Subject: Oh hey, Prydain!
Author:
Posted on: 2024-10-14 15:00:15 UTC
Kaitlyn got me onto Prydain many years ago; we have a very battered hardback copy up on the shelf. I haven't read it for a while, but we do still have occasional munchings and crunchings floating through our dialogue.
hS
It has been a while since I have made a post! I mainly use the discord server and lurk quite a bit, but I would like to both talk a little bit about the fiction/short stories I have been enjoying recently and also invite recommendations on what I should read next. I've been going through a bit of a blah moment in reading these past few months - I haven't been able to get seriously engaged with some larger series, and others (cough Atlas Complex cough) have seriously disappointed me. But, that isn't to say that it hasn't all been bad.
Starting from August/September, and working backwards, I recently got into Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, and have finished the first two out of six in the series so far. It's about an electrician who is, along with the rest of the population of Earth, thrust into a planetary gameshow/DnD-inspired competition to win the planet. While it might not be the most original setting, Dinniman's writing has been thoroughly enjoyable, and Princess Donut, the feline deuteragonist, is an excellent addition. In July, I finished A Psalm For the Wild-Built and its sequel, by Becky Chambers. I've been in love with Chambers' writing, and this post climate crisis, cozy setting really drew me in. I also recently found out that one of my IRL coworkers plays DnD with her! Her work is refreshing and low stakes, and what I needed after so much heavy, grimdark fantasy. And lastly, in June, I read The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett, author of the Foundryside series. Sherlock Holmes meets Attack on Titan meets weird alchemy and magical human alterations. It was a trip, and a thoroughly impressive murder mystery. I am very much looking forward to reading the sequel either when it drops this next April, or if I can weasel my local PRH rep into giving me an e-copy.
Let me know if you've read any of the above and what you'd recommend, or if you haven't, what you've read recently and would like to infodump about. I'm always adding books to my list, and have both ample time to get through it and easy access to most titles.
Happy Spooky Season, Helsinki
If you enjoyed Dungeon Meshi, this is another manga (soon to be anime) of a similar fantasy tone. I can't talk enough about the world and the plot and characters without also discussing the art of Witch Hat, because it's so integral to telling that story. The paneling is absolutely breathtaking, and the art is so intricately detailed, it's like wood carvings of a fairy tale.
The world it's set in is one of magic, where witches live lives separate from mundane humans, working their magic to sometimes help their communities but largely keeping to themselves. Everybody kows you have to be born a witch to use magic, though, and protagonist Coco has been heartbroken by this fact her whole life. She's just an ordinary girl in a small village who will never be able to use magic, no matter how much she wishes she could.
...Until she accidentally discovers the truth for herself when she spots a witch working some magic of his own. Spells, she learns, are drawn—magic runes and magic ink to create wondrous effects. And so she decides to try drawing one of the runes in a book she bought from a witch at a festival, many years ago.
She has to be rescued by the witch she saw before, because the magic she unleashes turns her mother to stone.
And from there, Coco is given a choice—lose her memories of magic forever, or become his apprentice to uphold the secret. She choses the latter, and her new mentor promises her that one day, she might have a chance to un-petrify her mother.
It starts off a very sweet slice of life story following Coco and her fellow apprentices—three other girls her age who all came to their mentor's atelier for various reasons of their own, though all of them were born into magic families and have been training most of their lives to draw the magic spells Coco now has to learn from scratch.
Her new mentor and his Watchful Eye (basically a second responsible adult assigned to the atelier) are childhood best friends and act like married dads with four daughters. They're really thoughtful mentors who encourage their students to play to their strengths while not ignoring their weaknesses, and the girls learn to work together as they grow in their magical capabilities. The magic system of drawn circular sigils is incredibly detailed and the parallels of art and magic are truly inseparable—the witches often find themselves stuck in creative ruts when they can't draw spells to achieve the effects they want.
It starts to get darker the further the story progresses. There's a counterpoint faction to the ruling law of the Pointed Cap witches; the Brimhats wish to see magic made free to all of mankind again, but often resort to less than pleasant methods as they try to undermine the Pointed Caps. It was a Brimhat that gave Coco the book of magic in the hopes she would uncover the truth, and it's (so far) heavily implied she's not the only child he was giving books out to.
