Probability Sun by Nancy Kress

Probability Sun was definitely less segmented than Probability Moon, which made being more interested in one part versus the other less of a thing. It did, however, present some interesting ethical quandaries. We also found out more about the Fallers, but not significantly more. Probability Sun was entertaining enough and it was kind of nice to know what Enli got up to once she returned to Shared Reality.

I honestly think the humans were in the wrong, stealing the artifact out from under the Worlders’ noses. We’re a damn shady people when we wanna be. It was damn lucky the Worlders didn’t actually know what they had or that it even existed. That they now have to deal with the complete disappearance of Shared Reality is kind of horrible. Not that I think basically being hive-minded was a fantastic thing, but it’s what they knew and, as Ann pointed out a bunch, adapted to deal with.

Moving on to the Faller stuff with Marbet… Grafton was an idiot. I understand you don’t want the Faller to kill itself, but how the hell is it supposed to communicate when you’ve basically taken away body language and it doesn’t speak our language? So dumb and ultimately short-sighted.

I thought Capello and his girls were an interesting addition. Bit of color in an otherwise very adult-centric narrative. Essa was also a fun addition. I like that Enli’s basically become her surrogate mother. I think it’ll do them both good in the long run.

Speaking of the long run, I don’t at present have any desire to read the third book in this trilogy. I feel like Probability Sun left off at a fairly good place. Maybe not the best, but satisfying enough.

In Other News

I finished 2, count 'em 2!, OviPets projects since the last one. We have the Diver Cat and Lavendeer. Both original critters designed by me and not based off anything else. Well... the Diver Cat is based off a previous project of mine, but other than that... Yay!

 

The Night Country by Melissa Albert

The Night Country is honestly not as compelling as The Hazel Wood. It's not bad, but the feeling I had while reading The Hazel Wood just doesn't exist with The Night Country. I think that's as it should be, The Hazel Wood feeling as complete as it did in the end and all. While The Night Country picks up where The Hazel Wood left off, I don't feel like The Night Country is as necessary to the whole story as it would like to think. It was a fun enough romp through the next steps in Alice and Ellery's stories. I did enjoy meeting Sophia and getting her story and the story of The Night Country in universe. I also really loved Edgar and his bookshop. I would like to go to there. I just wasn't as drawn into the world as I was with The Hazel Wood.

I did have a single note as I was reading: "Be sure" always, always that refrain. Every fairytale world. Walk through the door, take the power offered you, be sure. When I said The Hazel Wood has Seanan McGuire vibes, I wasn't expecting the second book to throw "Be Sure" in my face. It's not bad, and McGuire doesn't have the rights or whatever to the phrase, but damn.

But yeah... The Night Country had some enjoyable bits. The characters from The Hinterland are, ya know, a mixed bag of weird and wonderfully creepy. I hope to get to know some of them better when I read Tales From the Hinterland. But for now they're just set-dressing in Alice's story.

Favorite Lines

"If you poke around too long in the dark, you've only got yourself to blame for what you find." - Alice Prosperpine

"A book is always a door." - Iolanthe 

 

 The Boy Who Didn't Come Home

I was expecting and Ellery Finch post-The Hazel Wood story. This is not that. This is his story during The Hazel Wood. It has the same feel I was missing in The Night Country. I definitely enjoyed it.

Probability Moon by Nancy Kress

I wasn't sure what to expect with Probability Moon. I don't read a lot of sci-fi and my last foray led to a DNF so... yeah. I actually enjoyed Probability Moon.

I found this exploration of reality quite interesting, if not compelling at times. I definitely feel like a society in which everyone shares the same reality is problematic af, as Bazargan knows and David can't quite understand, especially in terms of introducing such a thing to humans. The fast that it managed to be home-grown on World is definitely a slightly different animal. There don't seem to be any, shall we say, large personalities taking over the entire mechanism, like I and Bazargan imagine there would be for humans. I do wonder how prevalent mental illness is on World, given they literally kill anyone who doesn't share reality, especially if they never develop empathy. It also isn't explored how Worlders deal with scientific advancement aside from the brief foray into the antihistamine thing... would head-pain prevent delving too deeply into the science or what?

