Kathy > Recent Status Updates

interesting world-building to justify and communicate the themes of the universally transfemme cyborgs. obvious, sometimes heavy-handed allegorical analysis of modern life via spec-fi dystopia lens. a large drawback to me, personally: POV character Dragonfly sometimes uses therapy speak, which fully breaks my immersion. she wouldn’t know how to say what she means!! let her communicate badly!!!

it’s a cyberpunk genderbent hades/persephone retelling. it has moments of brilliant prose, but overall….. idk :/

Incredible start: “The knife of my will cuts through the haze of new birth: this is how I begin. A human mind grows over time, layers of memory and cognition building into a personality and identity. I am not so mortal: my consciousness flashes online fully formed.”

“violence as intimacy” theme. also the first male character appears no sooner than 30% of the way into the novel. a real winner 👍

the vibes of Signalis in a medium that’s accessible to me.

I feel like the chapter on “the contemporary structure of plunder” is not as clear as it could be.

Kuang can’t write*, but by god she can compile a killer anthology! (* in my annoyed, salty, and probably unfair opinion after reading Katabasis)

feeling every emotion under the sunnnnn 🥰💕🥰💕🥰💕😭 i love this book sm

On Karhide’s slide into violent nationalism: “The mood of the city was bleak, although business was good, prosperity in general, and the weather fair.” :( relatable

Thus far, chapter three is so generalized and opinion-based as to be meaningless. Very hard to read when he won’t (1) be specific enough for u to know wtf he’s talking about or (2) cite any references you can check. imo, the weakest section of the book BY FAR. also boring and annoying to read.

“Friedrich List, father of the German customs union, once observed that free trade was Britain’s chief export. Nothing roused such British anger as protectionism, and they sometimes gave vent to it in violent language, as during the Opium War against China.”

Reminds me of this post, thematically: tumblr.com/that-gay-jedi/754453841115...

At 30% becomes inaccessible to screen readers.

I don’t think I truly understood the concept of “agricultural reform” in L.Am. (referenced and discussed in The Shock Doctrine, Empire’s Workshop, and Hope in the Dark) until reading the latter portion of chapter 2.

a silly little romp so far!

if I hadn’t just read the Grapes of Wrath and This Has Always Been A War, I don’t think I would viscerally understand the plight of Latin American agricultural workers as described in this.

“Is it hard, jailbreaking?”

A ship was a computer that you put desperate people inside, and when the computer went bad, the ship was a tomb you put desperate people inside.

This was a new kind of toaster, a toaster that took orders, rather than giving them. A toaster that would let her toast anything she wanted to toast: unauthorized bread. Even homemade bread. Homemade bread was something she’d read about in books, seen in old dramas, but she didn’t know anyone who actually baked bread. That was like gnawing your own furniture out of whole logs or something.