book review: A Stranger In Olondria

[psocoptera]

A Stranger In Olondria, Sofia Samatar. I look forward to nominating this 2013 fantasy novel for the Hugo. It's pretty far into the "literary" area of sf space and is, hrm, more beautiful than entertaining, but I would highly recommend it if you like LeGuin or maybe Tolkien. (But, really, LeGuin - in particular The Dispossessed, Voices (the middle of the Gifts/Voices/Powers trilogy), and A Wizard of Earthsea.) Samatar makes beautiful sentences and there's some really good stuff here about literature and art and inspiration and love and death and, you know, literary stuff. Narrative about narratives. Shifting referent of the title as the book progresses. I knew next to nothing about it going in and am trying to avoid spoilers here, would be happy to discuss more in comments.

I've also liked some of Samatar's short stories, Selkie Stories Are For Losers in Strange Horizons, and Honey Bear, which is one of the most powerful stories about parenting I've ever read. It looks from her website like she may have started publishing in 2012, which I think would make her Campbell-eligible? I look forward to nominating her for that too.

Comments

[sildra.livejournal.com]

So, I occasionally check your LJ for reading recommendations (pretty sure I picked up at least one or two webcomics that way, forever ago). So I stopped by here the other day, and read those two short stories. I liked the selkie one, although I wish it had been... less short. But I guess that's a good thing--it means I felt engaged with the characters and wanted to hear more about them? But the other one read to me like someone gave the author a template entitled "A Modern Short Story with a World-Building Twist" and she just filled in her little unique bits. That is, when I finished reading it, I couldn't help but feel like I'd read that story before, several times in the past few years, only the author and the characters and the world were different each time.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I see your point that it's not exactly groundbreaking in format or anything; I don't think I can really explain why her particular choices of details hit me as hard as they did. I tend to like fantasy-as-metaphor, in general, and the recognition in Honey Bear was very personal, like, oh yes that's just what having a kid is like. I often hate it when people play the "oh if you're not a parent you wouldn't understand" card, like people are incapable of using empathy and their imaginations, but I could also imagine there's less resonance for the reader if you haven't actually lived it. ::shrug::

[sildra.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can see how it might have more resonance for a parent--when you mention it, I think I can see what particular notes it might be hitting. But when I read it, I was just struck with such an overwhelming feeling of deja vu that I'm finding it hard to see past that into what was really going on in the story.