Wot I Read Again

This one was…cute. A shapeshifting monster falls in love with a monster hunter. It was cute in that way that defanged horror kind of is where the horrific monsters of yesteryear can't compete with the real-world monsters of today for terror so we repurpose them into cute and snuggly little guys who are objectively adorable by virtue of nothing else in the world being attractive. It got a little tiresome by the end because this monster – who struggles to understand the nuance and subtlety in human communication – also can understand things like trauma and consent and other complicated human psychological and social concepts. It's…fine though.

All of the other humans beside the love interest are objectively horrible people in one way or another and that makes it okay for the monster to be monstrous because don't you know? The real monster was humanity all along.

Yawn.

Still, I guess it was cute. The monster's voice was well realized and the ending - as a member of a marginalized community with her own parental issues - was satisfying, at least.

I'm not the biggest fan of Japanese light novels; I don't find them (or the broader YA Fiction segment in general) particularly engaging to read due to simpler prose and more direct narration. No shade to you if that's what you like; it's just personal taste for me.

But, I finished the second season of Apothecary Diaries in a two day shotgun blast however because the mix of historical detail and Sherlock Holmes-style deduction grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. I thought I would make a go at trying to read the novels because fuck waiting two years between seasons.

Volume 1 was a big strange; it felt almost like a prototype version of the Apothecary Diaries. It lacked a lot of Maomao's internal thoughts and some of her comments/reactions towards the events around her. Volume 2 definitely seemed a step up in prose quality and felt much more like the show in terms of characterization. Both were quick and easy reads and fairly strictly followed the plot of the show so I can assume the upcoming anime season will follow in the same vein.

I'm likely to continue with the series since, as I mentioned, they're quick and easy reads and can be done in a couple of hours. I find Maomao's character and the mysteries to be compelling enough to overlook simpler prose.

This is the first Warhammer 40k novel that I've read. It's a franchise/universe that I've always been interested in the lore/worldbuilding of but haven't really experienced outside of online videos, video games like Dawn of War, and internet memes.

This one came highly recommended and I found it a really entertaining read. Took about a hundred pages or so to get the setup which was a bit of a chore, but I enjoyed the novel immensely after that. I loved the idea of taking "deep time" and turning it into a bit of a comedy novel as the characters kept coming back to the same planet every couple of millennia and experiencing how it's changed after the last time they fought and fucked the place up. The voices of the characters felt well realized, the ending was fun.

I'm not the biggest fan of the "five pages of combat description detailing every swing and counter attack and charge" but I understand that I only have like…a foot in the pool as the typical target audience of these books and those sections were easy enough to skim so I can get back to the Statler and Waldorf shenanigans of two withered, decrepit academics who happen to be immortal killing machines being petty and spiteful to one another.

I genuinely, though, wanted more of Trazyn's librarian servant. The novel covers several million years worth of time because, again, deep time and immortal killing machines, but there's a section where he delves into the culture of the human colony that developed on the planet (as a result of the last time he and Oriken devastated it which is, itself, an interesting subthread because the culture that develops is partly based on those events i probably should have been an anthropologist) and he uses a human librarian that he's brainwashed as his source for books and information. It's a really grimdark concept, but it's executed with a degree of humanity because the narrative explains taht Trazyn showed kindness to him as recompense for his assistant by helping his family become rise up the ranks in the Imperium hierarchy. Basically, despite being a mind-controlled servant, Trazyn treats him better than the Imperium would. It was a little bit grim and a little bit heartfelt and that stuff is like crack to me.

I love the lore and worldbuilding of 40k and some of the games are fun, but I'm not really one for like…that kind of military fiction where its many pages of describing Toys You Can Buy bashing up against one another for a while so I'm kind of tentatively exploring some of the Warhammer 40k fiction backlog. Next up on my list are the Eisenhorn books.

This one has been something of a literary white whale for me for a long time. As someone interested in medieval theology, medieval history, detective novels, and when literature talks about other literature, this one should be right up my alley. But everytime I start it, I end up having to put it down. Either I bounce off its (notoriously difficulty) start or I find something else more interesting or blah blah blah.

But I managed to finish it and I'm really, genuinely glad that I did. I loved the way it both acknowledges and celebrates the detective trope (I mean, William of Baskerville?) while also twisting it on its head with how it ends. It manages to be a very humanistic novel at a time when I feel like I need to be reminded of humanism and it's in a novel that's full of fear, death, and all around general human ugliness. Or maybe I just see too much of myself in William and am completely missing the point?

I see a lot of people critiquing the novel's central premise in that laughter is anti-dogma and it's important to laugh at all knowledge, dogma, and institutions but I think that's taking the argument too far. The novel takes place during and around intense persecution of heresies and a lot of political unrest and I think what Brother William is arguing is that laughter is an important tool in countering that sort of oppression; basically: the church needs to lighten the fuck up.

But (and I think Eco would approve of this) I'm living at a time and a place when politcians are trying to make the case that American cities are under siege by "violent antifa terrorists" and the mainstream media is conveniently not showing any footage of them because what the viewer would see is ICE agents wearing head-to-toe tactical gear looking like they're ready for war….facing down guys in inflatable frog suits.

Brother William respects the learning and the quest for knowledge and even the quest for truth (even if he doesn't quite agree that a universal truth exists). He just argues that authority (read: all types, not just political) – especially authority that does not deserve respect – are challenged by laughter as it grievously undermines their authority.

"Of us God demands that we apply our reason to many obscure things about which Scripture has left us free to decide. And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation. Thus, you see, to undermine the false authority of an absurd proposition that offends reason, laughter can sometimes also be a suitable instrument. And laughter serves to confound the wicked and to make their foolishness evident."

Basically if totalitarianistic dogma is strengthened by seriousness and authority-enforced respectfulness, then it is weakened by laughter and folly.

(Which is, itself, reinforced by the way the ending comes about but I'm trying not to be too spoilerrific here).

I definitely can see myself reading this again. And again. And again. A reviewer of the work described the work as being like the Aedificium in the novel, the library that forms the crux around which the plot revolves: answers do not come easily as you go through it. To fully understand it, you have to go through multiple times, to allow yourself to be drawn down blind alleys and side-passages. The novel is more of a meditative walk in an enclosed abbey than it is a novel and I love it for that.

So I just finished this one today and haven't really fully put together my thoughts on it. There's a lot that I really loved - it was truly compelling. It had that tinge of bureaucratic absurdism I love (there's a civil war brewing in, of all things, the Guild of Elevator Inspectors) and it's definitely a hard-boiled novel which is like catnip to me. I enjoyed it - its world (one where the elevator is the most important technology) felt absolutely real and vivid despite the absurdity of the premise and I really enjoyed some of the segues into Daily Elevator Facts and would like to subscribe to more.

The ending felt a little….fast and I think I need more time to process what the author was going for. Effectively what I got out of it was that: if you build your life on the message of a person, you should be prepared to carry the work of that person forward to the next generation - at least that's how I read the novel's ending. The main character experiences a foundational breakdown when she learns the truth about the origins of Intuitionism but because the novel is an allegory and not really about elevator inspections, it's okay that the ending is structured that way.

I might have more to say in my next post once my thoughts have solidified into something stronger. Either way, I found it compelling and I loved it.