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juliana@books.solarpunk.moe

Joined 2 years, 1 month ago

A being of word given flesh who loves rats, trees, and escaping the hellworld of ecocidal capitalism in which she lives - when she's not plotting its decimation and replacement.

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finished reading Stedfast by Ali Blythe

Ali Blythe: Stedfast (2023, Goose Lane Editions) 5 stars

AAAA!

It's rare that I read poetry, but yesterday I stumbled across Grolier Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I popped in and had a look around, and I picked up and read a bit from this book. It blew me away; I bought it; and this morning I read it cover-to-cover.

Wow.

It manages to capture the ephemeral eternity of love with the knowledge that it will end in a beautiful, consuming, compelling narrative framed as night-time wondering while a lover sleeps.

It's transcendent.

finished reading Infomocracy by Malka Older

Malka Older: Infomocracy (2017, Tor.com) 2 stars

It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, …

I was pretty frustrated by some early sociopolitical commentary in this book, particularly along racial lines, but that lessened immensely after a couple chapters. It's still dripping with imperial core pretention and high academic elitism. Still, the story has some fun beats, the setting - when it stops being imminently self-congratulatory and Liberal - raises some interesting questions, and the analysis of weaknesses in electoral democracy demonstrates a material experience and theoretical familiarity that would be expected of a storyteller with the author's background. The story really picks up about halfway through; until then it's a bit of a slog. All in all, I wouldn't advise buying the book, but if you have access to it and no compelling reads besides, you could do much worse.

Emily Tesh: Some Desperate Glory (Paperback, 2022, Little, Brown Book Group Limited) 5 stars

All her life Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of …

An Antifascist Masterpiece

5 stars

From time to time, humanity is gifted the formation of a writer of such unimaginable capability and spirit that their work may reorient our past and reshape our future. Science fiction has had no shortage of such writers: Verne, Asimov, Le Guin, to name only a few — and now Tesh.

While this is her debut novel, it is obvious that Emily Tesh has refined her craft for much longer than the writing of one novel. This book is a finely-wrought masterwork with the precision and efficiency of Traviss, the soul and insight of Le Guin, and a creativity and compassion all her own. I cannot wait to delve into her prior work and to see what she creates next.

Heed the content warning at the beginning of this book, though it's not as bad as it could be. But if you have any interest in antifascist military sci-fi, in …

Angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod Owens, Jasmine Syedullah: Radical Dharma (2016) No rating

"Igniting a long-overdue dialogue about how the legacy of racial injustice and white supremacy plays …

This is an important book for anyone following a dharma tradition in the US, whether or not they consider themselves radical. As is so often the case in these traditions, this book doesn't offer ready-made, neatly-packaged answers; rather, it raises some deeply significant questions and offers some tools to engage with them.

reviewed Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler: Fledgling (Paperback, 2007, Warner Books) 4 stars

Shori is a mystery. Found alone in the woods, she appears to be a little …

Read it, you'll like it

5 stars

I just finished this book, and it was good. I plan to read everything else Butler wrote, too, in time, so I'll reserve comments on her broader writing and personality for when I feel like I know them a bit better. She was a self-described hermit who seems to have shared many of my mental struggles, so I suspect we'll get along fine.

The writing in Fledgling felt a bit sparse and rudimentary, which is apparently a mark of her style. It reminds me of Carver's poetry a bit. I haven't made up my mind on whether I like it in fiction yet, but I certainly liked Fledgling. It's the kind of vampire story I think I've always longed for, one where vampires aren't predators but simply beings with different lifeways, who are as capable of harm as they are of helping, and whose long memories and lifetimes have led …