Posts Tagged ‘gods’
Lagoonfire by Francesca Forrest
Posted on: February 26, 2021
Much thanks to Annorlunda Books for providing an ARC of Lagoonfire by Francesca Forrest, out March 3, 2021. You can read my interview with Francesca Forrest here.
On the surface, Lagoonfire is a mystery starring an investigator whose best friends are retired gods.
And underneath that first mystery was a garden that unfurled into verdant blossoms, as an entire world unfolded in front of me. One of the many things I loved about Lagoonfire is how it felt like opening my eyes. You know how you feel when you walk into a bookstore, or a library, or a museum you’ve never been in before and your face just lights up? Yeah, Lagoonfire feels like that.
Hmmm . . . now that I really think about it, Lagoonfire isn’t a mystery.
It’s about how the stories we tell shape us and our world and our beliefs. It’s about how the people we love will lie to us, to protect us. It’s about how love makes us selfish. It’s about how easily the present can erase the past, if we let it. And we always let it. It’s about how if we tell ourselves a story enough times, it becomes our truth, and a fact, and how facts are not always the truth, just the version of history we were convinced of, so we live as if the story was real, because that’s easier/safer than the alternative. I really love stories like this, and I love how Forrest tells this story.
The sequel to Forrest’s 2018 novella The Inconvenient God, Lagoonfire works perfectly well as a stand alone. That said, The Inconvenient God (read my review) is an absolute treat, and absolutely worth reading, and worth reading first, because Lagoonfire has so many big reveals.
Lagoonfire was so good, it took me a few hours to come back to myself after I’d finished reading it. It took me a few hours to remember how to form words into sentences. (Books literally floor me, ok?)
Decommissioner Thirty-Seven prefers that people call her by her formal title, not her real name. Her friends know her name of course, but she cringes when they use it. If she has to, she’ll allow people to call her by her childhood nickname, Sweeting.
She’s worked at The Polity’s Ministry of Divinities most of her adult life, and I should be very clear about what her profession entails. As a decommissioner, her job is is literally decommission, or “retire”, deities. They become mortal, to then live out a regular mortal lifespan, and then die. Gods no longer worshipped become truly forgotten. In the name of unity and progress, the Polity has the ability to give mere mortals power over any god who roams the earth, as prayers to a multitude of local harvest gods and goddesses now become shiny modern devotions to the Abstraction of the Harvest. The Polity views this as bringing harmony and equality to all. And should you forget that harmony and prioritizing the common good are virtues, the Polity’s job is to ensure that you remember.
The story opens with a freak flood at a new shoreline construction project. Decommissioner Thirty-Seven is asked to check in on her friend Laloran-Morna and make sure he wasn’t responsible. He’s not just a retired guy that she’s friends with, Laloran-Morna was an ocean god that she decommissioned, she botched the job, and they became friends afterwards (long story). And how could he be responsible? Laloran-Morna lives in a 4th floor apartment, requires nearly 24 hour home care, and is practically on his death bed. There’s no possible way he can make it to the seashore, so he asks Sweeting to go to the shore to pray in his place, to his lost lover.
Why does Sweeting seem okay working for The Polity? They seem authoritarian and kinda horrible!
Why do these retired gods seem okay with being mortal, and no longer having worshippers?
Why doesn’t Sweeting want anyone to know her real name?
If you’ve ever read a Francesca Forrest, you’ll know that what the story is “about” isn’t what the story is about.
What if you were the god of a particular place, and that place no longer existed?
Calling Lagoonfire a mystery is like calling Buckinham Palace a building. Like, yes, it is a building, but it’s so much more than a building!
Will 2017 be the year of the reread? only time will tell. In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying Sheri S Tepper’s Arbai trilogy. Again.
Raising the Stones by Sheri S. Tepper
published in 1990
where I got it: who knows. I’ve had it forever.
If you’d asked me five years ago for a list of my top five favorite novels, Sheri S. Tepper’s Raising the Stones would have been on that list. Is it still in my top five? Sadly, no. Is it a hella good book? Absolutely. I wrote a review of Raising the Stones back in 2011, which gives a great overview of the plot if you’re interested in the plot end of things.
