Staying at home is the norm... What are you reading?

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
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Piranesi (2020)

Second novel by fantasy author Susanna Clarke, following her debut Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I haven't read but must have been popular enough to get a television series on the BBC that I haven't seen either.

Piranesi is a lean book of a bit under 300 pages. It's written as a series of diary entries from a young man with no recollection of his prior life who has been inhabiting a strange, endless building for about five years. The building consists of three floors worth of large halls, the lowest of which is flooded by sea water, the topmost one which has clouds passing through it. The halls are filled with all sorts of statues, the only other life forms keeping him company being birds, fish and a mysterious man the narrator calls "The Other" who sporadically shows up to ask for his assistance in his search for some supernatural power he is convinced can be found in this mysterious megastructure.

On face value you'd assume Piranesi's primary hook would be the mysteries surrounding this strange world, the narrators origin and the nature of "The Other's" quest. And those are what technically makes up the novels plot, but it's all relatively incidental. Piranesi, at its core, is not so much a supernatural mystery as it's a fantastical version of a shipwrecked survivors tale. Clarke is less concerned with the supernatural metaphysics and the minor conspiracy that led to the protagonist being stranded in this otherwordly labyrinth as she is with his day to day survival, the spirituality he develops without the context of our world, the way he relates to this strange place that is the only home he can remember, the way his personality takes shape.

And it is quite an interesting personality. Piranesi (which isn't technically the protagonist's name, but it is what the only other human he knows calls him) is a bright and curious person, inquiring and documenting this sparse world that seems to consist of nothing but stone, marble, water and some plant and animal life with a mix of childlike wonder and scientific interest. Many of his diary entries are devoted to decriptions of the houses many statues, the ebb and flow of the tides, the behaviour of the birds and fish, the way he makes clothes and tools from fish leather and seaweed and the way he finds meaning and spiritual fulfilment in this life.

All of which makes the actual plot feel a bit obligatory, in that it helps the book, short as it is, maintain a sense of forward progression and potentially inspire some curiosity, even if I wouldn't go as far as to call it intrigue. As it gradually unravels its backstory and the why and how of its premise it employs some reasonably compelling, if mostly cliche, plot beats about scientific hubris, cult mentality, gaslighting, misguided ambition... it's all fine, really, but none of it is stuff you haven't seen before and neither is its eventual resolution.

Piranesi was an entertaining read that never overstaid its welcome, even if its narration was overall more compelling than its narrative. As a somewhat abstract (if far from experimental) take on a sort of Robinson Crusoe story from the viewpoint of a character who represents humanity at its best, but stripped to its bare essentials, it conjures up some compelling imagery and emotionally and intellectually resonant themes. I can't say anything about it left me extraordinarily impressed but it was more than worth the relatively minor amount of time I put into it.
 
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Agema

Do everything and feel nothing
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Piranesi (2020)
...
You might already be aware of this, but Piranesi was an artist in the 1700s, possibly most famous these days for making drawings of atmospheric, fantasy prisons: vast stone chambers with convoluted architecture and massive machines. I assume that was some inspiration for or has some meaning to the story.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
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You might already be aware of this, but Piranesi was an artist in the 1700s, possibly most famous these days for making drawings of atmospheric, fantasy prisons: vast stone chambers with convoluted architecture and massive machines. I assume that was some inspiration for or has some meaning to the story.
Yes sir, it does. The connection is actually explained and justified in the book.
 
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Ezekiel

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Buddha

People about to be executed and on same page former slave owner runs headfirst into the comic panel. Like the mix of darkness (or call it realism) and humor. It started publishing in 1972. Osamu Tezuka was allowed to draw cock and balls. Guess it just depends on how the genitals are drawn and the context.



Potential NSFW imagery removed - mod

Unfortunately, the pages are mirrored. It's my only manga in which the pages are mirrored.
 

Drathnoxis

I love the smell of card games in the morning
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Osamu Tezuka was allowed to draw cock and balls. Guess it just depends on how the genitals are drawn and the context.
It's because they are kids. It's perfectly fine to represent a child's penis in Japanese media. See also Dragon Ball and Digimon Tamers.
 

