yeah it was kind of ' Hard disagree. They is neutral in most circumstances, she/her is not, and it drove me absolutely insane that this author/pov character would misgender most of the people they met. They'd hear that someone uses different pronouns and keep using she/her and that was just so enraging I couldn't finish the book.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:09
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StrixNebulosa posted:Hard disagree. They is neutral in most circumstances, she/her is not, and it drove me absolutely insane that this author/pov character would misgender most of the people they met. They'd hear that someone uses different pronouns and keep using she/her and that was just so enraging I couldn't finish the book. they is neutral, but it equally refers to one person and more than one person and every time you read it you have to declutter which is which. that said, maybe it can be used fine; ultimately it's habit, i will keep disliking it until I see it used so well it doesn't bother me i guess.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:15
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People get so stuck on 'they' but the bigger problem is just that English doesn't mark proximate and obviative third person. "She let her dog bite her" could refer to between 1 and 3 people involved in a dog bite. It's a sentence structure and context problem that a good writer can work around, not a pronoun problem, imo.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:21
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Involving 1 or 2 in that sentence is understandable but 3 is just poor writing. Besides, what you just wrote is something you'd hear in speech when it's possible to cue who is her in each instance, seeing it in a novel would be unusual.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:24
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sebmojo posted:they is neutral, but it equally refers to one person and more than one person and every time you read it you have to declutter which is which. that said, maybe it can be used fine; ultimately it's habit, i will keep disliking it until I see it used so well it doesn't bother me i guess. This is why I shortened the singular they to ey/em/er in my series. They is still sometimes used at the beginning of the sentence if ey would sound awkward and the reflexive pronoun still tends to be themself cause I’m trying to replicate how linguistic shifts are part due to human laziness and phonetic comfort, not aiming for artificial consistency
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Dec 18, 2023 02:43
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I felt like a lot of the hype surrounding it was about its use of "she/her" as a gender neutral pronoun used for people of all gender expressions, which kind of lost its novelty after the first 50 pages, leaving a story I just could not connect with. It doesn't help The Left Hand of Darkness did it 50 years before to much more interesting effect. This is kinda where I land on it too. It's not a bad book, it's just not doing much that LeGuin didn't do decades ago better. I feel the same way about most of Jemisin's stuff.
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Dec 18, 2023 02:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This is kinda where I land on it too. It's not a bad book, it's just not doing much that LeGuin didn't do decades ago better. I feel the same way about most of Jemisin's stuff. Yeah, it's Fine.
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Dec 18, 2023 03:11
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I found the perspective shift stuff quite fun, FWIW.
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Dec 18, 2023 04:12
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zoux posted:Is it as propulsive as the medieval Jack Reacher vampire knight novel series I'm reading? No, nothing is. I'd like to know what this book series is, I'm intrigued.
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Dec 18, 2023 04:21
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Lex Talionis posted:The first was popular precisely because it did a good job with so many different fun tropes, lots of people found something they liked. The second dials the Cherryh influence way up (Foreigner in particular) and the other influences down so appeals to a much narrower set of readers. I remember the third as being more like the second than the first, but I don't remember anything about it (never a good sign) other than I felt like it didn't do enough to address the world-historical problems posed in the first to satisfy me (I have similar problems with Cherryh, e.g. Regenesis) I enjoyed all of them a great deal, but I also love Cherryh's stuff, so "dialing the Cherryh influence way up" is a major selling point. That said, my favourite individual parts are the bits from Justice of Toren's perspective and those go away completely after the first book. StrixNebulosa posted:Hard disagree. They is neutral in most circumstances, she/her is not, and it drove me absolutely insane that this author/pov character would misgender most of the people they met. They'd hear that someone uses different pronouns and keep using she/her and that was just so enraging I couldn't finish the book. So, the radchaai culture does not mark gender, and the radchaai language only has one third-person pronoun for people, which similarly is ungendered. By convention that pronoun is rendered in the text of the book as "she", rather than as "he" (the convention from 50 years ago used for the same purpose in The Left Hand of Darkness), "they" (the current convention), "it" (used instead for the impersonal third-person pronoun for referents which are not people), or a bespoke pronoun like gtst (used by Cherryh). When Breq's inner narrative refers to someone as "she" she is not misgendering anyone because she is thinking in a language without gender, and when communicating with people in non-radchaai languages she makes an effort not to misgender people, not always successfully. If anything the use of "she" to render the gender-neutral radchaai pronoun is a riff on the use of "he" for that purpose in LHoD specifically, and in nonfiction writing more generally because "hE iS a GeNdEr NeUtRaL pRoNoUn", which is still pretty common today and was more common ten years ago when it was written.
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Dec 18, 2023 04:28
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sebmojo posted:they is neutral, but it equally refers to one person and more than one person and every time you read it you have to declutter which is which. that said, maybe it can be used fine; ultimately it's habit, i will keep disliking it until I see it used so well it doesn't bother me i guess.
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Dec 18, 2023 04:33
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ToxicFrog posted:When Breq's inner narrative refers to someone as "she" she is not misgendering anyone because she is thinking in a language without gender, and when communicating with people in non-radchaai languages she makes an effort not to misgender people, not always successfully. Yeah I saw the way that the Radch just completely ignores other cultures' genders and pronouns to be there just as another example of its imperialism. For what it's worth, the fourth and fifth books (Provenance and Translation State) are set in non-Radch cultures with entirely different pronoun sets. Provenance's main culture has male, female, and neuter pronouns, as well as a separate neuter used just for children who haven't declared a gender yet. Translation State has multiple cultures with multiple gender approaches and one of the POV characters even uses e/eir/em (sie/hir and they/them sets are also used for other characters) and when an rear end in a top hat Radch ambassador shows up, she starts she-ing everyone (and they're not happy about it).
