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Queer Book Character Tournament Round Two

Ylfing- A Conspiracy of Truths

Ayda Mensah- The Murderbot Diaries

Voting ended onApr 24

Character, book, and author names under the cut

#Ylfing #Chantiverse #ACoL #ACoT #Tales of the Chants #A Conspiracy of Truths #A Choir of Lies #Alexandra Rowland #Ayda Mensah #TMBD #The Murderbot Diaries #Martha Wells #lgbt books #polls #queer book character tournament 2026

[based on this post]

#chantiverse #ylfing #conspiracy of truths #alexandra rowland #my art

2020 READING LIST RECAP: November

5. A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland

A Choir of Lies is actually the standalone sequel of another book I actually like, but as much as I love smug jackasses narrating the story of their life, the politics and bureaucracy in A Conspiracy of Truths just didn't vibe with me. It's still a wonderful book that I will willingly throw at anyone, but that's that. And no, I don't know why the economics of this book did vibe with me. My high school business class jumped out when the law of supply and demand was played up here. I was screaming when the faux-Amsterdammers took slow, painful paragraphs flirting at the idea of scarcity without naming it due to lack of sophisticated theory.

I also screamed a lot of things from how cute the actual flirtations were and how stupid young Ylfing had gotten since leaving his teacher and how glaring the twist was. But you know. We're not here to listen to me talking about plot twists. We're here to listen to me talk about how it was a highlight on my reading list. I definitely loved how the book utilized footnotes. It wasn't the matter-of-fact Pratchett expositing and it really pointed out how unreliable our narrator was. In the first book, we had to remind ourselves to take Chant's narration with a grain of salt because he's naturally a crabby old bastard who does say he's filling in gaps of his story with third-hand information. But here, we find an in-universe reader pointing out the flaws and biases in Ylfing's story, filling in details and information we lack, and further driving in the dichotomy between new and old, fiction and truth. I just love how the in-universe reader interacts with the story we're reading, but at times it gets a bit redundant. That, or it feels like the author is hitting you on the head while pointing out the information you need to take a note of in fear you'll miss the build-up of the story. Talking about the story, this is an interesting progression from the first book. Like Ylfing, we begin to realize the weight of the actions that were done by Chant and understand the trauma that was unknowingly inflicted on someone when a main character rushes to their happily ever after. Seeing Ylfing trying to recover from being hurt and abandoned is painful and slow, just like his own path to redemption. From a cheery and optimistic apprentice, he's become a mournful and jaded traveller. Sometimes, like the reader, you want to slap him and other times you want to let him cry on your shoulder. How Ylfing continues to be exploited and ridiculed through this story also adds to the pain of it all, but it eventually has to get better. Eventually. Also, if you're into that inclusivity, this book has a wide array of sexualities and gender orientations and cultures, as did the first book. The first thing anyone would note would be how Fictional Amsterdam has six different social genders. They say that A Conspiracy of Truths was a love story to stories while A Choir of Lies was a love story for storytellers. That is most certainly true. We get to see traditional storytellers and storytellers who's lost the joy for it. We get to appreciate the tales they tell in the artful, crafted way they learned to tell them. And we get to love those who manage to claw themselves out of burnout and the abyss for the sake of their audience.

#Book Recommendations #2020 READING LIST RECAP #fuzzy recommendation #A Conspiracy of Truths #A Choir of Lies #ylfing #Chant #Alexandra Rowland #books #bookblr #LGBT Authors #lgbt representation

I just passed that point where Ylfing see joy in life again, and boy, was that like the colors just flooding back to the pages!

P.S. I just realized he was depressed (like DSM-V dx MDD) after all this time, stupid of me not to realize that because he still seem to function, not normally...no, but he functioned with a different approach in life than he was in the previous book.

#sigh....putting this down for the night #i've got things to do #reading in short snippet of time #a choir of lies #ylfing