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@layingeggs8/1/2023, 1:48 PM

Rhiannon @Rhiannon

ghost of cohosts past @folly7/22/2023, 2:57 AM

the thing is, a memory called empire is the type of good where i frequently just... pick a chapter and start reading from there. it's like The Fifth Elephant good, i wish this book had been around when i was a teen.

rushed-appointment diplomat sent to an uncanny history-obsessed empire, solves a mystery while defanging a fascist movement and resolving a succession crisis (enabling the new, cunning ruler to have enough immediate legitimacy to centralize power). it's just... vimes is a superhero from a competing, culturally dominant empire, while mahit is... a lesbian poet who will never have respect no matter how she is loved. i think both stories accomplish something transgressive, all things considered; t5e, in 1999, has way more to say about gender, while amce in 2019 actually has queer characters who have messy romantic entanglements, but has more to say about abuses of power by law enforcement. it's funny how the two reflect each other so well

#A Memory Called Empire #the fifth elephant #brought to you by Cohost! Plus

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in reply to @folly's post:

cassandra rose @cass7/22/2023, 3:42 AM

i should read the fifth elephant if you compare the two so generously! i do love it when books have things to say about gender

ghost of cohosts past @folly7/22/2023, 3:17 PM

caveat that the main character of the fifth elephant is a cop, and that the book has some of the general flaws of Discworld, and that it's a significant book to me bc it's something i re-read frequently (picking up from any place and reading from there) as a teen who for religious reasons couldn't use the internet. like it's the sort of book i read back when books were the dominant thing that one read, rather than phones or posts or anything else. back when reading was easy and you needed so badly a text to escape into. but if you grant it the grace of its context, and being the sort of accessible text that a fantasy comedy can be, i do think it has a lot more to say about international relations, power, gender, and an individuals as cogs in the machine of history, than most people think.