More books, more tv
Sep. 3rd, 2025 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakMore books:
Stella Duffy: The Purple Shroud. The sequel to her novel Theodora, this one covering the time from when Theodora becomes Empress to her death. It's as readable as the first one, though I have a few nitpicks. Not about what I feared - the novel Theodora keeps morally ambiguous, and it confronts head on that once you are in power, you cannot simultanously be "one of the people", no matter how low you were originally born or how disadvantaged a life you've lived until this point. Doesn't mean your decisions can't benefit the disadvantaged, but you yourself are no longer one of them. So far, so good, and in case I hadn't mentioned it before, Duffy's characterisation of Narses is my favourite after Gillian Bradshaw's, and Thedora's relationship with him, ditto; they're firm allies from before she married Justinian, but they also sometimes have different opinions, and his ultimate loyalty is to Justinian, not to her. Also, Antonina (Belisarius' wife) in several lhistorical novels of the period tends to be presented as a none too bright promiscuous tool of Theodora's, and not so here, where they are friends, but up to a point, and Antonina has her priorities which are neither about her sex life nor about Theodora.
My one big nitpick is where Duffy does something even Theodora hater Procopius, who who accused her of nearly everything under the sun in "The Secret History", avoided doing: letting her have an affair AFTER her marriage. She does try to make it psychologically plausible - once the adrenaline from the Nika Riots crisis is gone and they've one, Theodora is in one big identity crisis (see above re: if you're in power, etc.), and that feeds into falling for the sexy architect of the new Hagia Sophia (after the old one got just burned down). The affair also works as an example of just how devoted Justinian is because he does catch on and subtly signals that he loves her anyway, whereupon she ends it, and as a way to show Theodora generous just after the novel has shown her to be cruel (in an unrelated matter), when the sexy architect a few years after their affair gets together with one of her younger protegées, and she's not petty, but kind and generous towards the girl. So there is a point within the novel (other than giving her a sex scene with someone who isn't her husband) , but historically, I don't buy it. Theodora was an excellent survivor, and it woiuld have been downright suicidal of her to have an affair when she had no rich or influential family to back her if an enraged Justinian had chosen to at the very least put her in a nunnery (with or without cut nose or blinded eyes) or do worse. So no matter whether she truly loved Justinian or the throne or both, it would have been insanely stupid of her. Not to mention, again: Procopius, who writes up any outrageous anti Theodora rumor he can find and would have loved to present Justinian (whom he also presents as the Worst, complete with secretly communing with demons) as a cuckolded husband, does NOT accuse her of cheating once she gets together with Jiustinian (even before they ascend to the throne, let alone after).
Naomi Novik: Spinning Silver. I've heard many good things about this one but didn't get around do reading it before now. Turns out it is absolutely worth the hype. I had been charmed by Novik's Temeraire saga, though less so the more books were published and stopped reading before Laurence and Temeraire got to Australia. This novel, by contrast, didn't just charm me but made me fall in love and start it all over again as soon as I was done. Rather unusually for what I've read of Novik's novels so far, almost the entire main cast is female, and she even pulls off multiple first person narrations without this reader getting confused as to who is narrating which passage (note: in my copy, this isn't marked with "Name of Character" to signal a pov switch), because the individual voices are that individual.
The setting is vaguely Russian, using various fairy tale elements (Rumpelstiskin, Cinderella, Baba Yaga) to weave something new. The main narrating ladies are: 1.) Miryem, daughter of a Jewish moneylender who isn't very good at moneylending due to being too kind and exploitable by his antisemitic village, who takes over the moneylending business, makes a success out of it and makes the fateful for fairy tales boast of being able to turn silver into gold, which gets overheard by a Staryk (= essentially fairy for the purposes of this novel) Lord who decides to take her up on it, 2.) Wanda, downtrodden but strong and determined daughter of a drunken and abusive farmer who is in debt to Miryem, which causes her to work for Miryem, 3.) Irina, daughter of the provincial Duke who through a plot device involving Miryem's business with the Staryk lord sees a chance to gain power by marrying Irina to the young Tsar despite said young Tsar's very sinister reputation. There are more first person narrators among the supporting cast, but these are the three main characters who drive the narrative, who have to use their wits to first survive increasingly dangerous situations and then get a step ahead and actually defeat the cause of said situations, and who along the way form relationships with other characters (and each other) that help them achieving this. It''s really, spinning metaphors being inevitable, a fantastic and brilliant yarn, and every time I thought "hang on, I can see where this is going, but how does that work with Character X' previously established behavior", the novel surprised me by making it work in the best way.