Agema

Do everything and feel nothing
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Hel's Eight (Stark Holborn)

Sequel to "Ten Low", about a POW turned medic on a barren moon at the arse-end of a not-so-distantly colonised solar system. With her on the moon are mostly the godawful dregs of humanity, many POWs from the civil war between the system's authority and a rebel movement. However, there's something else on the moon - some dangerous sort of force or maybe lifeform that seems to be triggered by chance and can be harnessed by some humans. The books have plenty of the feel of Westerns crossed with postapocalyptic, Mad Max style vibes. Ten Low has sequestered herself away from her friends and associates, feeling that she poses a risk to everyone around her. Unfortunately for her, other people have very different ideas and she's about to be sucked back into a new issue, as a corporate concern wants to take the moon over by hoo or by crook. Might be a another sequel?

The Trials of Empire (Richard Swan)

End to one of the better fantasy series of recent years. Our protagonists, chiefly a justice Vonvalt and his protege Helena, are attempting to prevent a zealot priest from taking over the empire and drowing the world in a sea of blood and demons. The first two feel a little like detective novels in that they are largely about investigations, where this junks that in for the heavy action finale. It feels distinctly weaker than its predecessors in the trilogy and so is a slightly disappointing end, although in the context that it's still comfortable superior to the mass of stuff out there.

The Knave of Secrets (Alex Livingston)

Fantasy book about four card sharps trying to make it big, who are dragged into the plots of spies and politics on an independent island nearby two rival empires. I almost want to like this book, but lots of parts of it don't quite hold together. The leads should be rogues, and as gambling cheats are rogues, but they are simultaneous weirdly wholesome and boring as if the author didn't have the guts to make them do properly morally difficult things. They lack style and pizzazz. They don't feel like they gel as a team - like Mission Impossible or others where their varied skills interact and complement to carry out amazing plans. The main protagonist has apparently developed new form of magic great for cheating at gambling, which could be interesting except it seems to be a macguffin - he mostly cheats conventionally with card tricks and weighted dice. And much more that seems to just not quite make sense, work, or get the reader involved. I'll give the author another chance or two because there's definitely some promise in there, but...
 

NerfedFalcon

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In 2008, I was told to read Fullmetal Alchemist by a guy I met in the United States, but it wasn't until fairly recently that I actually started reading it. Oh my god, this series is so good. The art is decent, but for the most part not that exceptional; I'm not really an art guy, so I can't say much about it, other than that having the characters appear in super-low detail to emphasize their reactions is cute. But the writing is genuinely the best of any manga I've ever read. The setting, the plot, the characters, it's all just incredible. Definitely one worth reading if you get the chance. (Currently up to volume 7 out of 27.)

Funnily enough, on the side I've also got Fist of the North Star, which is pretty much the opposite: the story is serviceable with a few good moments, but the artwork is exceptional, with Tetsuo Hara using the kind of detail most comic artists reserve for special occasions in every single panel. Buildings with hundreds of individual blasted-out windows, clothing folds, skin, hair, everything is just drawn larger than life no matter the distance or the importance, and it's something that none of the adaptations I'm aware of gets right (understandably, but still).
 
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Agema

Do everything and feel nothing
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Machine Vendetta (Alastair Reynolds)

Third in the loose SF trilogy of Prefect Dreyfus mysteries following "Aurora Rising" (originally called "The Prefect") and "Elysium Fire". You could just about get away without reading the previous two, as enough is explained about what has preceded to make it viable. It is set on a collection of space stations called the "Glitter Band" around a planet called Yellowstone. Each station in the Glitter Band is an independent polity, and to oversee law is a paramilitary police force called Panoply of which Dreyfus is, arguably, the top detective. The Glitter Band's networks are also infested with two malignant AIs, Aurora and Clockmaker, who hold an uneasy peace with neither able to overcome human activity and the other. Two Panoply agents are murdered in mysterious circumstances, and this leads Dreyfus into an investigation throughout the Glitter Band, and even into Panoply itself. Is this a routine investigation or crime and corruption, or something deeper that may threaten the whole Glitter Band?

It's not brilliant, but by one of the top SF authors around, it's a cut above.
 

BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
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Tales of Heroes, Gods, and Monsters: African Myths and Legends & Tales of Heroes, Gods, and Monsters: Japanese Myths and Legends - I've been reading the African Myths book much more for now and learning how a lot of these stories tie to African religion. They got some pretty good stories, but a good amount of them have some form of sexism. Either the start of something terrible or facilitating and enabling it. Not all stories I like that thankfully, but there are quite a few. Still a pretty good learning experience and I like some of the tales I've been reading so far. The Japanese Myths I have not exactly started reading any stories, but reading the preface and introduction to Japanese Mythology and the creatures it inhabits. When I do start reading, I am mainly going to pick and choose the stories and start in the Heroes and Adventure segment.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
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I've been trying to put my chronical unemployment to some use to catch up on some reading, more specifically, to get a bit of a grasp on fantasy, both the western and the eastern kind. Long story short, on one end of the spectrum I've started

Malazan Book of the Fallen: Gardens of the Moon (Steven Erikson)

Which I'll only talk about here very briefly, because I'm not very far onto it. The Malazan series is widely considered the "deep end" of sword and sorcery style fantasy, throwing the reader into a complicated world with a large number of viewpoint characters with very little exposition. I'm sure this is great and I will definitely continue it soon enough but, I'm gonna be honest here: There are two aspects of western fantasy that I'm tired of and that's european medieval aesthetics and stories about war/military stuff. And, honestly, I feel that that's, like, almost every single major work in the genre. Malazan has some interesting stuff going on and the prose is really good and I like the two current viewpoint characters (Garan, a soldier from a noble family and Tattersail, a battle mage) well enough but the whole setup just doesn't grip me all that much.

On the Eastern end I've been reading

Owari no Chronicle (Volume 1) by Kawakami Minoru

It's technically published as a light novel, a genre widely known for its overly descriptive titles, short volumes and often disposable quality. Kawakami Minoru 's work doesn't quite fit into that dichotomy because for one, his books are really freaking long (usually over 500 and sometimes over 1000 pages) and, I was surprised to learn, they are pretty legit fantasy novels.

Owari no Chronicle is an urban fantasy story about a boy who gets recruited into a mysterious organization that reveals to him that there used to be 10 different universes that existed parallel to ours, all of which were destroyed in a multiversal war 60 years prior, waged by that very organization. It had to happen, he is told, because only one universe would have survived their collision and they had to make sure it was theirs. Now, much later, their universe faces a potentially world ending crisis and the only way to avert it is to negotiate the cooperation of the surviving diaspora of these lost universes. Most of which, of course, carry a well justified grudge.

Owari no Chronicle, behind its very elaborately constructed metaphysics and world building and mythological references, is effectively a story about coming to terms with the "sins of the father". The first volume, which I'm mostly finished with, deals with the survivors of a world loosely based on ancient German myths (primarily the famous Nibelungenlied), the way they have split into different factions after they had to take refuge in our world, one of which is collaborating with the organization the protagonist is part of and living in a reservation, another more radical one which is plotting to fight them, both of which, in turn have different characters with different plans that sometimes get the spotlight and... well, it's really quite interesting.

Like, legitimately, there's so much thematically interesting stuff in there about generational guilt, victimhood, the role of cultural identity and assimilation vs. integration, colonialism... and, you, know, it's all in a story that features mechanical dragons and robot maids.

Now, there are some quirks to Japanese writing that someone used to western prose will stumble over a bit, especially in a fan translation that doesn't even try to compensate for them. Namely, japanese writing just doesn't have the same unspoken rule to avoid repetition of words or phrases and there's just some dialogue that feels awkward or redundant or weirdly phrased that I feel a professional translator would have phrased to sound more natural in English. Not knocking the translation here, though, the folks at BakaTsuki did a great job.

I'm honestly kinda surprised how much this has going for it. There are definitely reasons light novels have the reputation they have but then on the other hand, I also have a hunch that if authors like Brandon Sanderson or Terry Pratchett had been Japanese, their work would be published as light novels. That Kawakami guy definitely seems like he knows what he's doing.
 

Drathnoxis

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I've been reading Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer Among the Indians. Apparently, Mark Twain wrote the first 9 chapters and then some other dinkus wrote the rest of it a hundred years later. I didn't know that starting out. The novel is similar to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn except with all the wit and charm sucked out. It features Tom and Huck going off to live with the Indians, and ending up spending some time with a white family that is camping with a tribe. The white people end up getting massacred, captured, and raped and then Tom and Huck join up with the captured women's fiancee to go and rescue her. I can see why Mark Twain abandoned the story mid sentence, it's a pretty miserable story and lacks the fun that pretty much all the rest of his work possesses. Once the other guy takes over Tom Sawyer is pretty badly mischaracterized as a coward and promptly exits the story. I'll probably finish it, but it's not great.
 

