You know that feeling where you're enjoying inhabiting a book so much you don't want to reach the end? This week I finished The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison, and that's how I felt.

Witness is a companion novel to Addison's breakout novel, The Goblin Emperor (TGE), which I read for the first time last year and never got around to reviewing. You don't need to have read TGE to enjoy this one at all; Witness focuses on a minor character from TGE and his adventures after the events of that novel. Thara Celehar is a prelate of the god Ulis, and his role in elven society is something like a cross between a priest and a private detective. He has the ability to commune, in a limited fashion, with the dead, and he is employed by the city to provide this service to the people. This may involve reporting a deceased's last thoughts to a mourner, asking a deceased to clarify a point on their will, or seeking answers from a murder victim to bring their killer to justice.

Witness doesn't precisely employ a "case of the week" formula, but it does cover a few, sometimes overlapping, cases of Thara's with an ongoing murder investigation as the slow-burning thread tying the rest together.

Once again, Addison draws us into the complex politics of the realm she's created, and I do delight in that sort of thing. Thara tries very hard to avoid getting involved in anything that smacks of politics, but many more powerful players around him are keen to turn him into a political statement, forcing him to consider everything he does from about ten angles.

The murder investigation centers on a dead opera singer found early in the novel, and this allows Addison to dig into the artistic scene of the city of Amalo as well, which provides some very interesting worldbuilding opportunities. Hearing about how Amalo runs its art scene, what sorts of things they have chosen to commit to the stage, and what the reception to those things is tells us so much about this society. It's a perspective quite removed from TGE, where the focus was on the highest echelons of Ethuverez's nobility, and taken together gives us a relatively well-rounded look at Addison's world.

Thara makes for such an easy protagonist to root for. He's genuinely dedicated to his job, which he refers to as his calling, and always tries to do the right thing. This was a particularly refreshing perspective after my last audiobook, Sundial, and its cadre of people doing terrible things to each other all the time! He's soft-spoken, understated, and wants above all to do right by the trust that his clients place in him, and I loved following him around Amalo at work (I also really enjoyed the voice the narrator used for him).

The writing flows very well. Addison shifts to a first-person perspective here, which brings us more intimately both into Amalo and into Thara's work as he speaks directly to the reader about what he's doing. Addison has a talent for long, graceful sentences that provide wonderfully vivid looks at the characters around her protagonist. Listening to them all unfold was great entertainment!

As I was drawing near the end, I tried to articulate what it was about Witness and TGE's world I found so pleasant to engage with, and I think it's the sense that Addison's narrative rewards goodness. I mentioned above how hard Thara works to do the right thing, to be patient, to be kind, to stay out of power politics—and as with Maia in TGE, it feels that in some small ways, he is rewarded for that effort. Or at the least, he isn't punished for it. On a shelf full of edgy dark fantasy where cynicism is survival (and I enjoy those too!), it was comforting to inhabit a story where, for the most part, I did not expect Thara's kindness to be repaid with a knife in the back. He may miss out on some things-- as a dedicated prelate trying to stay off the political scene, he lives in relative poverty and has few resources at his disposal, and his political dodging mean he has few powerful allies on his side—but he chooses to accept this and is content with the ability to pursue his calling.

On the whole, I really enjoyed The Witness for the Dead, and I do plan to read the other two books in this series. I may pick up a hard copy of this to go with my TGE copy. Well done Ms. Addison!

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i. Exploration Amy Turk, Julia K ii. Les Sylphides VII. Waltz No. 7 in C-sharp Minor Ludwig van Beethoven, Berliner Philharmoniker iii. Mal di Luna Summer Watson iv. Little Bird The Weepies v. Shenandoah Hayley Westenra vi. Hope in the Air Laura Marling vii. Concerto for Flute and Harp, K.299; 2nd Movement Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields viii. Wasting My Young Years London Grammar ix. La Folia - Madness Antonio Vivaldi, Apollo's Fire x. Paradise Coldplay xi. The Tower Ramin Djawadi xii. Henry in Solitude Trevor Morris xiii. Greenpath Christpher Larkin xiv. Noble Maiden Fair Emma Thompson xv. The Journey Home John Doan xvi. Women of Ireland Joanie Madden xvii. Sacred Stones Sheila Chandra xviii. The Sixth Station Joe Hisaishi xix. Lullaby for a Stormy Night Vienna Teng xx. A Day Without Rain Enya xxi. Snow Loreena McKennitt xxii. When the Sun Rises in the West Ramin Djawadi

Track explanations and headcanons under the cut. Photo credit to Alice Alinari on Unsplash.

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Current Mood: sad

I'm on Witness for the Dead but I'm still thinking about Chenelo and how she was turned into a political football as a teenager and punished for things she had no control over and so incredibly fucking lonely and then dead at the ass end of the world at the age of twenty-six because no one cared enough about her even to make sure the guy left raising her only child didn't treat the kid like shit

That's why I've spent all day making a fanmix for her

The day after finishing The Traitor Baru Cormorant I had to rush over to the library to pick up book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I finished earlier today.

The second book of a fantasy series of any kind often bears a very difficult burden. It is most often the place where the scope of the story grows significantly. A conflict which before was local to the protagonist's home and surrounding area may expand, often to the extent of the known world. New players are often added to the cast, bigger and scarier problems and challenges arise. The protagonist may have gone up in the world, wielding new power and influence, with new responsibilities. As a result, this is where many series lose their footing; a tightly-woven book or season 1 may give way to a muddled, watered down part 2 as the writers struggle to juggle this expanded focus.

The Monster suffers from none of those things. It is the place where Baru's story expands—in The Traitor, her focus was almost entirely on Aurdwynn; it was the full field of play and outside players mattered only as they influenced events on Aurdwynn. In The Monster, Baru has become a true agent of the Imperial Throne of Falcrest, and with these new powers, the entire field of the empire is opened up for her play, and it is fascinating to watch.

In The Traitor, Baru was narrowly focused on managing the situation in Aurdwynn; everything she did was to that end. In The Monster, Baru can do whatever she wants, and we get to see her finally on the open field. Even where she flounders and flails, it's delightful to watch the machinations of her mind constantly at work. Her cleverness rows against her bursts of sentimentality to produce some impressively chaotic effects, but she is as slippery as an eel to pin down, even when her rivals think they've gotten the best of her.

