juliette_dunn's reviews
456 reviews

I was nervous about this follow-up given how incredible the original trilogy is, but this was a worthy addition. I loved that the rabbits from Authority were brought back in a wonderfully creepy way, every time horror utilizes a typically herbivorous prey animal acting predatory I find the uncanny effect chilling. 

My favorite sections were the first and last. The middle isn't bad, but I've always been more intrigued by the surreal nature of Area X in these stories than anything else. So of course, Lowry's section was the greatest in the book. Lowry drugged out of his mind experiencing both the surreal brain alteration of a trip AND the cosmic horror of his surroundings was so perfectly written and exactly the sort of reason I love VanderMeer. He manages to make pages and pages of f-bombs every other word work without feeling tedious.

And the ending to the book was pulled off perfectly. Area X works best when it's only grasped in the vaguest of ways, and that's how the resolution is brought about. Never knowing if what's happening is a hallucination or real, coupled with a hilarious and forceful personality, this section showcases VanderMeer at his trippy best.

I came into this expecting uninspired camp, but it was better than I thought, though still not stellar. It's unoriginal (the plot is a mash of NIMH and Ben) but for a "swarm of killer animals taking vengeance" story it's fairly well-done. The first bit was hard to get through. The main characters are workers at the lab who torture the rats, immediately unlikable. Which is fine, but the story's attempts to make them unlikable in an interesting way fell flat for me. I didn't find their backstories or motivations compelling at all.

The most potentially interesting was one of the character's beliefs in uplifting other animals, but this isn't explored deeply or how she justifies the constant murders of the rats if she believes animals deserve to be given uplifted abilities for their own sakes. I only got invested when it switched to Sammy, the rat, as protagonist.

There's long sections written in his first-person perspective, and these are by far the best parts of the novel. He grows in intelligence throughout, and we see it from the way his syntax and thoughts evolve, in a similar style to Flowers for Algernon. His arc was the only truly interesting one, so it's good he was the main character. He isn't an evil rat, but rather someone who cares so deeply about others he sees a violent uprising as the only way to put a stop to humanity's oppression of other animals, though he also violently uses non-sapient rats achieve these ends. He is a "revolutionary gone too far" more than a "crazed evil murderer," and I appreciate the book took animal liberation seriously, as well as used the rats as actual characters rather than a horror plot device.

A rat staging an organized rebellion after browsing footage from vegan hashtags, and this plot being taken sympathetically and seriously by the narrative has got to count for something. Again I don't think this book was all that impressive, the characters mostly fall very flat, but for whatever reason I really loved Sammy. Maybe I was only so interested in him bc he's a rat, or bc animal liberation is such a core issue to me. But it did have me staying up late hooked to see what happened to him, so I've got to give credit. I think this is a "that one character from an otherwise forgettable media" case. 

Tailchaser's Song is often compared to Warriors, but aside from the fact they are both about feral cats, it comes off much more like Watership Down, from the thought-out animal language to the frequent pauses in plot for myths and storytelling. Even the plot of escape from slavery in an authoritarian underground society is comparable to Watership Down.

The story was entertaining enough, but it did lack a certain quality that would make it compelling beyond casual entertainment. It's an adventure, with likable enough characters, but the conclusion felt unsatisfying, lacking anything that was truly earned.

The best parts were the cat mythology, as I always love when writers come up with ways different animals would think about the world and center themselves in it. And it had a fun tie-in to the plot and climax. 

I can't make a true critique of it other than a certain attachment was missing in the characters. While there is an arc to Tailchaser's Story, he still feels flat and distant by the end, and the other characters more so. And if I can't get attached to the characters, I can't get fully invested.

A science fiction classic, I liked this better than I thought I would, and a lot better than Asimov's other big classic Foundation. 

I, Robot is a collection of short stories, something I didn't know ahead of time. The stories vary in interest and quality, but overall are good. This book is the source of the Three Laws of Robotics, and each story, excepting the first, explores different ways robots interpret these laws and can go wrong from them.

I enjoyed this pattern and trying to figure out why the robots behave a certain way before the mystery is solved in the narrative, as it always stems from some form of logic of the laws. There's also slow development of the world as the technology progresses and the laws begin to be expanded on or altered in certain ways. 

The story is also notable in that it doesn't involve robots turning upon their creators in a sinister uprising. The threat of a rogue robot is used only once, and for the rest the First Law of never harming humans isn't threatened. The concluding story had a rare optimistic viewpoint on robots surpassing humans and running everything better, and the book was a novelty simply for having such a viewpoint. 

I'm a huge fan of Le Guin, but hadn't read many of her short stories before now. This was a very hit or miss collection. None of them were bad, but there were a fair few that were less than interesting. However, it's made up for by the good ones.

Of course, The Ones who Walk Away From Omelas has to be mentioned, as it is her most iconic story, and deservedly so. I had read it previously, but it was nice to read it again. It's a story that can be interpreted on a number of levels and is Le Guin at her best.

The Day Before the Revolution is also worthy of note. It actually serves as a prologue to The Dispossessed, following that society's famous anarchist revolutionary in her old age. But rather than focusing on world or politics, it centers on a character study, and her thoughts as everything she dreamed of comes to past after she is too exhausted to do much else about it. It's a quiet and compelling story.

I also loved Vaster Than Empires and More Slow, which was a story about a sentient forest. The plants themselves were not individually sentient, rather it is the entire networked collective forming a conscious being, a consciousness truly alien to human's understanding of it. An empathic man (meaning he has the capability to literally sense other's emotions within his mind) is the only one who is able to discover it. This was wonderful sci fi, my favorite types which explores minds which are truly other.

A wonderful collection. Le Guin deserves her place as one of the greats in speculative fiction.