A spot of recent reading

[grimjim]

Finished Player of Games by Iain Banks recently. Intense, though in retrospect and in conjunction with a few other of his Culture novels, there's definitely a dark underbelly to the seeming utopia, an Omelas thing. Not subtle in the least.

Just finished Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan. All in all, it felt like a moderately predictable young adult romance fantasy. Not a fan of the formulaic tropes of the subgenre. It felt like the author wrote herself into a bit of a corner near the end and had to invoke plot devices to get things back on track. I wonder how much AI has been trained on stuff like this.

Comments

[sabotabby]

Oh hell yeah I loved Player of Games.

Everyone loves formula books apparently except me, so maybe they can all be cordoned off as a market to read AI ourobouros fiction forever.

[grimjim]

I can't stand formula, really. I forced myself to complete the book to see how much it could break away from formula. Chinese culture isn't exotic from my perspective, so that aspect of world-building failed to distract me from the formulaic patterns. It grated upon me that some conditions in the world or character decisions didn't really make sense, but were clearly there so the characters would be able to fall into the desired pattern. I suppose reflects my own bias with regard to writing, that the environment and characters should maintain an integrity even if it makes plotting more difficult, which makes the struggles of the characters feel more real rather than being stuck in a set piece.