The new players added to the game—Baru's fellow agents of the Throne, various elements of Falcresti and Oriati society, and Farrier, now on paper a peer of Baru—never overpower the story, and it was really interesting to see Baru from more outside perspectives. She is certainly someone who generates strong feelings in others, and Dickinson doesn't shy away from the vitriol that many other characters hold for Baru—and understandably so! Baru played a magnificent gambit at the end of The Traitor--but it's marked her to everyone as a person who is incredibly dangerous and cannot be trusted, even when she seems entirely genuine. No one who knows the story of Tain Hu is willing to trust Baru as far as they can throw her, and that impacts her ability to maneuver. Force is her only way of getting through to many people now--fortunately, she still knows how to wield it.

The characters of The Monster are in most cases, even more morally gray or outright amoral than those in The Traitor, as Baru has now entered the big leagues, so to speak. No one gets to where Baru is without having been willing to spill a considerable amount of blood, literal or metaphorical, and most of her peers are just as bound by guilt and the threat of remorse as Baru.

As in The Traitor, the schemes of others are at play here too, and Dickinson does a particularly good job of showing how players of this great game think they've put together the situation, but they've done it wrong—yet you can fully track their logic and understand how they came to the wrong conclusion. There are simply so many factors at play here that it's very easy for someone to become focused on a specious truth, and many of them are acting on these false conclusions, which muddies the waters even more.

Baru is a mess in The Monster though, leave no doubt. Tain Hu's death has marked her forever, but Dickinson avoids becoming maudlin, with every page rife with Baru's laments for her lost lover. Hu is often in her thoughts, and acts as a kind of guiding light, but Baru is still consumed with her own plots and plans (and drinking ever more heavily). Another ghost of Baru's past is haunting her as well—Aminata returns in The Monster, and Baru's grief for her lost(?) friendship with Aminata plagues her almost as much as the memory of Tain Hu. I really enjoyed the weight their friendship is given, and that it is not eclipsed by Baru's romance.

I also enjoyed that Baru pursues other sexual encounters. It might've been easy to have her simply closed off to such things in light of what happened with Tain Hu, but it makes sense that someone at Baru's age, with her limited sexual and romantic history, is simply not ready to forgo sex, even in the throes of her grief. And given the intensity of the rest of her life, it also makes sense that she occasionally seeks respite in these things, in spite of her lingering fear over her own sexuality.

The tone of The Monster has shifted slightly. Baru is much more open about her attraction to women, both to others and in her own internal narration. In fact, the book is franker about sex as a whole. It also gives more POVs than The Traitor, including a historical glimpse at the Oriati Mbo, but I never felt that these things distracted from Baru's story. On the contrary, the perspectives here serve to give a rich and three-dimensional look at the world Dickinson has created and help us understand the field on which Baru is operating. The new characters are interesting as well—I really enjoyed watching the foibles of Tau-indi in the Mbo, even outside of how these events set the stage for present relations between Falcrest and the Mbo.

Baru is also questioning herself more than in The Traitor. As the costs of her crusade against Falcrest mount, she is more and more often asking herself if it's really worth it, if she even has the right. (Does she even know Taranoke anymore? she wonders in some of her more reflective moments. Would they even thank her for what she's trying to do?)

I enjoyed the extra bits of worldbuilding we got here too, particularly how Dickinson plays with gendered expectations within the Empire--for instance, it's explicitly stated what was hinted in The Traitor that only men traditionally wear make-up, and the scene where Aminata compliments her male companion on his make-up for the evening was a little delight in seeing a moment where men were expected to make themselves nice for the appreciation of women. Sure you can call it just a reversal of some of our own gendered norms--in this same scene, Aminata thinks to herself that it would be "unfeminine" of her not to pay for the meal of herself and her companion--but I still find it interesting how it subtly shifts the dynamics to something other than what they would be in our own world (and perhaps culturally appropriate, given, for instance, how much of Falcrest's navy elite is made up of women).

Dickinson is dealing with a great many more and larger moving pieces in The Monsters, but he manages them deftly, and I was racing through the final chapters of the book, eager to see where we'd be left before The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, book 3, which I will be picking up ASAP this Saturday. I need to know how Baru's story ends...I have no doubt the wait for the fourth book will test my patience!

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I don't actually remember where I saw Catriona Ward's Sundial recommended, but it was somewhere and convincing enough to get it on my TBR. I finished the audiobook this week so it's time to reflect.

Sundial is a domestic psychological thriller which focuses on the relationship between the protagonist Rob and her eldest daughter Callie. Or at least, that's what the novel summary claims. A good 50% or more of the book is actually about Rob's youth and her relationship with her childhood family, primarily her twin sister, Jack. I didn't get that at first, which led to me being slightly frustrated by the length of the "flashback" sections until I realized that they were at least half the true focus of the story.

Ward excels in capturing the petty toxicity of a domestic environment gone sour. Especially deftly handled are the ways in which a partner can wound in such seemingly mundane ways. Many of the exchanges between Rob and her husband, Irving, come off as completely innocuous to an outsider, but to the two people in the relationship, who have the context for these seemingly nothing interactions, the full cruelty of them is on display. This adds completely believably to the tension between Rob and Callie, who has long favored her father, and who sees her mother's responses as hysterical overreactions, because she doesn't have the context that Rob does. Ward also very neatly portrays a truly vicious marriage, where both parties have given up pretending they want to be together, at least to each other, and where the entire relationship has become an unending game of oneupsmanship, trying to get one over on your spouse.

Adding to this suffocating atmosphere is Callie, a very strange 12-year-old who is starting to exhibit some very troubling behavior, particularly in her interactions with her 9-year-old sister, Annie. Rob has always struggled to connect with Callie—in contrast with Irving, who happily spoils her to force Rob to be the bad guy enforcing boundaries—but when Callie is thought to have attempted to poison Annie with Irving's diabetes medication, Rob decides it's time she and Callie have a real heart-to-heart.

So she takes Callie on a mother/daughter trip to Rob's childhood home, Sundial, an isolated family property out in the Mojave desert.

