melreads | Entries tagged with expanse

(Saturday, August 15th)
Now I guess I have to go back to Babylon's Ashes, although I'm not feeling it, either. Maybe I should just give it up and finish the re-read later, and go on to something new right now. It's not like anybody is forcing me to do it!

(Sunday) I'm trying to read Crazy Rich Asians - I bought a paperback copy a while back and only got a couple of chapters in. I'm hoping it picks up. It's way too heavy on character details about way more characters than you can keep up with (or than I can keep up with, anyway).

(Later) I got more into it when it got to the Astrid part - where she figures out that her husband is cheating, that is - but overall I'm finding this kind of annoying. I'm not giving up yet but I may have to keep going one chapter at a time until I get more interested. (Note from the "future": pretty sure I never got much further than this & it's on my DNF list.)

Meanwhile, I'm re-reading Howl's Moving Castle (which is a fast read anyway).

(Monday) I forget between times how much I love Howl and Calcifer and Sophie and the dang castle. And I adore Miyazaki, but this is the one time I really disliked one of his movies because it took off and grafted his own obsessions (flying!!) onto the book, where it didn't fit at all. (I did think Miyazaki's version of Howl was terrifically hot, in a very anime kind of a way, but that wasn't enough to save the movie for me!) I did like the parts of the movie that stuck closer to Wynne Jones' original story.

(Later - back to the book rather than the movie) I forget all the ins & outs of the HMC book, too. I don't know, do other people have every bit of their favorite books memorized? Probably not - maybe a few people with exceptionally fine memories - or with fewer favorites! I don't know why I seem to feel I should. I guess I wouldn't re-read so much if I had a photographic memory and could just conjure everything up, so maybe it's a good thing. Re-reading is a pleasure I wouldn't want to forego.

(Wed.) I finished one read-through and now I'm re-reading bits of it again, with two questions: does Sophie curse herself? Or at least, does this version of herself that she's constructed influence what the Witch of the Waste does? (and also possibly how long the curse lasts?) And at what point does Howl realize what's actually going on?

I really can't see - having now read the early chapters again - how the WotW can have known what was in Sophie's head. I mean, there's no indication elsewhere that WotW is a mind-reader, right? But it does dovetail very neatly with Sophie's mindset coming into it. Maybe she was so into the concept of herself as "eldest" that that got turned into "elderly" somewhere along the way!

(Later again) Still re-reading Howl, and trying to pay attention to details - does Howl suspect Miss Angorian from the start? Sophie doesn't think so, but I'm beginning to. Howl has spent time around the Witch of the Waste - Miss Angorian's boss, after all. Apparently he's never seen her in this form, at least, but I still think he smells something fishy, here.

(Can Calcifer change shape like this? "Miss Angorian" is a much older fire demon, though.)

Also, I can't say I understand the thing about falling stars being fire demons. Is there a fire demon at the heart of every sun? (That makes a certain amount of sense, I guess.) I'm probably picking around at the details too much but I'm enjoying it, so whatever.

spoilers!

July 31, 2020
I was talking about not having a book in the last entry - I wonder if the local library might have it. The library here is about two blocks away and I'm ashamed to say I've never set foot in it. I did poke around on the website a while back, though. But I think they're closed right now anyway.

I have a new Expanse theory, or, well, I have a couple of things that my brain is wanting to string together, anyway. I noticed that at some point Avasarala says that Alex has a kid on Mars he doesn't know about. Then I don't think it's ever referred to directly again. It could have been an affair or something from when he was younger - but what if it was his wife? He left suddenly to go fly for PurNKleen (however they spell it!) - if she found out later that she was pregnant, it sort of makes sense that she might not tell him. It would explain why she's so hostile when he turns up much later (or it could just be because he dumped her in the first place!). But if there's a kid, maybe she's afraid they might want to go flying off with dad.

I also keep thinking Naomi's not-dead son might pop up at some point.

The whole thing about dropping big rocks on Earth just breaks my brain. I've read this book half-a-dozen times, probably, but it still blows my mind.

(always possibility of spoilers here!! - especially for later Expanse books, in this case)

Monday, July 24
I was thinking about two-author books. The only thing I know about how "Corey" works is that they started out with one of them writing Holden and the other writing Miller. That reminded me of the books that Patricia Wrede wrote with Caroline Stevener (which were literally an exchange of letters, in real life, as I understand it) - starting with Sorcery and Cecilia. Those are basically Regency with magic - the first one is an out-and-out romance, too (only with magic). I think I may need to re-read that.

