Too Many Parallels

Self finished Shards of Earth after four days of staying-home-all-day and not-changing-out-of-pajamas, four days of asking herself HOLY COW is-this-the-best-space-opera-she-has-EVER-read–or-what and how–is-jug-eared-Idris-Telemmier-the-hottest-space-hero-of-all-time?

FIVE STARS!

Plague, self’s current read, is giving her plenty of reason to reflect on January 6 Committee Hearings drama.

How was it fair? Caine was a liar, a manipulator, a murderer. And Caine was probably lying in satin sheets with Diana eating actual food and watching a DVD. Clean sheets, candy bars, and a wonderful, willing girl.

Caine who had never done a single good or decent thing was living in luxury.

Sam, who had tried and tried and done everything he could, was sitting in his house with a raging headache, smelling vomit with a pair of ibuprofen burning a hole in his stomach lining.

— Plague, A Gone Novel, by Michael Grant, p. 39

Fan of . . . Space Opera, Fantasy, and Dr. Ruth Galloway Mysteries

For this challenge — The Fan of . . . Challenge hosted by Jez Braithwaite — self didn’t want to just say Books. Sure, she spends most of her time reading, but she wanted to specify that she gravitates towards certain types of books, depending on her mood.

This year, she’s definitely into space opera (Shards of Earth), fantasy (The Mermaid and the Bear), and Elly Griffiths’ Dr. Ruth Galloway mystery series.

Sentence of the Day (Also: Spoiler Alert!)

You’re barreling along on p. 380 of an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel and you’re feeling it, really feeling it, swept along by the dense prose and the unspace and the intense flashbacks to what happened on Berenhof, when . . .

OLLI: “Son of a bitch, I knew it!”

And Solace sends the message.

NOOOO! Airlock her now, Olli!

Self can’t even.

Stay tuned.

Biblical

In the seventy-eighth year of the war, an Architect came to Berlenhof.

Idris had put out on the Pythoness.

— Shards of Earth, p. 363

The above is a flashback. Tchaikovsky made us wait 363 pages to finally learn the full story of what happened on Berlenhof, where Solace and Idris first met.

Another thing self appreciates about Tchaikovsky is his sense of scale. When a ship is targeted, it doesn’t just explode: The Locust Ark, sister ship of the Pythoness, “was shredded across fifty kilometres of space.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Havaer, the Government Man

Self is so glad that she has Shards of Earth to keep her mind off the unspeakable tragedy that is Renegade SCOTUS. Anyhoo, it’s doing double-time duty this weekend, and self has just been barreling along.

She’s now in a Havaer section, and it is pretty much generic hard-boiled detective stuff. Though Havaer is far from her favorite character, the dialogue has a certain Raymond Chandler vibe. Havaer has been interviewing a witness, a lawyer named Thrennikos who’s been contacted by Idris sidekick Kit (a beautiful lawyer; self hates Kit for having had such wonderful adventures with Idris while poor Solace, Idris’s close friend, was stuck on an all-woman ship and put into cryogenic sleep for, off and on, 40 years).

Thrennikos: Officer, these are my new clients, representing the Broken Harvest Society. They share your interest in my earlier visitors. And in anyone asking questions about them.

Havaer: And the currency your new clients are paying you is . . . ?

Thrennikos: Not skinning me and wearing me like a cloak, yes.

Threnniko’s New Client: Government man, my name is Heremon, herald of The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook.

BWAH HA HAAAAA!

What follows is a torture scene. Dammit, Adrian Tchaikovsky, why do you have to make even the torture scenes so full of balletic blood splatter and beautifully articulated flayed organs?

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.