I’ve been itching for some comfort reads lately, escapist novels that I know I will enjoy no matter what is happening in the world around me. Tepper’s Arbai trilogy fits that bill a hundred percent. I have no idea how many times I’ve read Raising the Stones, I know exactly what happens in it, I know who dies at the end, who the jerks are, who should have known better, who was blinded by their own narrow-mindedness. It’s neat to read a book that you know so well, to set aside everything that you know you know about it, and find everything else that was hiding there in plain sight all along.
Something that did catch my attention this read through was how the novel is paced, and that the pacing matches exactly something else that is going on in the background. Lemme ‘splain. The first half of the novel is painfully slow. I’d forgotten how slow it was. Slow isn’t bad per se, there is buckets of fascinating worldbuilding and learning about the various cultures in this star system and their beliefs; characterization of Maire, Sam, China, Jep, and Saturday; the slightest beginnings of what’s happening behind the scenes on the planet of Hobbs Land. There is tons of good *stuff* in the first half of the novel, it just doesn’t feel like anything is happening. Maybe I was just antsy for the good stuff? I dunno, but it felt sooooo sloooooooow. The last third of the novel is solid anxiety. Everything comes to a head, rebellions and coups are put into action, what’s been happening behind the scenes on Hobbs Land is suddenly very much the center of attention. It’s like something finally reached a critical mass.
And that’s exactly what the pacing of the plot mirrors – the pace of the growths on Hobbs Land reaching their critical mass. Very slow, barely detectable at first, and then slowly increasing, and then reaching a point where it has no choice but to asymptotically reach for infinity. Pretty brilliant trick for an author to pull off, when you think about it!
The Awakened Kingdom by N.K. Jemisin
published Dec 9 2014 as part of The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus
where I got it: received eArc from the publisher (thanks Orbit!)
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For those of you who are new to N.K. Jemisin, her newest novella The Awakened Kingdom takes place after the events in The Inheritance Trilogy. I highly suggest you read the trilogy before reading this bonus novella. Luckily, it all came out today in handy dandy omnibus format! (Oh, you’ve already read the trilogy, and are joining me in singing its praises? No problem, The Awakened Kingdom is available on it’s own as an e-book)
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In some ways, godlings are just like us. Sometimes, they want the same exact things we want. They want the love and approval of their parents, they want to make friends, they feed bad when they mess up and people get hurt. The newest godling, Shill, is no different. She desperately wants to see her parents happy. She assumes they made her to help them be happy. Her naivety is utterly charming, and the novella begins with Shill not even knowing to how to tell a story properly.
Have you ever had a four year old tell you a story? They tell it out of order, lose track of what’s happening, explain things in detail that you already know all about, and don’t explain the things you would like to learn more about. There’s plenty of backtracking, of remember of details and forgetting of others. it’s completely adorable, and there’s a part of you that doesn’t even care about the actual story, you just want to spend more time with this little person who is so very excited to tell you about their day, because you hope some of their joyful innocence will rub off on you. When we first meet Shill, she’s a little like that. Don’t worry, she’s gets better.
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Posted on: October 14, 2010
- In: mystery | Neil Gaiman | Review
- 15 Comments
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is unlike any novel I have read before. I’ve read this book a few times, and what’s nice about reading it again is since I know what the main plot line is, I can focus on all the little details. American Gods is a book of illusions, and as any illusionist will tell you the trick to the perfect illusion is misdirection.
Shadow is about to get out of jail. He’s a good guy who made a bad decision, and after three years behind bars he’s ready to keep his head down and live the cleanest life anyone has ever seen. The day he gets out, he learns that his wife, Laura, has been killed in a car accident. On the airplane trip home, Shadow meets a Mr. Wednesday, an old grizzled man who knows way too much about him, his wife, his time behind bars, everything.
At Laura’s funeral, he learns she was sleeping with his best friend.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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