It's Only A Paper Rose

What I've just finished reading

Zer0es, by Chuck Wendig. This is categorized as a thriller, and that's not inaccurate, but I'll be damned if Wendig's background as a supernatural horror writer doesn't show through in spades - once Typhon is out of the box and running wild, there are some horrific sequences involving body horror and computer-assisted zombifying. (ivy, in retrospect, our discussion about whether it'd drive you nuts due to the tech issues is sort of beside the point - the tech is pretty solid right up until it hits supernatural-horror land, but the latter is vivid enough that I'd recommend you skip it.) Story-wise, it clips along pretty well, but (also true to the author's horror background) the ending feels more than a little ragged and unfinished. A couple of the main characters feel like they got shortchanged on their arcs, and more than a few plot threads seem to just get...left dangling. It's kind of a bummer, because (supernatural horror aside) I really enjoyed a lot of this, but it doesn't quite stick the landing like it should.

Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman. I was...both satisfied and not by this recounting. It's a high-quality reweaving of the scattered myths that have survived to the present day, and it does a good job setting them in sequence and giving an idea of what might be missing. But in a very real way, all that effort only highlights how much is missing. Gaiman does his best to acknowledge these gaps in the narrative and smooth them over ("Kvasir, wisest of the gods, walked in through the first door. Once he had been dead, and mead had been brewed from his blood, but now he was alive once more"), and it works well enough, but the part of me that values narrative rebels at feeling like it's been handed a book with two-thirds of the pages missing. Some part of me wonders if it wouldn't have been a better book if he hadn't woven the myths in together with inventions of his own - he's certainly familiar enough with the stories and the culture to create a convincing return of Kvasir, or a story or two of Freya. I'm sure people would've complained that he was adding his own material, but frankly, that feels more in the oral tradition of these stories than leaving them so patchy and incomplete; one of the first things I learned about public speaking is that if you forget what you were going to say, make something up. It's the flow that matters as much as the content.

What I'm currently reading

Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer. I'm beginning to feel like audiobook was either exactly the wrong format for this book, or exactly the right one. I'm mostly following along with the characters and the worldbuilding, but there's just so much of it, sometimes in fairly info-dump-y segments; additionally, it reads very much like the author's depending on the reader's knowledge of history to help connect the dots. I'm not historically illiterate by any means, but like most autodidacts, I have significant gaps in my knowledge, so there are times I'm flailing a bit. On the other hand, the worldbuilding and even the narrative seem to exist entirely for the purpose of philosophical and ethical discussion, something I'm very much at my ease in, so I'm not entirely lost...still, much as with the lone Neal Stephenson book I've read, I'm glad I have it in audiobook so I'm not sitting there wondering when the plot's going to pick up again.

What I plan to read next

Finally, I can pick up Ancillary Sword! As soon as I have a spare moment in the Sculpt-biking-yoga-cleaning-decorating-socializing-music-shows-bookings whirl, heh.