Aron 2 Blue

Now on Netflix (sigh). I didn't watch it, I read the English edition. "The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu. What a weird thing. The start during the Cultural Revolution in China is really disturbing. A wholesale persecution of scientists and social elites that seems crazy. The zither bothered me. Ultra strong molecular wires - nanomaterials - can be strong under tension but not stand up to shear forces. How fast does it cut?  Unfolding a proton from higher dimensions so that it expands to the size of a planet but still has the mass of a proton - I don't think gravity would matter at all. It sorta hangs together, but is also wildly fantastic. Sci-fi, I guess?  I did enjoy the strangeness of the fairly direct translation. I liked everything enough to keep going and read the full trilogy. Recommended if you can overlook any issues caused by translation. 

SPOILERS I wanted to write down what I thought the major events of the first book because I'm re-reading the series so I can read the 5th book with everything fresh in my mind. Opening: Gavilar assassination by Szeth, truthless, assassin in white. Lashing to change gravity, stick objects together. Kaladin: we get his full back story, training as a surgeon growing up, joining the army to protect his little brother Tien, then having to watch him die. Later, he kills a shardbearer to protect his lighteye lord Amaram, then when he refuses to claim the shardblade because it caused the death of most of his squad, he has to watch the rest of his squad killed and is made a slave, so Amaram can claim the shards. This is told in flashbacks throughout the book. The main timeline follows him as a slave, meeting Syl the spren, then being made a bridgeman in Sadeas's army on the Shattered Plains. He despairs and nearly kills himself, Syl convinces him to try to help. He figures out how to tr...

John Green is really startling sometimes. He describes his work as a chaplain in a children's hospital, and that his work was not about questioning or communicating beliefs, but listening, and acknowledging other peoples' pain, without being able to offer a solution. "Don't just do something, stand there."

Hmm, read back in Jan and didn't finish a review. Lovely book, with lots of potential sub-text, but I think it's mostly about starting again with good people around you - and giving people who don't fit the mold a chance. An orc with a violent past starts a coffee shop, which is unheard of in this city. A succubus joins as a partner, who doesn't want to be judged by their species. And then there's the ratkin cook with extraordinary talents. Magic that helps and hurts, and a final redemption due to just being good people. The dire cat is an added bonus!

 "The Fault In Our Stars" by John Green. This is the book that launched John Green. And I get it - it is hard and touching and romantic and realistic and optimistic and depressing. Hazel Grace and Augustus both have cancer, are snarky teenagers, and they fall in love. "I don't want to be a grenade" hit me really hard.  And then Hank Green got cancer! Thankfully, his treatment was successful and he's back to normal health, because I like all-the-things that Hank and John have done, and I hope they keep doing for a long while.

Space empire, anyone? Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy, by Anne Leckie. Imperial Radch series . I picked the first one up for a book club I couldn't attend, and highly recommend it. It explores a number of deep themes, and I can see why it won all three major sci-fi awards. *** Spoilers *** Multiple minds, multiple viewpoints, single consciousness. The main character is a ship and most of it's crew, made up of "ancillaries". These humans are integrated into the ship's consciousness as additional brains/bodies. The author noted the difficulty of portraying a being with many viewpoints available to it, but I think they did an admirable job. Surveillance - what is a relationship like when the ship can sense everything about her crew except their thoughts? Gender - the main language does not have gendered pronouns, so all characters use she/her until specifically proven otherwise, and often the main character forgets. Imperialism - beings are not c...