ardvark

There Is No Antimemetics Division

4/5. A short novel about what it would be like to be an organization fighting anti-memes (powerful eldritch somethings that can effectively erase information from the universe, including from human memory). How do you fight a war for humanity when you keep forgetting a war is happening at all?

A very interesting mechanism of a book. I enjoyed watching its strangely-shaped gears catch one to the next, partly because this is the sort of story that my brain would not have come up with given several centuries of work. Not just the story itself, but the entire odd structure that makes it go. I do think I fundamentally disagree with one of this books premises about how human beings work, but sure, okay, I’m willing to go with the idea that the people who work at this particular organization are odd ducks who will, for example, have an entire decade of life scooped out of their head by a cosmic horror and who will just kinda shrug and go about calmly reconstructing their life from the evidence left behind.

I will say as a point of flavor more than a warning: this book has that particular approach to character where people are extremely unembodied. Indeed, you could be forgiven for picturing the entire cast as brains in a jar that go about acting on the world and on each other without much affect at all. People do have internal lives, but we glimpse them at odd angles and through narrow pinholes, like when we only get to know about a marriage when one of the spouses has forgotten the other and reads the surveillance reports on them. It’s all definitely a vibe, and not my style, but here it works.

Content notes: Cosmic horror, other kinds of creeping horror of knowing you’ve forgotten something terrifying, violence.

The Montessori Child

4/5. What it sounds like, focusing mostly on the 6-12 age range, and a bit on the teenage years. A good survey book that passes lightly over a lot of things and gives good recommendations for where to look for deeper info. The sort of book that will say in passing that of course a child’s gender may not be as a parent wants or expects and a parent should follow the child’s lead. Good information delivered in a paragraph whereas the people who need it the most probably need a full book on it. Useful to me largely in that it made me realize that I already know most of this, at least in general. Good to know some things have stuck after all the parent ed Cb’s montessori school does.

Saint Death's Herald

3/5. Sequel, do not start here. Further wholesomely necromantic (it’s a vibe) adventures. Rough road trip when you have to chase down your great grandfather’s psychopathic ghost.

This book continues in the footsteps of the first by being cheerfully morbid, with great character work and complicated relationships. Weird thing though: I thought the first book was messy and oddly paced and overlong. This sequel is about 9 hours of audio shorter (so about 90,000 words, give or take) and so straightforward, I was baffled. Then the author said in the afterword that her editor made her cut 90,000 words, and ah. I see. I think I actually would like a little more mess in this book, believe it or not. Maybe the third book can get it just right.

Anyway, my point is: read if you would like a sort of T. Kingfisher plus Tamsyn Muir vibe plus normalized polyamory and queerness. And a reanimated tiger rug as the noble steed. And an undead wolf who is a very good boy.

Content notes: Death, violence, possession, mind control.