jocu-reads

[jocu-reads]

The only time I was happy was with you.

Willis...

[jocu-reads]

Book 7 Ch 3 is the most violent DoA has been, it's also had some of the strongest push on these characters being separate people. Important to keep in mind, Amazi-Girl does not sprout from Amber's anger—she comes from Amber's desire to avoid violence.

And yet here, she does not surface. The reappearance of Ryan is an excuse for her to enact justified (righteous?) violence... right? So you could assume, perhaps, this is a situation wherein Amber can be allowed to go All Out, not beholden by whatever code Amazi-Girl has.

Except, this does not seem like a healthy outlet at all.

I had a lot of anger issues in high school and college. Many times I would imagine my own hyper-violent scenarios in my head. These were not the same as my intrusive thoughts, they were detailed and constructed fantasies that I allowed myself to indulge in. Sometimes these thoughts focused on others who I felt would deserve to be a punching bag. Sometimes they were focused on myself. I would often consider that as long as these thoughts stayed in my head, they were perfectly fine—even a good way to outlet my anger. (THIS WAS NOT A GOOD THING FOR ME.)

The amount of fights I've been in is pretty small. Only one of them resulted in serious injury that was close to a comparable level of what's going on here (I am assuming Amber has hurt this guy pretty bad but not killed him or wounded him in an extra-ordinarily bad way. I haven't read past this chapter yet, so I might be wrong.)

This is all to say, I empathize a lot with Amber here (many of my fantasies in college revolved around a masked vigilantism of my own) and it is sort of shocking to see that cycle of anger, compartmentalization, and shame put to page like this. Even right down to the flashes of red.

This is a very real feeling to me, or at least it used to be. The overwhelming urge to dip into that deep rage and let yourself go. Have a way to redirect it (fantasies, alter-ego, or otherwise) is a wash of relief for the moment, but in my case (and I suspect Amber's) it ended up just allowing the issues to fester.

Amber's beat down on Ryan is not "cool" or "exciting." It doesn't have the flashiness or quips or dramatic stakes as Amazi-Girl going out on the campus and stopping vandalism. It's scary for her, scary for Dorothy, scary for us. It's ugly and really upsetting. It's very clearly not a good outcome—the catharsis of seeing Ryan taken down comes at a very worrying cost to Amber's stability.

And I just. Love that. DoA does not take the easy route at its most dramatic moments and try to diffuse with a joke or a clean ending. It didn't with Ryan's original appearance several books ago, nor with Blaine and Becky's father, nor with Robin in this same book. I really appreciate that.

I'm looking forward to whatever reckoning Amber may have to this in the future. I'm especially interested in how that will play out with Amazi-Girl becoming a much more distinct persona.

The Amber/Amazi-Girl split becomes more and more compelling to me by the chapter.

[jocu-reads]

The Amber/Amazi-Girl split becomes more and more compelling to me by the chapter.

[jocu-reads]

Wow okay.

I'm reaching a part of Exordia that I find myself bewildered at how much book is left. What do you mean there's still over 100 pages. What else is even still in this book?

It's very exciting that there's still apparently so much left to cover. I will say though, the shortened chapter sections are making it a little too easy to jump ahead to The Next Thing. I feel like I'm lacking in time to digest some of the big leaps that are happening. That sort of makes sense as an effect of the book's rapidly escalating tension but is still frustrating.

[jocu-reads]

Some disorganized amber thoughts from my first time DoA liveread.

It's so something that her double identity is gendered Amazi-Girl, specifically. And yet, she puts on this gruff Christian Bale impression, she's constantly compared to her father, and also there's this:

Initiation of contact ✔️

Positive association with name ✔️

Being made to be the one to ask for sex ✔️

And of course, the

Terminally burdened with the desire to be a normal girl and saddled with a alter-ego that is both freeing to explore as and enclosing to be desired in! Amber is the bearer of the curse.

[jocu-reads]

I'm reaching a part of Exordia that I find myself bewildered at how much book is left. What do you mean there's still over 100 pages. What else is even still in this book?

It's very exciting that there's still apparently so much left to cover. I will say though, the shortened chapter sections are making it a little too easy to jump ahead to The Next Thing. I feel like I'm lacking in time to digest some of the big leaps that are happening. That sort of makes sense as an effect of the book's rapidly escalating tension but is still frustrating.

[jocu-reads]

Also hey. Has Kid Ignition's mom said like. A single word.

