#dylan is reading

[strawberryplottwist]

Book 7: Straight by Chuck Tingle (@drchucktingle)

I'm going to start by saying that I really enjoyed this novella, because it's not going to seem like it from the rest of what I have to say, but I promise I did. If you like zombie stories, a healthy dash of camp, and the centering of queer joy and solidarity, you'll enjoy it, too.

As much as I enjoyed it, it's also bringing up some really complicated feelings for me. This might be down to when, exactly, I read it. I started it yesterday while waiting for a couch to be delivered to my condo and while waiting in line at the post office to request the lock on my mailbox be replaced, and finished it today while running on less than five hours of sleep and stewing in the anticipation of a movie night I don't really want to attend. It has me thinking about how disconnected I am from every community I theoretically belong to, and how lonely of a life that is.

I'm sure I'll feel better once I can get some sleep. It's a significant mark in the book's favor that it's got me thinking about all this and feeling complicated things. This is the first work of Dr. Tingle's that I've read and I'm excited for more, another mark in its favor. I'd love to see it adapted for the screen, it would definitely be a fun time.

9/10, really enjoyable despite my brain deciding to get Complicated about it

[strawberryplottwist]

Book 14: Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

I have read two books in as many days. I'll probably read a third tomorrow, and a fourth on Friday. Novellas have the distinct advantage of being short enough to read in a single evening. As I mentioned yesterday, I have @great-exhibition-of-1851 to thank for getting me to pick up this series.

So. I begged Martha Wells not to do this to me, and also to do this to me. I asked her to stop making me look at myself, but also not to let me look away. She obeyed precisely half of those requests, and I'll let you guess which ones.

Murderbot has ripped the molten, gooey core out of me and splattered it on the sidewalk for everyone to gawp at. When I went away to college, I started learning to be a person. Then I moved back in with my parents, and I forgot. I'm in my own home, which I own, and I'm learning again. So maybe I shouldn't have picked up the series expressly about learning how to be a person, the painful reckoning with your own personhood, and what it means to be a person at all. But maybe I needed to. Maybe I needed to read about it to crystallize it in my head.

I don't think I'm going to come to some grand, profound conclusion at the end of this series. Probably. I do think that, because of when in my life I'm reading it, it is going to be very important to me for a very long time. I think Martha Wells knows a lot about what it's like to learn to be a person later in life than everyone around you and I think, even if she didn't intend to write this for people going through that, it's a gift to us nonetheless.

10/10, please put that gooey thing back in my chest, I think it was important

[strawberryplottwist]

Book 17: Network Effect by Martha Wells

The usual thanks to @great-exhibition-of-1851 for getting me to read the Murderbot books!

I had intended to read this in the three days immediately following when I finished Exit Strategy, but then I had an extremely busy weekend, got bodied by my period, and had another extremely busy weekend right after. So it took longer than I meant it to. I'm still wildly ahead of schedule on the book-every-two-weeks front, so it's fine.

Sometimes we put our blorbos in the blender. This is right and natural and what blorbos are for. Other times, our blorbos put us in the blender. This is also right and natural and what blorbos are for. Murderbot absolutely put me in the blender this time. I mean, it's been putting me in the blender the whole time, but like. This time it really fucking did it. It put me in the blender so good it broke the System my brain developed for dealing with my alexithymia. Which is always fun.

(Grief. It triggered the overwhelming grief I tend to feel for past me who was alone and didn't really have an internal sense of self and didn't know how to go about putting one together. It triggered that grief so hard I couldn't do any kind of rational analysis of my feelings to identify and explain them in the moment and I had to leave myself bread crumbs in a group chat to come back to later to figure it out.)

Just like the last book felt different from the rest of the series so far, this one did, too. The last one tipped the balance in favor of the story, where previously the balance was strongly in favor of the philosophical and existential questions of personhood and freedom and identity. This one, however, balanced both basically perfectly. The story was engaging and present and the philosophical elements were woven so thoroughly and subtly into the story that they became plot elements in and of themselves, that the plot elements answered the questions posed by the philosophical elements seamlessly, that they are inextricable from each other. They have been the whole series, but the balance is absolutely knife-edge perfect in this one.

10/10, please let me out of the blender, I ask of the series that might as well be titled "The Blender", fully preparing to dive head first directly back into the blender

[strawberryplottwist]

Book 13: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Yes, I finished Gay Pride & Prejudice yesterday. Yes, I read this entire book in one day. Yes, it's a novella. We've already established that novellas count as books with both Straight and Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism. Moving on.

So. I picked this up because @great-exhibition-of-1851's Murderbot posting got me invested enough in the characters by proxy that I could not live with it being by proxy anymore. I acquired the entire series so far, including the one that just released today, as cheaply as I could manage. Thank you, Barnes & Noble membership - that shit more than pays for itself every single year in the discounts I get on books.

Anyway. About the book itself. It had an unfair advantage going in in that I already care about the characters, but I think I would have liked them all anyway, especially Gurathin. He is a sad, wet cat of a man and I love him so much. And even if I hadn't had any particular attachment to the human characters, the gut punch that is the last three pages would've gotten me so unhealthily attached to Murderbot itself that I may never have recovered. I mean, they did that anyway, let's be real. I am unwell about those last three pages. No spoilers, but there is a particular phrase that reached directly into my brain and squeezed.

This is going to take a while to fully process. It is going to percolate through my brain and find all the tiniest, most deliciously painful nooks and crannies to settle into. I need to inject it directly into my veins, upload the entire rest of the series directly into my brain, subsume it into myself. I knew going in that this is a series that directly reckons with the questions of personhood and still it caught me off guard. I cannot understate how high of a compliment this is. I am so uncomfortable and I would like to continue being uncomfortable like this forever thank you.

