Reading

So, the title said something about the Argonaughts or maybe the Hugonuts?

Me, using correct spelling: Those are two entirely different groups of people. Is there any way you can narrow this down even a little?

Them, repeating the wrong spelling: Nope, absolutely not!

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Where the Axe Is Buried

Where the Axe Is Buried, Ray Nayler, 2025 science fiction novel. Some interesting stuff going on here, but it didn't quite come together in the end for me; I went back and did some rereading which helped, but I continue to have various issues with this book which I am of course going to talk about at length as I do, behind the cut.

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Anyways. Interesting book and I'll be curious to see whether it makes the Hugo ballot with his related novella having just won.

So, I've now created a DW feed

for

chopwood_carrywater_feed. I thought that getting it in my email and on my reading page would help prompt me to call (or email, listen, I have limits) my congresscritters.

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current events

This one will be [curr ev]

Current rumors engulfing Bluesky have me recalling an old Communist-era Russian joke:

Every day, a man walks to a news stand and pays for a copy of Pravda, unfolds it, looks at the front page, and throws it in the trash. Every day he does this, for months, until finally the news seller asks the man, "So what is it you are looking for on the front page every day?"

"I'm checking for an obituary."

"Comrade, the obituaries aren't on the front page."

"Oh, this one will be."

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Among Ghosts

Among Ghosts, Rachel Hartman, 2025 YA fantasy (or possibly middle-grade? really heavy/graphically violent middle-grade??). Set in Goredd some years/decades/(centuries??) prior to Amy or Seraphina/Tess, but was written to stand alone and imo would read just fine if you've never read any of her other work. There is a *lot* going on here in terms of plot elements/characters/things needing resolution but I felt like it all fit together and hung together. More emotionally resonant for me than the second Tess book. Some really heavy/bleak events and backstory but I thought Hartman handled it well (matter-of-factly without downplaying); she also did a really nice job with the lighter and happier stuff. A sequence involving a bird was just gorgeous (as well as doing a neat job of letting her fill in some of the stuff happening outside the protagonist's POV). I do recommend this but I wouldn't give it to a younger reader without getting a rundown on some of the content, which I suppose I will put behind this cut.

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Second cut for more specific spoilers ( Read more... )

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Wanted, A Gentleman

Wanted, A Gentleman, KJ Charles, romance. (Not actually sure if it was a novel or novella.) I'm behind on writing up books so I'm doing them easiest-post-first instead of chronologically. The publisher of a personal-ads newspaper teams up with a formerly enslaved businessman to find the eloping daughter of the latter's former enslavers, with a lot of attention to what it might have felt like to be trying to make long rapid journeys by stagecoach. Charles is so good at making her characters people (and people who I feel like I haven't met before, even if they are also tropey or types).