I do enjoy that we've really only had the Superpowers six minus Eliza as consistent characters so far. Tonya is the most elevated of the non-superpowers, probably followed by Isabella. But other than that? Damn people don't even speak!

Which is all intentional, right. The Superpowers are the only people that matter—or so the narrative would have you believe. Heavy wanting to rip up the state of Texas is a good example of this. All of those lives are nothing but a deterrence to him. Of course, the flip side here is that Haven is the same way. For all his talk about keeping Atomics safe, none of them are important enough to speak except the journalist (our audience stand in) and his son (another Superpower in the making. Allegedly.)

This is part of what makes Eliza so compelling to me. Was she able to grasp at global (and narrative) relevance through Jacky? Perhaps she was always capable of it... or maybe it was granted to her in some other, weirder way. Given that she's been slowrolled so hard, I suspect her role be very weird indeed.

The Power Fantasy #6 is good though I'm missing the longer delves into previous events. The 1999 plotline is great of course, but I've been so much more compelled reading about the 60s and 70s. I hope that skipping back and forth doesn't leave the comic's toolkit after issue 10 (the furthest issue on the timeline in issue 3.)

Also. I need that Eliza issue like I need water.

[jocu-reads]

The Power Fantasy #6 is good though I'm missing the longer delves into previous events. The 1999 plotline is great of course, but I've been so much more compelled reading about the 60s and 70s. I hope that skipping back and forth doesn't leave the comic's toolkit after issue 10 (the furthest issue on the timeline in issue 3.)

Also. I need that Eliza issue like I need water.

[jocu-reads]

Exordia next btw

[jocu-reads]

Citadel is so meandering and drawn out it's silly. I wish more was actually done with Agia and Hethor. I think Dorcas's ending is... fine. It could be so much worse.

I kind of want to reject the idea that the only way someone like Severian could grow would be by having his own autonomy stripped and torture inflicted. Like that seems antithetical to the whole idea of 'being a good person,' in that you need negative experience to feel any desire to be less awful.

Some of this, especially that last chapter, is still odd. But odd in a fun, open ended and puzzling way, not necessarily in a poorly done way. My understanding is that Urth will crack open the spheres of those mysteries and give conclusive answers to things, which seems so against the work Wolfe has put into making the world feel fantastical. I still haven't decided if I'm going to read it yet.

What I can say, is that I did enjoy this one, even if it really drops off in the second half. But I am really, really looking forward to picking up something a little lighter and less obfuscating for the next few reads.

GOODBYEEEE SEVERIAN

[jocu-reads]

GOODBYEEEE SEVERIAN

[jocu-reads]

Also. You have split your mind in twain for a 9-5 to support your life style of sitting at home drinking beer and watching flea documentaries. That's fucking crazy man. I love this.

I think this is going to tie into this "Food is not life" bullshit all those people were talking about at the anti-dinner. I'll be interested to see how those themes of nourishment and fuel develop. Interesting that we only see Mark eat once in this episode (sandwich with sister after anti-dinner), despite having like three and a half scenes about food. "Hey kids, what's for dinner?"

Anyway. Who is the fuel here? Topside or bottomside Mark? Much to think about.

Severance really has a near perfect pilot. I wish Britt Lower had more screen time but beyond that, what a damn good forty minutes of television. DEVS wishes it could have been half this.

[jocu-reads]

That "no dinner" dinner scene is pretty wild. People know what this operation is and apparently it has had some impact on like, legislature. There's weird parenting hacks. Lumon has maybe been around since the 1800s, starting in the medical field. This is a really punchy way to open up your series, since the implication is that Everything Is Crazy, not just this one SciFi procedure.

And that procedure is something else. Fantastic storytelling move. You could pull just about any plot with it, since people's memories can just be taken from them. Where will this thing go? Where has it already gone? I dunno, maybe they have a damn dragon down in that basement or something and everyone just got their memories taken away about it.

Severance really has a near perfect pilot. I wish Britt Lower had more screen time but beyond that, what a damn good forty minutes of television. DEVS wishes it could have been half this.

[jocu-reads]

Severance really has a near perfect pilot. I wish Britt Lower had more screen time but beyond that, what a damn good forty minutes of television. DEVS wishes it could have been half this.

[jocu-reads]

It ended up growing on me a lot more. The book really picks up with all the fucked up awful shit going on in a number of ways. A lot of interesting little case studies about control of others, both body and identity. Some of the twists it pulls are really shocking and upsetting, which is like, good for a gothic novel.

