literaryelise
literary elise
book enjoyer • she/they
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senozelot
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Random Trip Pics
letodietrich
Leto Dietrich
eagleeyelens
Eagle Eye Lens
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Baru: I will paint you across history in the color of their blood.
Tain Hu: Mama kudos for saying that. For spilling.
#baru cormorant#the traitor baru cormorant#seth dickinson#tain hu#sff books#fantasy books#books#mama kudos#funny#joke#quotes#incorrect quotes
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they may be doomed by the narrative but atleast they had gay sex
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Exordia - advance review
So. I finished the book!
This is not everything I will write about Exordia. That will come when the book is like, officially out, and I feel comfy spelling out the ending and quoting passages at length.
This 'advance review' is split into two parts. The first part is quite abstract, so I'll copy it here.
If Baru took an elliptical path towards its subject matter, by defamiliarising and rearranging the material of history… Exordia just gets straight in there.
How to describe Exordia? Maybe you could call it philosophy-driven science fiction, a thought experiment about ethics. Maybe you could compare it to Arrival, but shot up with black humour (it’s a book that could make me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time) and real tragedy (at the core is the genocide of the Kurds in the late 80s, and the many betrayals and failures of American imperialism). It’s got a lot of action and military details, with a good few spies and soldiers as central characters, but broadly it’s one of the sharpest eviscerations of the US military and its role in the world I’ve encountered in Western science fiction.
The first two thirds or so lay out the driving, fascinating ‘what the hell is this thing’ mystery lined with all manner of juicy body horror and drama—yet the core high-concept premise is laid out almost immediately, you know what's at stake. The last third… escalates.
It’s full of the usual meaty Seth themes, iterating on the ideas first laid out in Baru. But it’s a distinct flavour of its own. That escalation is… well, I can’t describe in detail, not while the book isn’t even out, but it’s nuts. Not just for the scale, but for how convincingly it sells concepts that if I described them straightforwardly would sound completely ridiculous.
Equally, it’s a study of a markedly diverse group of characters thrown together from all over the world, each constructed with very evident care and nuance. It goes places that so many writers would probably feel ‘damn, that’s probably way too thorny for someone like me to write about’—and yet somehow, it manages to handle it gracefully each time. Certainly, you can perhaps inevitably tell when Seth is writing from direct experience and when they are (as they used to say back in the ’10s) Writing The Other, if only through what they assume you know and what they need to explain as much as everything—and yet there are always all these telling details (the scientist cursing out R) that make these characters come alive with convincing presence and humour.
(Of course the autistic-ass lesbians are my faves. It’s not as overtly a Lesbian Book as Baru was, but there’s a strong current of gay shit.)
A few other reviewers mention Crichton, but I haven’t read Crichton, so… I’ll have to make other comparisons. But then the thing is it’s very self-aware about existing in the fabric of science fiction. This book is set in our world, not in the near future but the recent past, in the late Obama administration. A lot of the things you might compare it to (including a couple I’ve mentioned, Arrival, Crichton) will be invoked as explicit, in-character allusions as these very sharp, funny, modern people try to make sense of their crazy situation. Sometimes it feels like Tamsyn’s use of memes as texture, but it never gets overbearing. The rhythms of Seth’s prose have been refined by Baru into a powerful suite of devices to make you cackle and go, noooo, Seetttthhhhh…
It’s a fascinating blend of hard-ish scifi, with the big ideas carried by surprisingly accurate higher-mathematical technobabble, and what you could probably best call occultism: narrative and ethics and gods and mythology. Seth always tends to deflect when praised for their ability to hop between a dozen different disciplines and pull them together into one unifying story, saying that they’re just good at looking up summaries, or that they had help from the right people. Maybe so, but it works, it passes the smell test, and Seth’s real genius is their remarkable ability to tie all these big grand ideas back into the world of character and emotion.
Since this is an advance review… I gotta be careful how much I say! Usually I assume you’ve read it if you’re going to and dive straight into the spoilers and long quotes, but here I feel like I should take a little care to avoid describing too precisely the exact beats of the story. (Rest assured I will give it the thorough treatment when it comes out in full).
But, I feel like I want to say something a little more substantial. So here’s a description of the mechanism. If all you want to know is whether you should read this book, hopefully I’ve given you plenty of reasons that the answer is god, yes, do it. If you want to know more, read on.
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“You’re part of my addiction.” Olympus, Blondshell
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He’s gonna start infecting my life
It will hit all at once like sepsis
victim of a bad inclination: female driven indie rock about unfortunate decisions
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Did you expect something different? — Kiss City, Blondshell
#jason todd#red hood#sad#lyrics#batman#batfam#gotham#depressed#blondshell#mitski#kiss city#family#aeshetic#edit#love
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The Stars Undying, Emery Robin
#fantasy books#sff books#book recs#books#julius caesar#the stars undying#emery robin#queer books#queer fantasy books#queer sci fi books#retelling#shakespeare#historical fantasy#sisters#family#drama#difficult#sad#love
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i’m sorry
#jason todd#batman#red hood#comics#dc#batfam#bruce wayne#sad#bad dad bruce wayne#daddy issues#tragic#father son#quotes#gotham#relationship#dynamic#robin
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Yes, it's true, i do hungrily want a cliche "I'll grab your face gently. Look for you, somewhere, in ruin. I'll take your hands, soaked with my blood, and still not believe it's you who spilled it there" jason and bruce scene. while it's raining.
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dick texting jason
#jason todd#dick grayson#dick grayson gotham’s number one drama queen#batboys#batfam#batfamily#siblings#gotham#comics#dc comics#funny#joke#nightwing#red hood
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#jason todd#batman#red hood#batfamily#robin#joker#mitski#sad songs#jason todd’s sad spotify playlist#batfam#bruce wayne#gotham#bad parent bruce wayne#father son
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Jason Todd and Bruce Wayne
Lyra Wren // Batman Annual #25 // Origin Story - Desiree Dallagiacomo // Batman Annual #25 // And My Father's Love was Nothing Next To God's Will - Amatullah Bourdon // Batman #424 // User: petrichara // Batman #683 // Family Line - Conan Gray // Batman: Under the Red Hood // The Pain Scale - Eula Biss // Batman: Under the Red Hood // Woodtangle - Mary Reufle // Red Hood and the Outlaws V2 #24 // Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong - Ocean Vuong // Red Hood and the Outlaws V1 #19 // Georges Bataille // Red Hood and the Outlaws V2 #25 // The Sun Is Also A Star - Nicola Yoon // Task Force Z #6 // Episode 100 - Just Roll With It // Batman and Robin V2 #20
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currently spiraling over i’m your man by mitski and how these lyrics are so deeply bruce wayne reflecting on how shitty of a father he has been
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