(It occurs to me to wonder if the idea for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell came from that. Same combination of Regency and magic.)

Tuesday
I'm finishing up Cibola Burn, and the last time I read the epilogue I must've been totally skimming, because it lays down a foundation for the rest of the books in a way I didn't really take in before. (I can see missing it before I read the others, but that was a while ago now.) The gist: once Mars' population starts leaving for the gates in significant numbers, the Martian terraforming project will fail, so Mars as a civilization fails too. Nobody needs their natural resources when they can get them beyond the gates - and that means the immediately valuable thing left is their military might - leading to Marco and Laconia and all that.)

Friday
It's early and I can't sleep so I thought maybe writing would clear my brain a bit and help me sleep. I can't say I really have anything brilliant to say about books at the moment, though. I did read straight through Sorcery and Cecilia the other night. There are two more books in that series, but I don't think I have the second one any more, only the third. Which is a shame, because even if the third one is better than the second (which it is), I'd still like to re-read the whole series, not just 2/3 of it.

(discussion of fictional violence, & spoilers)

Friday, July 24, 2020
Hmm, I haven't actually read much in the last day or two. I was kind of looking at some things I might want to read in the future, some recommendations and such... For one thing, I have one of the Murderbot books, I think, and that seems like something I'd like. (I say "book" but I think maybe they're novellas?) I also saw some recommendations from the Expanse guys about "spaceship" SF, which might be interesting!

Sunday
I don't know that I have much to say. I finished the romance novel. (The one guy did commit suicide, the other guy did egg him on, but this is something that happened several years in the past, in the book, and the protagonists agree that there's not going to be a way to punish the egger-on, and they move on. A lot of Mary Balogh books seem to be about getting past the traumas that happened in your past.)

Meanwhile, I'm back to slogging through Cibola Burn. I'm to the part where there's a huge apocalyptic event on the other side of the planet Holden and Amos are on, and it seems for a while like everybody's absolutely going to die, but actually most of them don't, in the end. This book has now been done by the TV series, too. We watched one episode (of the 4th season, that is) and Rob seemed interested but we haven't come back to it. I guess I'll go finish it on my own, at some point. Rob and I tend to have difficulty coordinating on TV shows sometimes. Anyway, I will get through this book eventually. Possibly with another romance novel going in parallel!

Spoilers always possible here!

Tuesday, July 21, 2020
These books (meaning the Expanse series) are really "boy" books, in a way. Lots of violence, I prefer my action without a whole lot of actual killing, but I'm not likely to get that wish unless I go back to reading romance novels. Even "girl" books usually have some violence. Heck, even romance novels often have some level of violence. Often there's a little murder mystery, or a violent suitor or something like that.

(Later) I was trying to remember one romance where an evil guy deliberately eggs somebody on to kill themself. - It took me a while to figure it out, but i think it's The Proposal - or at least one of the books in that series, a Mary Balogh series where all the protagonists were in the Napoleonic wars and all of them are traumatized. The maybe-suicide that I was thinking about was the heroine's late husband.

(Even later, continuing the thought) To say "maybe-suicide" is not fair to the evil guy. It was a suicide - the guy jumped off a balcony. It's just that the guy who could have been trying to dissuade him, didn't. (And he stood to inherit, so there's definitely motive there.) I've actually started re-reading this now, did I say that? I need an antidote between doses of Expanse, anyway.

Beware - definite spoilers here!

Saturday, July 18, 2020
Finished Abaddon's Gate. I guess moving on to... what's the name of the next one, I can't think. The one on the planet beyond the gate, anyway. (Cibola Burn, I just looked.) I need to look up Cibola, I don't what it means beyond what Trashcan Man says in The Stand. A mythical city? My grasp of mythology beyond the very basics of Greek and Roman gods is tenuous.

Let's see, before we move on, do I have more thoughts about Abaddon? Don't really understand that reference either, beyond Abaddon being a Big Bad. These guys, meaning the authors (I can't think of them as one person) write such good characters. Sam dying feels like a punch in the gut. (I also think of the revelation way later that she and Pa were lovers. Doesn't surprise me that Sam would like girls, but there's hardly even any inference that she knows Pa to speak of. Sam's been on Tycho and I mostly never got the impression that Pa was, although maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, never occurred to me at all.)

Sunday a.m.
I forget every time how depressing Cibola Burn is - actually all these books are pretty depressing, come to that. Dropping rocks on Earth, for god's sake - and we haven't even gotten to that part yet! By that standard, Cibola Burn's terrorists and alien robots and killer snails are minor-league.

