Tonti Riyad > Recent Status Updates

I’m so enjoying all the details and thoughtfulness that’s gone into the world building that’s so eerily familiar. Like the extinction credit hack with COX region manipulation to feign new species in assessments (and then using the money for conservation as a way of having the free market work in your favor). Genius!

The pain of having to translate something almost sacred into a language that was never built to hold it. Like taking a living, breathing species, with all its quiet complexity and the impossible evolutionary history, its very right to just exist, and compress it into numbers on a balance sheet, hoping that will make someone care.

“The biodiversity enthusiasts were trying to talk to capitalists in the language of capitalism, but they knew as well as the capitalists did that it just wasn’t a strong pitch.”

The way mine and (& every other biologist I’ve met) can feel their soul leave the body every time we’re made to reduce a species to just a monetary value.

When Karin talks about how she’s nevertheless part of the apparatus that legitimized the extinction of her beloved fish I felt that lol I carry so much weight for the shit that happens in the govt beyond my control 😮‍💨

Ok but why’s this book so fun to read 😭 like I see it. 100% this is the future

Ok but one minute I’m invested in everyone storyline and genuinely enjoy it but then I’m like idk if I care about anything except Kaz and Inej

Ok I just want this book to go on forever it’s too bad there has to be an ending 🥲

Thinking about the sheer concentration of stories that unfold at a given time in London (and ig any other city) and all the ways it can also make you feel small. I feel suffocated by the inner lives of the characters I wish they’d stop shielding each other from what they actually think and feel

The way the book reads it feels so real to me like I’m there and I want nothing but for these fictional people who feel so real to just go on about their lives and not have to live through a literal civil war.

Realizing periyannan is the Tamil equivalent of Dhonbe in Dhivehi, and then have the family lose their eldest son to the riots 🥲

The familiarity of Jaffna of what I remember as my island homes had me reminiscing, longing for more little details of day to day life (like oiling your palms before breaking open a jackfruit as we would with breadfruit) before the big sads hit. Sri Lanka may feel like kin, but we could never understand the depth of their pain, my heart is in pieces learning about the burning of Jaffna’s ancient public library.

Stress reading it and may have already forgotten everything except the gist of it so far

This is the most good natured British nature writing I’ve read in a while. Enjoying the witty and easy going writing style infused with clever scicomm. I just know we would SO get along.

Knowing people who are survivors of SA it makes it that much harder to read about it. All I can think about it is how unforgiving the world as a whole is to survivors, shifting so much blame to someone already in so much pain. I’m also encouraged by the willingness of people who do provide support and care to the victims in need. I just wish that it was also available for the people I know who were victims.

Every moment I have spent with this book makes me think I am in the presence of genius. The innermost lives of these women, so rich, so raw. The words. The poise. Oof

From the hypocrisy of ‘pick me’s in liberal circles to the most desperate moments in women’s lives in their vulnerability and insecurity, blind to how amazing they really are. What a wow

Is it just me or is this book lacking any sort of real conflict or mystery at this point 😭

“The dangers looming before us, the trepidation I felt at my decision to venture here, to stay at his side-it was all abruptly subsumed by something much more familiar, which sent my heart skittering with excitement.

Scientific curiosity.”

🤣🤣💕

“..conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right—the feeling of living in a world with Shadow Lands, the feeling that every human misery is someone else’s profit, the feeling of being exhausted by predation and extraction, the feeling that important truths are being hidden.“

Teary eyed on the tube completely disconnected from reality as if this is the world I live in. The Kaul family gathering during the autumn festival was the hopeful, happily ever after I knew would be good to be true for a book like this.

Too many memories of 2008 election for some reason and the eventual coup and betrayal that threw the country into chaos comes into mind.

Teary eyed on the tube completely disconnected from reality as if this is the world I live in. The Kaul family gathering during the autumn festival was the hopeful, happily ever after I knew would be good to be true for a book like this.

Too many memories of 2008 election for some reason and the eventual coup and betrayal that threw the country into chaos comes into mind.

Ru’s realization of the concept of privilege, progressive ideas on inclusion, fighting discrimination and investing in societal benefits for all, not just green bones 🥹🥹 I love an idealist university kid with drive lol miss that for me

Sweet Ru. My heart

Such a clever book! Didn’t think the theme of body doubling would’ve been explored so critically with so many well developed ideas that parallel different moments in time.

The way wellness influencers refuse masks and vaccinations turning a blind eye to collective action for human health based on ideas of individual optimization and genetic supremacy was so well explored.

I’m already starting to feel a little sad that I’ll miss the series when I’m done.

The green bones are definitely hyped up in the series but I think the author does an amazing job of presenting different POVs from those who don’t share the same love for this system of governance. Awesome play between culture, honor, systems of oppression and progress. Fonda Lee’s imagination feels boundless

Anden’s storyline has got to be one of the most interesting in this series- the way Fonda Lee has managed to give voice to East Asian diaspora in fiction and adapted it in this series is 🔥🔥

The scene where Assemblyman Sonnen gives a heartfelt speech about Anden’s efforts to promote jade medicine in Espenia was so pure 🥹