More tv:
Alien: Earth, episodes 1.01 - 1.04: Not a sequel but a prequel, setting wise, though made with an awareness that most of the audience will be familiar with at least the first few Alien movies. Mind you, with the heavy emphasis on AI beings already introduced in the pilot I thought, hang on, to which Ridley Scott cult movie is this supposed to be a prequel to? (Four episodes later: leaving aside the four years limit on the life span of Replicants in Blade Runner, this actually would work in a kind of shared early Ridley Scott films universe.) Not that Alien and its sequels don't have robots (robots here being used as a collective noun for various different AIs in human shape) as important parts of the plot, of course, but this show really puts them centre stage (perhaps recalling David was one of the key elements of Prometheus that worked even for people who disliked the movie?), and it absolutely works. It also so far provides a good remix of core elements. Ripley in I think not one but two of the Alien movies said that the company (not just Wayland-Yutani which she originally worked for, but also its successors in the movie plots) were the true monsters, given that the Xenomorphs "just" follow their instincts but Wayland-Yutani et al sacrifice fellow human beings for greed. If this was late 1970s and early 1980s scepticism of capitalism and where it's going, well, now we the audience live in the world of tech bros and politicians not even trying to hide their corruption anymore but boasting of it, and so this tv series so far doiubles and triples down on Ripley's observation. Not just the good old Xenomorph but newly introduced creatures like the T-Ocelius deliver the creeps, horrors and scares, sure, as they go after their organic victims, but the character you really loathe and with every episode more wish to fall to an extremely unpleasant fate is the resident main tech bro billionaire, Boy Kavalier (what he really calls himself), so covinced of his own brilliance, so utterly unconcerned with any empathy whatsoever, and seeing both human and synthetic workers as his property.
(Future eras may write their film and tv thesis about tech bro villains from Glass Onion onwards.)
But any genre that involves horror needs sympathetic characters as well, characters the audience cares for and wants to survive, not getting torn apart by the Xenomorph (and other murderous species). Which is where this show also excels, The central gimmick from the show pilot is that Boy Kavalier either has found or thinks he's found a way to transfer the human consciousness to a synthetic, i.e. android body. Obviously if this works, he has the recipe for immortality, and all the other rich people will want in on it. But there is of course the question as to whether the transfer simply transports memories from the human being to the synthetic body, or an actual identity, the actual core being, and and so far, the show hasn't come down on an answer, thankfully, because that deserves longer exploration. In true ruthless tech bro style, the "prototypes" were created by dying children getting transfered (or their memories getting transfered) to new adult synth bodies. This had various advantages for Boy Kavalier: children dying already from an uncurable illness will have their parents signing off on him getting custody, a child's mind is still malleable and adaptable in a way an adult human beings isn't. It also is a big advantage from a Doylist pov, presenting the actors and the audience with characters who are children in adult bodies - and the actors are fantastic in playing this with their behavior and body language -, who on the one hand are innocents in a horrible situation but also children with superstrength (never safe thing to be for your environment). The first child on whom this experiment was performed was called Marcy as a human and then named Wendy as a synth (Boy Kavalier has a Peter Pan obsession going, and all the other children/synths got named after the Lost Boys after their transfer, though thankfully Wendy isn't the only girl), and she's the closest thing the show has to a main character. Her/Marcy's brother who initially believes she died untl she rescues him from the Xenomorph is the most sympathetic of the human characters, and her relationship with him the strongest argument that Wendy is indeed the same being as Marcy - but again, this is challenged. Can recorded memories create affection? This also a question for Slightly, whose strong emotions about his original parents Morrow expertly manipulates with the goal of getting his hands on the Xenomorph again.
Synths aren't the only human shaped A.I.s walking around, though. There are also Cyborgs (originally human, got physically altered with more and more technical implants to being part machine), represented on the show via on the one hand Morrow, who first gets introduced as essentially Ash from the original Alien film (i.e. the robot willing to let his crew die in order to transport the Xenomorph back to Earth) but then gets fleshed out beyond that; and Kirsh, played by Timothy Oliphant made up to look as much like Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Blade Runner as humanly possible, who works for Boy Kavalier and sort of mentors the new synths/children but is hinted to have his own agenda as well.
