Reading Update: Exhalation, The Tea Master And The Detective, Seizing Power, Nona The Ninth

[jaggedwolf]

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Collection of short stories. Before this the only thing I’d read of Ted Chiang’s was Story Of Your Life, which was a fun concept but didn’t move me much. That throughline pretty much held up here - for all of these stories I enjoyed their thorough exploration of a concept, with the emotional underpinnings only landing for me about half the time. (Which is a higher than usual hit rate for me reading a short story collection IIRC). Am again reminded I should read more sci-fi short stories.

Notes on my favorites below.

Exhalation: Loved the robot self-dissection, didn’t care that much for the long denoument on the inevitability of entropy.

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling: Possibly the story I started out most skeptical of, because blah blah new tech ruining what it means to be human blah blah but then its dual narratives lived up to the title - the journalist narrative worked a tad better here for me, with its conclusion of facing up to the reality of the person you are and that perhaps being worth doing.

Omphalos: The Earth in this world is a Young one, but there are still surprises left in store. Was always gonna be a sucker for the conclusion here.

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard

Via a rec from shadaras, a (very!) loose Sherlock Holmes adaptation where Watson is a sentient spaceship still recuperating from a terrible injury and Sherlock is a scholar-detective, set in a Vietnamese-inspired galactic empire. Their names are The Shadow’s Child and Long Chau respectively.

This was fun! The Shadow’s Child is appropriately skeptical of Long Chau, and hurting from their time in deep space, and also hurting for cash. Long Chau is irreverent, has her own agenda, and as is very important for me in Sherlocks, has a hidden fierce morality of her own.

(I have a tangential thought here about Sherlock adaptations that take the idea of Watson as someone injured in war as something with lasting repercussions for Watson, when the Doyle stories rarely mention it beyond descriptions of the injuries. I think I’m neutral on it? Miss Sherlock’s Wato and this book’s The Shadow’s Child both get a lot of interesting stuff out of it. But if Elementary’s Joan Watson had kept the army doctor background I wouldn’t have needed her to have that kind of story. Perhaps the difference is partially that OG Watson’s is set in a very specific place and time and partially that character narratives in long-running procedurals are going to be different LOL)

(And now I’m distracted by the fact that army doctor -> sober companion would’ve been a compelling shift on its own, more so than surgery mistake)

Anyway! Appreciate Long Chau’s unhinged act of trust in The Shadow’s Child towards the end of the book, would not mind reading more of these guys.

Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic Of Military Coups - Naunihal Singh

Non-fiction book about, surprise surprise, military coups. Essentially argues two main points (1) the most important dynamics in military coups are intra-military ones, as opposed to anything to do with civil society or the government (2) military coups are best modeled as coordination games, not battles or elections - coups don’t succeed due to superior military force on the challengers side or popular dissent among the ranks, but due to enough people in the military thinking that a coup is going to succeed.

Book supports these theses with an examination of eight coups, seven in Ghana and one in the USSR. The Ghanian chapters are supported with interviews with the various military actors who were present, some who even were the coup-makers.

Enjoyed this book, also got to learn a bunch about Ghana which I had known literally nothing about other than its capital and location.

Nona The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Shout-out to library holds coming through. Brief thoughts under the cut.

• Lol John is very hatable for me, almost a little bit for how he cannot bear to be hated. Taking away their memories of the pre-resurrection world because they’d blame themselves? Nah bro you were scared they’d blame you.
• Augustine was right. Cristabel is an insane fanatic and I am utterly terrified of her! How do you get from “you should set office hours like Jesus failed to do” to “yo dude I know you’re in a nuclear standoff what if I killed myself in front of you would that help”
• Nona :(
• I dunno man I’m bummed out that the kid had to die even if the kid was actually the earth or whatever. Now she’s in that Barbie body she doesn’t like and is probably very different.
• Paul :/
• Look I get it
• But I am also the person who put off watching Steven Universe for ages because fusion is instinctively a body-horror (mind-horror?) concept to me
• And I really liked Pal and Cam this book too. The trading off of the body, the discussions, the planning.
• Also the duel! Very good stuff there
• I doubt Paul will live up to them for me.
• (suddenly thinking of the Bible Paul and laughing at the idea of all of Saul’s friends going wtf what do you mean he’s Christian now and also changed his name, I forget if his old life ever comes up again in the Bible or not.)
• It’s very funny that with every book I care less about Gideon? She’s a prince, I guess.
• Pyrrha! A fucking delight, glad she got to survive.
• This book was so bad for my inability to keep track of physical descriptions. I thought last book with the eyes was bad for me.
• Have also given up on trying to understand when what bodies were moved where. It’s all vibes now baby.