Never been to this specific library (never even been to the state) but i do really respect a library having a tumblr page.
Anyhow, do you know of any interesting science fantasy? It would appear i've read all the fiction of my local library, and would like to expand my horizons a bit.
We love an expanded horizon! Here's what our staff recommend for science-fantasy:
Abby suggests The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher featuring airships, cats with their own language that only some can understand, and elaborate world-building. (Adult)
Jae suggests:
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao (Young adult. giant robots powered up by murder)
Zodiac by Romina Russell (Young adult. A young leader must unite the houses of her galaxy against an ancient threat.)
and tumblr's favorite lesbians in space, Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Adult. Swords, necromancy, extremely dubious science)
Sarah suggests Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. The series has about two dozen books, starting with Dragonsdawn, and puts the reader in what feels like a semi-feudal society where dragons and their riders face a dwindling role in society. The reemergence of a terrifying threat and the rise of a young noblewoman change the planet's fate. As the series continues, you begin to realize that the entire society is rooted in scientific plans - to tell too much would ruin the story. But starting with Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon should set the reader up for a good experience. (Young Adult. Note: the original version of this post marked these as YA, but though some books in the Pern series are YA these particular ones are shelved in Adult. We also originally had the reading order as Dragonsdawn, Dragonflight, and then The White Dragon but that's been corrected - this is what happens when every work has the word dragon in the title!)
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Can't remember if I made this post before: my working theory for green dragons being allegedly sterile and golds reflexively vomiting out firestone instead of digesting it, when we know green & gold firelizards have zero problems with firestone and are both fertile, come from the same root.
I think something went wrong in the sizing-up process. That somehow, when Kitti Ping made them big, an issue resulted in which processing firestone even once affected the dragons' ability to form eggshells. And that when that happens, the brood auto-aborts internally and is reabsorbed into the dam's body.
Kitti Ping caught the eggshell issue in time and added a reflexive vomit response to firestone in golds. She crunched the math in this crisis and decided greens being fighters was more important than them brooding, but wanted to ensure no one could carelessly sterilize every female they had and so genetically coded a failsafe into the golds.
Unfortunately no one found her notes, and so didn't realize that if you refrain from ever giving firestone to a green dragon, they'd be able to bolster the populace.
In this episode, we look at how Dragonsdawn recontextualizes the rest of the Pern books, discuss the role of grief on Pern, and finally talk about the elephant dolphins in the room.
Transcript is available on our website!
Warning for a brief discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation, and a more extended one about eugenics.
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Posting for the first time in ages because I got ahold of a copy of Dragonseye and I’m reading it for actually the first time ever! Exciting things to come
So far I’m entertained by Dragonsdawn callbacks, especially in names - the Telgar Holders are named Tashvi and Salda, and the benden weyrleaders are M’shall and Irene. I feel that this is goofy.
Not even halfway through dragonsdawn yet, so maybe it'll be better again, but after a certain icky scene between Tarvi and Sallah:
I now headcanon Tarvi as asexual and give him a good written way of including it, where he can just be excited about his caves and discoveries and also bond with Sallah but doesn't get drugged and/or pressured into having sex with her just bc ~procreation~ ugh yikes
And maybe they will get together but just not in the traditional way they seem to push extra hard or maybe they stay off friends, but either way he gets a happy life on Pern, exploring this new world
This is a heckin weird book and I started off enjoying it until I Was Not Enjoying it.
The intro seemed interesting enough: we’ve got people who are escaping a variety of circumstances (including retired war veterans). They’re looking to colonize an uninhabited planet, which neatly sidesteps major issues in other colonial literatures, since, well, there’s no one sentient to object!
Personally, the sciencey stuff seems fine... I’m nota science person to begin with, and I was mildly interested by their tech and how it was described. Nothing stood out as weird. Maybe funny, when they refer to film or tapes, since we’ve established this is in our future and the colonists are often from actual places: Ireland, etc.
I did find it weird that they name a bunch of places after places on Earth. Why bother? Why not just make names that actually communicate something about the landscape they’re in? This is somethig that obviously colonists did here to North America—every city I’ve lived in has roads that are named ‘Hillside’ or ‘Pinevale’ or something (even if there are no hills or pines). In my hometown, Beacon Hill was a region my high school was in (and I’m not sure there was ever a beacon or a hill); in my current city, Beacon Hill is a park. It’s stupid and I hate it. Name things organically, or else it feels WEIRD. (In books. Obviously IRL just use the indigenous names and maybe please do a land back, like with Haida Gwaii!)
