Reading Update

[jaggedwolf]

The Gatekeeper by Nuraliah Norasid

An older medusa and a younger half-not-human cross paths in fantasy-AU!Singapore. Was okay.

It was hard for me to get into this book because I kept one-to-one matching aspects of the fictional Manticura with real Singapore history. Don’t get me wrong, I was very tickled by the map at the beginning of the book. I’d love to read more genre takes on city-states in general.

But when it comes to fantasy, I’m a fan of the good old mix-match-and-mashing of real world cultures and history. For one thing, it’s fantasy, let’s not get constrained. More selfishly, when I read a fantasy story that doesn’t do that, that closely replicates real places in the skin of fictional ones, I am both too distracted by actual reality and questions of why the fantasy aspects didn’t change the course of the fictional history.

A short listing of my distractions:

• Gahmen tear down kampongs for shiny new city buildings. Gahmen don’t care about actual medusas till they refuse to move?
• Manticura used to be a part of Fantasy!Malaysia F’herak before gaining independence
• Manticura is invaded by and occupied by Fantasy!Japan Esomiri, including a note that Esomiri avoided the open sea route (but hey, it happened after independence here)
• Modern-day Manticura is basically SG + non-humans, complete with national service and race quotas.
• There seems to be a parallel between Malays and non-humans, given that the increase in the (unraced?) human population (via other countries) is what results in them being privileged over non-humans. In Manticura, it is non-humans who don’t get assigned sensitive posts in the military

To be fairer, I did enjoy reading the appendix at the end of the book that outlined the entire history of Manticura, like a puzzle of recognition and reconfiguration. To be even fairer, I am a biased reader - I’m not particularly well-versed in history and I know Singapore’s history far better than I do anywhere else’s, and so maybe I’ve consumed lots of works that did an exact one-to-one that nonetheless didn’t hit uncanny valley for me because I don’t know shit. Such is the variability of readers...

Ria and Eedric are...fine? I got bored with their respective holding patterns in the middle of the book, and while I initially thought Eedric’s feelings for Ria were cute, the actual culmination of them was also boring to me.

I liked Ria’s older sister more and more as the book progressed, and was utterly infuriated by what Ria does to her at the end. Fuck that “for her own good” logic, and taking that away from her.

Frederick Douglass: Prophet Of Freedom by David W. Blight

A very thorough overview of his life, sometimes refracted through the three autobiographies he wrote in 1845 (age 28), 1855 (age 38) and 1881 (age 64). Liked it.

Little prior knowledge here, and I don’t think I’d read anything longer than a paragraph from him before, but the biography did a good job of showcasing the power and skill of Douglass’s rhetoric even without that. And the meta-ness of being a book about a guy who had written the narrative of his life multiple times over. I did read the 4th of July speech, mostly because the book dug into it for multiple pages and I thought I’d be missing out if I didn’t. I was correct.

The elucidation of Douglass’s views was well done: the shift from moral suasion to political abolitionism, the constitution’s perspective on slavery both in terms of genuine interpretation and political utility, what it meant to truly “let alone” the freedman during Reconstruction and after, and the ways in which he clashed with other thinkers.

And other folks too, looking at this line I copied about Douglass’s opposition to the Kansas exodus movement: The poor farmers caught up in migration fever, however, were not playing for history; they needed safety on their own land, an escape from the furnishing merchant, and hope.

In the first chunk of the book I was caught on the realities of literacy. Obviously because gaining it is a key part of Douglass’s narrative even in his own framing, but if I’m being honest, probably also because I have no memory of learning to read, only reading. His first wife, Anna Murray Douglass, remained largely illiterate. Communication through letters was mediated through first a family friend and later their eldest daughter, as Douglass travelled lecturing, the earlier ones the more dangerous due to pro-slavery attackers.

The other banal reality was that of finances. In his early career, there’s the careful way in which Douglass shifting political positions also means carefully figuring out what his new sources of income would be, a clear avenue through which the Garrisonians had hold of him. Douglass stayed the main breadwinner of his growing family of children and grandchildren, often through his lectures and books and then later through his positions as Marshal Of Columbia/Recorder Of Deeds. His adult children were clearly pained by their inability to be truly independent and having to rely on him.

Other quick bullet point thoughts:

• Douglass’s reaction to John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid: 100% agree with the spirit of it, but this is terrible planning and I cannot join it for those reasons
• Douglass and Pitts are baller for eloping and not caring that it’d piss off literally all their relatives imo. And a whole bunch of other people who apparently had very strong opinions on acceptable marriage candidates.
• Ottilie Assing was...such a character. I don’t even know if I like her but she’s fascinating - this German atheist who becomes close friends with Douglass (even as they butt heads sometimes about religion), translates his work, clearly head-over-heels for him while making condescending comments about his wife, and then the tragic ending of her own life
• A sweet excerpt of his grandkid's memories of him as a grandfather - couldn't disturb him while he worked, but he would always eventually be a boisterous, fun, playmate for their entertainment.

Hullmetal Girls by Emily Skrutskie

YA sci-fi where a girl from the super-fancy part of the Fleet and a girl from the super-not-fancy part of the Fleet become cyborg soldiers and butt heads while figuring out secrets. It was fine? About average for the genre YA I’ve read.

I liked the ragtag squad of misfits, complicated by cyborg mind-sharing. (It seems like a fun setup for AUs) I was way more into Key’s story than Aisha’s, even though a rich kid facing reality is usually less my speed than a self-sacrificial older sibling. Key’s amnesia was one of the better executed throughlines, explaining everyone’s behaviour and the mistake she makes right before the climax. Aisha’s sister was a little too precious for a nine-year-old in her sense of fairness, so I couldn’t buy into it.

Comments

[flowersforgraves]

Have you read Fonda Lee's Green Bone Saga novels? I think she does some really interesting city-state things in that series as well (she treats it as a simultaneous homage to Hong Kong gangster films and high political drama).

[jaggedwolf]

Oooh, I have not. Premise looks fun, added to my to-read list.