Reading meme for August 6 2025
Aug. 6th, 2025 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishWhat I've Read
Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma - There's some interesting elements of this book - Girma is an Ethiopian Australian author and the culture and language are woven into the story with more nuance than I can unravel without help. It came recommended by a friend who could do some of that for me, so I can pass along her recommendation. For myself, I find YA dark academia a hard sell unless the school setting feels very central to the story. The main character is deeply wrathful over the disappearance of her sister, and as she wrangles her position of heir to her family in a social structure built around controlling vampires.
Overall, I think I could have enjoyed it more if the writing were not so slow. Emotions snarl or boil or lash, which should be exciting but instead manages to make a paragraph a slog - It slows the pace and makes the actual action harder to parse. More than once I really wondered if a character had struck at another, but it was always eyes lashing out with rage, in the middle of a paragraph and then the conversation just goes on. I lost the thread of the plot pretty dramatically, and I found the main pairing dull. I really don't think YA is for me.
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky - I loved this book after five pages and I never stopped loving it. Charles is the consummate valet, the gentleman's gentlerobot, trying to maintain standards as he is thrust outside the civilized atmosphere of the high tech manor where he takes care of his master. Each section of his adventures alluded to famous writers' works, taking ideas sideways and upside down like Tchaikovsky does so well, and reworking them into something fresh. The book is post apocalyptic in the sense that the world has fallen apart but not in the sense that the story of humanity is over. I feel like this is in conversation with Remains of the Day, as Charles really does believe in the value or service to his master, and later, extends that to humans. This book asks clearly, who matters? Who gets to decide? It answers both with a resounding: YOU.
Reading Currently
A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett - also a resounding demand that we treat people seriously and with care. I would love to do a book club that holds Excellent Women up to some of Pratchett's witches. I think it would bear examining.
My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 2 – Emil Ferris
What I'll Read Next
Trying to get my Hugo nominees done, at least the novels. So Alien Clay and Ministry of Time
Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma - There's some interesting elements of this book - Girma is an Ethiopian Australian author and the culture and language are woven into the story with more nuance than I can unravel without help. It came recommended by a friend who could do some of that for me, so I can pass along her recommendation. For myself, I find YA dark academia a hard sell unless the school setting feels very central to the story. The main character is deeply wrathful over the disappearance of her sister, and as she wrangles her position of heir to her family in a social structure built around controlling vampires.
Overall, I think I could have enjoyed it more if the writing were not so slow. Emotions snarl or boil or lash, which should be exciting but instead manages to make a paragraph a slog - It slows the pace and makes the actual action harder to parse. More than once I really wondered if a character had struck at another, but it was always eyes lashing out with rage, in the middle of a paragraph and then the conversation just goes on. I lost the thread of the plot pretty dramatically, and I found the main pairing dull. I really don't think YA is for me.
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky - I loved this book after five pages and I never stopped loving it. Charles is the consummate valet, the gentleman's gentlerobot, trying to maintain standards as he is thrust outside the civilized atmosphere of the high tech manor where he takes care of his master. Each section of his adventures alluded to famous writers' works, taking ideas sideways and upside down like Tchaikovsky does so well, and reworking them into something fresh. The book is post apocalyptic in the sense that the world has fallen apart but not in the sense that the story of humanity is over. I feel like this is in conversation with Remains of the Day, as Charles really does believe in the value or service to his master, and later, extends that to humans. This book asks clearly, who matters? Who gets to decide? It answers both with a resounding: YOU.
Reading Currently
A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett - also a resounding demand that we treat people seriously and with care. I would love to do a book club that holds Excellent Women up to some of Pratchett's witches. I think it would bear examining.
My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 2 – Emil Ferris
What I'll Read Next
Trying to get my Hugo nominees done, at least the novels. So Alien Clay and Ministry of Time
