Reading Wednesday
Jul. 10th, 2019 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhThe Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold. A new novella in the Vorkosigan series; in internal chronology it comes after A Civil Campaign (where Miles gets married) but before Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. The narrator this time around is Ekaterin, Miles's wife, a relative newcomer to his planet, but wonderfully cool and competent. She's working with scientists on a long-term (very long-term) project to clear up the Vashnoi district, which was hit with nuclear weapons eighty years ago and has been uninhabitable ever since. Ekaterin's role is designing a bio-engineered species of bug that eats radioactive materials – yes, they are descendants of A Civil Campaign's butter bugs! Who probably are my favorite characters in that book, come to think of it.
These new radbugs are not quite as memorable as that, but when they're put in a test plot within Vashnoi to measure their effectiveness, they start disappearing. It turns out that Vashnoi might not be as uninhabited as everyone thought....
The Flowers of Vashnoi is very much one of the lighter and shorter Vorkosigan novellas. It's a pleasant way to spend an afternoon without being particularly memorable. I was a bit annoyed, in fact, that Ekaterin's actions have an easily predictable negative consequence that she is nonetheless shocked and unprepared for when it arrives. Bujold is an author who normally is very, very good at having her characters be thoughtful and aware of the potential unintended effects of their choices, so having a character blunder around destructively and never really regret her own short-sightedness was more annoying in the Vorkosigan series than it would have been somewhere else.
But, ah, well. It's too light of a story to even bother being annoyed by. It was fine. Not great, sure, but fine.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The True Queen by Zen Cho. The long-awaited sequel (by me, at least!) to Sorcerer to the Crown. On the magical island of Janda Baik, in Malaysia, two teenage sisters wash up on the beach with absolutely no memory of their past lives. Sakti is hugely magically talented, a complete prodigy, while Muna has not a single solitary drop of magical ability. After causing hijinks on Janda Baik, the decision is made to send the girls to sorceress school in London. Unfortunately Sakti disappears on the journey, presumably captured by some sort of Fairy, and Muna is left to a) navigate English society, b) pass herself off as a magician, and c) convince one of the powerful people around her to rescue Sakti before it's too late.
The sad truth is that I simply didn't love The True Queen the way I loved Sorcerer to the Crown. The True Queen is still worth reading, but it's not lightning in a bottle the way Sorcerer to the Crown was. Some of my main problems with The True Queen is that it's very slow to get started; the first few chapters repeatedly jump around in time in a way that adds nothing to the plot but feels like a car engine turning over... and turning over... and turning over... before finally catching. At the other end of the book, the big climatic twist turns out to be a secret that was abundantly obvious from page one. Which - fine. Not every book has to be a mystery; plenty of plots have revolved around a thing that's been long obvious to the reader. But this reveal is clearly intended to have so much emotional weight, and so much time is spent convincing various characters of its truth, that it drags and drags. Finally, the writing style felt a bit simpler to me this time around, a bit more YA-like. Nothing wrong with YA, but Sorcerer to the Crown didn't feel like part of that genre to me, and The True Queen does (I don't think it was actually marketed that way, but I see that more than a few people on GoodReads have tagged it as YA, so clearly it's not just me).
On the other hand, there's an adorable f/f relationship. I will forgive a lot for fantasy Regency witchy f/f romance.
These new radbugs are not quite as memorable as that, but when they're put in a test plot within Vashnoi to measure their effectiveness, they start disappearing. It turns out that Vashnoi might not be as uninhabited as everyone thought....
The Flowers of Vashnoi is very much one of the lighter and shorter Vorkosigan novellas. It's a pleasant way to spend an afternoon without being particularly memorable. I was a bit annoyed, in fact, that Ekaterin's actions have an easily predictable negative consequence that she is nonetheless shocked and unprepared for when it arrives. Bujold is an author who normally is very, very good at having her characters be thoughtful and aware of the potential unintended effects of their choices, so having a character blunder around destructively and never really regret her own short-sightedness was more annoying in the Vorkosigan series than it would have been somewhere else.
But, ah, well. It's too light of a story to even bother being annoyed by. It was fine. Not great, sure, but fine.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The True Queen by Zen Cho. The long-awaited sequel (by me, at least!) to Sorcerer to the Crown. On the magical island of Janda Baik, in Malaysia, two teenage sisters wash up on the beach with absolutely no memory of their past lives. Sakti is hugely magically talented, a complete prodigy, while Muna has not a single solitary drop of magical ability. After causing hijinks on Janda Baik, the decision is made to send the girls to sorceress school in London. Unfortunately Sakti disappears on the journey, presumably captured by some sort of Fairy, and Muna is left to a) navigate English society, b) pass herself off as a magician, and c) convince one of the powerful people around her to rescue Sakti before it's too late.
The sad truth is that I simply didn't love The True Queen the way I loved Sorcerer to the Crown. The True Queen is still worth reading, but it's not lightning in a bottle the way Sorcerer to the Crown was. Some of my main problems with The True Queen is that it's very slow to get started; the first few chapters repeatedly jump around in time in a way that adds nothing to the plot but feels like a car engine turning over... and turning over... and turning over... before finally catching. At the other end of the book, the big climatic twist turns out to be a secret that was abundantly obvious from page one. Which - fine. Not every book has to be a mystery; plenty of plots have revolved around a thing that's been long obvious to the reader. But this reveal is clearly intended to have so much emotional weight, and so much time is spent convincing various characters of its truth, that it drags and drags. Finally, the writing style felt a bit simpler to me this time around, a bit more YA-like. Nothing wrong with YA, but Sorcerer to the Crown didn't feel like part of that genre to me, and The True Queen does (I don't think it was actually marketed that way, but I see that more than a few people on GoodReads have tagged it as YA, so clearly it's not just me).
On the other hand, there's an adorable f/f relationship. I will forgive a lot for fantasy Regency witchy f/f romance.
