Emi > Recent Status Updates

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh book

this... is not how you get a well-adjusted adult

Oh yeah 1 chapter + the prologue in and I can already tell I will in fact love this.

the first time I tried updating my progress on this novel it didn't work and now I'm finished with it without at any point having posted about it. Wild. Anyways, book good! Book REALLY good. If this was a proper review, it'd be 4/5 - concept A+, characters A+... but the length of it vs the amount of plot means I feel it could be a bit tighter. Still! Loved it!

my copy spells it Djinni? what's up w the difference in spelling

Dancing to Ganam was my favourite of these stories

honourable mentions to Newton's Sleep (she GETS PEOPLE), and the titular novella (will I ever get enough of sedoretus? no. no i will not. thank you le guin for this fascinating relationship constellation)

so in the interest of finding something that'll blow my mind I'm turning to Le Guin to save me

1.5 stories into this novel and man, this is a writer that GETS people? She rarely spells out the hows and whys of why they think the way they do but these people & thought patterns feel so damn authentic. @ goodreads why the character limit cmon

i respect this book for being something the author clearly had fun writing and it definitely is not a BAD book
but man I really wanna read something that blows me away now... no more of this halfhearted enjoyment gimmie something that'll blow my mind

For the first couple chapters, this novel had me pretty hype - it seemed like some nice relaxing fun, a book you wouldn't have to struggle with at all. Not worldchanging for sure, but FUN.

Bit further through and my initial impression wasn't WRONG but it feels almost... soulless? The protag is all funny quips and no substance (her name is Echo. How ironic is that?) and the rest of the book follows suit.

this, however, was about twice as long as it needed to be and STILL didn't deliver. a thoroughly "meh" experience

some things I liked. Some I didn't. Wasn't much that completely gripped me but it's not a bad read

it promised me fairy tales and it delivered
all in all pretty fun

the blurb for this book is INCREDIBLY cheesy and i can't for the life of me remember why it's on my re-read list.
EXCITEMENT

tried to trick myself back into reading by revisiting a book I know I enjoy... I guess it worked?

To absolutely nobody's surprise, I like Shallan quite a bit

although turns out the TWO consecutive "meet these characters/this scenario! PSYCHE the actual novel hasnt started yet and they're all dead or fucked up" may have permanently damaged my ability to trust in anything, as I'm still sort of waiting for Shallan to get murdered (....or arrested) and the story to start following someone else instead

if I had the space on my phone id be taking pictures of these epigraphs. Unfortunately I am way too lazy to write them down (itd slow me down SO much) but hello??? "collected?" "subject"????

here goes! I honestly can't even remember the summary so I'm going in completely blind.

5-pages-in-note: wtf are you telling me the PROLOGUE of this does time looks??? where's THAT story
(bonus wtf: holy shit 4500 years is one hell of a jump)

I've told myself I'm gonna read all the library books I currently have at home before end of February
that's 7 books in 10 days & video games are very distracting wish me luck

I loved this in so many different ways.

current earthsea hirearchy: Tehanu > The Tombs of Atuan > The Farthest Shore >> A Wizard of Earthsea.

so maybe I just love Tenar
...but I also love how Tehanu is about people who Have Been something; have been shaped by their past & are now trying to find out who they are with distance to it. Who is Ged, if not a mage? Who is Tenar, if not a priestess, a mother, a wife?

the hopelessness & general feel of "the world is ending and there is nothing we can do about it" in this book makes it a way tougher read for me now than it was when i first read it
bc climate change
still good tho. Like Arren. Ged is more fun as a sidecharacter than a main one.
the farthest shore better than a wizard of earthsea but not as good as the tombs of atuan

yep, like the tombs of atuan a LOT better. i LOVE ARHA. LOVE HER.

...oops, forgot to mark this done when I finished it haha
Final thoughts: I DEFINITELY marked this 5-star thinking of the series as a whole rather than this one part. Don't get me wrong, Le Guin is GOOD - but the style of writing is very different to my usual tastes (it has the feel of being intented to be read out loud + literally covers 20 years) and since it's so fast-paced, it's hard to get properly attached.

it is still so incredibly hard to read people screwing themselves over
especially when it's this mixture of temper and pride. oh, ged. I love that you have flaws but please stop being so damn easy to rile up.

can u imagine id straight up forgotten we started with ged's origin story?
I don't exactly REGRET starting from the beginning but i DO wish I was reading the tombs of atuan right now hahahah

hmm, my glasses got fucked at dodgeball and now reading fanfic hurts my eyes so imma go for an actual physical novel instead. gee i wonder which of my many unread books I'll pick up now- haha jk I'm gonna reread earthsea again

oh, OUCH

yknow those bittersweet words like melancholy and nostalgia? that's this book.
v enjoyable would recommend BUT same goes for this as w the rest of the series; theyre novellas not novels and that sometimes lead to them feeling incomplete, like concept pieces rather than finished things

enjoying this so far! Seanan McGuire really does have a way with words- this whole series reads like a fairytale and i love that.