Laura Madsen > Recent Status Updates

Dark academia meets magic and the Roman Empire (in space? I don’t know why, it just feels more sci-fi than fantasy).

19th century ships had a botanist or two onboard. “Much of the wealth of Britain’s empire rested on plants: timber, hemp, indigo, spices, tea, cotton and opium.”

Sprawling space drama. Moderately confusing because there are so many characters, species, planets, and conspiracies to keep track of.

Some bits remind me of Ursula, Pullman, and Ann Leckie.

More Laszlo: “God seems to have a lot in common with your average Mean Girl.”

Laszlo the demon: “…we’re just independent thinkers who didn’t like being ordered around. Really, demons are no different than the Pilgrims, and you celebrate those stiffs every Thanksgiving.”

Just started listening to the audiobook after reading it 3+ times. I love it so much. The audiobook narrator reads slower than me—after 4 hours, Ned & Terrence aren’t even on the Thames yet. But by going slower I’m catching a lot of clues I missed before about the Bishop’s Bird Stump & Coventry Cathedral.

Different than his other books, looks at history and other fields of science—all focused on polar regions.

I’ve read other books by Neil Shubin because I love paleontology, and this one also crosses over with all the reading I’ve been doing about the Arctic!

Somewhat similar to Arctic Dreams (which won the National Book Award) but forty years newer and updated to look at the impacts of climate change and covid and with a more sensitive view of colonialism.

I have this from the library but it’s so good I just bought my own copy!

Connie Johnson is such a fun character. She is unapologetically smart and unapologetically criminal. She’s very refreshing.

“There are now more vegan cafes in Fairhaven than there are non-vegan cafes, but, relentless though the gentrification of the town is, Connie is delighted that the demand for cocaine remains robust.”

Not just plants and animals but also explains permafrost, glaciers, topography, etc. RIP E.C. Pielou.

One of the characters is an Elven veterinarian. When we first meet him, he’s treating a pregnant unicorn with dystocia!

People call T. Kingfisher’s books “fairy tale retellings” but that really doesn’t explain them. This book has a mirror and a poisoned apple but is otherwise not remotely related to Snow White. Nettle & Bone has a godmother but that’s it. Sorceress has a few geese and an abusive relationship but that’s it. They’re all creative and weird and addictive and disturbing.

“It had been so late that it was early again, and we had actually managed to save someone’s life, through no fault of our own. Then we went back and drank heavily. It’s strange how winning can be more jarring than losing sometimes.”

“If you go around eating random plants without knowing what they are, then yes, sooner or later you’re going to wind up either very unhappy or very dead. Plants aren’t necessarily your friends.”

A protagonist after my own heart: a plump middle-aged woman obsessed with toxicology!

On healing: “I had to try. Sometimes you get a miracle. Mostly you don’t, but you still have to make space for the miracle to happen, just in case,”

“Women my size don’t run if we can avoid it. There are, let us say, certain structural concerns in the chest region.”

“Across the past 2 million years, meat-heavy diets have often proved unsustainable, particularly if the meat in question is that of big, slowly reproducing species.”

“Broken mutualisms often inspire outsized human responses.”

“Cyanobacteria offer us the precedent of nonhuman species capable of creating conditions at the scale of Earth hostile to their own persistence.”