I am currently reading A Half-Built Garden and I am grudgingly giving it my first ever Appropriate Use of Pronoun Pins in a Mixed Species Happy Gay Space Future Seal of Approval
but I’d still much rather go live in the Zealand corporate culture enclave where they have seven different pronouns and simply sneer at you for being a backwater boor if you fail to understand that anime villain is a perfectly good gender all on its own
UPDATE
I have finished A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys and I have absolutely no idea yet if I hated it or liked it but it was a wild ride and I can confidently say I’ve never read anything quite like it, which is something for sure.
It is a novel that reminds you over and over of its Jewishness while at its heart, I think, not being a very Jewish narrative. I mean, not that there aren’t many ways of being Jewish, but what I would consider the most likely argument from a Jewish perspective, that of Tikkun Olam, is not present really at all. The central conflict of the novel, “should we abandon the planet or continue to try and fix it,” is presented in terms of symbiosis and mutualism, resources and compromise, but not really from a perspective of obligation at all.
I dunno, I reserve the right to change my mind on that at any point in the future, it just feels a little weird to me and I’m not 💯 that I’ve correctly identified what’s pinging off about it for me.
Also, content notes: there is a lot of motherhood and nursing content, like a lot, but hardly any pregnancy stuff at all.
