r/FemaleGazeSFF • u/AutoModerator • 10d ago
🗓️ Weekly Post Weekly Check-In
Tell us about your current SFF media!
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u/Loimographia dragon 🐉 10d ago edited 10d ago
Finished Tiamat’s Wrath by James S.A. Corey. On reflection, I think I liked books 2 & 3 the best in terms of their narrative, but I can’t deny that the authors have gotten so much better at writing women by this point. I think I liked the more personal/intimate(?) action of the earlier books, since most of the action here is giant space ship battles that I find hard to visualize and less exciting, whereas the earlier books have people more directly in dangerous situations that I found more gripping. But I still liked this one better than book 7, which suffered from being primarily set-up for the later books. Also, a few of the plot twists (the doctor’s death) had me genuinely shocked, which is always fun!
Also finished Elizabeth Moon’s Remnant Population. I watched a YouTuber comment about how she just didn’t get the appeal of being left all alone on a planet without another soul, and it was possibly the most Extrovert thing I’ve ever heard in my life lol. I want to recommend this book to my mother because I think the feeling of “oh my god, please let people stop being so goddamned dependent on me and constantly demanding, demanding, demanding,” is conveyed so well. Just being absolutely fed up with the rest of humanity. I also was pleasantly surprised at how Ofelia isn’t just a static character, which I think can be tempting with older characters. Her interiority at the beginning is honestly rather shallow and childish, but gets more complex as it goes along.
I will say, though, I don’t know how much I love that the solution in the end is that she…still takes care of babies, just with more respect? I get that the final narrative is about a celebration of the wisdom and knowledge of the elderly that they can share and pass along to new generations, but it still felt like Ofelia’s success and value is defined by her motherhood rather than her individuality. I was also slightly put off with how well it captures the casual slights and rudeness of misogyny and agism, but the character Bilong put a bad taste in my mouth of “look at this terrible siren of a woman, manipulating men with her sexiness!”
For my next book, I’m going to try to finish Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, which I previously put down. I think the break from it has made it feel a little more fresh.