World building wise, the Earth as presented by this show no longer has nation states, it's run by five cooperations (this reminded me of what Mike Duncan did for the Mars part in his Podcast Revolutions, and he couldn't have known), with Weyland-Yutani as one of the older powerful ones and Boy Kavalier's company, inevitably named Prodigy, as the newbie which together with another new company changed the "Triumvirate" to "The Five". Democracy, of course, is also a thing of the past. For once, North America isn't a location (so far), instead, the Weyland-Yutani vessel in the series pilot crashes down on what used to be Thailand, and Boy Kavalier's lair seems to be located somewhere in South Asia (Vietnam, I'd say, given the scenery) as well. We all know how a Xenomorph looks in the various stages of its existence by now, but the design team came up with four other creepy species as well which are new and are excellent at bringing on body horror. Though like I said: the truest revulsion is created by human greed. Contrasted, which makes it compelling and not nihilistic, by the capacity of doing better than that, by artificial and human beings alike.
Stella Duffy: The Purple Shroud. The sequel to her novel Theodora, this one covering the time from when Theodora becomes Empress to her death. It's as readable as the first one, though I have a few nitpicks. Not about what I feared - the novel Theodora keeps morally ambiguous, and it confronts head on that once you are in power, you cannot simultanously be "one of the people", no matter how low you were originally born or how disadvantaged a life you've lived until this point. Doesn't mean your decisions can't benefit the disadvantaged, but you yourself are no longer one of them. So far, so good, and in case I hadn't mentioned it before, Duffy's characterisation of Narses is my favourite after Gillian Bradshaw's, and Thedora's relationship with him, ditto; they're firm allies from before she married Justinian, but they also sometimes have different opinions, and his ultimate loyalty is to Justinian, not to her. Also, Antonina (Belisarius' wife) in several lhistorical novels of the period tends to be presented as a none too bright promiscuous tool of Theodora's, and not so here, where they are friends, but up to a point, and Antonina has her priorities which are neither about her sex life nor about Theodora.
My one big nitpick is where Duffy does something even Theodora hater Procopius, who who accused her of nearly everything under the sun in "The Secret History", avoided doing: letting her have an affair AFTER her marriage. She does try to make it psychologically plausible - once the adrenaline from the Nika Riots crisis is gone and they've one, Theodora is in one big identity crisis (see above re: if you're in power, etc.), and that feeds into falling for the sexy architect of the new Hagia Sophia (after the old one got just burned down). The affair also works as an example of just how devoted Justinian is because he does catch on and subtly signals that he loves her anyway, whereupon she ends it, and as a way to show Theodora generous just after the novel has shown her to be cruel (in an unrelated matter), when the sexy architect a few years after their affair gets together with one of her younger protegées, and she's not petty, but kind and generous towards the girl. So there is a point within the novel (other than giving her a sex scene with someone who isn't her husband) , but historically, I don't buy it. Theodora was an excellent survivor, and it woiuld have been downright suicidal of her to have an affair when she had no rich or influential family to back her if an enraged Justinian had chosen to at the very least put her in a nunnery (with or without cut nose or blinded eyes) or do worse. So no matter whether she truly loved Justinian or the throne or both, it would have been insanely stupid of her. Not to mention, again: Procopius, who writes up any outrageous anti Theodora rumor he can find and would have loved to present Justinian (whom he also presents as the Worst, complete with secretly communing with demons) as a cuckolded husband, does NOT accuse her of cheating once she gets together with Jiustinian (even before they ascend to the throne, let alone after).
Naomi Novik: Spinning Silver. I've heard many good things about this one but didn't get around do reading it before now. Turns out it is absolutely worth the hype. I had been charmed by Novik's Temeraire saga, though less so the more books were published and stopped reading before Laurence and Temeraire got to Australia. This novel, by contrast, didn't just charm me but made me fall in love and start it all over again as soon as I was done. Rather unusually for what I've read of Novik's novels so far, almost the entire main cast is female, and she even pulls off multiple first person narrations without this reader getting confused as to who is narrating which passage (note: in my copy, this isn't marked with "Name of Character" to signal a pov switch), because the individual voices are that individual.
The setting is vaguely Russian, using various fairy tale elements (Rumpelstiskin, Cinderella, Baba Yaga) to weave something new. The main narrating ladies are: 1.) Miryem, daughter of a Jewish moneylender who isn't very good at moneylending due to being too kind and exploitable by his antisemitic village, who takes over the moneylending business, makes a success out of it and makes the fateful for fairy tales boast of being able to turn silver into gold, which gets overheard by a Staryk (= essentially fairy for the purposes of this novel) Lord who decides to take her up on it, 2.) Wanda, downtrodden but strong and determined daughter of a drunken and abusive farmer who is in debt to Miryem, which causes her to work for Miryem, 3.) Irina, daughter of the provincial Duke who through a plot device involving Miryem's business with the Staryk lord sees a chance to gain power by marrying Irina to the young Tsar despite said young Tsar's very sinister reputation. There are more first person narrators among the supporting cast, but these are the three main characters who drive the narrative, who have to use their wits to first survive increasingly dangerous situations and then get a step ahead and actually defeat the cause of said situations, and who along the way form relationships with other characters (and each other) that help them achieving this. It''s really, spinning metaphors being inevitable, a fantastic and brilliant yarn, and every time I thought "hang on, I can see where this is going, but how does that work with Character X' previously established behavior", the novel surprised me by making it work in the best way.