This book is at times difficult to read, because tension suffuses every page. At some point, I was waiting with baited breath for the next terrible thing someone was going to say or do. Not everyone in the book is bad, but they are all struggling, and they all do ugly and selfish and hurtful things.

The miscommunication and missed connections between Rob and Callie also felt woundingly believable, not the sort of outlandish refusals to talk that appear in less well-crafted dramas. Rob is understandably troubled by much of Callie's behavior, but she's also intolerant of any behavior that seems outside the norm, so even Callie's more harmless habits get her in trouble. Callie, at that tender preteen age, views much of her mother's scolding as an attack on her as a person, and reasonably misconstrues her mother's emotional upset as proof that she is unstable, and possibly a threat to Callie (concerns heartily reinforced by her father).

In order to give Callie clarity and context, Rob has decided to reveal the truth of her family history, which kicks off the lengthy "story-within-a-story" section about Rob's childhood and youth. Even when I grasped that this was meant to be the majority of the story, I still felt these sections dragged at times. There were more detail that necessary to explain things, and I was at times impatient to get back to Callie and Rob in the present. Still, as Rob's tale unfurls, it casts increasingly horrifying light on everyone in the family—Rob, Callie, Irving, and Rob's parents (now deceased).

The book goes some pretty twisted places, which I'll warn for because having skimmed reviews, some people definitely were not prepared for the darkness of the story. As for me, I enjoyed it, and Rob's backstory absolutely recontextualizes much of her early-book behavior towards Callie and Irving. There was cruelty in Rob's past, but there were also situations in which there just seemed to be no winning, and people doing their best but causing harm in the end anyway.

My only real complaint is about the ending. The ambiguousness of it I can forgive, because I think in the long run, it doesn't really matter whether route A or route B was the "real" ending—the pieces set on the board won't significantly change one way or the other. As Callie points out, her and Rob's lives are now both governed by the truth Callie revealed before they left Sundial. For me, it was the final twist that left a bad taste in my mouth, in part because it felt like just one twist too many, coming in what I expected to be the denouement, and because it sucks almost all of the triumph out of the final confrontation.

On the whole though, I thought Ward did a great job with the slow reveals and although I think the flashback sections could have been trimmed a bit more, it was never so bad that I was tired of the book. None of the characters here are very likeable, but boy they are trying to get through life without causing too much harm. Also, the audiobook narrator does such a good job of making Irving sound absolutely loathsome—his lines just drip with patronizing contempt. I wanted to shake him every time he spoke.

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I've fallen into the trap of being so busy playing Baldur's Gate 3 that I haven't had the time to say anything about Baldur's Gate 3 (a problem I've experienced before - which is why I've never yet reviewed My Life as a Teenage Exocolonist). There's also the fact that anyone on the farthest verge of the gaming sphere is aware of this game and has probably already read a least one review of it. Still, I'll throw my thoughts out, for whatever they're worth.

2025 has been a strange gaming year for me. Far and away my most anticipated game was Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game I've waited almost a decade for with baited breath. Baldur's Gate 3 was barely even on my radar—I played a few meager hours of one of Larian's earlier RPGs, Divinity Original Sin 2, which cemented my hatred of turn-based combat and dislike of isometric games. (Which is not a knock on DOS2—it was a very well-done game! Just not for me.) I was not willing to shell out BG3's price for the significant chance that its gameplay would be too frustrating for me to get into the story. Fortunately, my sister handled that issue by gifting it to me for Christmas—a free experiment.

In January, as usual, I plunged into my holiday cache of new games, starting with DATV—for more on my disappointment with that, see this review. When I'd quickly burned out on DATV, I turned to BG3, the unknown factor. Admittedly, this game is not optimized for console. Even after its eighth patch, it frequently crashes, particularly in battles with a high number of participants. Its menus and maps are difficult to read at a distance, such as from couch to TV. Its controls can be obtuse as the game tries to cram the huge number of functions onto a controller's limited button scheme.

However, in spite of these flaws, I've been reflecting the last few weeks on how BG3 has nevertheless been so much more fun than DATV, the game I was predisposed to like. What was it, I wondered, that made BG3 more fun? (And sorry--there will be more DA comparisons below.)

First, the thing that's most important to me in my RPGs - the vast roleplaying potential. Some games are "roleplaying" games in that you build up a character's skills and customize their fighting style. Others are "roleplaying" games in that you craft a character's personality and control their decisions in ways that (hopefully!) shape the narrative. Some are both - BG3 is both. The battle tactics of gaming has never interested me much, so I will leave that discussion to many reviewers more equipped to have it than I. What I can say is that BG3 gives you incredible potential to create your character--their backstory, their personality, their choices.

I've played three games of BG3, start to finish, and my three player characters (hereinafter referred to as "Tav," the default name for the PC) could not have been more different. And not just in my head, in the way I imagined them when I created and played them, but in the ways they were able to move through the world of BG3 and the choices they made.

BG3 eschews the clean and convenient dialogue wheel in favor of a long list of unvoiced dialogue options reminiscent of Dragon Age Origins (or DOS2, which uses the same style). This gave Larian the freedom to give the player far more response options than are available to a fully-voiced protagonist. Tav can be kind, curious, guarded, funny, caustic, and/or downright cruel. The long, branching conversations available with even minor NPCs gives the player ample opportunity to discover and display what kind of person Tav is to them.

Growing out of this same attitude are the many choices Tav can make throughout the game. I complained in my DATV review that it felt like the PC never made any real choices—they were all surface-level decisions that never once put the player in a real bind or had any notable consequences for the world. BG3 excels perhaps more than anywhere else in allowing the player to shape the world. The decision tree shaping the final two choices of the game itself spans at least half a dozen different outcomes (some with more significant differences than others—in my first playthrough, Tav became a mind flayer by the end!)