Ezekiel

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Finished the 14-volume epic Buddha, found it beautiful, and am more bothered now that I can't collect for a reasonable price Osamu Tezuka's "life's work" Phoenix (because it's out of print). May eventually simply read scans. Checked comments about the last chapter, negative ones were about the unrealistic humor. Don't care. It's a cartoon.

He was a doctor before becoming a mangaka. I did not know that this was how people checked blood types before modern science.

 
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Ezekiel

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Lone Wolf and Cub (1970 to '76) is perfect commuter literature. With chapters mostly episodic and no longer than fifty pages, I'm finishing three chapters while on the bus (though today I finished the last pages of the second after coming into the warehouse and before clocking in). The nudity and bloody violence aren't publicly acceptable, though.

The disgraced ronin protagonist is basically a colder Toshiro Mifune. As clever. His little boy who follows him on his path to hell is amusing to watch too. Acts like a child, but then smiles as his father is about to kill.

Can tell it was drawn fast, and had to be with, I estimate, 5600 pages (if every volume is approximately 200 pages and there are 28) in six years, but looks good.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
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Weaveworld (Clive Barker, 1987)

The first big fantasy novel by Clive Barker who, until that point, was mostly known as a horror writer. Weaveworld follows two young people from Liverpool as they get involved in a fight for a magical carpet that has woven into it a pocket dimension that serves as the refuge for a tribe of mages seeking shelter from a mysterious calamity. Cal Mooney happens upon it by chance, Suzanna Laschinsky is the granddaughter of its last caretaker. They are in a race with the evil sorceress Immacolata and her accomplice, corrupt businessman Shadwell, to recover the carpet and save its inhabitants.

It's, effectively, a story that contains 3 different arcs over the course of its nearly 800 pages. The hunt for the Fugue, the name of the aforementioned carpet, the battle for the world it contains and a final standoff against the eldritch creature seeking to destroy it and its inhabitants.

I did feel the pacing meandered a bit and I feel it could have been edited down by a couple dozen of pages but overall it was a compelling story, in a very 80's fantasy way. In many ways it feels a bit like a more adult version of Michael Ende's Neverending Story. You have the everyman protagonists getting isekaied into a fantastical world, you have them helping those worlds inhabitants in their struggle against various destructive forces, you have morals about the power of imagination and creation, summed up by the repeated mantra of "What is imagined must never be lost."

Standing out most, of course, are the bits of grotesque horror that Barker uses to garnish this rather conventional urban fantasy story. The primary antagonist of the first arc is accompanied by the spirits of her sisters that she strangled in the womb, one of which rapes men and gives birth to demonic, malformed offspring that serve as their foot soldiers, there's an encounter with a boneless demon who was implied to have been created by the Cenobites from Hellraiser, there are some very visceral descriptions of gore and violence in it... it's not actually a huge part of the story but that sort of iconography is definitely something it contains.

The other thing, of course, is that Barker clearly had a lot to say in Weaveworld. Aside from the overt, idealistic ruminations on imagination, awe and wonder, there are a couple more overt specks of social commentary in it. Weaveworld presents an almost cartoonishly evil depiction of the british police, a squad of which ends up joining one of the primary antagonists in his efforts to subjugate the Fugue, basically serving as his army. Also the depiction of that Fugue as a more sexually liberated world. What I'm saying is, some of it definitely expresses the frustrations of a financially struggling gay guy in thatcherist Britain.

All things considered, though, it was a fairly enjoyable read with some fairly significant pacing issues. I'm willing to be a bit more lenient on it, because the pacing improved as it went on and I will say I feel like each of its three story arcs was more engaging than the last. The closer it got to the end, the more interesting I felt the worldbuilding and the mythology got and especially the nature of the eldritch entity that the final act of the story revolves around is quite evocative, primarily because of how much about it is left vague. It did actually made me want to learn more about that universe Barker created. Overall, Weaveworld was probably a bit longer than it should have been but it's a pretty good read.
 
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