More tv:
Alien: Earth, episodes 1.01 - 1.04: Not a sequel but a prequel, setting wise, though made with an awareness that most of the audience will be familiar with at least the first few Alien movies. Mind you, with the heavy emphasis on AI beings already introduced in the pilot I thought, hang on, to which Ridley Scott cult movie is this supposed to be a prequel to? (Four episodes later: leaving aside the four years limit on the life span of Replicants in Blade Runner, this actually would work in a kind of shared early Ridley Scott films universe.) Not that Alien and its sequels don't have robots (robots here being used as a collective noun for various different AIs in human shape) as important parts of the plot, of course, but this show really puts them centre stage (perhaps recalling David was one of the key elements of Prometheus that worked even for people who disliked the movie?), and it absolutely works. It also so far provides a good remix of core elements. Ripley in I think not one but two of the Alien movies said that the company (not just Wayland-Yutani which she originally worked for, but also its successors in the movie plots) were the true monsters, given that the Xenomorphs "just" follow their instincts but Wayland-Yutani et al sacrifice fellow human beings for greed. If this was late 1970s and early 1980s scepticism of capitalism and where it's going, well, now we the audience live in the world of tech bros and politicians not even trying to hide their corruption anymore but boasting of it, and so this tv series so far doiubles and triples down on Ripley's observation. Not just the good old Xenomorph but newly introduced creatures like the T-Ocelius deliver the creeps, horrors and scares, sure, as they go after their organic victims, but the character you really loathe and with every episode more wish to fall to an extremely unpleasant fate is the resident main tech bro billionaire, Boy Kavalier (what he really calls himself), so covinced of his own brilliance, so utterly unconcerned with any empathy whatsoever, and seeing both human and synthetic workers as his property.
(Future eras may write their film and tv thesis about tech bro villains from Glass Onion onwards.)
But any genre that involves horror needs sympathetic characters as well, characters the audience cares for and wants to survive, not getting torn apart by the Xenomorph (and other murderous species). Which is where this show also excels, The central gimmick from the show pilot is that Boy Kavalier either has found or thinks he's found a way to transfer the human consciousness to a synthetic, i.e. android body. Obviously if this works, he has the recipe for immortality, and all the other rich people will want in on it. But there is of course the question as to whether the transfer simply transports memories from the human being to the synthetic body, or an actual identity, the actual core being, and and so far, the show hasn't come down on an answer, thankfully, because that deserves longer exploration. In true ruthless tech bro style, the "prototypes" were created by dying children getting transfered (or their memories getting transfered) to new adult synth bodies. This had various advantages for Boy Kavalier: children dying already from an uncurable illness will have their parents signing off on him getting custody, a child's mind is still malleable and adaptable in a way an adult human beings isn't. It also is a big advantage from a Doylist pov, presenting the actors and the audience with characters who are children in adult bodies - and the actors are fantastic in playing this with their behavior and body language -, who on the one hand are innocents in a horrible situation but also children with superstrength (never safe thing to be for your environment). The first child on whom this experiment was performed was called Marcy as a human and then named Wendy as a synth (Boy Kavalier has a Peter Pan obsession going, and all the other children/synths got named after the Lost Boys after their transfer, though thankfully Wendy isn't the only girl), and she's the closest thing the show has to a main character. Her/Marcy's brother who initially believes she died untl she rescues him from the Xenomorph is the most sympathetic of the human characters, and her relationship with him the strongest argument that Wendy is indeed the same being as Marcy - but again, this is challenged. Can recorded memories create affection? This also a question for Slightly, whose strong emotions about his original parents Morrow expertly manipulates with the goal of getting his hands on the Xenomorph again.