This freedom is perhaps most on display in the way your companion quests can play out. In some cases, I was reminded of Dragon Age II, where you at times had the choice to indulge your companion's worst instincts, the ones they really wanted to exercise, or to push them forcefully in a healthier direction. For instance, Shadowheart dreams of becoming a Dark Justiciar, a militant devotee of the goddess of darkness, Shar, almost universally reviled by the rest of Faerun for her petty cruelty. As this path demands more and more sacrifice from Shadowheart, you can either encourage her and bolster her resolve to follow her goddess' will—or you can ask her if Shar is really worth it, and push her to buck these divine demands. The outcomes for Shadowheart put her in a very different place, with even more, smaller differences in just how you pursue either route. Given, this is still a game trying to appeal to its audience, so few of your companions will openly regret the path you nudged them towards, although the hints may be there if things haven't turned out like they imagined.

I can also say at this point, having played through the character origin "The Dark Urge," that this was a fantastic addition to the game. While I enjoy making my own little guy as much as anyone, "Durge" is a great option to shake things up and it really made me see various facets of the game in a new way, given this unique context. Durge is not going to be to everyone's taste—it demands even more violence than you usually get from BG3—but I was fascinated watching this story play out (with plenty of room left for my own decisions, including ultimately rejecting my ordained destiny).

The last thing I'll mention is how the freedom of storytelling and choice in BG3 mean that you aren't forced onto a particular moral path. Your companions alone present you with a dizzying variety of moral codes, from Wyll who has devoted his life to defending the common people, to Minthara raised on the brutal drow code of conduct which prizes personal gain above all.

You can play Tav as dark or as light or as in-between as you want. You can lie to avoid fights, you can lie to start fights, you can make jokes about the harm you've caused, you can devote Tav to overthrowing oppressive powers, you can go out of your way to help people, you can remain laser-focused on your goal of curing yourself with no time to spare for other people's problems.

Your companions will react to these things—for instance, cheesing aside, Wyll and Minthara are mutually-exclusive companions, because the route you must take to recruit Minthara is so objectionable to Wyll that he'll simply leave the party. In general, they do not seek to spare the player's feelings—your companions can be angry, disappointed, betrayed, and more with Tav, as much as they can feel supported and loved. And it makes sense--it makes sense that Lae'zel is angry when she feels you're wasting time from finding the githyanki creche, where she believes there is a surefire cure to your problem. It makes sense that Shadowheart lashes out defensively if you question her devotion to Shar (even when she herself may be questioning it!) It makes sense that Gale is disgusted by the person he's become alongside Tav if you choose to raid the Emerald Grove rather than protect its residents. The characters as Larian has established them would have these reactions, and it wouldn't be reasonable if they continued to cheerlead Tav in the face of blatant violations of their moral codes and worldviews.

All of these things combine to make for a beautifully rich, layered game world which is just a joy to explore, one which I'm eager to return to yet again. Turn-based combat and isometric views are still not my favorite way to experience a game—but on the whole the story has been such a fun experience that I'm willing to brave a more complicated, more time-consuming fighting method. I may even seek out another copy of DOS2 to give that one another try, now that I have more understanding of the knack of Larian games. I may even go after the first two Baldur's Gate games!

BG3 is in no way a "hidden gem," but it was a surprise for me how much I've enjoyed it. A sleeper hit in my personal experience, perhaps. Anyway, I can't say more—I have another Tav to design.

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On Monday's outbound commute I finished the audiobook for Even Though I Knew the End. This is a supernatural/fantasy noir romance and it does pack a lot of all three of those things into its brief 4-hour runtime.

This book relies heavily on stock film noir tropes—the veteran down-and-out private (paranormal) investigator (here a lesbian, Helen, our protagonist) who drinks too much and is haunted by past mistakes, a mysterious and sexy female client with a unique case, and "just one last" job before the PI plans to quit and retire with a beloved romantic partner. I didn't find them overused—and seeing them reworked to queer and female characters was fun—but other readers may find them too worn out even here.

Because the book is so short, it moves along at a very rapid pace. The whole thing takes place over the course of two days—the final two days before Helen's soul debt is called due and she finally has to pay the price of her warlock bargain. In this way, any rush felt appropriate, since it fit both the size of the novel and the context of Helen's urgency to get this last job done before she has to pay up.

The characters weren't super developed, but again—4-hour runtime. They're a little stock character-y, but not total cardboard cut-outs. It was disappointing for me to see Helen make the same mistake at the end of the book that she did prior to the start, as if she hadn't really learned anything, but since the novel ends promptly after that, the story never has to reckon much with it.

I was relieved that Edith, Helen's girlfriend, wasn't just the damsel in distress/goal object for Helen, which I was a bit worried about in the beginning. Edith has secrets and goals of her own.

Overall, the book was fine, and it entertained me well enough for a few days. Nothing extraordinary here, but nothing objectionable either. I will say I think keeping it short worked best for this book—I think drawing it out might have only weakened it. A fun little twist on a typical noir novel.

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On Saturday afternoon, on the bus ride home, I finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant, because I couldn't wait until I got home to reach the end, despite a long history of reading-induced car sickness. It was totally worth it.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is all fantasy politics. There's no magic or fairies or prophecies, just Seth Dickinson's invented world and the titanic machinations of Empire. And it is electric. Tentatively, I'd make a comparison to The Goblin Emperor, except that where TGE is about how Maia, completely unprepared for his role, is thrust into a viper's nest of politics, Baru Cormorant is about how Baru has painstakingly taught herself the ways of the empire and enters into the game fully prepared to rewrite the rules to her liking.

Dickinson creates a wonderfully believable world. The Empire of Masks—popularly known as the Masquerade—is sickeningly plausible, with their soft conquests of money and ideas backed by a highly-trained and well-equipped military. The Masquerade is not content to conquer land—it must conquer minds, people. It is relentless in its push to force its colonies and territories to adopt its ways of thinking, to the point of dictating who may and may not marry based on their bloodlines. With this comes a heaping dose of homophobia, frequently enforced on cultures who had formerly been relaxed or even accepting of queer identities and relationships. This presents a specific problem for Baru, who is the daughter of a mother and two fathers, and who is herself a deeply closeted lesbian.

The story makes use of incredibly mundane tools in its schemes, something that also rings realistic. It's not all backstabbing, murder, and blackmail—at one point, a serious political threat is nullified through currency inflation. Baru, who becomes an imperial accountant, is in a prime position to use these seemingly dull tools to marvelous effect. Many schemes are strangled in the cradle, such that only the plotter and the defeater are even aware that they existed. But the game goes on.

