(no subject)

[skygiants]

I enjoyed a lot of the stuff in Yoon Ha Lee's Hexarchate Stories, the companion short-story tie-in volume to his Machineries of Empire series, but I'll be honest, the thing I was most excited for was the novella "Glass Cannon" involving a sad immortal Frankenteen from the third book of the trilogy who got an extremely rum deal, and for whom I was hoping to see slightly better things.


BOY, that was a misguided thought, huh?

I just went back and reread my review of Revenant Gun, in which I say, clearly and specifically, "I would like Jedao II to hang out with Cheris." This is very much a careful what you wish for situation, it turns out, but in my defense, I did not say, "I would like Jedao I to hang out with Cheris." I understand this is what Yoon Ha Lee wants and also what a large chunk of the people want and I'm happy for the people who want that! But the thing that interested me about Jedao II was the possibilities inherent in second chances, in independent identity, in becoming someone other than the person that you were created to be and that everyone thinks you're destined to be, and I hated that all that potential inherent in Jedao II just ... got completely subsumed back into Jedao I. The fact that the entire rest of the story was more or less literal Jedao II torture porn was really just the icing on the cake. I don't know whether to be sad about the fact that literally no human being was ever nice to Jedao II even once, resentful about the manipulation levels in the fact that Yoon Ha Lee successfully made me sad about the truly ridiculous level to which no human being was ever nice to Jedao II even once, or resentful about the fact that Yoon Ha Lee manipulated me into caring about Jedao II when the book never actually planned to care about about Jedao II as anything except a vector for the return of Jedao I and also the realization of moth intelligence. But either way I'm definitely having a very emotional reaction so I guess in some sense this effort was a success!

I am glad we're now having a robot-and-moth revolution though! Politically I like the story, it's just on the individual and emotional level that it's the absolute opposite of everything I personally wanted.

All that said, the greatest moment for me in the book as a whole was the short story involving ritual combat via specialized designer pathogens, which provided the opportunity for the immortal line "Whether due to precautions or pure luck, no one else came down with the duel."

Comments

[vass]

that literally no human being was ever nice to Jedao II even once

Mikodez?

[skygiants]

Only if you define 'being nice' as 'constantly plying Jedao II with sweets that he has been very clear that he does not enjoy', which, while admittedly not on par with a lot of the other torture porn in the story, is still not great (and also 'keeping him captive and manipulating him into thinking that the people around him are planning his death' but that's just standard Mikodez, I don't hold that against him.)

[vass]

All of that, yes, true, but also gave him a Highly Symbolic Green Onion.

[skygiants]

And yet didn't conspire for him to take the Highly Symbolic Green Onion with him when he left the compound, which he easily could have done, which means Jedao will never know what happened to it!

[reconditarmonia]

Glass Cannon 2: Green Onion Heist

[skygiants]

If I believed that reconstituted Jedao I cared enough about the green onion to stage a heist, I'd be much happier with the story!

[pengwern]

With glass cannon what I was honestly hoping for was the AU from the end of ninefox gambit where Jedao I survives his betrayal of Cheris through the book and has to face down her ire, not sad trodden on baby fox gets zero support ;-; Also I had a Shuos headquarters workplace sitcom in my head at end of book three ;---;

(On the subject of Mikodez, I only recently realized that unfortunately, he managed to not only carve out an entire new section of my id in his Zehun interactions, but also that his sufficient ................aesthetic similarities to Christopher Chant and Eugenides meant that I was bound to love him anyway. Probably when I started hearing "O Mikodez, why are you such a Mikodez" in my head like the silly ladies @ Clistoffer. He managed to hit a different character dynamic I enjoy with nearly everyone he met in Raven Stratagem! I went straight for the webnovels in an attempt to find that dynamic between an emperor and their teacher/eminence grise/subordinate/minister again, but not even ancient china or space ancient china managed to replicate that delicious balance! T__T )