The Brimhats also want all magic to be made legal again—which includes healing magic, outlawed for the horrific mutations spells cast on the body can create if cast wrong due to magic ink and blood having unpredictable effects when mixed. There's a really interesting examination of the nature of privilege and disability throughout the story, and Coco has to grapple with the fact she's now one of the people who knows the truth after she wished so long for the impossible.
(Also there's a really cute cooking spinoff called Witch Hat Kitchen and the recipes are made with really exotic fantasy ingredients that add to the worldbuilding in general. The prism lemons are my favourite.)
Anyway, I really cannot gush enough about this, because it's really one of those stories that I think is going to become a timeless classic. It's rapidly become one of my favourite fiction stories, period.
(Also, I swear that, like, half of everyone I know has been raving about this series ... and now you're on that list. I should perhaps get around to it at some point.)
There are even recipes included (with normal food substitutions) so you can make your own versions of the dishes. I love the spinoff and it really leans into the 'two dads with four daughters' cottage vibe. It's very sweet and fluffy which makes for a nice breather when the main story starts getting darker.
Unless you count the absurd amount of badfic I read, I've been working my way through Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series. It's taken a while... well, because of how incredibly long each book is.
That's about it, honestly. :/
--Ls
I was lucky enough to pull all four of what I've just learned is called her Wayfarers series out of the library... last summer, I think? Those are fantastic books; I've described them to Kaitlyn as "person-centred sci-fi", and highly recommend them.
I didn't actually know she'd written anything else. XD I checked the shelves in the bookshop literally yesterday, and they only had The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I'll need to look these two up!
(Our library system is... pretty bad. They charge for reservations; I hate it.)
I recently read This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which falls into that same space for me: it's sciffy, but it's about the people not the tech, if that makes sense. Very good book.
hS
I've quite enjoyed her work (and also "[...] Time War") and agree with the person-focused sci-fi assessment.
(I was about to let you know about Psalm and the rest of the Monk and Robot books, but it looks like Hel covered that)
I've got a copy of "To be taught, if fortunate" (a Chambers novella) on the plane travel reading list (behind most of the rest of "Guards! Guards!").
My recently completed reading has been the rest of the Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells) which, well, I've raved about the meant-to-kill cyborg with social anxiety and massive autism vibes before so ... I'll dig up a link to it later.
...so I'll say as quickly as I possibly can that I've been rereading The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander and it's just reminding me how great an author he was and why I counted him as an inspiration and an influence earlier in my writing career. Also, it feels very, very much like meeting old friends through text, and that's so wonderful. Highly recommend the Chronicles of Prydain series, as always. Maybe the characters will end up beloved by you as well.
~Z
Kaitlyn got me onto Prydain many years ago; we have a very battered hardback copy up on the shelf. I haven't read it for a while, but we do still have occasional munchings and crunchings floating through our dialogue.
hS
I picked it up somewhere between ages nine and...eleven, maybe? Probably more like nine to ten, and then proceeded to reread it and reread it and reread it. I wrote a book report on one of the books (Taran Wanderer, I think). I own either all or almost all of the main five books by now (it's either all or I'm missing one). I can't remember now if I mentioned in the original post - I think I did - but I used to credit Lloyd Alexander as one of my writing influences, and picking up the Black Cauldron again, I can see why. He's just very good, and his books and author's notes did certainly shape a certain amount of my approach to writing, especially early on. I wanted to write, as he did, books that entertained and engrossed and taught the reader valuable life lessons and bits of practical skills together with the protagonist while not being preachy about it or taking you out of the story at all. I wanted to make my readers cry and laugh and walk away feeling like something in them or their lives had been enriched by the reading experience. I'd phrase it a bit differently, these days, but I wouldn't say that's no longer true.
Always glad to meet someone who's actually read those books as well (you would not believe how few I've come across irl!) and it's great that Gurgi left that kind of mark XD also, I feel like Llyan the giant housecat is a character I should bring up, because I know a whole lot of people here are cat lovers!
~Z