What I'm saying is this series feels more like this great big galloping thing than a book, and I'm not sure a conventional book write-up really captures the feeling of the thing
Yeah, I felt that too when trying to write about this one -- it's an edifice and a conversation, but it's hard to talk about this book/the series in a book-shaped way.
and "no one is this dumb/courteous/earnest in wartime, please stop straining my credulity."
I could kind of accept those bits, not because they felt realistic to me but because it kept reminding me (as the book explicitly did) that these people (minus Achilles) only know war from textbooks and LARPing.
how utterly incurious everyone seemed about the source of the global radio silence, and the global car hijacking, like—did no one care? or was there just literally no one around competent enough to try to find out the source? Neither of these, uh, reflect particularly well on the populace of Terra Ignota.
I'd assumed that most people accepted the propaganda that this was more Utopia shenanigans, but you're right that that doesn't reflect well on the population. I guess it was really good Brillist propaganda :P
I found the Cousins' tiring guns simultaneously clever and dubious as hell;
I did like the way the Cousins did a lot of effective-at-minimizing-harm but super shady things in the way (the Gorgons, and also the abductions or the people prone to violence and the little villages for them -- talk about dubious as hell).
* (a lot of the joy I find in these books is laughing at some of the images that are either intentionally or unintentionally silly via juxtaposition! does anyone else feel that way?)
Definitely! Though I think mostly the intentionally incongruous ones.
"here's everyone's Real Bio Genders; check this answer key against your test" sort of thing? I've not been invested in the gender stuff in this series in general (it's just the bit of storytelling that I've personally found kind of shaky/inconsistent and thus have been determinedly ignoring), but even so, it felt a little like cheating!
Interesting! I'd been dubious about the gender thing at the start and found it more interesting with every successive book as I got more of a sense of what it was there for, and I did feel like that scene -- or, rather, 9A's realization of the victory against Madame that this scene implies -- mostly paid off the gender stuff, in a way I wasn't expecting.
and apparently have no interest in a PR firm for changing that impression?
I bet it's 'cos PR mavens are all in Gordian :P No, but actually, I felt like while Mycroft definitely and apparently 9A as well are Utopia partisans, I didn't think the narrative was trying explicitly to be (though it's definitely stacking the deck a bit). I do feel like Mycroft, like Cato, is a Utopian at heart, for all that he did not choose a Hive, and so his sympathies lie there. I was more surprised about 9A, but actually I think 9A has a tendency to think the best of people who are nice to/around them, so maybe the Utopia stanning is partly Huxley's presence/help and partly listening to Mycroft about how awesome Utopia is, IDK...
* Alternatively: I think the narrative wants me to think the Brillists are evil, or at least not to love them, but joke's on the narrative, babey!
I didn't get that sense either. Or, rather, Brillists certainly did a lot of extremely shady stuff, but I thought it fell under the same general "shady stuff for the greater good" umbrella as Utopia and Cousins. (But maybe that's my Gordian bias showing, Felix Faust has been one of my favorites for several books as well, and this one only slightly dampened my delight in him.)
the whole argument Felix gives for Brillism vs Utopia was so delightful and funny to me because I have absolutely heard this barfight in San Francisco;
OK, this is a delightful characterization of the trunk war, and actually makes me like that whole setup (which I found one of the least plausible things in the whole structure) a lot more. I will be thinking about it purely in these terms from here on XD
I think Ganymede had the best death—that duel! classy! cool! Ganymede-y! crushing, but at least he died in a very Humanist way
Agreed wholeheartedly! Ganymede was another one of my favorites over the last couple of books, but what a way to go out!
That is a really good point about Nurturism and set-sets, it was kind of dropped, wasn't it... I didn't even notice because of everything else going on, but what do we actually get as far as set-set resolution? Eureka and another set-set nominated for office, but was there anything else?
* in general UN lady has some good fucking points.
YEP!
