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usuallyhats) wrote2023-10-11 01:36 pm
usuallyhats) wrote2023-10-11 01:36 pm
Books and comics read in September 2023
He Who Drowned the World - Shelley Parker-Chan
Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine - Hannah Fry
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands - Kate Beaton
Into the Riverlands - Nghi Vo
The Water Outlaws - SL Huang
Band Sinister - KJ Charles
The Kingdom of Darkness - Sarah Monette
The Fox - Sherwood Smith
Perilous Times - Thomas D Lee
Desdemona and the Deep - CSE Cooney
Suradanna and the Sea - Rebecca Fraimow
Jade Shards - Fonda Lee
The Devil's Novice - Ellis Peters
The Raven Throne - Stephanie Burgis
America: Fast and Fuertona
He Who Drowned the World
This was incredible, Shelley Parker-Chan really stuck the landing with this one. It's frequently brutal, but not completely bleak - it's full of hurt people who now have the power to hurt others, and it doesn't shy away from the pain they cause (while still maintaining compassion and understanding for them), but it also knows and believes that there is another way and that other choices are possible, even if they're not easy and they might not last. It really grapples with ideas of power and whether it's justifiable to cause pain and suffering if it's in service of building a better world, and I really appreciated both that and the answers it found. I can't wait to see what Parker-Chan does next.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Ooof, this memoir of the two years Kate Beaton spent working on the oil sands was excellent and a lot. It grapples with a lot of big things (sexual assault and rape, the way capitalism strips away your choices) in a way that's often very bleak, but it's also leavened with a lot of the humour and warmth of people being people, and I'm really impressed that it contains both without either undermining the other.
Jade Shards
I absolutely inhaled these short stories in Fonda Lee's Green Bone universe. None of them are essential, but they flesh out the characters and world beautifully. Lee built such a rich world and characters in those books, and let them grow in really interesting and convincing ways, so it's always a pleasure to spend time in the universe - slightly bittersweet this time knowing she isn't intending to revisit it. I wouldn't recommend this as a jumping on point, but for anyone who's already read the trilogy, it's definitely worth your time.
(Content note for suicide on the second story)
I also really liked The Raven Throne and Hello World, and continue to thoroughly enjoy Sherwood Smith's Inda Quartet!
Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine - Hannah Fry
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands - Kate Beaton
Into the Riverlands - Nghi Vo
The Water Outlaws - SL Huang
Band Sinister - KJ Charles
The Kingdom of Darkness - Sarah Monette
The Fox - Sherwood Smith
Perilous Times - Thomas D Lee
Desdemona and the Deep - CSE Cooney
Suradanna and the Sea - Rebecca Fraimow
Jade Shards - Fonda Lee
The Devil's Novice - Ellis Peters
The Raven Throne - Stephanie Burgis
America: Fast and Fuertona
He Who Drowned the World (five stars), Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (five stars), Jade Shards (five stars)
He Who Drowned the World
This was incredible, Shelley Parker-Chan really stuck the landing with this one. It's frequently brutal, but not completely bleak - it's full of hurt people who now have the power to hurt others, and it doesn't shy away from the pain they cause (while still maintaining compassion and understanding for them), but it also knows and believes that there is another way and that other choices are possible, even if they're not easy and they might not last. It really grapples with ideas of power and whether it's justifiable to cause pain and suffering if it's in service of building a better world, and I really appreciated both that and the answers it found. I can't wait to see what Parker-Chan does next.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Ooof, this memoir of the two years Kate Beaton spent working on the oil sands was excellent and a lot. It grapples with a lot of big things (sexual assault and rape, the way capitalism strips away your choices) in a way that's often very bleak, but it's also leavened with a lot of the humour and warmth of people being people, and I'm really impressed that it contains both without either undermining the other.
Jade Shards
I absolutely inhaled these short stories in Fonda Lee's Green Bone universe. None of them are essential, but they flesh out the characters and world beautifully. Lee built such a rich world and characters in those books, and let them grow in really interesting and convincing ways, so it's always a pleasure to spend time in the universe - slightly bittersweet this time knowing she isn't intending to revisit it. I wouldn't recommend this as a jumping on point, but for anyone who's already read the trilogy, it's definitely worth your time.
(Content note for suicide on the second story)
I also really liked The Raven Throne and Hello World, and continue to thoroughly enjoy Sherwood Smith's Inda Quartet!
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Glad to hear He Who Drowned the World lived up to the first one. Hope to get to that soon.
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