In that same vein, Dickinson pays ample attention to the practical realities of economics, war, and rebellion, in a way that grounds the story in realism without letting it drag. The pace felt even throughout, picking up at the climax without ever feeling rushed. At the same time, despite the frequently detailed and excruciating groundwork various characters are laying for their plans, the novel never felt slow. Dickinson's prose is descriptive without being overwrought or tiresome. He keeps the reader on the hook figuring out Baru's plans or realizations without making it so obscure that a dedicated or observant reader couldn't figure things out along with her. I never felt like Dickinson was keeping things vague because he lacked answers or plans himself.

Given the above two things, potential readers should know this book runs almost entirely on machinations. If you are not significantly interested in plotty plotters plotting things, you may find this book duller than I did.

Baru herself is the epitome of ruthlessness. Her goals are noble—her desire to free her home, to end the tyranny of the Masquerade—but she will do anything to achieve those goals. She is a truly fascinating character, calculating, controlled, brilliant—and constantly tormented by the need to weigh her choices and the potential futures ahead. I loved watching her schemes build, play out, and adapt along with the developing situations. She is a fantastical chess player—but not without flaws and blind spots. Her character asks the reader a fascinating question about just how long the ends can justify the means, and what an individual is willing to sacrifice for their notion of the greater good.

There were moments in the book when I felt Baru's motivations were a little foggy, a little hasty, but I was willing to forgive that because the rest of the book was so enjoyable. It wasn't until the very end when I realized I had missed something, and all the pieces fell into place, and her motivations were perfectly clear and logical.

Equally interesting are the ways the characters around Baru plot and respond to her. There was one moment near the end when I gasped out loud at a twist, and then realized later I'd made the same error as some other characters in assuming its causes. The thing with Dickinson's twists is that they all make sense in retrospect. There were some "I can't believe that just happened!" moments, but nothing that felt like it came out of the left field or that was not supported by the narrative up to that point. Dickinson also does a good job of making sure the characters around his core plotter still feel like real players in the game. He never falls prey to Baru being the only one with schemes and long games ongoing—the board pieces are constantly shifting as others make their own bids for power and Baru must adjust her plans accordingly.

And this book has things to say. Baru Cormorant is an unrelenting condemnation of imperialism, economic and militant, and it never shies away from the extent of personal and cultural damage done to the victims of the Masquerade. Everyone trying to survive in the Masquerade's world is having to compromise themselves somehow, to some extent, and no one survives contact with the empire unscathed, even those who eventually turn its power to their own ends. The economic control; the eugenics programs; the targeting of youth to indoctrinate them with the Masquerade's values; the wars of conquest; the coercion, manipulation, and bribery that keep the people adhering to the Masquerade's will—all of it is brought to light and examined and called for what it is: control, control, control, no matter how pretty a face is put on it.

It is not, as you may have gathered, a happy book, but that's just fine with me.

I was hanging on every page by the end, and first thing Sunday morning I was off to the library to pick up the sequel, which I started the same day. I cannot wait to see how Baru's story progresses! Hats off for Baru Cormorant!

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Since I did one for Minthara - here are the things that I love about Lae'zel's romance:

Her first encounter with Tav is trying to kill them, and then they end up together agkjkgf Forgotten Realms meet-cute.
She does NOT pussyfoot around about her interest in Tav. She's into them and not afraid to declare it. Bold move when they have to continue traveling together for days/weeks/months regardless of how Tav reacts.
The way she tells Tav where to kiss her during the sex scene. Yes.
When Shadowheart asks if Lae'zel didn't consider it "beneath her" to share a night with Tav, Lae'zel responds "They were beneath me, at times. But also above me. And standing, at certain points."
The fight. That she gets so worked up about having a crush on Tav and can't think of any way to deal with those feelings but fighting. "Get out of my school" energy. Nevertheless, whether Tav wins or loses, Lae'zel declares she doesn't really want to hurt them--she wants to protect them, and wants them to protect her.
How she has to brace herself to ask for softness and affection from Tav, after potentially scoffing at Tav's earlier request for cuddling. It's scarier for her to ask for a gentle touch from Tav than it was to proposition them.
Her FACE when Tav asks to kiss her publicly for the first time adjngkj She talks SUCH big game when they're in private but the moment Tav wants to publicly show affection for her she's O.O
Waking Tav up to watch the sunset with her!! Lae'zel is someone who rarely does things purely for the pleasure of it and at the beginning of the game, I'm sure she would have considered this a waste of time. But now she finds pleasure in it, and she wants to share it with Tav. "This couldn't wait" she says!
Her entire speech during the sunset scene is so incredibly touching. Her whole life has been about war--she'll boast about having killed classmates growing up because they weakened the githyanki as a whole--but now she sees another path, and she wants to share it with Tav.
"You showed me freedom." I will not quote the entire thing but this is so core to Lae'zel's feelings about Tav and her new friends and Faerun--this is the first time she's been shown another viable way of life besides the one she was raised in, and she likes it--even though she's good at the githyanki way of life.
The moment where she acknowledges her flaws, but also insists on her virtues. Lae'zel knows she is hard to get along with for Faerunians--but she also knows she has value.
How she struggles to define exactly how she feels about Tav ("There's more, but I don't know how to say it. I don't know what to call it.") She doesn't have the words, but she recognizes the feelings--she knows she feels something special for Tav.
Related to the above - her banter with Gale where she admits she'd never heard any other githyanki talk about being in love. She literally has no cultural script for what's happening, but she cares enough for Tav to push through these scary unknowns.
The forehead kiss!
How "source of my bruises" becomes "source of my joy" TT_TT
If she's turned against Vlaakith, she and Tav can leave to join the githyanki revolution together. Either a gith!Tav and Lae'zel, having saved a foreign world, now set off to save their own, or Lae'zel, having saved her lover's world, now brings her lover with her to save her own people.
Related to the above - her helping Tav onto the red dragon with her at the end! Lae'zel has dreamed of riding a red dragon her whole life, and the first time she does is with Tav.
If the egg from Creche Y'llek is taken, Lae'zel and Tav can raise it together. Lae'zel names it "Xan" for "freedom."
Gith!Tav and Lae'zel returning for the reunion as leaders among their people and of Orpheus' rebellion.

