ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote in [community profile] followfriday2025-07-04 01:00 am
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Follow Friday 7-4-25

Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

rocky41_7: (Default)
rocky41_7 ([personal profile] rocky41_7) wrote in [community profile] books2025-07-02 06:15 pm

"The Witness for the Dead" by Katherine Addison

You know that feeling where you're enjoying inhabiting a book so much you don't want to reach the end? This week I finished The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison, and that's how I felt.
 
Witness is a companion novel to Addison's breakout novel, The Goblin Emperor (TGE), which I read for the first time last year and never got around to reviewing. You don't need to have read TGE to enjoy this one at all; Witness focuses on a minor character from TGE and his adventures after the events of that novel. Thara Celehar is a prelate of the god Ulis, and his role in elven society is something like a cross between a priest and a private detective. He has the ability to commune, in a limited fashion, with the dead, and he is employed by the city to provide this service to the people. This may involve reporting a deceased's last thoughts to a mourner, asking a deceased to clarify a point on their will, or seeking answers from a murder victim to bring their killer to justice.

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alierak: (Default)
alierak ([personal profile] alierak) wrote in [site community profile] dw_maintenance2025-06-30 03:18 pm

Rebuilding journal search again

We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
marycatelli ([personal profile] marycatelli) wrote in [community profile] books2025-06-29 01:18 pm

Babylon White

Babylon White by Kit Sun Cheah

The grand conclusion! Spoilers for earlier books ahead.

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ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote in [community profile] followfriday2025-06-27 12:38 am
Entry tags:

Follow Friday 6-27-25

Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

rocky41_7: (Default)
rocky41_7 ([personal profile] rocky41_7) wrote in [community profile] books2025-06-26 06:12 pm

"The Monster Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson

The day after finishing The Traitor Baru Cormorant I had to rush over to the library to pick up book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I finished earlier today.

Spoilers for The Traitor Baru Cormorant below!
 
The second book of a fantasy series of any kind often bears a very difficult burden. It is most often the place where the scope of the story grows significantly. A conflict which before was local to the protagonist's home and surrounding area may expand, often to the extent of the known world. New players are often added to the cast, bigger and scarier problems and challenges arise. The protagonist may have gone up in the world, wielding new power and influence, with new responsibilities. As a result, this is where many series lose their footing; a tightly-woven book or season 1 may give way to a muddled, watered down part 2 as the writers struggle to juggle this expanded focus. 
 
The Monster suffers from none of those things. It is the place where Baru's story expands—in The Traitor, her focus was almost entirely on Aurdwynn; it was the full field of play and outside players mattered only as they influenced events on Aurdwynn. In The Monster, Baru has become a true agent of the Imperial Throne of Falcrest, and with these new powers, the entire field of the empire is opened up for her play, and it is fascinating to watch. 
 
In The Traitor, Baru was narrowly focused on managing the situation in Aurdwynn; everything she did was to that end. In The Monster, Baru can do whatever she wants, and we get to see her finally on the open field. Even where she flounders and flails, it's delightful to watch the machinations of her mind constantly at work.  Her cleverness rows against her bursts of sentimentality to produce some impressively chaotic effects, but she is as slippery as an eel to pin down, even when her rivals think they've gotten the best of her.

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