I know, I’m yelling about colonial problems at an author who has a weird obsession with bloodlines. And who killed off all the black characters in the first Threadfall. Uh huh. Moving on.
There are too many characters in this book, by the way. There are too many AND they are kinda bland. They run together. I don’t know why I should care about any of them. It’s weird that it’s supposed to be multicultural or whatever but it never feels like it. The way other cultures are represented is kinda uncomfortable.
Spoilers and stuff upcoming.
Paul and Emily seem like they should have Main Character Energy, but neither does. They’re important people or something but the narrative never makes you feel it. There’s a whole bunch of names that keep coming up but I can never rememeber who they are or what they do... Pol, Bay etc. Idk.
Sorka and Sean are obviously telegraphed as some of the first dragonriders, they’re the sort of Adam and Eve first kids of Pern, and they’re boring and I grew to kinda dislike them by the end of the book because they’re just like Generic Hetero Couple and it was very yawn.
I liked Kenjo, I though he was going to be The First Dragonrider because the book goes on and on about his flying ability, the way he can conserve fuel, all that. But actually he dies halfway through and I hate that actually, because it feels like any build up with this character never went anywhere. His death was pointless but the story didn’t even make it about the pointlessness, so like... why?
Sallah’s seduction of Tarvi, a pretty man, was awkward as fuck. She drugs him and they fuck and then later she’s like ‘why doesn’t he seem to love me?’ BECAUSE YOU DRUGGED HIM? OH MY GOD????? At least Dragon Sex Pollen gives you an out! There’s no excuse to for this nonsense! And then when she dies, Tarvi—changing his name to her last name, Telgar—has this ‘oh I DID love her after all’ grief thing but it comes across as super contrived.
Look, I stand by actually liking Lessa/F’lar, but I’ve pretty much hated every single other romantic relationship in this series (except for Moreta/Alessan ... Moreta is the best book).
Speaking of Sallah’s tragic death aboard the orbiting, fuelless colony ship—her murderer is the Obviously A Villain Avril Bitra. Who is a mean gold-digger lady who is also a slut, and Anne, did you need to work something out with this one? Avril is set up as a villain but instead of being a threat to anything, she basically does a stupid and dies, but manages to take Sallah down with her. But her inexplicably meanness with Sallah has a weird sexual undertone to it? I’d be into it if I didn’t hate it. Like. The scene where Sallah is cut up and Avril is tormenting her is SO CHARGED and it could’ve been so good except it’s... it’s just not. It feels incredibly out of place! It’s the climax of the book in terms of intensity, but it’s in the middle and we haven’t even gotten to the dragons yet!
Thread, by contrast, wasn’t even that dramatic. Oh noo, there’s Thread.
And the dragons feel sort of rushed into the end of the book. There’s something weird about the biologist and her granddaughter. They’re Chinese, and everyone loves the grandmother, but apparently the granddaughter is an unpleasant bitch and there’s no explanation offered at all. I have no idea why the characterizations are so weird and awkward, but they really are.
How many times can I say ‘weird and awkward’ in one review???
Also, why does that one MAGA-style asshole, Ted Tubberman, try to bioenginner felines? What even was that? There’s literally nothing relevant about it? WHY WAS IT INCLUDED? Why wasn’t it cut?? It doesn’t do anything for the plot or characters except, I guess, kill off a loose end? Who was already exiled?
By the way, the glee with which everyone exiles this dude is so weird. ‘We didn’t kill him! We just ostracized him forever!’ Wow. Just. Wow. I don’t even know what to say.
In sum, basically, this book is a structural mess with bad characters. It had a fun dragonfighting sequence three pages from the end, and that was probably my favourite part.
I don’t know how a book with so much stuff happening crammed into it could be so boring, but here we are. Like, this wasn’t Nerilka-level bad: it didn’t do any character assassinations because it wasn’t a sequel to anything that came before. But it was a slog, and it didn’t even have the grace to have a lot of dragon-related screen time to offset it.