Things that make me insane about Minthara's romance(s):

"I wanted this, for myself." Even in the midst of her total brain fog by the Absolute, she knows she wants to be close to Tav. Even when she's been manipulated not to merely serve, but to serve in ecstasy, she wants to be near Tav and that is the one thing she chooses to pursue for her own ends--which are purely pleasure and comfort.
This could have easily been a victory bang one night stand, which might have tracked with her being the "evil" companion, but it clearly meant more to her from the very beginning. She stays with Tav after the sex, she snuggles, and she willingly bears her heart to Tav about her fears and anxieties regarding the Absolute and her place on the surface.
If Tav pries into her thoughts while she's sleeping, they see "the scars of a life spent anticipating betrayal." Life in Menzoberranzan trained her to expect a knife in the back constantly, and she remains paranoid about this even on the surface. But even so, she takes this moment with Tav, seeking to overcome her own fears about intimacy.
The skill check you have to pass to convince her not to kill Tav? 2. She is looking for a reason to not have to kill Tav, even if Tav spoke complete heresy to her. She wants to let Tav live, she wants to see them again at Moonrise.
Obviously, the big sad puppy eyes when she turns to see Tav during her castigation in Moonrise. Worst moment of her life and who steps through the door? The one person she has wanted to be close to maybe since she left the Underdark.
The way the two gnomes torturing her call out her "longing for acceptance and affection from a mortal," which confirms that her night with Tav always meant more to her than just a hook-up. She wanted more than just physical intimacy--she wanted something emotional. And that is what is being highlighted in her torment as one of her worst failures--that she, essentially, wants to be loved.
Related to the above - after Orin is killed, Minthara sort of laments that if not for Tav's strange act of mercy in saving her from Ketheric and Z'rell, she would have been just one more casualty in Tav's quest to destroy the Absolute, and "nobody would remember me."
"You came. I prayed that you would." I am howling at the moon. Minthara, the paladin, prays for Tav. For Tav to come rescue her. Minthara, who spurned Lolth, who has realized the Absolute was a lie, prays for Tav to come and save her.
The interplay between Minthara and a Dark Urge's respective relationships with Orin--how Orin's brainwashing and torment was what set Minthara on her quest for revenge against the Absolute, and how Durge was perhaps the very first of the cult's victims and all the amnesia they've struggled with throughout the game the result of Orin's torture.
Related to the above - if Minthara is the one kidnapped by Orin in Act III, that once again Orin has taken Minthara captive and once again Tav will free her.
The way Minthara tries to pry into Tav's mind again in Act III, only to quickly withdraw and apologize for not asking first. Minthara! Apologizing! That instead of letting it go, she still asks if she can be allowed to look into Tav's mind, because she is so desperate to see how Tav sees her. If Tav says they'd rather just use words to tell her, Minthara insists that the parasite connection is more true and accurate, and she wants to see that.
That she is hoping Tav sees her like a lover, and is openly disappointed if that's not the case. (Tie back to point 5.)
The way she begs to see herself through Tav's eyes, because "without Lolth, without the Absolute, without my home, I do not know myself." Her sense of self is so tenuous that she turns to someone else to help her understand herself--and that person is Tav, possibly the only person in the world she trusts.
The adoring look she gives Tav after some of their kisses, followed by the throaty "thank you." Thank you! She thanks Tav for their gestures of affection! (Tie back to point 5.)
That she is quietly poisoning Tav to build up their resistance in case they ever go to her homeland.
"I have never needed anyone, but I want you."
The way she is so all-in once her romance is locked in. Tav can become the Slayer, become Bhaal's chosen, become a mind flayer, choose to enslave the brain, choose to destroy the brain, go to Avernus--no matter what they do, Minthara is with them. They are her Person.
Related to the above - if Tav does become a mind flayer and tries to leave her on the grounds that they're a monster, she says "So am I, my love. Let us be monsters together." She "mourns" the loss of the parasite, because she yearns to share minds with Tav in their new state.
If a mind flayer Tav tells her they need to figure out who they are alone, without her, she pleads for just one day to change their mind.
If romanced by a Karlach origin who chooses to die rather than return to Avernus, Minthara is in tears as she promises to stay with Karlach until the end.
If Tav proposes they return to Menzoberranzan and conquer it after defeating the Netherbrain, Minthara casts off Baenre and declares "their" new house will be named after Tav.
During the epilogue, she seems rather keen to leave, and no matter what dialogue option is chosen, she admits to a romanced Tav what bothers her: she's afraid no one there likes her.

I really hate to give up on a book, but sometimes, there are too many other tempting things on the horizon to keep ploughing through an active read in the hopes it gets better. Today I put aside Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling. While I would have liked to have gone all the way to the end before making a judgement, there just over 9 hours still to go on the audiobook and the book has simply not given me enough to power through that.

At nearly 9 hours in (about halfway) my overall feeling towards this book is indifference. Towards the plot, towards the characters, towards the setting. It's very generic fantasy and just doesn't give much to bite onto outside of that. The first half of the plot has some fun adventure elements, but when the mentor-figure, Seregil, becomes incapacitated partway through, the youthful protagonist Alec is simply not enough to carry the story. The second half of the story is more political intrigue, and I can't help but compare it to The Traitor Baru Cormorant which I'm also currently reading, and that comparison does Luck in the Shadows no favors.

Seregil and Alec's escapades are fun, and it's interesting to see the creative ways they go about their tasks, but for me it's not enough to make up for the lackluster plot and detailed but unremarkable worldbuilding.

There's a disappointing dearth of women in the story, although one of the fantasy kingdoms in which the second half of the story takes place has been ruled by a succession of queens for centuries. There is some casual queerness in the story which I liked, but when I looked for more reviews on this to help me decide if it was worth pressing on, I learned (SPOILER) that Alec and Seregil become a couple later on. Given that Alec is barely sixteen at the start of this book, and Seregil is a middle-aged man, I'm just not here for it.

This is the first book of a series (the Nightrunner series), but my general feeling on series is that it's a cop-out to rely on later books to make up for weaknesses in earlier books. Particularly here, where each book gets longer, the author is asking for me to take a lot on trust that this story will get better with time.

