cattytrona's reviews
241 reviews

a really consistently strong collection. the standouts are ‘it takes a village some say’ by ngwah-mbo nana nkweti, for its language, and ‘skinned’ by lesley  nneka arimah, which is a really excellent piece of worldbuilding, and is a both fresh and clear feminist dystopia

broad thoughts: i love when fantasy is actually science fiction sososo much. i also think this is a really great collection of stories, that do benefit from being put together. not only do they compliment each other, with their sff approach, it’s just so rewarding when the links between the novels start emerging, in a way which wouldn’t hit as well if i read them separately with other book in between … it made me really excited, not just about the stories, but about big shared universes as a way to do scifi storytelling. if i log a culture novel in the next week it will be a direct result of this.

rocannon’s world: was the most interested in this one after reading ‘the necklace’ as a short story in the wind’s twelve quarters, which becomes the prologue here. i still think that is extraordinary, a perfect, efficient manifesto for bringing fantasy and science fiction together, for making magic technology. but it almost works better out of context. it’s not that the rest of the book drags it down, but it doesn’t do much else that isn’t embodied in those first pages, except lay out some rudiments of the league/universe — which do come to feel more worthwhile in the later novels here. the story’s good but a little slim, never much expands on the fairytale tone of the prologue, and so could be more convincingly real, and perhaps deserves to be bc the concept’s so excellent. although i did find the angels affectingly gross as an alien concept.

planet of exiles: i had fun with this, although again i wonder if it could have gone further with its work. the characters are more convincing but the pace is quick and the world feels a little brief. but i liked what it did do, the whole aliens in your own home. i think the novel as a whole is a better argument for how giving a scifi backdrop to your fantasy story furthers it, and allows you to justify and easily explain impossible relations and situations, which take what human beings are and do to extremes, which is already the thing what slays about fantasy, where fighting isn’t a metaphor, it’s war. here the alienation is aliens.

city of illusions: one for the hayt fans, although that’s possibly only me. dune messiah made me crazy 70% because i found that one character/move so compelling, and this does the same thing!! i was so excited and interested, even though neither this — nor dune messiah tbf — have fully done what i want them to do with it. what that is, i’m not sure! but more! anyway i still liked this and found it tricky and compelling, even though again, i think it could have done more to inspect and dig into the situation it’s built, and its non-rational, non-plot movement effect on the characters.

i wonder if it’s a part of the time it was written in. i don’t usually expect depth and character work from scifi of this period, i’m more than happy with cool space stations and big cat aliens, and it’s perhaps unfair that i’m expecting more here, especially because le guin doesn’t ever really become a full on character study writer. but i think the situations she sets up for her characters are interesting specifically because they are so psychological, particularly in the latter two texts, but even in the first, when it’s considered as a response to tolkien, and what lotr becomes towards its end, and so it seems a waste to just. be so efficient and conceptual. to only spend time in people’s minds to problem solve,  not to feel. does that make sense? i also don’t love a one guy is special and solves it all narrative, which two of these stories basically are. that approach means there’s basically no lastingly meaningful people beyond the main characters, and i think that lack of relationships, webbed, also makes the world feel significantly slighter. the exception is planet of exiles (because it has a romance) and i think that was my favourite.

there’s still much to like. le guin’s a lovely writer, sharp and beautiful and really well observed. i knew where i was. and, again, i think the concepts powering all of these are really good. the difference between a 3 and 4 star rating for me, on here, is whether i’d go out of my way to reread it in the future, and because of that, even with all my hesitations, this is an easy, instant 4 star. these are just such good ideas! i want to bask in them!

already too of its time after a century and a half to feel convincing, or much more than a novelty: none of the grounding grit (?) of war of the worlds. banging on the book’s metaphorical door like nooo that’s surely not how museums will age!! however, i do always love a victorian framing device and specifically the final paragraph that leads into, which is really good.
skipped the other short story because i read it a couple of months ago in a different anthology

in the end, touching. i liked hearing the details about tube trains and the names of various sort-of-familiar north downs locations. i didn’t know the box of box hill was a species of tree! i just always thought, well, it’s a bit rectangular. 

there’s nothing like stories about queer life before, like, 1990 to do a bit of internet romantic morality deprogramming: these tight standards of judgement cannot coexist with necessary empathy!!

sort of an interesting one to have listened to in its entirety in one blast by 11am, but there we are.

listening to this sort of felt a bit like the verbal equivalent of ambient music. i was lulled into enjoying it, but it didn’t mean much to me and i do think fictional studies/diaries/manifestos deserve more irony and distance from their real life author

a good book to listen to on a long walk: engaging, fast paced, with some bombastic moments to keep me from thinking too much about my feet.
very cinematic, in a way which makes an adaption seem imminent, altho it also makes the book form seem a little more coincidence/convenience, than because it was a story that had to be told verbally.
some gross images and fun horror moments, which is a compliment, but nevertheless quite a friendly scary story because it never gets too visceral. 

started this on July 20th 2024, the same date as the first entry.

the thing is that all the parts of this i thought were richest and most compelling are not resolved with this book. it's very clearly setting up a series, and looking ahead to that, and that meant it didn't feel like a complete work. there is a satisfying, arcing plot to the novel, of course, but it doesn't get to the places i wanted it to, and that i imagine the series would get to: space travel and religious cults and a bigger insight into earth.

as it is, it's well rendered, and the dystopian world does feel unexpectedly, refreshingly continual - no rapid, massive change, just a descent from here to there. i'm sort of stuck, between admiration for the craft and awareness that Butler's doing something really skilled, even in the brutal simplicity of the plot, and a sense that it's not what interests me right now.

Extremely charmed and impressed by Eliot out of this. Am looking forward to reading more of her.

Took some notes duing the first half:

I specify the first half because 3/4 of the way in, everything changes and suddenly, what could have been a whole book in itself emerges as its key incident.
So, some of the comments become significantly less relevant, and the tone gets darker.
Some reflections on that, then, under spoilers:

• There’s a world where this book’s called Hetty Sorrel, and it’s not that far away. Hetty’s sort of an astounding little piece of empathy, or at least that’s how she reads to me. Her vanities are given time and focus and therefore rise to validity. She makes, and is made by, mistakes entirely down to her youth and naivety, which she should be left alone to make in peace, instead of on this stage (?) of male interest. She is the most important character of Adam Bede, for me. 
• The pacing of the chapter lengths is so good, something which really comes to the fore during the arrest/trial scene. Shed a tear or two when Hetty and Dinah come out for the execution.
• I think the last section is hasty and doesn’t work as well as everything else. Maybe because I was so bought into Hetty, maybe because of the languid pace of earlier parts, but I don’t think Adam and Dinah get enough time to matter.