Wednesday Reading Meme for May 27 2026

[kitewithfish]

Reading journal for Wed May 27 2026

What I’ve Read
Marae by Anonymous - https://archiveofourown.org/works/31072724 – A fascinating Star Wars prequel AU with Maul/Rex and Blade Runner influences. I recommend! The premise is that the close are not quite replicants of Blade Runner, but not unlike them – organic droids anchored to physical form with a set of memories that come from … well, spoilers. It’s great, it’s weird, it’s got a work skin that I didn’t really get to enjoy. This author was prolific but opted to leave fandom, so tho I know their name, I’m going to avoid sharing it here. Their works remain on AO3 and collected here - https://archiveofourown.org/collections/001100_00

Indexicality by Therrae aka DashaMTE - https://archiveofourown.org/works/27580219 – The final addition to the long and delightful Xenoethnography series - I should have read this when it came out about 4 years ago, and I don’t think I finished it. But by god, it was amazing and a fitting conclusion to a very long and emotionally complex series. If the word count feels daunting on this series, just start with the first one and see if it you like it – pleasures like this, you can savor.

Honorable mention for a shorter fic: Rites series by soulshrapnel – Darth Maul/Qi’ra (from the Han Solo prequel movie) https://archiveofourown.org/series/1978516 – After the new Maul: Shadow Lord cartoon, I have been interested in some fic about Maul – poking randomly thru the tags found this gem. Focusing on the new character, Qi’ra, this fic series is a fascinating look at Maul from an external perspective of a crime lord who is interested in manipulating him via sex – and, well, it works pretty well, in the short term, and has some consequences she did not expect and does not like. I felt like this fic really nailed the ways that these two extremely damaged people would create intimacy without trust via manipulation and exploitation. (I adore a touch-starved Maul, and a situation where people exploit the limited power they have.)

Isle in the Silver Sea – Tasha Suri – Sigh. I loved the elevator pitch of this book! I think it might work for others!

The story focuses on the idea that the Isle (which is explicitly a magical England) ontologically depends on the re-enactment of stories to maintain the physical reality of the nation. Our main characters, Simran and Vina, are stuck in a story that will lead to their murder-suicide. Both magical and political power constrains them to this end, unless they try to fight it.

The idea is interesting! But, the actual story lacked focus enough to be a standalone novel, and lacked space enough to be a trilogy. The end result was characters that felt, not shallow, but rushed, and a book that wasted time giving grace notes to side characters who were barely there to begin with. It vacillates between overexplaining some concepts and ignoring the mechanics of others – so the balance of setup and payoff was skewed and inconsistent.

Petty gripe: if you are going to show me a magical chalice and a guy who is definitely King Arthur with the serial numbers filed off and talk about the power of stories, at some point, you do have to address Jesus. If your story is set in a magical England and you have THE HOLY GRAIL, you do have to deal with the underlying myth of why the grail is holy. Because if Wales and Punjab exist as they do in reality, then so must Christianity!


What I’m Reading

The Raven Scholar – Static

Inventing the Renaissance – Ada Palmer – about 30% - Actually fascinating look at the Renaissance with historical details and a fun bouncy tempo. The thing I am caught up on is how foreign and insane the past was, and how well Ada Palmer explains it.

The chapter on how political patronage and the religious concept of grace both overlap in the justice system and in the religious system is fascinating – like a seeing a puzzle come together. It makes so much more sense out of things in history that felt absurd and insane when I heard about them. In a snippet, the idea of a judicial being fair and consistent was simply not a goal for these people. The idea of justice was to impose harsh penalties as a lesson about hierarchy, from which the guilty sinner/convict would be saved by the grace of their patron (human or saintly) as a display of God’s mercy. So, while many more crimes had the legal penalty of death than do today, the expectation was that a criminal would be saved from the full force of the law and given a lesser punishment as a show of their patron’s holy mercy.

What I’ll Read Next
Tomb of Dragons Katherine Addison - reread for Xing Book club
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie for Necromancy Book Club

Hugo nominations still to read:

Novels
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Novellas
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)