The Iron Dragon's Daughter, by Michael Swanwick
This is exactly the sort of book I like, gritty and thorough and so full of interesting ideas that you can't help thinking, 'hey, wait, I want more of that part!' from time to time. And told straightforwardly enough to be read while sick, but still dense and lush and full of tasty odd words and complicated sentences.
Except, that's not all. And I can't get at what I really want to say about this book, what really matters about it, because I'm sick and my brain is uncooperative, but it has something to do with it being a lot more morally complicated than most of the books I read. Not *darker*, I've read lots of things this dark, some things darker, but just ... the dark things are dark because dark things shouldn't be left out of something true; they make the story *realler*, rather than being there to be transformative or exciting or triumphed-over or shown-to-not-really-be-dark or ... bah, can't splain it, brain too fuzzed. If you just go and read it, you'll either see or you won't. Hm. Maybe?
Also, the pale man's story was something else - that's the point from which I couldn't put the book down ... though I did fall asleep for about 30 minutes with it still in my hands at one point. Woke up, kept reading. Glad to have this one in my brain.
(68/300)
This is exactly the sort of book I like, gritty and thorough and so full of interesting ideas that you can't help thinking, 'hey, wait, I want more of that part!' from time to time. And told straightforwardly enough to be read while sick, but still dense and lush and full of tasty odd words and complicated sentences.
Except, that's not all. And I can't get at what I really want to say about this book, what really matters about it, because I'm sick and my brain is uncooperative, but it has something to do with it being a lot more morally complicated than most of the books I read. Not *darker*, I've read lots of things this dark, some things darker, but just ... the dark things are dark because dark things shouldn't be left out of something true; they make the story *realler*, rather than being there to be transformative or exciting or triumphed-over or shown-to-not-really-be-dark or ... bah, can't splain it, brain too fuzzed. If you just go and read it, you'll either see or you won't. Hm. Maybe?
Also, the pale man's story was something else - that's the point from which I couldn't put the book down ... though I did fall asleep for about 30 minutes with it still in my hands at one point. Woke up, kept reading. Glad to have this one in my brain.
(68/300)