10/10, stop making me look at myself but also don't let me look away

[strawberryplottwist]

Book 18: Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

Once again, thanks to @great-exhibition-of-1851 for getting me interested in this series!

I asked to be let out of the blender, and Murderbot complied! I don't think it will last, but hey, my request was granted! This entry in the series didn't blenderize me the way previous entries have. I still enjoyed it, of course, but I do almost wish I had read it before Network Effect. If I come back and reread the series, or listen to the audiobooks, I think I'll swap them in the reading/listening order.

As with Exit Strategy, the story took center stage this time over the questions of personhood. It was a really good story that I really enjoyed, and contains my absolute favorite line in any of the books so far - "That left me with the human most likely to want to drop everything and come watch me break into a damaged transport and the human also most likely to come watch me break into a damaged transport but only so he could argue with me about it. So I called both of them." (pp 47-48) And it gave me more of my beloved Gurathin! But at least for me, I think this series is at its absolute best when the philosophy and existential questions take the front seat, or share it equally with the story. I did enjoy it, however, and it does have some really interesting things to say! I just think it suffers from coming directly after Network Effect, which has been the best book in the series so far for me.

10/10, really gripping story, more of my favorite of Murderbot's humans, more Murderbot, what's not to love?

[strawberryplottwist]

Book 20: Platform Decay by Martha Wells

The final (for now) thanks to @great-exhibition-of-1851 for getting me to read these books! If I hadn't moved out of my parents' house this year, I would have been able to call this the best decision I made all year. As it stands, I'm happy for it to be number two!

I am Back In The Blender with this one, oh my god. One would not think a killing machine interacting with children would be a good idea, and yet, Murderbot is so soft with multiple small children in this book and it absolutely killed me. The phrases "tiny little bones" and "even tinier bones" will live rent-free in my brain forever, making me cry whenever they push up to the surface. They made me cry while I was reading, that's for damn sure.

It remains truly incredible to see Murderbot's growth throughout this series, and the effects it is (unwillingly) having on the world around it. I really love how much it has opened up to the world, in its own way, especially in the last couple of books. I love its ever-expanding bunch of humans. I love getting to know its universe through its eyes, even the bits we have to extrapolate because Murderbot doesn't care about them.

I'm almost sad that I read this series now, when there are likely to be more books, and not once it's over, because now I have to wait for there to be more. This is absolutely one of my favorite series of all time. I am so, so glad to have read these books, and I will be so, so glad to read any more that come out. It breaks my heart that not everything can be as wonderful as Murderbot, but then, if everything was as wonderful as Murderbot, it wouldn't stand out so much. I hope Martha Wells knows what a truly amazing piece of art she has created.

10/10, the only bad part is that there isn't more to read, the tiny little bones are squeezing my heart

[strawberryplottwist]

Book 19: System Collapse by Martha Wells

Continued thanks to @great-exhibition-of-1851 for the Murderbot tipoff~

I remain unblenderized, and before you think that's a criticism, I finished this book grinning ear to ear and hugged it. I also signed up for Martha Wells's email list so I can get updates on any future Murderbot books. (Yes, I have one more book after this. No, I can't believe I'm almost done with this series for now, either.)

One thing I haven't mentioned in these posts yet that I really want to call out here is the evolution of Murderbot's narration. The way it talks, both to ART/its humans/other bots and to us via the narration, changing as it learns and grows and becomes more and more itself is absolute genius. It's still recognizably Murderbot at all times, but especially in Network Effect, getting to see narration from Three as well really highlights not just their different personalities, but just how far Murderbot has come since All Systems Red. Murderbot is getting increasingly comfortable within itself and within its new role in life, and it is so wonderful.

This series is ingenious in how it weaves together the personal and the systemic. Martha Wells's grasp of the psychology at play in these situations is sublime. The individual and societal narratives push against each other extremely well, in both heightened and grounded ways that make both feel very real. I just. There is too much going on in this series that I wholeheartedly adore. I could go on forever, listing all the disjointed things that make me want more and more and more, that make me never want to be done with this series.

10/10, I don't want this to ever be over but I won't put off reading the (current) final book for anything

[strawberryplottwist]

Book 15: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

As before, thanks to @great-exhibition-of-1851 for getting me to pick up this series!

I have to admit something right off the bat here. I've been pretty glib about the impact this series has had on me up till now. I've been silly and joking and unserious, even in the more sincere things I've said about it. It's a deflection, hiding feelings in humor. I can't do it this time. I can't come up with some funny, poignant string of words to humorously exaggerate my feelings in order to distance myself, and anyone reading, from them.

There are a very few characters I've encountered in my life who are made of the same stuff as me. Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one. Aza from Turtles All the Way Down. Charles from Dead Boy Detectives. Newt from Pacific Rim. They're not me and I'm not them, they haven't had my same experiences and they don't have my same personality, but we're all made from the same stuff. Thinking too hard about any of them makes me cry.

Murderbot is made from the same stuff as me. Previous entries in the series dealt primarily with the parts of learning to be a person that are at most neutral for me. I can think about them easily and fairly objectively. This book delved into part of it that is more acutely painful - the idea that someone Like Us can be genuinely loved and cared for. I try to look at this from an angle, never head on, because if I look at it head on, I get blubbery and overly sentimental and start apologizing for my own existence and thanking anybody who even minimally puts up with me. This book looked unflinchingly at it and refused to look away.

I used to have screaming, crying emotional meltdowns whenever a character died and other characters were shown being deeply upset that they were gone. I didn't think anyone would react like that if it had been me who died, and that terrified and upset me, for obvious reasons. I haven't had one of those meltdowns in a while. It does still always get to me, I do still cry, but I can function now. This book hit that button, hard.

10/10, I love you, Miki, and I love you, Murderbot