juliana started reading Ally by Karen Traviss (The Wess'bar wars)

Ally by Karen Traviss (The Wess'bar wars)
The worlds orbiting Cavanagh's Star are in turmoil.Civil war on Umeh—ignited by outsiders—threatens to annihilate the teeming masses of a …
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66% complete! juliana has read 8 of 12 books.
The worlds orbiting Cavanagh's Star are in turmoil.Civil war on Umeh—ignited by outsiders—threatens to annihilate the teeming masses of a …
I've been re-reading this series in large part because I remember being deeply influenced by it as a pre-teen and wanted to see how it held up.
Well, I'd had some realizations to the effect along the way, but this specific books really drove home the extent to which I modeled the kind of woman I wanted and endeavored to be on Shan Frankland.
It's fascinating to see which aspects of myself were shaped by which aspects of her. With my much greater life experience, it's interesting to watch the ways my emotional responses and judgements have evolved, too.
I wouldn't consider myself an expert or super experienced in the subject matter (BDSM/Kink) which is why I wanted to read this book, to learn more. However it didn't have much to say that I didn't already know. That might be a sign that I've had good mentoring so far or that the book is quite shallow, or possibly both. It really only touches on basics and spends a lot of time with telling stories of the authors' amazing adventures, which tbh I wasn't really interested in.
Slightly amusing was the way these let's say slightly older authors talk about online culture in terms the "the Net" and "Netfolk". They really could have asked someone who's a bit more at home online to proofread this for them.
What really stuck out was a section where they argue that, as a top, you're supposedly obligated to follow through with dates and …
I wouldn't consider myself an expert or super experienced in the subject matter (BDSM/Kink) which is why I wanted to read this book, to learn more. However it didn't have much to say that I didn't already know. That might be a sign that I've had good mentoring so far or that the book is quite shallow, or possibly both. It really only touches on basics and spends a lot of time with telling stories of the authors' amazing adventures, which tbh I wasn't really interested in.
Slightly amusing was the way these let's say slightly older authors talk about online culture in terms the "the Net" and "Netfolk". They really could have asked someone who's a bit more at home online to proofread this for them.
What really stuck out was a section where they argue that, as a top, you're supposedly obligated to follow through with dates and play-sessions even if you don't feel up for it. I'm sorry, but that's not how consent works and forcing oneself to do kinky things regardless of how one feels or even want's to do it is a wild thing to suggest. They later contradict themselves about this in the same book but it really made me question their qualification to give advice on these subjects.
Just like The New Topping Book by the same authors, which came out after this but I read first, this book very much shows its age. It is from a time when online resources like Fetlife were far more scarce than today and someone coming newly into kink would have had real difficulty finding any useful material. That is no longer the case and these books today read like someone did maybe a week’s worth of internet research to compile them.
They cover a lot of the basics quite well, but if you already have some experience, even just a little, and especially if you had even just a halfway decent mentor who introduced you to kink, they don’t offer much new insight.
I’m sure they were useful 20 years ago but I wouldn’t recommend them today.
They also have a few issues that you’d expect to see in books …
Just like The New Topping Book by the same authors, which came out after this but I read first, this book very much shows its age. It is from a time when online resources like Fetlife were far more scarce than today and someone coming newly into kink would have had real difficulty finding any useful material. That is no longer the case and these books today read like someone did maybe a week’s worth of internet research to compile them.
They cover a lot of the basics quite well, but if you already have some experience, even just a little, and especially if you had even just a halfway decent mentor who introduced you to kink, they don’t offer much new insight.
I’m sure they were useful 20 years ago but I wouldn’t recommend them today.
They also have a few issues that you’d expect to see in books written by cis people in San Francisco around the year 2000: a very limited view on gender, some very obvious cultural appropriation, and a sense of assumed authority on their subject matter. They sometimes like to define things is very stiff terms, which feels very dated today.
Three strikingly different alien races greeted the military mission from Earth when it reached the planet called Bezer'ej.Now one of …
Three strikingly different alien races greeted the military mission from Earth when it reached the planet called Bezer'ej.Now one of …
Shan Frankland forever abandoned the world she knew to come to the rescue of a lost colony on a distant …
Shan Frankland forever abandoned the world she knew to come to the rescue of a lost colony on a distant …
Three separate alien societies have claims on Cavanagh's Star. But the new arrivals -- the gethes from Earth -- now …
I read this book (and the entire Wess'har series) back in late middle/early high school, and it had an enormous impact on me. I've never re-read it, so I figured it's time.
I'm about halfway through and it's frankly astonishing how deeply the perspectives of book are reflected in my life, both directly and indirectly.
I'm really curious how I feel about the series's overall theses when I get to them in earnest; I was nowhere near intellectually active the last time I read it.