I really wanted to like this book, as I really want to like all fantasy novels, but it's just not worth the amount of time investment needed. Also, in general, not looking for stories about adults falling in love with teenagers. Disappointing, but there are other things to move on to.

Crossposed to

books

Current Mood: disappointed

Last night I finished The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernandez, book #9 from the "Women in Translation" rec list. This book was translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer.

The Twilight Zone is a nonfiction book, part memoir, part investigative journalism piece by Fernandez, first published in 2016. It concerns Fernandez's study of and memories of growing up under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The author is haunted by the traumas of the regime, both those she experienced firsthand and those she heard about from others, and the book in some ways feels like an exercise in simply trying to reconcile those feelings.

Fernandez's book is of course very specific to the Chilean experience, and yet core parts of her incisive commentary about both the absurdity and the cruelty of autocracies rings true around the world. The exercises the regime goes through in its constant quest for self-preservation are both ridiculous and brutal, feelings Fernandez captures in her title. The surrealist sci-fi hit show of the 70s fits very well as a metaphor for the often-flailing yet eminently dangerous police state.

Fernandez does an excellent job of using her prose to say things not neatly spelled out in words. I was reminded of reading The Things They Carried in high school, and how revelatory it seemed to me at the time how the author could use the style of prose to suggest a character's mental disarrangement without simply saying he was deranged. Fernandez's prose stood out to me in a similar way—how she uses the structure of her words to capture the feelings at play.

Equally compelling is the obviously copious amounts of research Fernandez put into her work. She portrays herself as a woman consumed by a quest to find answers about this regime, and it comes across in her work. Names, dates, places, timelines — Fernandez has clearly put in the leg work to piece together the final days of the highlighted victims of the regime as much as can be done.

However, the book never comes across like a textbook. Fernandez ably weaves her research into a compelling narrative. Neither does she ever seek to blur the line between the facts and her imagination—she keeps a clean line between what she knows and what she wonders, or imagines. Nevertheless, the questions and suppositions that populate Fernandez's mind feel regrettably natural for anyone in the aggravating circumstances of a mendacious autocracy. She does an excellent job of showing how crazy-making it is to live under such a government, where you are constantly being lied to in direct contradiction of visible facts, and yet there seems to be nothing you can do but either accept the truth or taste the knuckles of the regime.

I really enjoyed this read. It breezed by and I can absolutely see what a national treasure Fernandez is as a writer! I would love to see if more of her work has been translated into English; she has a wonderful voice.

Crossposted to

books

Hesitant to post this on tumblr because I don't want to kick off Discourse but "friendship ended with Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate 3 is my new best friend" is so the mood. BG3 has just been so much more FUN that Veilguard, and I say that as someone who was deeply invested in DA for years. Maybe part of that is just that I don't know enough about BG to know if this latest game has fucked its lore and screwed over returning characters (I know at least one person very unhappy with Viconia Devir's cameo) but I do think it's more than that. BG3 lets you roleplay in a way that Veilguard never does. All of the things you control about Rook in Veilguard--species, appearance, class, background--are essentially superficial. There are some unique dialogue options, but at the end of the day, you're playing Bioware's character Rook, who really cannot deviate from their canon attitude and personality. My first Tav, a tiefling monk who was kind-hearted but ultimately non-interventionist about a lot of things, could not be more different from my other two--a githyanki fighter who preferred to talk her way out of fights, and a dragonborn barbarian Durge who doesn't seek cruelty but nevertheless has left a trail of blood behind her. And all of these are things expressed in game separate and apart from any headcanons I have about them.

Your companions REACT to things! My first Tav had a pretty supportive friendship with Gale; my second barely knew his name; Durge was actually close to him before the Grove slaughter, after which he really wanted nothing to do with her. My first Tav and Wyll almost got together; in the current playthrough, he left the party entirely. Your companions in BG3 have views and beliefs of their own that seriously impact how they view Tav's actions and behavior and that makes the game so much more interesting!

There are things to explore! I let Shadowheart kill Aylin my first run, so meeting her in the second run was a surprise and a delight--and impacted several more quests than just Shadowheart's! I played Veilguard twice, and it really is one and done. If you've played it once, you've seen what it has to offer. Your choices are superficial, your companions are with you no matter what, and for Rook, all endings but one (the one where they themselves go into the Fade) pretty much have the same impact. Despite the amazing graphics and killer character creator and smooth combat, the game is ultimately boring, because it's a roleplaying game that doesn't let you roleplay.

Let's be real Kagha is not materially worse than at least half of the companions. "She threatened a child" Lae'zel and Shadowheart both explicitly approve of not intervening on Arabella's behalf; Lae'zel and Astarion both approve of siding with the goblins which involves slaughtering every child in the Grove; Astarion will kill a dozen or more Gur children to ascend unless Tav convinces him not to; Gale is trying to become a god almost expressly to get back at his ex-lover; Shadowheart kills an aasimar in chains unless Tav convinces her not to and may also kill her own parents in pursuit of Shar's will; Minthara encourages Tav both to embrace their heritage as Bhaal's chosen and to assume control of the Elder Brain...let's not start throwing stones from glass houses

I went into her tumblr tag and should have been expecting the vitriol in there (* ￣︿￣) I get it, she's not likeable, but to act like she's uniquely awful in the game is kind of laughable, even when you're comparing her only to Tav's friends/companions.

In other news, this fanfic has turned me onto the idea of Kagha/Minthara and now I can't let it go.

Below will be fanfic recs for BALDUR'S GATE 3, DRAGON AGE, MASS EFFECT, TOLKIEN, and a few miscellaneous.

Crossposted from tumblr and Pillowfort.

Past fanfic rec lists

( Read more... )

Current Music: Jump Into the Fire; Harry Nilsson

I'm looking for more fantasy and sci-fi, so if there are any titles that pop into mind, new or old, feel free to drop names below!

This week I finished The Dawnhounds, the first book of the The Endsong series by Sascha Stronach.

This book has been compared to Gideon the Ninth, which I think does it a disservice, because while there are enjoyable things about it, if you go into it expecting The Locked Tomb, I think you're going to be disappointed. They are not on the same level.