That said, it handles those topics, especially its depictions of sexual violence well. There's no point at which it feels cheap, per say, and it's gripping to see how different characters process and handle the information that's revealed to them about what's happening in the chateau.

I'll break down some more thoughts in a spoiler tag.

The long and short of it is that Leech pulls a fake-out about its core concept—what if there was a hivemind pulling the strings of humankind. Pretty early on in the book, Ennes breaks the hivemind character we're following off from the rest of the pack and it becomes about how fucked up it is to be forced into a hivemind. That shit sucks! I say that's a fake-out, but it isn't really. The logical conclusion, especially considering that there's a second, less smart but still unpleasant brain parasite in the plot, is that having your agency taken away is a bad thing. It's not immediately clear that's where the book is gonna end up turning from go, but given the time to ruminate on the nature of things, I'd probably end up there too.

A lot of this book is pulling on some ideas from Ancillary Justice, that goes without saying. That said, I think the entities in that novel are more interesting than here. I can only speak to the first book in that series, haven't read the rest yet.

So most of this book, we're following a different character, the person absorbed into the "Institute" (a hivemind bacteria that controls every doctor on apocalyptic Earth) as they are slowly, painfully, upsettingly pulled out of that situation.

Leech especially threads the needle of having the appearance of that original person in the narrative being the horror to flipping it to the appearance of the Institute in the narrative being the horror. There's a solid stretch from like 170-240 that just nails the transition between characters. You aren't totally sure who is the Real Narrator as the former consciousness comes back into control. A little while after this, you get to see this person come into contact with a few doctors who are totally in the control of the Institute mind and it is wacky to see how the act and talk with the context of like, a hundred pages of that being the narrator. Good shit.

It's intriguing to hear how this narrator deals with the fact they've lost 10 years of their life to being part of the gestalt. Their struggle at finding who they are under all that brain parasite muck and the fun twist that she was sent to join the Institute by her mothers without any idea this is how the organization operated. It fixes her epilepsy while completely expunging any independent personhood in her brain (well, not completely since she eventually comes back.)

In a real way, we're very much witnessing the story of the assault of a child, though on her identity rather than a sexual one. That's not so with the novel's other protagonist, Emilé.

It's kind of insane what Ennes does with Emilé in a very interesting way. Emilé is a servant around the house and also child of chateau baron's adult son's unrequited love. As he matures, he is raped by the son just as his mother was. It's god damn chilling. That's made all the worse as the narrator tries to (and fails to) assimilate Emilé as a means of surviving the second parasite eating her insides before she fully snaps control of the Institute over her mind. This is all just so fucked and so awful and sooooo Gothic.

I'm not sure I'd call the ending happy or anything, but it is triumphant. It's real good. The whole last bit of the novel is a lot of fun, people start turning into monsters and ghosts and puking up black parasite bile. It's great.

There is... a real unfortunate use of a certain Native American story here that just sucks and should be cut or renamed or something. I think Ennes is trying to do some bullshit of like, "Oh, some pre-apocalypse group NAMED this thing after that story and it's bad and appropriating something for a scifi monster on purpose," but like. Just don't do that lol. Call it literally anything else.

That pretty much the only real qualm I had with it. Some people online seem to be... mad that the story is about how systems of domination are terrifying and horrible to happen to people? And that it would have been more interesting if it was just about the hivemind the whole time. That just seems to be misunderstanding the genre, really. Ignore those reviews. It's good.

I'll be interested to see what they write next. Glad I finally pulled this from my bookshelf. If you like Gothic novels, that real upsetting shit and the ways people deal with it, this is something to watch for.

I'm not sure if I'm enjoying Leech. It's abandoning some of the more interesting parts but may be supplanting it with something else more or equally interesting.

I'm not loving the Native American exoticism subtext I'm picking up, but I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt that it's doing something with that. There's some signalling those parts of the book may be getting subverted, so we'll see.

I am still interested in where the plot is going, and it's still been very fun (and gripping!) to read, so that's a point in its favor. That's the halftime report.

[jocu-reads]

I'm going to need to process and probably reread Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones before I can say anything super coherent about it. Damn.

[jocu-reads]

I'm not sure if I'm enjoying Leech. It's abandoning some of the more interesting parts but may be supplanting it with something else more or equally interesting.

I'm not loving the Native American exoticism subtext I'm picking up, but I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt that it's doing something with that. There's some signalling those parts of the book may be getting subverted, so we'll see.

I am still interested in where the plot is going, and it's still been very fun (and gripping!) to read, so that's a point in its favor. That's the halftime report.