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The second book in the Lilith's Brood trilogy, this story takes place years after the arrival of Oankali aliens in …
Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth—the last stage of the planet’s final …
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Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the …
Now this was the sort of pirate queen adventure I was expecting when I had read Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea. (That book is historical pirate politics and internal musings about power and this book is more fantasy adventure; I liked them both, they're just different.)
Amina al-Sarafi is a middle-aged pirate queen who gets blackmailed out of retirement into "one last job", gets the criminal gang back together, and ultimately faces off against a sorcerer and his sea monster (as if the cover doesn't give you this hint). (Also, gender stuff! You love to see it.)
It's set in the same world as her Daevabad trilogy although you don't need to have read those books at all. (You might appreciate a single character briefly appearing as well as the lawyer parrots, but that's about the extent of it.) My opinion here is that this is …
Now this was the sort of pirate queen adventure I was expecting when I had read Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea. (That book is historical pirate politics and internal musings about power and this book is more fantasy adventure; I liked them both, they're just different.)
Amina al-Sarafi is a middle-aged pirate queen who gets blackmailed out of retirement into "one last job", gets the criminal gang back together, and ultimately faces off against a sorcerer and his sea monster (as if the cover doesn't give you this hint). (Also, gender stuff! You love to see it.)
It's set in the same world as her Daevabad trilogy although you don't need to have read those books at all. (You might appreciate a single character briefly appearing as well as the lawyer parrots, but that's about the extent of it.) My opinion here is that this is a fantasy pirate heist book and so is a bit more accessible than a fantasy djinn politics book (even if here it means that the world feels more like a stage and the side characters get a little bit less air time).
All in all great fun, highly recommend especially if you liked SA Chakraborty's previous work.
Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth—the last stage of the planet’s final …
Chris Riddell, Paul Stewart: Twig im Dunkelwald. Die Klippenland- Chroniken. (Hardcover, German language, 2001, Sauerländer)
Young Twig lives in the Deepwoods, among the Woodtrolls, but he isn't one of them. In a brave attempt to …
Since his childhood in the DeepWoods, young Twig has always longed to soar above the forest canopy and explore the …
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![Ursula K. Le Guin: City Of Illusions (Hainish Series) [UNABRIDGED] (AudiobookFormat, 2005, Audio Literature)](/images/covers/05be6d1f-9fc3-4333-bf0c-f0a68ea2b94e.jpeg)
I love this for the mysticism (they have a glass bead game!), the poetic descriptions of nature and the questioning of the Self. I think it was such a realistic portrayal of the main character's mind, at least I really got into it.
What I didn't notice when reading it for the first time were misogynistic and transmisic undertones :F it didn't spoil the book completely for me, but it's the reason this isn't 5 stars for me. might well ruin it for others.
also, if you're into plot-driven stories, don't pick this up.
At the far end of our universe, on the twin planets of Werel and Yeowe, …
But words are an essential way of thinking. And books keep the words true.
— Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hainish Cycle, #7)
(Discussing the value of books vs "the net".)
Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, …
The Earth colony of Landin has been stranded on Werel for ten years—& ten of Werel’s years are over 600 …
The Earth colony of Landin has been stranded on Werel for ten years—& ten of Werel’s years are over 600 …
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A new world is possible and not just in our hearts. Anarchic Agreements is a …
Anarchic Agreements is a non-fiction how-to book about organizing in leaderless groups. It focuses on creating explicit "consensual, changeable, and conscious" agreements (via constitutionalizing), ways to make coalition building between groups more effective, and various examples of declarations and statements, and finally a few worksheets. I wish there were some more small examples (A group had B problem and discussed in C way which resulted in D changes) but for a short book there's only so much it can do.
For me personally (who doesn't have a lot of extra background in this sort of thing), this was a much more thorough follow-up answer to the concerns of The Tyranny of Structurelessness in that it presented many questions to ask to interrogate about how decisions are made, how to communicate, and how to make sure to reduce barriers and think about power differences between members in a group.
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Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.
A house embedded with an artificial intelligence …
A room is a sort of narrative. The passage in and out of a room, the constraints of action within it. What is moved and what is left alone. The composition of the shape of a person superimposed against the frame of the built environment. Once, clever men—mostly men—dreamed that the frame within which people dwelled might prescribe their behavior. Their ways of loving, their ways of working. Their interdependence or solitude. All purpose-built, all shaped. Those men tended to be wrong. They did not consider the superposition of frame. A room is a sort of narrative when an intelligence moves through it, makes use of it or is constrained by it. Otherwise it is in abeyance. And an intelligence has its own designs.
— Rose/House by Arkady Martine
