The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N. K. Jemisin
Finished reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and, wow, um. I have a hard time believing it's up for a Hugo. It is... really not my style. The worldbuilding feels kind of cheap and easy and imitative, like the sort of thing I would have come up with at fourteen. (For reference, the last fantasy whose worldbuilding I remember liking a *lot* was the Doctrine of Labyrinths series; sure, okay, there I spent a fair amount of time saying things like "it's really kind of insulting that the in-universe word for tops/dominants/sadists is 'tarquin' (which is kind of weird in a world that seems not to have had Rome and therefore no Tarquins) and that apparently the only explicit sex scene that would have portrayed kink as actually enjoyable and not part of fucked-up magic rituals was excised from Corambis" but at least Sarah Monette clearly did her worldbuilding homework, yo, and tried to make it evident that Felix's fucked-up-ness was based on him generally being Felix, and not what he liked to do in his free time.)
Plus, Hundred Thousand here is one of those books that strikes me as (a) deeply deeply het and (b) requiring you to instinctively understand the Sexy Appeal of Bad Boys (okay, Bad Gods, whatever) who could very easily kill you. I wasn't really into either of those, while reading. Maybe I should just stick to the queer SF. (Or also SF where sexuality isn't particularly relevant; the main relationship in Feed was siblings and, man, I liked them a whole lot better than Yeine and... everyone here.) It's the kind of fantasy where apparently the only same-sex-attracted people are (surprise!) pedophiles (oh, also, and a creepy relationship between divine beings that does Bad Things to the planet) and the villains are coded as villainous partially because they keep people collared and chained presumably for their Perverse Kinky Things. And this is up for a Hugo. I just... come on, people, it's 2011. Can't we do better than this?
Sigh. Well, I'm hoping Feed wins. Looking at the other novel nominees (hey, I've read four-fifths of them this year! whooo!), I think I even liked it better than Cryoburn (though I liked the sphinxes, and the drabbles, it is sure not my favorite Vorkosigan book), but I did like Blackout/All Clear an awful lot. Possibly more. Hmm.
In better book news, you can apparently now buy the Sime~Gen series (Sime-Gen? Sime/Gen? whatever!) as ebooks at Amazon and Fictionwise. At Amazon, at least, they are $5 each, which seems reasonable to me, and apparently there are three new books. Yay! I don't think I even managed to find all the old ones in paperback, so this is fun. But sadly, the covers are all lousy.
Hooray, SF tentacle romance! (Though it has always irked me that same-sex tentacle pairings are less awesome, by worldbuilding fiat. But I did like the one piece of fanfiction about the gay channel.)
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
comments
Plus, Hundred Thousand here is one of those books that strikes me as (a) deeply deeply het and (b) requiring you to instinctively understand the Sexy Appeal of Bad Boys (okay, Bad Gods, whatever) who could very easily kill you. I wasn't really into either of those, while reading. Maybe I should just stick to the queer SF. (Or also SF where sexuality isn't particularly relevant; the main relationship in Feed was siblings and, man, I liked them a whole lot better than Yeine and... everyone here.) It's the kind of fantasy where apparently the only same-sex-attracted people are (surprise!) pedophiles (oh, also, and a creepy relationship between divine beings that does Bad Things to the planet) and the villains are coded as villainous partially because they keep people collared and chained presumably for their Perverse Kinky Things. And this is up for a Hugo. I just... come on, people, it's 2011. Can't we do better than this?
Sigh. Well, I'm hoping Feed wins. Looking at the other novel nominees (hey, I've read four-fifths of them this year! whooo!), I think I even liked it better than Cryoburn (though I liked the sphinxes, and the drabbles, it is sure not my favorite Vorkosigan book), but I did like Blackout/All Clear an awful lot. Possibly more. Hmm.
In better book news, you can apparently now buy the Sime~Gen series (Sime-Gen? Sime/Gen? whatever!) as ebooks at Amazon and Fictionwise. At Amazon, at least, they are $5 each, which seems reasonable to me, and apparently there are three new books. Yay! I don't think I even managed to find all the old ones in paperback, so this is fun. But sadly, the covers are all lousy.
Hooray, SF tentacle romance! (Though it has always irked me that same-sex tentacle pairings are less awesome, by worldbuilding fiat. But I did like the one piece of fanfiction about the gay channel.)
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
