Unraveled Wednesday: 12/6/2023

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday on this first Wednesday in December. Only three more "Unravelings" before the end of the year! I have a pair of not terribly exciting, not completely finished Hot Waffles that is my Christmas knitting for Justin. I have already cast on for the same thing for Ryan in the blue-purple yarn and I'll do all the thumbs after I'm done knitting the mitts. I have some electric blue yarn to knit a pair for myself. Fifteen years ago I made myself a pair out of slightly boring beige Encore and they are my favorite mitts, maybe because they're my only mitts? It's definitely time for a nice new pair for me, too. 

I finished two books last week and they were pretty much polar opposites. The first was Fourth Wing, a fantasy novel that it seems like everyone is reading. As I'm writing this, the Goodreads page says that 80,800 people are reading it, and 118,000 people are reading Iron Flame, the second book in a planned series of five books. Carole was reading it and assured me that it was great entertainment, and Justin's girlfriend Jess thinks that this may be one of the best books she's ever read. I'm not much of a fantasy reader and I'm also decades past the target audience but decided to read it because I didn't have any other promising books and I wanted to see if it lived up to all the hype. I can understand some of the reasons why this book is so popular, and the biggest one for me is that it definitely is entertaining.

The book follows Violet Sorrengail, who was trained to be a Scribe her entire life but after the death of her Scribe father, her mother forced her into the deadly training grounds of Dragon Riders. During her time at Basgiath War College, Violet faced mental and physical challenges but somehow managed to stay alive. Violet has friends and possible love interests but people are also trying to kill her at every turn. I don’t fully understand why the War College is so invested in killing off its cadets or having them kill each other. The weak recruits are weeded out, die, their names are read, and everyone else goes on trying to survive. At the same time, the reader is reminded frequently that there are fewer riders and fewer dragons every year. It was never explained how or why Violet decided she did desperately want to be a Rider.

The best parts of the book for me were the dragons. There are different types and I enjoyed the internal conversations with them that the Riders had after bonding. I have other questions about the dragons that were not explained in this first book, but they are entering spoiler territory and may be answered in later books.

I had issues with plenty of things when I started to think about them more deeply, but as a fantasy novel (with plenty of "romance", i.e. lust) told from a female perspective, it's highly readable and entertaining. Three and a half stars rounded up because of the dragons.

The whole phenomenon of this book is fascinating to me. Reviewers are railing on Goodreads and elsewhere with one-star reviews saying that this is the worst thing to ever happen to the fantasy genre because they feel it's not fantasy. I think the fact that the story is presented by a strong female may have something to do with the "it's not real fantasy opinions. I'm not here to pass judgment on genres, just to tell you that I found the book to be a wild ride and will consider possibly reading the sequel someday.

The other book I read was No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is a wonderful collection of blog posts that Ursula K Le Guin started writing in 2010 after being "inspired by José Saramago's extraordinary blogs". She really did think and write about what matters in this collection, which runs the gamut from age to letters from kids, swearing, feminism, and the annals of her cat, Pard. I've found her fantasy writing dense and ponderous but these nonfiction pieces are anything but. I highlighted so many passages in this Kindle library copy that I may need to buy a copy of this four-star book for myself. 

“This is morally problematic when personal decision is confused with personal opinion. A decision worthy of the name is based on observation, factual information, intellectual and ethical judgment. Opinion — that darling of the press, the politician, and the poll — may be based on no information at all. At worst, unchecked by either judgment or moral tradition, personal opinion may reflect nothing but ignorance, jealousy, and fear."

What are you making and reading this week?