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Dec 18, 2023 04:52
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You isn't equivalent unless you're in second person, (in which case it's directed at the reader, who can comfortably be both singular and plural) and dialogue can handle that kind of ambiguity much better. I just think she made the correct decision not using they as the gender neutral pronoun in AJ. I like stuporstars approach actually, that's really clever, splits the difference very nicely.
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Dec 18, 2023 04:58
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Slyphic posted:I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I read the Coldfire trilogy, those covers leapt off the library shelves into my greedy child hands. But I can't recollect a single thing about them, even after that summary. I guess I get to reread them again for the first time. Coldfire owns, cs Friedman owns. But that description was for her Magister series. Coldfire is basically about a priest and a vampire mage (ish) getting to know each other in a pretty neat magical system that feels pretty well realized. Also a lot about faith.
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Dec 18, 2023 05:18
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Awkward Davies posted:I concur that the 2nd was a slog and the 3rd was better Been there 
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Dec 18, 2023 05:19
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DurianGray posted:Yeah I saw the way that the Radch just completely ignores other cultures' genders and pronouns to be there just as another example of its imperialism. For what it's worth, the fourth and fifth books (Provenance and Translation State) are set in non-Radch cultures with entirely different pronoun sets. Provenance's main culture has male, female, and neuter pronouns, as well as a separate neuter used just for children who haven't declared a gender yet. Translation State has multiple cultures with multiple gender approaches and one of the POV characters even uses e/eir/em (sie/hir and they/them sets are also used for other characters) and when an rear end in a top hat Radch ambassador shows up, she starts she-ing everyone (and they're not happy about it). The Radch are imperialist as gently caress and the ambassador in Translation State is a huge rear end in a top hat, yes. "Breq constantly misgenders everyone in AJ" is a hell of a take though. She spends the whole trilogy trying to be better than her origins and part of that is not being an rear end in a top hat to non-radchaai in the manner the ambassador in TS very much is.
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Dec 18, 2023 05:21
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Yeah breq explicitly tries to do her best, she just can't work out those whacky cultures with pronouns and sometimes gets it wrong
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Dec 18, 2023 05:27
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It's been a while since I read the books, but isn't it explicitly stated in the text Breq has trouble with gender because she spent thousands of years being plugged into the humans she cares about and thus had no need for visual gender cues and now that she doesn't have this, it's difficult because both in and out of raadch space, visual markers for gender are vary by place? That said, I felt like the use of she as a pronoun in the books made me no more and no less interested in them. It was pretty easy to get used to and not pay much attention to until a couple of instances Breq stuck her foot in her mouth over someone's gender.
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Dec 18, 2023 05:40
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Imperial Raadch society doesn't have a concept of gender much less gender signifiers.
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Dec 18, 2023 05:43
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fwiw, I liked that the books used "she" because everyone ever has defaulted to "he" as the default for gender, including in Left Hand of Darkness, and this turns that on its head which I think is neat.
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Dec 18, 2023 06:08
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Keret posted:fwiw, I liked that the books used "she" because everyone ever has defaulted to "he" as the default for gender, including in Left Hand of Darkness, and this turns that on its head which I think is neat. yeah it was cool, and worked fine, it wasn't a big part of the thematic payload afaict (unless I missed it). i liked how breq would sort of flail at a guess while being impressively competent at her core goal of annihilating a galactic emperor e: LA review of Books on Translation State, seems relevant
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Dec 18, 2023 06:16
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Keret posted:fwiw, I liked that the books used "she" because everyone ever has defaulted to "he" as the default for gender, including in Left Hand of Darkness, and this turns that on its head which I think is neat. Everyone except Delany for Stars in my Pockets like Grains of Sand,* which is a better comparision to the Raadch because he was writing about humans, rather than Gethenians. *and anything else I'm forgetting E: Keret, sorry if I look like I'm picking on you specifically; just using your post as a jumping-off point for mine Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 06:53
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platero posted:I'd like to know what this book series is, I'm intrigued. Vampire Crusader (The Immortal Knight Chronicles) was mentioned earlier in the thread, might be it. (I did buy, haven't read it yet)
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Dec 18, 2023 11:27
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Ah, I think I was getting it confused with Daughter of the Empire. I had a coworker who swore by it but said that you had to read the first Rfitwar Trilogy which wasn't as good. You most definitely do not need to read Riftwar first. Empire stands very well on its own.
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Dec 18, 2023 11:45
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sebmojo posted:picked up ancillary justice because it was cheap in a pile and... it's fine? feels a little assembled out of familiar influences, the cold planet from le guin, the ship minds from banks, the tense conversations from cherryh, bits of the plot from traveller campaign secret of the ancients. i slurped it up in a day and it was pleasant enough to read but didn't really leave much trace when i was done. Are the sequels more interesting? i like the non-main series books and short stories in the ancillary world more than the main series
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Dec 18, 2023 11:58
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Dropping in the Leckie chat to remind that The Raven Tower is really good.
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Dec 18, 2023 12:24
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Exordia's great! Pre-order that book, Goons! I'm going to be thinking about it for a while.
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Dec 18, 2023 12:28
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StrixNebulosa posted:It isn't, actually! Coldfire Trilogy is a standalone trilogy. I like Friedman but if her other returns to a classic series are anything to go by, I would probably pretend like this doesn't exist. The sequels to In Conquest Born and This Alien Shore (previously standalones) were fairly disappointing. Milkfred E. Moore posted:Exordia's great! Pre-order that book, Goons! I'm going to be thinking about it for a while. Five weeks and one day to go. I'm excited! Danhenge fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 13:15
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