(P.S. You seem to spend a lot of time in San Fran! If you're ever here once we get out of These Unprecedented Times and are up for hanging out, let me know! I probably won't be up for a bar fight about digital immortality vs going to space, but I am always up for nerding out about Terra Ignota or any other shared books and stuff :)
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Date: 2021-12-14 04:40 pm (UTC)Yeah, I felt that too when trying to write about this one -- it's an edifice and a conversation, but it's hard to talk about this book/the series in a book-shaped way.
and "no one is this dumb/courteous/earnest in wartime, please stop straining my credulity."
I could kind of accept those bits, not because they felt realistic to me but because it kept reminding me (as the book explicitly did) that these people (minus Achilles) only know war from textbooks and LARPing.
how utterly incurious everyone seemed about the source of the global radio silence, and the global car hijacking, like—did no one care? or was there just literally no one around competent enough to try to find out the source? Neither of these, uh, reflect particularly well on the populace of Terra Ignota.
I'd assumed that most people accepted the propaganda that this was more Utopia shenanigans, but you're right that that doesn't reflect well on the population. I guess it was really good Brillist propaganda :P
I found the Cousins' tiring guns simultaneously clever and dubious as hell;
I did like the way the Cousins did a lot of effective-at-minimizing-harm but super shady things in the way (the Gorgons, and also the abductions or the people prone to violence and the little villages for them -- talk about dubious as hell).
* (a lot of the joy I find in these books is laughing at some of the images that are either intentionally or unintentionally silly via juxtaposition! does anyone else feel that way?)
Definitely! Though I think mostly the intentionally incongruous ones.
"here's everyone's Real Bio Genders; check this answer key against your test" sort of thing? I've not been invested in the gender stuff in this series in general (it's just the bit of storytelling that I've personally found kind of shaky/inconsistent and thus have been determinedly ignoring), but even so, it felt a little like cheating!
Interesting! I'd been dubious about the gender thing at the start and found it more interesting with every successive book as I got more of a sense of what it was there for, and I did feel like that scene -- or, rather, 9A's realization of the victory against Madame that this scene implies -- mostly paid off the gender stuff, in a way I wasn't expecting.
and apparently have no interest in a PR firm for changing that impression?
I bet it's 'cos PR mavens are all in Gordian :P No, but actually, I felt like while Mycroft definitely and apparently 9A as well are Utopia partisans, I didn't think the narrative was trying explicitly to be (though it's definitely stacking the deck a bit). I do feel like Mycroft, like Cato, is a Utopian at heart, for all that he did not choose a Hive, and so his sympathies lie there. I was more surprised about 9A, but actually I think 9A has a tendency to think the best of people who are nice to/around them, so maybe the Utopia stanning is partly Huxley's presence/help and partly listening to Mycroft about how awesome Utopia is, IDK...
* Alternatively: I think the narrative wants me to think the Brillists are evil, or at least not to love them, but joke's on the narrative, babey!
I didn't get that sense either. Or, rather, Brillists certainly did a lot of extremely shady stuff, but I thought it fell under the same general "shady stuff for the greater good" umbrella as Utopia and Cousins. (But maybe that's my Gordian bias showing, Felix Faust has been one of my favorites for several books as well, and this one only slightly dampened my delight in him.)
the whole argument Felix gives for Brillism vs Utopia was so delightful and funny to me because I have absolutely heard this barfight in San Francisco;
OK, this is a delightful characterization of the trunk war, and actually makes me like that whole setup (which I found one of the least plausible things in the whole structure) a lot more. I will be thinking about it purely in these terms from here on XD
I think Ganymede had the best death—that duel! classy! cool! Ganymede-y! crushing, but at least he died in a very Humanist way
Agreed wholeheartedly! Ganymede was another one of my favorites over the last couple of books, but what a way to go out!
That is a really good point about Nurturism and set-sets, it was kind of dropped, wasn't it... I didn't even notice because of everything else going on, but what do we actually get as far as set-set resolution? Eureka and another set-set nominated for office, but was there anything else?
* in general UN lady has some good fucking points.
YEP!
(P.S. You seem to spend a lot of time in San Fran! If you're ever here once we get out of These Unprecedented Times and are up for hanging out, let me know! I probably won't be up for a bar fight about digital immortality vs going to space, but I am always up for nerding out about Terra Ignota or any other shared books and stuff :)