i am curious to hear more about what you enjoyed about Eight Antidote, if you're willing to share! just because hearing what other people dig often gives me new perspective/appreciation/etc. there was something kind of conceptually neat about having a character who's simultaneously an observer/outsider (due to his age) and very much at the center of things (due to his status), and i got a vague feeling that the novel was trying to say something about the kind of empathy that comes from a place of quietude/detachment/youthfulness, though it didn't quite land for me.
re: Vernor Vinge: haiglehalgh i should really read his stuff! i've heard nothing but good things about A Fire Upon the Deep and A deepness in the Sky and they've both been on my to-read list forever, just, i'm such a slow reader alas!!! anyway i'm taking this as an excuse to bump them up the list a bit :P
re: Swarm: i'm so curious about (1) how much of Swarm's Deal TM Arkaday actually had mapped out in her head, and (2) how much of that was on the page and then had to be cut for editing/revision reasons... it seems like it's definitely possible Martine had more in an earlier draft, and just inadvisedly cut too much, and didn't realize that meant the reader just didn't have quite enough to go on for parsing him... i guess the more disappointing possibility is, Arkady just didn't have much of his culture/background/etc mapped out in her head, and thus there wasn't enough to actually put on the page, but that'd be disappointing :P i imagine the next book (if there is gonna be one) will be a long time coming, either way, so guess i'll have to content myself with idle speculation/fanfiction in the meantime, lol
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2021-08-23 08:36 pm (UTC)i am curious to hear more about what you enjoyed about Eight Antidote, if you're willing to share! just because hearing what other people dig often gives me new perspective/appreciation/etc. there was something kind of conceptually neat about having a character who's simultaneously an observer/outsider (due to his age) and very much at the center of things (due to his status), and i got a vague feeling that the novel was trying to say something about the kind of empathy that comes from a place of quietude/detachment/youthfulness, though it didn't quite land for me.
re: Vernor Vinge: haiglehalgh i should really read his stuff! i've heard nothing but good things about A Fire Upon the Deep and A deepness in the Sky and they've both been on my to-read list forever, just, i'm such a slow reader alas!!! anyway i'm taking this as an excuse to bump them up the list a bit :P
re: Swarm: i'm so curious about (1) how much of Swarm's Deal TM Arkaday actually had mapped out in her head, and (2) how much of that was on the page and then had to be cut for editing/revision reasons... it seems like it's definitely possible Martine had more in an earlier draft, and just inadvisedly cut too much, and didn't realize that meant the reader just didn't have quite enough to go on for parsing him... i guess the more disappointing possibility is, Arkady just didn't have much of his culture/background/etc mapped out in her head, and thus there wasn't enough to actually put on the page, but that'd be disappointing :P i imagine the next book (if there is gonna be one) will be a long time coming, either way, so guess i'll have to content myself with idle speculation/fanfiction in the meantime, lol