Mallory O'Meara from The Reading Glasses podcast joins Tom to talk about The Marrow Thieves, dreams and why a top hat might make sense on an HG wells commemorative coin. But not four legs on a tripod.
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A Message from the Office of Veronica Belmont
"Hopefully everyone is watching this dope ass season of the Expanse!
I’m trying to read along this month!
I also finished the new Bob"
WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?
Tom: Dalmore Scotch
Mallory: Ol Dominick Huling Station
QUICK BURNS
Jan: TheOneRing.net has posted the official synopsis for Amazon Studios’ Lord of the Rings series.
Jan: Polygon has released their list of the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy novels of 2020.
Jan: Lotus Mag has published on their website an article with a short introduction into Science Fiction in Germany.
Eric: Dragonlance Nexus is reporting that a New Dragonlance book by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman will be coming July of 2021
Trike: UK’s new commemorative coin honoring H.G. Wells. American designer gives The War of the Worlds tripods four legs and The Invisible Man a top hat.
BARE YOUR SWORD
We had loads of suggestions for Crystal who wanted "SFF that’s not action driven? Like SFF murder mystery or very minimal violence?"
Terpkristin: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I guess it had some action in it, but I remember that there wasn't much violence. There's also The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
Phil: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and The Caves of Steel
Joanna: Wilde Investigations series by Laura Laakso starting with Fallible Justice.
Jenny (Reading Envy) The City & the City by China Mieville is famously written in mystery style for his mother who didn't care for fantasy....
To which Seth added: Mieville's Embassytown is another title where the action is more intellectual than physical. I liked Jo Walton's trilogy starting with The Just City too, it's another one where most of the action is cerebral.
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Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth: Interesting to hear... Was it Mallory?.. talking about dreams. I have always had very vivid, detailed dreams, but I have fewer dreams now than I used to, which makes me sad. Dreams, to me, are this wonderful way to experience so many amazing things. There is also the delightful fact that a lovely long hug I experience in a dream is indistinguishable in memory from a real one - the feelings are the same, and it it comforting to me to know that however far away they might be, my friends can pop into my dreams to give me a hug when I need one. So my feelings about dreams are totally the opposite of Mallory's and I can appreciate how awful it would be to lose the ability to dream, and why one might consider it reasonable to kill to get that ability back. I'm very interested in this book. Count me in for this one!
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION (NON-SPOILERY)
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
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"Leesa: I found that it wasn't very dark, or dismal, or too dystopian. The part that has most people despairing--about Metis and other native/first nations being harvested--is relegated to (mostly) back-story. I found it more like The Ten Thousand Doors of January than Parable of the Sower .
Dimaline writes very believably and I could see very clearly the scenes she was setting. Examples such as (view spoiler) and (view spoiler) and I could absolutely see that and understand what the body language is conveying.
Also, the (audiobook) narrator, Meegwun Fairbrother, was VERY good. I'm very happy they picked someone from First Nations to narrate.
If you like anything with a Native American/First Nations/Metis feel, this is in your wheelhouse. It's definitely in mine.
I went ahead and gave this 5 stars. I'm happy I made the extra effort to find this in audio, which is my preferred method for consuming media.
ETA: I filed this in both Tom and Veronica for the S&L goals. LOL. It's dystopian, which is generally filed under Sci fi/speculative, but the concept of Native marrow being linked to dreaming was more like Jade City and California Bones, so I filed it under both. :)
Fight Me.
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Ruth (tillitab) Ashworth: I was excited to read this book because of the intriguing concept. Dreams are important to me, and I wondered what I would do to get them back if I lost them. I knew this wouldn’t be the main perspective in this book, but I’d expected the motivations to be explored and delved into and they weren’t really. I felt rather disappointed, which is unfair, because I can hardly be upset with a book simply for not telling the story I wanted it to.
This got me wondering what other books might have defied expectations, and whether this was a good or bad thing. Another example for me, and one we’ve read, was Lovecraft Country, which I had expected would continue the creepy inheritance story set in a house in the middle of the woods, and I was surprised, and initially, disappointed when it changed directions. In the end, I found I enjoyed the book all the more for surprising me, though I would still have happily read the story I epected. "
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Iain: Hi, motivated by this months pick I realised I had never read any Australian indigenous SF&F.. this led me on a mostly fruitless search for Some writers which after much searching I found a couple.
The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf is another YA SF book set after the apocalypse (and after the recovery) with indigenous themes that are very similar to the Marrow thieves. The stolen generation informs the book with young people scraping institutions. It leans heavily on indigenous mythology and the Australian landscape. It also has similarities with the New Mutants. If you like TMT this is worth a look. The author, Ambelin Kwaymullina, is from the Palyku people in NW Australia.
I have The Old Lie by Claire G. Coleman which looks like hard SF with an indigenous take on my TBR list as well
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ADDENDUMS
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