Synths aren't the only human shaped A.I.s walking around, though. There are also Cyborgs (originally human, got physically altered with more and more technical implants to being part machine), represented on the show via on the one hand Morrow, who first gets introduced as essentially Ash from the original Alien film (i.e. the robot willing to let his crew die in order to transport the Xenomorph back to Earth) but then gets fleshed out beyond that; and Kirsh, played by Timothy Oliphant made up to look as much like Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Blade Runner as humanly possible, who works for Boy Kavalier and sort of mentors the new synths/children but is hinted to have his own agenda as well.
World building wise, the Earth as presented by this show no longer has nation states, it's run by five cooperations (this reminded me of what Mike Duncan did for the Mars part in his Podcast Revolutions, and he couldn't have known), with Weyland-Yutani as one of the older powerful ones and Boy Kavalier's company, inevitably named Prodigy, as the newbie which together with another new company changed the "Triumvirate" to "The Five". Democracy, of course, is also a thing of the past. For once, North America isn't a location (so far), instead, the Weyland-Yutani vessel in the series pilot crashes down on what used to be Thailand, and Boy Kavalier's lair seems to be located somewhere in South Asia (Vietnam, I'd say, given the scenery) as well. We all know how a Xenomorph looks in the various stages of its existence by now, but the design team came up with four other creepy species as well which are new and are excellent at bringing on body horror. Though like I said: the truest revulsion is created by human greed. Contrasted, which makes it compelling and not nihilistic, by the capacity of doing better than that, by artificial and human beings alike.
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Date: 2025-09-03 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-09-03 07:09 pm (UTC)Also ahhhhhh you read Spinning Silver! :D I love it, and I think it's the Novik that has most wide appeal. Her previous book, Uprooted, is good but I think Spinning Silver is better.
I also adore the Scholomance books she wrote after Spinning Silver, though they are very very different and something of a niche taste -- for one thing, there's quite a bit of monster-horror vibe about them. (However, perhaps that won't bother someone who wrote a horror story about Gundling and FW, although that's very different as well... :P ) But I will say that thematically, though not stylistically, the Scholomance books are reminiscent of both Spinning Silver and Some Desperate Glory, which is a big reason I love them. (The Incandescent is definitely a bit in dialogue with the Scholomance books, though!)
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Date: 2025-09-04 11:07 am (UTC)Scholomance: noted, and depending on my leisure time, I will look for them.
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Date: 2025-09-03 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-09-03 10:23 pm (UTC)Also Alien Earth - I've seen the first three episodes, so will come back to this review later, I think. So far I'm impressed, but it is Noah Hawley, who can get immersed in ideas over characters at times. But I'm also watching because it is Noah Hawley - who did Legion and Fargo, and I find him to be interesting. Also, I have a love/hate relationship with the Alien movies. (I either find them too scary to watch - or too intriguing to ignore. I love Ripley.)
On villains? Yes, I've noticed a recent trend in cinema and television towards utilizing tech bros as villains. Superman definitely did, as has Alien:Earth. Which I'm all for - and in way they were used as villains prior to this - both in the Alien films, as well as the Terminator, and James Bond films.
Not to mention Tron.
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Date: 2025-09-05 09:19 am (UTC)Noah Hawley: never saw Fargo, but I did see Legion, so I know what you mean about his tendency to get immersed in ideas over character. (I will say that the third season of Legion undid some of the damage the second season did in this regard.) Speaking of Legion: there is one character in Spinning Silver where a mid novel reveal made me think: OMG it’s David from Legion!
Re: Tech bros as villains - I will say the difference between old school (i.e. your avarage James Bond villain from the 1990s) and new school (the latest Lex Luthor, Edward Norton’s character from Glass Onion, now Boy Kavalier) is that the old school villains had the traditional world domination goal, and in their over the top ness felt very removed from the “real” world, and thus more hilarious than creepy. Whereas the new school villains feel all too real, because the real world types come across as having modelled themselves on old school Bond villains.
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Date: 2025-09-05 09:57 pm (UTC)Fargo is a little less problematic than Legion, due more to the genre than anything else. Hawley was a bit confined by the genre and the world on that one. I found Legion more interesting (I love the animated bits in Legion). But I admittedly got lost in S2, so didn't quite make it to S3 - I may have to remedy that at some point.
And thanks again on Spinning Silver.
Also thank you for your review of the film Superman - a while back, I didn't read all of it - but you managed to convince me to rent it. And I adored it. Watched it twice. You were right about it.
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Date: 2025-09-04 04:38 am (UTC)Lithuanian.
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Date: 2025-09-04 01:54 pm (UTC)Also agree with your thoughts on Alien: Earth. We're 4 episodes in and enjoying thus far.
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Date: 2025-09-05 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-09-05 03:32 pm (UTC)