What I'm Reading Now

Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing. This is a 498 page book, and I read it all in one night. It's about a world at war, and the dragon flyers who defend (part) of that world. The point of view character is the daughter of a famous general, and also has (I think, since the disease is never named) Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which makes her spectacular unsuited to be a dragon rider, work requiring great physical strength and resiliency, among other traits. But she is compelled by into becoming a cadet by her mother (the famous general), and through a combination of clever tricks, hard work, and the help of her fellow cadets, survives the brutal training months. Yarrow apparently also writes romance novels, and a little of that seeps through -- the two leading men are super hot, a fact which is dwelled on endlessly; and there are some boring (at least to me) sex scenes, but the dragon stuff is great, as is the politics of the world. Very nice world building here. A sequel is coming out soon, hurray!

Matt Haig, Humans, The Midnight Library, How to Stop Time

I forget where I saw Matt Haig mentioned, but I've been reading through all his books that my library has. Humans is the best of those I have read so far -- it's about an alien who takes over the body of a mathematician at Cambridge, one who has just solved a very big math problem having to do with prime numbers. The alien's job is to kill anyone the math guy might have told about the solution, since solving it has some very bad effects on the universe. Instead, the alien discovers that it likes being human, and likes the humans in its life -- specifically the son of the math guy -- and so he doesn't want to kill them. 

How to Stop Time is about long-lived humans, ones who age about a year for every fifteen years of life, and their struggle to survive in a world filled with short-lived humans. The Midnight Library is about a woman who has lived a life filled with regrets, who after committing suicide finds herself in a place called the Midnight Library, where every possible life she might have lived (this is infinity lives, obviously, since every choice she's made creates a new life, in the multiverse way of viewing universes). She must sample life after life until she finds one she is happy in. A nice ending to this one. These are all what we call "high-concept" novels, which is to say they're built around a big idea, which the novel spends its time examining. I'd actually read part of The Midnight Library before -- I remembered the opening, and identifies the spot where I stopped reading the first pass through, due to not really being interested in any of the characters. I liked it a little better this time, but I don't think Haig is going to be a favorite of mine.

Octavia Butler, Lilith's Brood, Seed to Harvest, Fledgling

Rereading this. Octavia Butler is great, and it had been long enough since I re-read these, her major works, that I'm enjoying them immensely. Butler takes big ideas and mixes in fascinating characters, plus a huge dose of hotness, plus an examination of why all that is so problematic. These are wonderful novels, well-written, and disturbing. 

Lilith's Brood is about aliens taking over an earth lately destroyed by pollution, global warming, and nuclear weapons; Seed to Harvest is about long-lived humans with psionic powers; Fledgling is about vampires, sort of. Butler also wrote Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, which are a little too prescient of our current world: a failing climate and a failing economy lead to widespread governmental and social collapse, during which a young woman founds a new religion. These are two very depressing books, partly because Butler read the writing on the wall, and I'm not up to rereading them this go-round. And she wrote Kindred, about a black woman who jumps back through time to her remote (white) ancestor, who she must keep alive if she is to continue to exist in the present (1970s Los Angeles).

Anyway, everything Butler writes is very much worth reading, even the depressing stuff, if you're in a place where you can take it. 10/10 will always read again.