Along with how World's shared reality mechanism, we also get a glimpse into how future humans might deal with some of these things via chemical alteration. That isn't delved into as much, though it does play a large part in David's character arc. I had twigged he wasn't exactly neurotypical to begin with... he was just too set in certain mind-sets regardless of his chemical alteration thingy... didn't imagine he was a bad off as it turned out he was, but... yeah.

Enli's progression was honestly something I think she needs to have a very frank but obviously very private discussion with one of the priests about. Figuring creatures without a shared reality into Worlder reality just seems like something that should be done. Understanding that a creature could be that different from you and still function or be "real" just seems like an overall good thing. Maybe that's a very human-centric thought process but when the consequence with basically "death to anyone without a shared reality"... seems like a not-great way to go about life in a universe full of such different people. I do hope Enli finds someone to talk to about that at some stage in her life without being forced into "unreality" again.

I was much less invested in the space part of the plot. It felt like more or less bog-standard sci-fi space stuff. The characters dealing with that weren't developed as much and not very interesting as a result. Setting up the weirdness of the artifact coupled with the one buried in World was vaguely interesting, but only vaguely. I am kind of wondering if the Fallers have a similar kind of shared reality thing to the Worlders and just decided that everyone outside of them is unreal and worthy of death as a result... seems like it's either that or they're like Daleks. If you're not a Faller, you're unworthy of life. Actually, yeah... space-faring Worlders who haven't accepted the idea of multiple realities would act exactly like Fallers have done. So... that's a thought I came upon while writing this review.

That's one of the things I actually quite like about Probability Moon. It's thought-provoking. I don't know that I'll be sitting with these thoughts for a long time, but they're there and making my brain itch. 

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

I don't think I've had a book grab me like this one did for a long while. It's not my usual cup of tea, but it hit the spot and then some. Wilder Girls brings together the coming-of-age school girl story with some X-Men-ish-ness thrown in with Government conspiracy with dystopian plague in such an intriguing way. I had a hard time putting it down, to be honest. I also went on a bit of a rant about something Hetty finds out to my Boyfriend earlier today which my perspective on turned out to be wrong about, given what's revealed later in the book. It was one of those "well that definitely changes things" moments. Almost a blink-and-you'll-miss-it thing. Definitely safe to say I was not expecting what eventually went down.

The last time I read a school-based post-apocalyptic type story, it just ended up being really bleak. Wilder Girls initially had the same kind of vibe, but I think I'm overall hopeful for Hetty and her friends at the end. Probably misplaced, knowing the circumstances they're technically heading into, but I don't feel like it was all for nothing. Hope really runs through the entire novel. Hope for a cure, ultimately, but other bits of hope, too. Reese, hoping her father is still alive; Hetty hoping to find Byatt after she disappears; even Byatt hoping somewhere along the line to get back to her friends...

Of course, there's also the through-line of the Government conspiracy aspect. I twigged fairly early on the Government was using the girls of Raxter as an experiment. For what, I wasn't super sure about, but you don't just quarantine an island and slowly cut that island off completely while still feeding the inhabitants for a reason. And of course it was a bunch of girls they decided to experiment on. Part of that was the bad luck of proximity, but still... innocent, disposable girls shouldering the terrible things the Tox did to them without any explanation whatsoever. I couldn't figure out why the food and general supply situation was so fucked, though. That didn't make any sense. Couldn't even be bothered to send more than the bare minimum and apparently can't be bothered to make sure the girls are kept in some modicum of comfort while actively suffering... but that's also explained later, so I feel vaguely better about it.

There's a quote from Jeff VanderMeer on the front of my copy of the book talking about the emotion packed into the book. There is, at that, though it's not overwrought. It's very tightly controlled and doesn't at any point feel forced. If anything, it feels as though the characters are just burnt out while being in shock at the same time. They've seen too much death and dealt with too much pain while at the same time being so isolated, even among their peers. None of it feels like too much, while at the same time feeling like a lot. I honestly don't know how else to describe it.

