#the escapement

[girlonthelasttrain]

For some reason Ziani was laughing. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “There’s no such thing. No evil, no bad people, they’re just a myth. Do you want to know something, Falier? Everything we do in this world, everything that matters, we do for love. It’s always love, when you peel away the shell. There’s that old song, it’s love that makes the world go round. Well, it’s true. Who’d have thought it? They didn’t want us to know the truth so they hid it where nobody’d ever think of looking, in some stupid old song. It really is true, you know. Apart from mad people, and they’re sick and can’t be blamed, apart from them, everything bad - I don’t mean just greedy or spiteful things; everything really bad that was ever done was done for love. You and me, we love Ariessa. The Eremian duke, Orsea, he loved his country. Even Maris Boioannes loved the City; he wanted what was best for it, and he really believed that he was the best. That’s why there’s no such thing as evil, Falier. Evil’s just love in action, love on the move between wanting and getting. I mean, look at you. A man and a woman love each other, they’ve got no choice but to do whatever needs to be done. No, you mustn’t blame yourself, really. Believe me. I’ve only just realised this, and it changes everything. You do see that, don’t you?”

K. J. Parker, The Escapement

[ninja-muse]

The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar was funny, heartbreaking, surreal, and powerful. It’s about a lone gunman on a quest for a magic flower, in a desert landscape full of Wild West tropes, circus imagery, and elder gods—but it’s also about life on the margins, love, memory, reality, and loss. It’s a story only Tidhar could pull off and he’s done it with aplomb. I went in blind and loved it.

[violettesbooks]

ARC's to read for the month, especially excited for the Axoim's End sequel (Truth of the Divine)

[secret-third-thing]

me: I like weird fiction

friend: like weird girl fiction?

me: no. Like weird clown fiction

[highladyluck]

today I got an unexpected snow day off and I finished THREE SEPARATE BOOKS and it was awesome. Some random thoughts on Lavie Tidhar’s The Escapement, since that was the one I just finished and the only one I started today: It reminded me several things I love, including the computer game West of Loathing (like, I was literally visualizing about half of it as the West of Loathing stick figure graphics, which was a weird experience) and the books The Phantom Tollbooth and Perdido Street Station. It also reminds me of anxiety dreams, weirdly- the constant searching for something that is always just one step farther and the way dream stories stutter and restart and suddenly feel like sequels of themselves. It also reminded me of Dara Horn’s The World To Come, actually, especially in the ending. I enjoyed it and will definitely be rereading it.

[quoththegryphon]

He remembered a story he'd heard when he was a boy, about a tiny doorway in a mountain that led into another world; vast plains and mountains under unlimited skies, all contained inside a little door. Closed, the book was just a flat brown thing; you could put a couple of reports on top of it and bury it completely, so you wouldn't know it was there. Open, it led to something monstrous and huge; reading it, he thought, would be an undertaking on par with invading a large and hostile country, and once you ventured inside, there was more than a chance you'd never get out again.

The Escapement, by K.J. Parker

[brushesandbourbon]

"The man you thought you loved never really existed. I wrote him, like a character in a book; I made him up when I wrote you those letters. It was so hard, it took me a whole day to write one. I guess I always knew you'd never love the man I really am. He'd never have ridden to Civitas Eremiae, and screwed up everything for his people, just to save one woman. I had to invent him, too; just like I invented my father's perfect son, who never really existed. There was a real Valens Valentinianus once; he was a stroppy boy who hated hunting and fencing and hated his father, and loved a girl he saw once. When my father died he had to go, because there was a country to be governed; and I suppose I must've thought, if I can't be me, I might as well be someone perfect--the good duke, the world's best huntsman, the ideal of pure courtly love; and after that, the great leader in adversity, and then the avenger, though I was never really comfortable with him.

The strange thing is, I've been the imaginary man so long, I don't know how to be anything else. And, as you say, Daurenja killed him, just because he was better at swordfighting. It's a hell of a thing, for your entire conception of good and evil to depend on the outcome of a fencing match. If I won, my ideas of right and wrong are vindicated. If I lose, I must've been wrong all along. And I lost. ... So what are you planning to do now?"

"Nothing," she said, as she sat down and picked up her embroidery, " nothing of any importance. What I've been doing my whole life."