Ermingarden (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ermingarden) wrote2021-10-12 09:01 am
ermingarden) wrote2021-10-12 09:01 am
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Imaginative: Too Like the Lightning
Day seven of the meme, posted on day...twelve. Better late than never!
7. The most imaginative book you've seen lately
I was briefly tempted to say Winterblumensaat, but that's imaginary, which isn't quite the same thing. (Yuletide drama came early this year: Someone seems to have tried to get two completely nonexistent canons into the tagset, presumably to pad their requests and force a match on the one canon they want...don't know if we've seen that tactic before! Mods caught it, anyway, but a bunch of people have responded by posting fic for it.)
I'm going with Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (and the Terra Ignota series generally) for this one. Reading Too Like the Lightning is a pretty overwhelming experience. There's just so much going on! Palmer does fascinating things with novel political systems, religion, gender...all told in the style of an eighteenth-century novel, with possibly the world's most neurotic (and often unreliable) narrator. It's a utopian novel more than anything else, and really gets into ethical issues about what is justifiable in service of maintaining a society that is in many ways better than ours, but still deeply flawed.
Note: When I first picked up a copy I thought Palmer was doing something deeply cissexist with gender; then I read further and realized she was actually doing something very different – exploring how the fact that gender is a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that we made it, and now we have to deal with the thing we made rather than pretending it will go away if we ignore it.
The remaining questions:
8. A book that feels like it was written just for you
9. A book that reminds you of someone
10. A book that belongs to a specific time in your mind, caught in amber
11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time
12. A book that came to you at the wrong time
13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that
14. A book balanced on a knife edge
15. A snuffed candle of a book
16. A book you'd take with you while you were being ferried on dark underground rivers
17. A book that taught you something about yourself
18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion
19. A book that started a pilgrimage
20. A frigid ice bath of a book
21. A warm blanket of a book
22. A book written into your psyche
23. A book that made you bleed
24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to
25. A book that answered a question you never asked
26. A book you recommend but cannot love
27. A book you love but cannot recommend
28. A book you adore that people are surprised by
29. A book you detest that people are surprised by
30. A book that led you home
7. The most imaginative book you've seen lately
I was briefly tempted to say Winterblumensaat, but that's imaginary, which isn't quite the same thing. (Yuletide drama came early this year: Someone seems to have tried to get two completely nonexistent canons into the tagset, presumably to pad their requests and force a match on the one canon they want...don't know if we've seen that tactic before! Mods caught it, anyway, but a bunch of people have responded by posting fic for it.)
I'm going with Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (and the Terra Ignota series generally) for this one. Reading Too Like the Lightning is a pretty overwhelming experience. There's just so much going on! Palmer does fascinating things with novel political systems, religion, gender...all told in the style of an eighteenth-century novel, with possibly the world's most neurotic (and often unreliable) narrator. It's a utopian novel more than anything else, and really gets into ethical issues about what is justifiable in service of maintaining a society that is in many ways better than ours, but still deeply flawed.
Note: When I first picked up a copy I thought Palmer was doing something deeply cissexist with gender; then I read further and realized she was actually doing something very different – exploring how the fact that gender is a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that we made it, and now we have to deal with the thing we made rather than pretending it will go away if we ignore it.
The remaining questions:
8. A book that feels like it was written just for you
9. A book that reminds you of someone
10. A book that belongs to a specific time in your mind, caught in amber
11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time
12. A book that came to you at the wrong time
13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that
14. A book balanced on a knife edge
15. A snuffed candle of a book
16. A book you'd take with you while you were being ferried on dark underground rivers
17. A book that taught you something about yourself
18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion
19. A book that started a pilgrimage
20. A frigid ice bath of a book
21. A warm blanket of a book
22. A book written into your psyche
23. A book that made you bleed
24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to
25. A book that answered a question you never asked
26. A book you recommend but cannot love
27. A book you love but cannot recommend
28. A book you adore that people are surprised by
29. A book you detest that people are surprised by
30. A book that led you home
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I actually love the wild-card aspect to it all; with most exchanges, I have a pretty good idea of who I'm going to be matched with and what I'm going to get based on sign-ups, but Yuletide is so big and has so many rare things, I have no idea (at least until the author posts it, and then I can usually make some guesses based on the fandom listings in the collection. But even then, it's not a guarantee.)
My favorite part is the fact that it doesn't take much to spawn a fandom--a joke, a parody, an idea, an anthropomorphic concept can all spawn a new subgenre within hours. It's a testament to human ingenuity and creativity that we're just Like This, and I love it.
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My first Yuletide was last year, and I was all but certain I'd matched on Rosemary and Thyme – and then I received a literal novella for The Name of the Rose. You absolutely never know, and I love that!
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I totally agree with everything you've said about the Terra Ignota books — they're so incredibly ambitious, and so successful at what they're trying to do. I'm just on the verge of rereading the first three in anticipation of the final book being published this month (although I have to wait for my husband to finish Too Like the Lightning first).