I won't say I had fun, exactly, but Wilder Girls definitely gripped me. It's been a hot minute since I finished a book in under 24hrs. Definitely a fantastic read. 

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

I absolutely loved The Hazel Wood. It felt very much along the same vein as a cross between Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series and her Indexing series, though it definitely has its own vibe. Got both the kiddo out of their own world thing and fairy tale characters interacting with the "real world" thing going on, but enough twists and story beats to be interesting in its own right. The Hazel Wood is also one of the few stories I've read recently that feels finished and doesn't end abruptly. Even knowing there's a second book doesn't mar that at all. Definitely a plus.

I liked Melissa Albert's use of fairy tale tropes. Expertly crafted together in ways I both expected and didn't. I also enjoyed the couple of stories from the in-universe Tales From the Hinterland we got to experience. They were delightfully dark and twisted in just the right way. I cannot, though, quite wrap my head around why a character with god-like powers, like the Spinner, would want to craft a world where all the terrible things just keep happening over and over... but, then, she is described as sociopathic so... yeah. That's a whole... other thing.

It really feels like discussing The Hazel Wood without spoilers is hard. Even looking back on the first half of the book with knowledge gained by actually finishing it feels like a mine-field. I think The Hinterland is neat and an interesting way to look at fairy tale universes. They do always seem to come from some really twisted brains.

I feel like I have to talk a little about Ellery Finch, though he does disappear for reasons for most of the second half of the book. At first, I was all on-board with his character and then his fate befell him and a bit of an icky feeling set in. Not because of his character, but because of what happened to his Character, if that makes sense... ah, that nasty spoilers thing rears its ugly head... anyway... perils of being Black in a horror-bent story... yeah. That was a thing for a minute, although its not dwelt upon by Alice in the way my brain dwelt on it at all. She grieves, I do a little wince. But it's overall fine... *clamps down on spoilers* Ellery was fine. Very not-like-other-popular-boys coded with a tang of fanboy thrown in.

The Hazel Wood is very good. Definitely fun for fairy tale nerds (like me) and probably the scholars among us, too. I cannot wait until my copies of The Night Country and Tales From the Hinterland arrive. 

Glimmering by Elizabeth Hand

Glimmering was honestly not my cup of tea. It was engrossing enough and kept me reading, but I feel more put off by it than anything else. It felt chaotic, in all honesty, and not entirely cohesive. Sure, Leonard Thorpe was there, threaded through everything, but... and then it just trailed off suddenly at the end... I'm left with this really unsatisfied feeling. I don't even have anything else to say about Glimmering. I'm not sure it really did what Elizabeth Hand says it does or did in her Author's Note in the beginning. Just felt like it was going somewhere and then... didn't.

In Other News

I finished my Upamon project! Part of my Village of Beginnings Project Line.

Good Eats 4: The Final Years by Alton Brown

Full disclosure: I haven't cooked anything from this book and mainly just read the info-parts and the footnotes. Alton Brown truly does live in the footnotes.

I will say, reading this cookbook is just like watching Alton Brown's content, only, ya know, staring at sheets of paper and hallucinating his voice in my head rather than watching him move around with his voice coming out of the speakers. I definitely count this as a good thing. I learned a few things and reviewed a few others (as a long-time consumer of Alton content, I've seen a few things he went over in the book before reading the book).

I will probably cook some things out of here in the future. I already swear by his recipe for sugar cookies, so... yeah. Solid, informative, and fun read for any fan of Alton Brown.

In Other News

I have finished my "Harvest" Project over on OviPets. They are part of my Digi's Miscellany Project Line. These guys took me about 11 months to finish. I was originally thinking I'd come up with a better name for them as I was completing the project, but I never did so... yup. Harvest it is.

 

In much sadder news, I was informed yesterday that my Paternal Grandmother passed away that morning. We weren't close at all, but... yeah. Still sad.