Tangled Mind

... a show put up by some Etruscans from up north. ... their faces were quite bare; they were using them to act with. It is hard to describe how this display affected me. Some barbarian peoples are ashamed to show their bodies, while civilised men take pride in making theirs fit to be seen. But to strip one’s own face to the crowd, as if it were all happening to oneself instead of to Oedipus or Priam; one would need a front of brass to bear it. [loc. 1579]

I believe this is technically a reread: I certainly owned a copy of this novel in my early teens. But nothing felt at all familiar, and it's possible I found it too difficult back then.

The narrator is Nikeratos (Niko), an Athenian actor, and the time is around 350BCE. Niko is noticed by Dion, advisor to the tyrant Dionysios I of Syracuse. ('Tyrant' in the original sense: a ruler who holds power without any constitutional right.) After Dionysios' death, Niko becomes a witness to Dion and Plato's efforts to mould the dead king's son, Dionysios II, into the platonic ideal of a ruler. It does not end well.

Long-distance runners exercise themselves to a point where the walls of reality become thin. He fondly recalls the time – on this same run – when a troop of centaurs emerged from the woods and trotted alongside him for part of the journey. Labras is still unsure whether this actually happened, but very much looks forward to it happening again. [p. 165]

Twenty-four interconnected short stories, each focussing on a scene from life in Athens in 416BC, just before the festival of Dionysia. It's a brief interlude of peace (after the Peace of Nicias five years previously) but Alcibiades is keen to invade Sicily. Meanwhile, the ordinary folk of the city -- hoplite and hetaira, slave and spy, fish-seller and fig-smuggler, vase painter and long-distance runner -- go about their business.

“Skinchangers do not eat flesh. ... What they eat is everything that makes a being itself. Their haecceity. Their thisness. Thisness is what they feed on.”[loc. 1052]

In Saint Death's Daughter, Lanie (short for Miscellaneous) Stones spent much of her time in the family mansion, avoiding anything and anyone that might trigger her allergic reaction to violence: when that was taken from her, she found a home above a school in Liriat Proper. In Saint Death's Herald, she leaves Liriat (and most of her found family) behind,( Read more... )

"Pindaros, look at the moon. What do you see?"
"It's very thin," he said. "And it's setting behind the sacred hill. What about it?"
"Do you see where some columns are still standing? The moon is tangled in them -- some are before her, but others are behind her."
"No, Latro, I don't see that..." [Chapter XVI]

My most recent reread was ten years ago (review here), and even then I was bemoaning the lack of an ebook version. Once again I am thankful to the Internet Archive...

The premise of the novel, set in Greece in 479BC, is simple: 'Latro', a soldier, is suffering amnesia due to a head injury, and has been advised to write down the events of each day before he sleeps. One unexpected side-effect of his injury (or his amnesia) is that he sees the gods and other supernatural beings.( Read more... )

"What are they doing?" asked Myshtigo. It was the first time I had seen him genuinely surprised.
"Why, they're dismantling the Great Pyramid of Cheops ... they're kind of short on building materials hereabouts, the stuff from Old Cairo being radioactive..."
"They are desecrating a monument to the past glories of the human race!" Diane exclaimed.
"Nothing is cheaper than past glories," I observed.

I was craving Ancient Greece after The Hymn to Dionysus and thought there was more of it in this, Zelazny's SF novel rooted in Greek mythology. ... There isn't, but it was a quick and mostly enjoyable read (thanks, Internet Archive!), and very nostalgic. I don't have much to add to my review from (OMG) 25 years ago here, except that I now also find the characters' constant tobacco use weird and outdated.

I swim for the same reason that I sail, because I love the sea, not it loves me. Because it is dark, because it is salt, because it is deadly. Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart. [loc. 2892: 'Keep the Aspidochelone Floating', by Chaz Brenchley]

A selection of gay fantasy short stories by eleven authors, introduced by editor Steve Berman. I'm fairly sure I bought this because I'd just read something by one of those authors, but I cannot remember which or who. Here we find selkies and naiads, mermen, pirates, rig workers, fishermen... The two stories I liked most were 'Wave Boys' by Vincent Kovar (in which tribes of 'lost' boys meet, fight and part in a futuristic landless world where language has warped) and 'Keep the Aspidochelone Floating' by Chaz Brenchley (in which pirates of many genders discover a secluded island and live to regret it). I'm also intrigued by the worldbuilding in 'nathan Burgoine's 'Time and Tide': would like to read more in that world. A nice anthology to dip into.

Full list of contents here.

“If you’re such a good thief, then why haven’t you stolen me yet?” [loc. 3002]

This is a YA queer romance: it is not -- despite the title -- a straightforward retelling of the myth of Icarus, who flew too near the sun. Ancrum has transformed the elements of that myth into something quite new, a story about a motherless boy and his father, about art and vengeance, about theft and love and being different.

"She had a hard time deciding if she should see you too. If she saw you, you would know she was dead. But she said yes... even though she wants to live inside you for ever, even though she wants you to never forget her. She knows that once you see her, you'll forget about her and move on..." [loc. 1732]

Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon, first published as Tsunago ('Go-Between') in Japanese in 2010, could be mistaken for another vaguely magical feelgood novel. The premise is that the Go-Between -- a young man, orphaned, named Ayumi -- can set up a meeting between a living person and a dead person. There are, of course, rules: the dead person must agree to the meeting, and neither party can ever arrange another meeting. The meetings take place at a five-star hotel, from sunset to sunrise on the night of the full moon. ('The more intense the moonlight, the longer they can meet' -- but still, sunset to sunrise...) 

We must attempt, with great urgency, to imagine a world that does not require Shadow Lands, that is not predicated on sacrificial people and sacrificial ecologies and sacrificial continents. More than imagine it, we must begin, at once, to build it. [loc. 6058]

Activist and writer Naomi Klein (author of No Logo, Shock Doctrine and other impactful works) realised that she was being conflated with Naomi Wolf (author of The Beauty Myth, but more recently anti-vax and conspiracy-minded). The two, at least from Klein's perspective, could not be more different, yet Wolf -- 'Other Naomi' -- has been cast as her doppelganger. ( Read more... )

Animals never would have crawled out of ancient bogs without scaly trees and other plants that altered the terrestrial realm first, thick and otherworldly forests where crunchy insects would eventually entice our fishy ancestors to belly flop onto shore. [loc. 160]

I greatly enjoyed The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, but wasn't sure that a book about the prehistory of plants would appeal as much. I was wrong: it's rivetting.( Read more... )