Reviews and Comments

So I've been a big fan of the shining movie and wanted to see how the book told the story cause I heard that a) Stephen King didn't like the movie b) the story was different.

So considering that I felt like I was reading a story I really enjoyed specifically to appreciate the differences. At points it felt like a slog, with date rusty and clumsy politics and such. But some of the differences I really appreciated about the book included the greater sympathetic lens we view jack Torrence through, his suicidal tendencies, struggles with alcohol, and love for danny cast him in a much more sympathetic light, which makes his descent into unhinged murderous rage much more disturbing and tragic.

The shining and magic of the world is also much more prevalent and explored and even the jump scares and horrors focus on hornets, hedges, anthropomorphic ghouls, and possession than the blood tidal waves, and creepy twins that are so iconic from the film.

Definitely better appreciate all the liberties that were taken with the film and world building shoved aside that make up the novel. I can see why Stephen King felt antagonistic to the film, and appreciate the story better for it all.

But all in all, don't think I really like Stephen King's writings that much, this being my first read, and might just stick to how pop culture interprets and bastardizes his works in the world of b-rate horror films.

Some things are just better seen than read.

Ok, this book was very fun and gave me some of those excitement in the streets feels at moments I am just always there for. Going in blind to the story, it took me way to long to feel invested in the story, it being fantasy and starting off with a tale about god, I was pretty much ready to swipe left on this one. But then the world came into focus and I was hooked.

I read a review that said in the fantasy world, it's hip to be exploring the magic/creatures/polygod world's through a lens of the industrial revolution rather than bronze or medieval developments. And within this modern trend this is Adrian Tchaikovsky's contribution to that.

I couldn't help but map Marx's capital onto this world, updated by my stronger and stronger appreciation of Tchaikovsky's work and left politics. We have main characters from the factory works, lumpen proles, sex workers, students, immigrants, and heretic theologians. The book explores a world colonized by an analogue of Roman Catholic conservatism and empire. There is even a parallel of Marx's theory of dead-labour embodied in commodities as magic embed in objects, which lends them value and can be distilled and extracted to produce further value.

Definitely a strong nationalist anti-colonialism bent to the societal tensions, with nostalgia and ghosts of feudal ethnic powers and the folk cultures and traditions lost to urbanization and proletarianization.

Reading it as a Marxist, one would be happy by its interpretation of struggle, class and modernization with greater heed paid to the lumpen proles and gender. Reading it as an anarchist, there are critiques to be made around the appeal of nationalism, hierarchy, and power as little fiefdoms and warlords struggle to remain dominant above and sometimes oblivious to the peoples struggles in the streets.

I would highly recommend this book, 1 of 2 in the series as of yet, as a fun read that gets your heart racing while both escaping from this world to better view it as an outsider.

Probably gonna stay in my top 5 of 2024!

This was a really fantastic novel and I think you should read it. With a heavy hand in world building and exploration of linguistics and translation this novel gave so many hints and tidbits of the world without creating a complete picture which left you will so many paintings of these worlds with just enough to have you pondering the world just outside the frame.

It is really impressive the amount of world building that was built into a standalone novel, I would read anything, including fan fiction, created in the universe after finishing it.

The story itself and it's interactions were fantastic. There was many times I was left feeling so alien from the valleys that divided characters that I truly believed that there was alien consciousnesses so different than ours, rather than a metaphor for human struggles.

The plot was very hard to predict and kept my rapt attention as it twisted and turned building and referencing with clues and surprises that I honestly didn't know where we were going including the conclusion.

China mieville is one of my favourite contemporary authors because his writings bring in politics, class and revolution in such honest and contextual ways that I am left feeling like through the story I am newly a revolutionary within a different world and power dynamics.

I think everyone should read it. And talk about it with friends.

Just finished the last compilation in the METAtropolis series and it is a mixed bag. I was pretty happy with the final two stories in the series which had Bashar reprising his role and the general timeline development across stories and characters which took us from a recent collapse world to what is probably 120 years later.

The first book in the series really felt like a certain idealism, horizontalism, and anti-capitalism diffuse amongst the stories. as the series, and the world, goes on capitalism, class stratification and political power creep back in as it is consolidated and exercised in the radical and new forms of life that developed in the first series.

Positives is carnies made their first appearance in the universe in this book, negatives beyond the above mentioned development in the universe is that the stories just came off more "action-adventure" and less world building and social questions explored.

And there wasn't a new stories from my favourite Ukrainian nuclear fall out specialist !?!

Anyways, jay Lake, the editor and an author from the series died after a fight with cancer a year after this was published and with his passing, the world's of METAtropolis were retired.

RIP Jay RIP METAtropolis

First off, I am dying for mingrelin khachapuri with the cheese inside and the cheese on top.....

Anyways this is an old memoir from a English journalist living and flailing about in Georgia in a time where wars with ethnic cleansing were rampant in the region, power was spotty and on maybe 1-2 hours a day, and drugs, desperation, and no work was rampant in Georgia. It was a really good read, and while the landmarks, friendliness and warmth, beauty, and prose were all very familiar and nostalgic, the Georgia I travelled in has come along away. With a stable electrical grid, low crime rates, little drug use outside of club drugs (fentanyl is still a problem there too) and some work and some forms of stability it really seems like things have improved for the lives of people in the country.

Wendell writes well, and tells stories -- some of her own, more of local people and adventurous journalist expat types -- which tie in the regions long history and experiences within the USSR with the 90's conflicts that inform so much contempt and politics in the region today.

All in all, it really want some khachapuri.

I was really curious about this book more for its author than because I really needed to learn about the Russian Revolution. China Mieville is a pretty successful sci-fi and fantasy author whose works blend surrealism, fantasy, and politics. But beyond his successful fiction he also writes and edits an unconventional communist journal called Salvage from England and publishes some non-fiction like this book on the Russian Revolution.

From the introduction Mieville responds to the unasked question," why do we need another history book about the Russian revolution?" By suggesting that rather than being just another history text that he undertook an attempt to write a narrative of the revolution that follows it from its embers to insurrection.

It read confidently as a hybrid narrative/history book which prioritizes the debates, actions, and tensions of the revolution over citations and scholars opinions on it. That being said, this narrative does take the Bolsheviks as the protagonists, follows them and Lenin most closely and regularly reflects the tensions and power struggles amongst intellectuals and party members, and secondarily the tensions between the vanguard and the Russian people, whose aims and desires don't often line up. Truthfully the "leaders" are presented as perpetually trying to catch up or tamp down the insurrectionary actions of the streets.

I think there are so many interesting people in the revolution but as is the case of history, this won still disproportionately tells the story of the victors. The people in the streets, the anarchists, soldiers and their wives, factory workers, beggars, and terrorists feature as secondary characters moving the story forward but as a supporting role to the debates and discussions of the central committee, Soviets and duma in their power struggles.

All in all, well written and presented, giving me a better understanding the key Leninist texts and debates and in what context they were written, and some very cool asides about bad as women and anarchists doing while shit.

I would recommend it with a caveat, if you can't stand Communists or Lenin enough to get through a history text, then skip it, or read the critical afterword before investing in the rest of the text to make you feel better.