Protagonist Yat's homeland—the port city of Hainak—is implied to have been colonized and fought a revolution to escape that, but while some of the changes have been welcome—the embrace of "biotech," freedom of determination—her home is in the throes of sliding from one abusive regime to another. They have thrown off the yoke of colonization, but as Yat comes to slowly realize over the course of the novel, what they replaced it with isn't much better.

Yat is in a prime position to realize this. A former street rat turned cop who joined the police in hopes of making a positive change for people like herself, she's been slowly worn down over the years into someone who simply closes her eyes to the worse abuses by the government and partakes herself in the lesser offenses. The kick-off for the story isn't any of that though—it's that Yat is demoted after her coworkers learn she's patronized a queer bar. She's blundering through the fallout of that—continuing to patronize that same bar, and using drugs to cope—when the fantasy plot hits her in the head.

Unfortunately, here is where the novel began to lose me. I think the comparisons with The Locked Tomb arise from the way The Dawnhounds throws the reader into the plot with the promise of revealing more information later. Except that where TLT is a masterclass in subterfuge and gradual reveals that make perfect sense in retrospect, and in some cases reframed entire characters and story arcs, The Dawnhounds just...never really reveals the information.

By the end of the book I could not describe anything about the antagonists—who they were, what their goals were, how Yat defeated them. And although the city of Hainak is omnipresent—it's almost a character in itself, and much of Yat and Sen's motivation surrounds wanting to do right by the city—I could not tell you anything about how its government functions or why there are problems with it (or what those problems are at the core, besides wealth disparity and abuses by the criminal justice system). It's suggested at one point that the specious specter of violence or re-invasion by their former colonizer is being wielded to allow some to gain power within the city...but we never learn who those people are, what they want, or how they're able to do this. Given how much lip service is paid to politics in the book, this feels particularly jarring since it's precisely the kind of thing Yat and her pal Sen should be really invested in.

Early in the book, the confusion about the magic system and the import of various characters and objects is forgivable, because Yat herself doesn't know any of this. I have no problem with an author who wants the reader to feel the protagonist's confusion and sense of being overwhelmed. But the book never gets around to explaining anything.

As mentioned, this is the first book of a series, which may mean that more information about who the antagonists are and what they actually want is revealed later on, but I can't say I'll bother with the next book. This one just did not give me enough to care about and I'm not willing to dive into a whole new book on the hope that it might explain things the first book failed to explain.

And for a truly nitpicky complaint: the title has no relevance to the book. The term "Dawnhound/s" never comes up.

That said, if you set aside the obtuse nature of the plot, the book is still fun. I liked Yat as a protagonist. She's certainly a flawed person whose general attitude at the start can be summed up as "careless," but it's a kind of self-enforced carelessness, because she is too afraid to really open her eyes and see what Hainak has become, and what she's assisted them in doing as a cop. Her transformation from someone largely passive into someone with the courage to take real action is nice to see.

Stronach has the bones of something interesting in Hainak, but I wish we had gotten more time to explore it. Stronach is trying to fit a great deal into a midsized novel, which makes the boat detour to some random island we never really find out much about and thin hints towards Captain Sibbi's past feel a little frustrating in retrospect, and I think the book would have benefited from more room for all of these things to breathe. Sometimes it feels like Stronach was trying to cram everything she personally thinks is cool into the book, and that does not benefit it.

I don't feel that I wasted my time with The Dawnhounds, but I also don't feel compelled to pick up the next book in the series. I think I've seen enough of Hainak.

Crossposted to

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"But it wasn't enough for you. You were distracted by your own desires: bloodlust, murder, chaos, and most damning of all, an unexpected weakness, and longing for acceptance and affection from a mortal."

I can't post the gifset from tumblr because the images are too large, but I am going insane over this dialogue from Minthara's torturers at Moonrise Towers if you romance her in Act I. First of all, knowing how Minthara prizes the sanctity of her mind, this kind of mental torment and digging through her most private thoughts to torment her with them must rank among her worst-case scenarios. Second, that it's not her violence that's being used to most condemn her, but her desire for affection, her yearning to belong. That is what's being called out as her greatest failure--and that probably tracks perfectly with what she was taught in Menzoberranzan. That when she finally tries to reach out anyway, in spite of knowing this would be considered weakness among both the drow and the Absolutists ("I wanted this, for myself" she says to you after your night together), it's used to punish her. It's no wonder you can't just pick your romance up with her where it left off when she's just been so brutally reminded that love or even a semblance of it is a weakness that can and will be used to hurt her.

There's also the fact that if you kill her in Act I and then speak with her corpse, you can ask her what her "ambitions" were before she died, and she tells you "To find a home." Minthara is LONELY and I will stand by that.

Rambling about my newest Tav (Durge flavor)

Haranatavna's a berserker subclass of barbarian, so rage is part of it all, but hers is a very cold kind of rage. She's not the kind of person you can work up into a temper to get her to make mistakes. She gave her eye up to Aunt Ethel trying to solve the parasite problem, but her decision to kill Ethel--although strongly motivated by anger that she had paid a price and gotten nothing for it--was by all outward appearances made very calmly.

Part of that is her indifference to killing. It's a coin toss for her on whether or not to kill any given person, so while it doesn't take much to talk her into it, it also doesn't take much to talk her out of it. For her, it's an option like any other, not one that requires a given amount of anger for her to exercise.

( Read more... )

Dark Urge run here we gooooo

This is Haranatavna ("Tav") and much of her backstory is on hold until I've played more and understand more about Durge's background. I've only just made it to the Emerald Grove but I'm already enjoying this origin.

She's a barbarian class but on the whole pretty chill. She's willing to help people as long as it doesn't conflict with or endanger her core goal: never to be under the control of anyone else. She's very curious and loves to learn, and is pleased to engage in philosophical discussions about death with Withers. She can be a pretty solid traveling companion. Unfortunately, she also spends large portions of her time in a dissociative state trying to convince herself that it does actually matter if she hurts other people. She's not always successful.

She will be romancing Minthara, for which I will recruit Minthara the "right" way so...sorry tiefling refugees and druids. But the Grove slaughter will be a turning point for Tav to become a true resist!Durge and she and Minthara can work on being better people who overcome their worst instincts together <3

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