thingexplainer

it's been several weeks since I last did one of these. I have been consuming media of various forms, but work leaves me a pile of sludge at the end of each day.

What I Just(-ish) Finished Reading

Network Effect, by Martha Wells
I think at this point I can say that I just really like the tone and style of Wells's work. In the end, how the alien virus(?) worked confused me, but all the other stuff about connections and relationships was great.

The Serpent Sea, by Martha Wells
Also liked this, hah.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo
I keep saying this, but I also really liked this a lot! Tender... I'll probably keep an eye out for more works by Vo.

The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
Enjoyed the politics of this the most, although I very much wanted to know more about Maia's guards. The honorifics were confusing but I think I started grasping them around halfway through.

Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
A long read, but pretty rewarding. Definitely enlightening about discrimination against ethnic Koreans living in Japan, and how it surfaced over generations.

Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire
About halfway through I started enjoying the fantasy story being told. I spent the first half complaining about how the math academia shown was wrong. And the narrative was way too pushy about how ostracized smart women are, and how competitive they are with each other, which I found unrealistic, especially since I grew up in this exact area, more or less. I have a whole rant about how bad the math academia was, and it's only the passage of time that has led me to forget how annoyed I was about it.

Palo Alto is a haven for way too high achieving kids (really, this entire area), so I found it incredibly bizarre that no one knew what to do with Dodger. The math academia part was also annoying because the book kept trying to say that no one cares about math, look, Dodger going to Cal is news relegated to the chess club newsletter, apparently. When she had solved several open questions and is probably close to Terry Tao levels of known in her field, that's not small news.

And another part where another math grad student was "skeptical" that she had really proven any of the things she had, was like, what? The implication she hadn't written any papers despite doing advanced research? Because otherwise, she wouldn't have been peer-reviewed? You don't solve open questions and then not publish. And if you publish, then other mathematicians can verify your research? It's like saying that Dodger is Mochizuke with his nutty IUT theory except even Mochizuke wrote (indecipherable) papers and that's why everyone thinks he's a bit of a hack now. I just think it's important to me that academia is well represented in fiction, you know.

The Dragon Republic, by R.F. Kuang
Also not for me. Too much focus on military battles. And the narrative is incredibly inconsistent with how smart/perceptive Rin is supposed to be? She went to the top military school in fantasy China and still needs to be told that people are assholes about geopolitical power. It felt like it was trying too hard to "cleverly" incorporate references to the real world (it was not clever). I first picked this series up because of the Asian representation, which is pretty varied (although not necessarily great representation), although I'm sort of picking up cnovel fandom things via osmosis and it generally makes me disappointed in this series for missing so many of the details.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics, probably, but I have very few thoughts this week. I'm impressed with Empyre for sprinting straight past Kree-Skrull vs Cotati all the way to the main antagonist, instead of tossing us around for a couple issues, I guess?

What I'm Reading Next
Vagabonds, by Hao Jingfan.