chomiji | Reading Wednesday

*tap tap tap* Is this thing on?

So yeah, now that I'm back at work (finally!), I'm going to try to get this rolling again.

I got around to reading Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which I'd had on my To Read list for ages. And ... meh? It wasn't for me. Sometimes I like Jane Austen-ish pastiche, but I was not so thrilled with this one. I could appreciate Zacharias' position (believe me, I could: that "stick with the job because you were entrusted with it, even while it kills you" is all too familiar), but at the same time, it made for a somewhat claustrophobic reading experience.

On the other hand, Prunella soon made me a little crazy. I'm not quite sure I believe her extremely sudden transformation from the dutiful behind-the-scenes manager to out-of-control sorcery prodigy. And frankly, I just didn't like her that much. I think I'm just the wrong audience for it. And I spotted the romance plot about a third of the way in, too.

My other big read was a bit of a disappointment as well. You all know I'm a super fan of C.J. Cherryh, and her Alliance-Union setting is one of my favorites (Chanur is the other). So I was anticipating Alliance Rising like crazycakes. But it's a really, really slow start. The info-dumping is on par with the opening of Downbelow Station, even though it's framed as the thoughts of the POV characters instead of third-person authorial narration. In fact, in terms of pacing and approach, this reads more like the start of a new "Foreigner" installment, with Bren reviewing all the events of the last three books.

About a third of the way in I nearly burst into tears: we were still on essentially the first real piece of action, the approach of one of the new jumpships to the creaky old Alpha space station at frightening speed. We read it from the viewpoint of a young local merchanter crewman, Ross, and then from the viewpoint of the sad, over-stressed station manager, and then from the viewpoint of a fairly high-up officer on the incoming starship, Finity's End. And OK, we learn something from each view, but hell! We're a third of the way into the book! Shouldn't we be seeing something else by now?

Perhaps as a result of the amount of time spent on this slow opening, I didn't feel as much engagement with the characters, and the station didn't feel as real to me, either, as most Cherryh settings do.

Anyway, I will certainly be following it up: lackluster CJC is still better than 90% of what comes out.

For where I'm going: I've just started Exit Strategy, the most recent Murderbot installment by Martha Wells. This is the finale of the series of "Murderbot Diaries," and I expect to like it, as I did the others. I was pleased to hear that she's sold a full-length Murderbot novel as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If Cherryh has a fatal flaw, repetition has got to be it. Even in the books I enjoy I can sometimes feel a bit like that moment in a Monty Python movie - "Get on with it!" Sometimes concepts don't need to be revisited eight times in a single book, CJ...

True, She also revisits concepts from book to book, but I rather like that.

Haha, I just started reading Cuckoo's Egg and I'm already thinking ah, wow, she really DOES like assassins. Also maths. And being attracted to alien women.

But absolutely it's worth it, she's good at what she does and she's still one of the best at making me feel like I'm actually reading about an alien culture, not just a bad interpretation of a 'foreign' culture transposed on some aliens.

I also found Sorcerer to the Crown not to my personal taste. I read the entire thing and didn't hate it, but my general reaction was sort of "meh". It was kind of like, it's a good book, I think, but not a book for me, if that makes any sense.

As for Alliance Rising, yeah, I agree the first part is a slog - it did remind me a lot of Downbelow Station, which is definitely not my favorite of her books - but I felt like it picked up a lot later on, and I blazed through the last third ... if that helps at all.

It did pick up at the end ... but still, I didn't feel very connected to the characters. Also, I was getting annoyed on Fallon's behalf. Dude, he's not a mascot or something.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the back half of the book and especially loved the whole thing with Chekhov's half-built spaceship and their solution for that (CJC is so good at coming up with cool scifi set-pieces that really utilize the outer-space setting). But it's not one that has stuck with me in any particular way - I'm now finding that as time goes by since I read the book, it hasn't really left me with a strong impression one way or another. I think it didn't quite grab as hard as her books normally do because it didn't really have that "lost misfits finding each other" thing that most of her books do, since all the main characters already have strong relationships with their families; none of them are lonely outsiders finding home, but instead they already have home, and it's a very different feeling.

I'm still glad she's writing in this universe again. I think she's contracted for 3(?) Alliance-Union novels. The cliffhanger ending makes me think the next one will probably pick up with the same group of characters, but I'm hoping there's enough of a time-jump that things will shuffle a bit and we'll get a different window on these events with a slightly different set of protagonists.

And I spotted the romance plot about a third of the way in, too.

Would you have liked it better without the romance?

Maybe I *would* have liked it better without the romance. I did feel like Cho was marrying them off because it was a reasonable solution for them, because in the parallel England she'd created, just as in that period in historical England, it was going to be tough for either of them to marry anyone else in their social class because of the racial issue. And that's sort of awful. Realistic, but awful.

I liked Sorceror, but I wanted it about twice as long and a lot more leisurely. I felt an editor had told her to chop half her word count, and that it would have been much better at a Jonathan Strange pace, even if not quite the same length.

To tell the truth, I barely got through Norrel and Strange. I liked parts of it, but I've never felt compelled to re-read it. I think a little Austen-ish stuff goes a long way with me. I enjoyed the original Sorcery and Cecelia, for example, but was no more than lukewarm about the sequels.

Reading Wednesday

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CJC

Re: CJC

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Alliance Rising

Re: Alliance Rising

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Sorcerer to the Crown

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Sorcerer to the Crown