/lit/ - Literature

>>20285899
Straying from the Path (2011) - Carrie Vaughn

This is the Highest Step in the World (2004)
A dramatic retelling of Joseph Kittinger's 1960 jump from 102,800 feet. Ten years after the publication of this story, 2014, Alan Eustace exceeded that by jumping from 135,908 feet. I don't think that undercuts this story, but I also didn't find it that interesting.
Meh

Peace in Our Time (2004)
The two last surviving US war veterans preside over the burial of the former third last. The two reminisce about the last war they were in and worry that no one will be left to commemorate them. A worldwide pandemic had killed so many that sending people to fight was no longer feasible. War must go on though, and so autonomous machines were sent to kill.
Ok

Silence Before Starlight (2001) [Trade Guild]
A crewed mission has come to Europa to confirm whether it has any life. Strange and mysterious happenings occur to them and their equipment. As per the author, this is intended to a fairytale set in space. I put [Trade Guild] on these stories because the term is used in them, but they seem to be extremely loosely connected at very best and may just be a generic term Vaughn uses. I may be missing other similar possibly connected series of stories.
Meh

The Happiest Place (2009)
A Disneyland cast member discovers a magical tiara that turns her into a fairy godmother that can grant wishes. However, seeing all the suffering there is in the world can quickly make anyone yearn for death.
Blah

Swing Time (2007) [Temporal Transit Authority]
Two time traveling thieves keep coming across each other. Each time traveler has a specific action they perform, a catalyst, to travel through time.
Ok

The Librarian’s Daughter (2002)
A dark fairytale of a girl who wears the skin of a horse to dream prophecy.
Ok

The Bravest of Us Touched the Sky (2004)
Two female pilots are assigned to fly a heavily modified plane with a doctor of psychology along with them to see how they react, for classified reasons. A horror/mystery/thriller story.
Meh

The Heroic Death of Lieutenant Michkov (2002)
In the hopes of delighting his emperor Michkov presents embellished tales of heroism from the front lines rather than than the dismal reality of that the dispatches report.
Ok

Real City (2006)
A director wants to try something that hasn't been done in decades. Many think him foolish for trying to make a film on-set with actors. Everyone knows that these days that movies, which all are interactive, are created in a bluebox that uses people only for branding purposes and as an aid to ease production as everything else is computer-generated imagery. It's also a romance story.
Enjoyable

In Time (2001)
A story about Emily Dickinson and her dog Carlo.
Blah

Story Notes (2011)
I enjoy reading the notes authors write about their stories and I wish it were a regular inclusion.

>>19267634
The Tyrant Baru Cormorant - The Masquerade #3, Seth Dickinson
Unlike this previous two, this entry is told through a frame story. As with any frame story it's always unclear just how reliable or accurate the narrator is being, but I didn't see any reason to not believe what was being told. I don't think there would be any point to do so aside from speculation anyway. This book was better than the second, though not anywhere as enjoyable for me as the first, as it becomes ever more different from how it started. Some would call that evolution and others would say it's a bait and switch. My thoughts fall somewhere between. None of the characters particularly interest me, which is the greatest limitation on my enjoyment of this series. I was glad to see that the "A Story of Ash" split narrative was greatly reduced in overall length, as it was the low point of both the previous book and this one as well. For the first half or so, Baru continues on being ever more disabled, and I continued to be unable to appreciate that. The organization introduced in the second book was rather a let down to me, though I think that was also intentional. The last third changes pace and becomes less action oriented and more focused on infodumping and discussing ideas. I didn't mind that, though I wondered if it really needed to be such a discrete change. By the end, Baru has had, depending on how it's defined, sex with four women, teased a fifth, pines after a sixth, and promises to soon have as much sex as possible with as many women as possible.Considering how conveniently this book ends, it could've easily have been a trilogy, but the epilogue sets up a fourth. In terms of the narrative I find this to be rather odd, because I feel like it'll be more the first book of a new trilogy rather than the fourth. Even though the author says the next book is the final one, it just doesn't feel right. I would've been entirely satisfied with this as the final book, though I'm also interested in what possibly could happen with the fourth.
Rating: 3/5