Monday
Well into Cibola Burn now - well 10%, according to Kindle. (Still getting rolling, but not the very beginning.) I was thinking that nowadays my brain registers this duality: I think of the characters and I also think of the way the authors are setting things up, to play out later in the book. I think as time goes on I see it from the authors' POV more and more. Maybe that's why I have trouble getting quite as immersed in books in general the way I used to. Or, I don't know, maybe I've been that way for years and I'm just now noticing. (Some of that definitely came from being an English major, though. I think before that, I was oblivious.)

Always a definite possibility of spoilers!

Monday, July 13 (still on Expanse #3)
It occurs to me that I really like the character of Anna, even though she's a preacher and I'm an agnostic. I never have any problem with people from middle-of-the-road religions. It's the zealots I have a problem with. (I was thinking of this more generally but it's also why I hate Ashford so much. Zealotry doesn't have to be about religion.)

Tuesday
I wrote down the quote from Melba about how everybody's bags of meat, there's no souls, and all that matters is your story and your name. (The authors have versions of the "bags of meat" bit scattered around the books - that one and that we're monkeys playing with microwaves. I wonder which story and which name Ms Koh/Mao means, since she has multiples. Or maybe she means Holden.)

Wednesday
I like a lot of what this book says about how people react to tragedy. I think they must have talked to psychologists or something. I think that's why these books work so well - these people are in (almost) unimaginable circumstances but they're just people, & they act the way normal people react. It's very grounded.

Thursday
It's funny how some violent things don't upset me at all, but others really do. I hate the counter-coup bit where they're going around shooting people execution-style. Somehow I find that particularly upsetting. I really, really hate book Ashford. (TV-Ashford is David Strathairn in particularly insane mode, yes, but still, he's somebody that I have difficulty hating.) (Casting is everything.)

Always a definite possibility of spoilers!

Wednesday, July 8
I'm not sure I'm enjoying The Expanse books as much as I did before. We'll see if that holds as we go along. It might just be that I'm really still in the early setup phase of this book, and once it really starts rolling I'll feel less jumpy. In the first book the setup stage was like one chapter. This one takes quite a bit longer.

Thursday
I'm now to the part of the book where they're traipsing around Ganymede and people keep getting shot (or presumably attacked by the protomolecule monster, but they don't know about that yet) and it's all pretty unpleasant. I'm looking forward to the part where they're back on the ship and at least shooting people from a distance.

Friday
OK, a day later, everybody - or well, Holden and Prax and the whole gang other than Alex - is still on Ganymede, but they're about to get off as soon as Alex gets there with the ship. And Bobbie and Avasarala have now hooked up (metaphorically speaking). So the pace is picking up, which is what I wanted. I don't know how much more reading I'll work in tonight, though. It's early-ish by my standards and I'm already sleepy.

Saturday
I was talking before about how I visualize characters. I just realized that I now hear what Bobbie says with TV-Bobbie's accent. And her hair, mostly! Before I saw TV-Bobbie, I was visualizing her wrong and I knew it - which is to say I was visualizing her as white, even though I knew intellectually she wasn't. It's still hard to tell the back of your brain that it's wrong. So thank goodness for TV-Bobbie, I guess.

Sunday
I finished Caliban's War just now and am starting Abaddon's Gate. All of these books are so good - there's not a dud among them - as I predicted, I whizzed through the second half of Caliban. That's pretty much the only criticism I can come up with for these books, is that there are a few sections like the beginning of Caliban that are slow to get going. (Well, ok, the very beginning is Bobbie's platoon getting killed, that isn't slow. It's after that that it lags.) But also they keep throwing all these new characters in and it takes you a while to get used to them - Bobbie & Prax & Avasarala in the last book, Bull and Clarissa in this one.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Mel Reads

Entries tagged with expanse

Navigation

Flashback to August 2020 - overthinking Howl's Moving Castle, & more

Flashback: 2020, July into August - libraries, & more Expanse

Flashback: 2020, late July - still slogging through Cibola Burn

Flashback to 2020, late July - sci-fi and romance (spoilers!)

Flashback to July 2020: gender issues

Flashback: 2020, mid-July (spoilers for Expanse books 3-4)

Flashback to 2020, mid-July (spoilers for The Expanse)

Flashback to 2020, early July (spoilers for The Expanse)

Profile

October 2025

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags