Malazan Empire: polishgenius - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Cause, on 21 August 2024 - 06:17 PM, said:

(I haven't played this one yet but it's meant to be well good)

amphibian, on 16 August 2024 - 05:32 AM, said:

It's definitely on the list but since, in a burst of optimism, bought about twenty books to throw onto my to-read pile in about five days last week, it's gonna have to wait a bit.

polishgenius, on 15 August 2024 - 10:04 PM, said:

Finished this. Yeah, entertaining slice of backstabbing, manipulation and blowing shit up, led by fun characters. With, it has to be said, a background of genocide survivorship that makes it more than just a throwaway romp.



It's increasingly clear that a lot of the stuff that was previously the domain of medieval epic fantasy has been taken over, in popularity or at least publisher trust, by space opera and space fantasy. Obviouly the two/three genres have always been related (it's no coincidence that most of the 80s/90s 'Tolkienite' fantasy boom had as much plot similarity to Star Wars as LotR really) but there's a really notable increase in amount and variety of big, epic, dance-of-empires type space stuff in the last ten years, and getting more so.


I can't say I'm displeased by that.

I read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which was good.


Then I read Robert VS Reddick's Master Assassins, the latest in his more recent series after concluding the Chathrand sequence. Bit of a switch in a few ways, one being that it's gone from a very ocean-centered setting to a desert, but more importantly, the Chathrand series is quite whimsical in places whereas this is... not. It's also, at least in the first book, a lot more focused- that ties in with the whimsy, a bit, but the first in general was quite sprawling and had a lot of strands going on. Whereas this clearly has details in the background but the plot itself is knife-sharp. Basically a 300-page chase thriller in a magical desert.



Anyway, it's really good, I tore through it- but I do have to add a warning, in that the inciting incident of the plot is that one of the evil faction rapes a child, and while it's not graphic or anything it's not off-page and I really did not need that in my fantasy romp. Quite frankly if I didn't already have trust for Redick from the first series I'm not sure if I'd have continued. I get why it was there- Redick needed the main character reacting with mindless rage so he has him stumble upon it- but I feel like he could have presented it differently at least. Especially since after that moment, though sexual violence is something that comes up in the plot, it isn't anything like that kind of edgy.




Anyway now I'm on to These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs, a space opera of the imperial skullduggery type that won the most recent Philip K Dick award. Very sharp opening.




I'm on a bit of a roll these last two weeks, which is nice beccause I've been reading very slowly till now this year.

Honestly if you remember the broad strokes it's probably better not to get hung up on the details, because some of them change. There's a very GotM thing where Cameron clearly decided on a different direction between the writing and publication of book 1 and writing the rest, and has to awkwardly maneuver some character interactions to get them where he wants them to be. Also just forgot some things (iirc at least one character's name changes with no warning, although that's a small enough detail it's possible it was cleared up in later editions, I don't know).

I think there are like four separate questions going on with Olympic breakdancing and Raygun in particular:

1) Is breakdancing, athletically and physically, within the paremeters of a sport? Sure, why not. Gymnastics has the same theme of subjective scoring rather than objective goals, and there are way less physical sports.

2) Is it a problem that someone who is shit at breakdancing turned out at the Olympics? Not inherently, no. There's always people who qualified from countries who never do that sport and Olympics history would be poorer without them. Eric the Eel is an icon.

3) Should breakdancing be an Olympic sport? I actually don't see any problem with it from the 'olympic' side of things- lesser known sports getting a showcase is part of the charm of the games (I'm also all for BMX, and I'd like to see things like roller skating introduced). There might, however, be a problem from the 'breakdancing' side- that is, there's a cultural background and context to breakdancing that doesn't seem suited to sportification, and making it an olympic discipline removes it from that. I have no insight into breakdancing at all myself so I can't judge that at all, but I've seen that put forward.

That actually feeds into the fourth question:

4) Should Raygun have been at the Olympics? Was she really the best breakdancer Australia could find? I fucking doubt it. And the fact that she's a professor of cultural studies who once wrote, for example, an article where she's essentially whining that it's unfair that the cultural cachet of 'authenticity' bars her from real credibility... it leaves a bad taste. It feels like she must know she's not the best but took advantage of being relatively wealthy and having prominence or contacts to get herself the spot. Or at least, she didn't correct the organisers when whatever tryouts they had didn't find anyone better. It's possible that's unfair, but someone fucked up for her to be there, surely.