>>18529031
The Monster Baru Cormorant, The Masquerade #2 - Seth Dickinson (2018)

Contains some protagonist spoilers for the first book and how they affect the second, though not in terms of plot spoilers.
While there are similarities with the first book it's overall a significant departure and not for the better as I thought it'd be. I believe Dickinson has overcorrected for the perceived flaws of the first book and as a result has veered off wildly. This is more of an adventure book than anything else, though most of it is spent in transit rather than at destinations. The book starts with explicitly undercutting the ending of the first and then proceeds into a certain type of character arc for the rest of the book that I dislike.
As a result of the first book Baru now has brain damage and PTSD which are shown to be significant disabilities. Because of this she is overall a much more passive and weaker character, which is to be expected. While these are certainly realistic outcomes they aren't ones that I'm interested in reading about. I've read more than enough of "mary sue becomes terribly disabled which provides character development AND also slows down narrative progress" to know that it isn't something that I enjoy.
I remain confused about the setting, particularly the specifics of their technological development. It's very much all over the place, which I don't know if it's because they developed significantly differently than how our world did or if they're piecemeal remnants from past civilizations.
On a related matter of specifics, some of the words the characters use, especially the Japanese, made me question whether it was those specific terms or if the author was using them as convenient shorthand rather than explaining what they would be in-universe assuming this isn't an alternate Earth.
As with the first book the fantastic elements remain limited, though the conclusion could be heading towards science fantasy, but not in a way that I can appreciate as I find it rather ridiculous and out of place. There are also other elements present that I found jarring that varied from the operations of modern spy agencies, to an African ethnography by colonialists, and a commentary on the US involvement in the Vietnam War. At times it felt like I was reading multiple different books.
I'll read rest of the series, though my expectations are now appropriately tempered. I had envisioned several different path for the series to tread and it would seem it's heading towards one of my less preferred destinations.

Rating: 3/5

>>16093283
The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson, The Masquerade #1 (2015)
I would describe this as secondary world historical fiction. It would be more commonly called historical fantasy, but I don't think that would be accurate. Some may even try to label it as hard fantasy. In the first book there's not even a hint of anything fantastical from what I could tell. If A Song of Ice and Fire didn't have anything fantastical, which is to say no magic, no dragons, and no white walkers I would have still been satisfied with it. This lack of fantastical wasn't an issue for me, though I don't know others would feel about that overall.
Baru is a savant whose homeland is subjugated and decides that the only way to save her homeland is by destroying their conquerors from within.
This book is heavily biased towards exposition. Economic warfare is the primary mode of action. Governmental policies are described in detail and used to drive a lot of the plot forward. As George R.R. Martin once asked, “What was Aragorn’s tax policy?”, and this more than sufficiently answers that question in its own way. I felt like this went on for a lot longer than it page count would suggest, probably because I was reading it more slowly than I usually read.
My primary issue was that everything seems to come too easily for Baru, but I assume that was to maintain momentum. In some ways this is more like a certain type of science fiction in that it seems more concerned with exploring its ideas, which are socio and geo political, rather than anything else. Apparently a lot of people really enjoyed the characters and that was the primary draw for them, but it wasn't for me. There's a 77% drop-off of people who rated the second book (released 2018) on Goodreads, which I think was because they enjoyed it because didn't think they could endure any more of it. That's understandable. I'll be reading the next two books, but not anytime soon, as it emotionally affected me more than I thought it would and earned a place among those which provoked an emotional reaction that I would described as "elated despair". I'm all too familiar with mixed affective states.
I'm almost certain that the books after this will be rather different from this one and that'd be for the best. This style is suitable for a one-off, as it continuing it would probably be overbearing for most readers. I suppose I'll eventually see.
Considering what I've written, the rating below may seem too high, and perhaps it is, but I don't feel that I could possibly rate it any lower from a personal perspective, but I could also never rate it any higher.
Rating: 4/5