posthuman’s Comments (group member since Aug 06, 2019)

posthuman’s comments from the Beyond Reality group.

I tend to avoid books with medieval fantasy setting, but this was rather unlike anything I've ever read. It was as if Borges and Mark Twain had collaborated on a MacGyver episode. Sixteen Ways defies genre classification, though I suppose it reads like historical fiction more than anything else.

An engineer in a corrupt medieval bureaucracy embezzles, cheats, bribes, and forges documents to get the supplies he needs to jury-rig the defense of a city under siege. This is the riveting and deliciously detailed first person account of a cowardly, resourceful cog in that bureaucracy rising to rule an empire by dint of being the last man alive who might possibly delay an invading army from butchering everyone for a few hours. Despite his skin being the wrong color.

“I’m an engineer, I told myself. People bring me problems and I fix them. I’m an engineer; my answer to any and every problem is a gadget, a trick, a device. I don’t consider the politics or the ethics. If a bridge needs to be built, I rig something up with logs and ropes. If the system is so hopelessly fucked that I can’t get pay or supplies for my men, I manufacture coins and seals. If the City is threatened with a fate it richly deserves, I modify and improve catapults, improvise armour out of bed linen, manufacture, sorry, forge (both senses of the word) new communities – fake ones, naturally, authorised by a fake seal. I fix broken people with things; with tricks, lies, and devices. I’m resourceful and ingenious. I don’t confront. I avoid; and one of the things I do my best to avoid is justice, and another one is death”

Colonel Orhan is a former slave and chief of the Corps of Engineers in a colossal empire where white skinned "milkfaces" have been subjugated by the tall, dark skinned Robur. Even after becoming effective ruler of the city and cleverly restoring the water supply, he still gets dressed down by a lowly guard for drinking from a "Robur only" public fountain.

According to the books Orhan has read, there are fifteen ways to defend a walled city. Now, with little or no siege equipment, weapons, tools, soldiers, food, or coin, he must come up with a sixteenth way pretty damn quick.

From Charlie's delightful review:

Orhan can do more with a mile of rope, a bucket of nails and some support beams stolen from an old church than most men can do with a whole army.

The story is told in the format of a long letter written by Orhan to an unknown recipient. The book is a page turner, with a relentless prose style driven by the engineer’s dry wit and endearing personality. The elaborate details of how he cobbles together all these desperate solutions lent the story world a feeling of authenticity that many fantasy novels lack.

Orhan admits he is a liar, and we will never know which parts of his story are real or exaggerated. From the fictional "translator's note" in the epilogue :

It is enormously frustrating that our only witness to such momentous events should be so unsatisfactory; unreliable, self-serving and barely literate.

My only gripe is that the abrupt ending left me hanging. We never learned what happened to the important characters.

I'd like to nominate Recursion by Blake Crouch for the SF category.

reposting here excerpt from my goodreads review in case it's helpful:

...picked up Recursion a few days ago on the way home from work, started reading and the next thing I know, it was 2AM and I had finished the book, curled up in a fetal position on the sofa with my mind completely shattered. Easily one of the best novels of the past several years. This story takes your heart on a pounding journey from one emotional pole to the next while your mind is simultaneously exploding in slow motion.

For Fantasy category, I'd like to nominate House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig. Haven't read this one yet myself, but it seems interesting

OMG! *heavy breathing* I just found out this new collection of stories by N.K. Jemisin, Blake Crouch, Andy Weir, Amor Towles, Veronica Roth and Paul Tremblay is totally free if you have amazon prime!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...

includes the following titles I've been eagerly awaiting:
Summer Frost
Emergency Skin
Randomize
You Have Arrived at Your Destination
Ark
The Last Conversation

Ooh been looking forward to reading The Power, good one Shel!

I have one more suggestion for Fantasy category City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett. tbh never imagined I'd fall in love with an imaginary bureaucracy, but this world and its society are so full of lush details. Reminded me a bit of world of The City & The City or something Borges might come up with. One of my all time favorite books.

In this world the gods are real, but they have been killed and any acknowledgement of their very real miracles is prohibited by law. Unassuming junior bureaucrat Shara Thivani arrives at the city of Bulikov to investigate the murder of a historian researching these contraband miracles. She is a delightful protagonist and IMO even the minor characters were interesting and nuanced.

EDIT: woopsie daisy, nvm pls disregard as I see this was one of the previous books of the month

I'd like to nominate Recursion by Blake Crouch.

This was a super fun read that had me contemplating the mysteries of the universe for days (from part of my review):

"...picked up Recursion a few days ago on the way home from work, started reading and the next thing I know, it was 2AM and I had finished the book, curled up in a fetal position on the sofa with my mind completely shattered. Easily one of the best novels of the past few years. This story takes your heart on a pounding journey from one emotional pole to the next while your mind is simultaneously exploding in slow motion."