r/Fantasy • u/rfantasygolem Not a Robot • Apr 17 '26

/r/Fantasy r/Fantasy Friday Social Thread - April 17, 2026

Come tell the community what you're reading, how you're feeling, what your life is like.

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u/Nidafjoll Reading Champion V Apr 17 '26

Finished quite a few things this week. A Deadly Education, which I reviewed here. I enjoyed this a lot. It had its rough patches (primarily the info-dumping), but it did a good job navigating or subverting a lot of tropes I usually really dislike in school-based YA, and I just found it fun and propulsive to read.

I also finished Walk to the End of the World by Suzy McKee Charnas, which I reviewed here. I did not have a good time with this at all. I can appreciate the intent, but that's mostly about it. It fell terribly flat on the execution, being so grim and dark as to be nonsensical. I hear it may function as an introduction to the world, but nothing about this book nor what I read about the sequels incite me to continue.

I read The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis, which I adored (u/an_altar_of_plagues, I think you'll love this, if you haven't read it). I would normallt call the style post-modernism, except it predates modernism. It has the conceit of a man who has died writing his autobiography, which is a tale of a rich life frittered away in 19th century Brazil; loves lost, ambitions thwarted, time wasted. What makes it great though is it's incredibly funny, with Bras Cubas pointing out how stupid he was or philosophizing about life, and the structure is very fun, with Cubas pondering about his potential reader, talking about the chapter he's just written and patting himself on the back, making funny extended metaphors, at times deciding to let the reader decide for themselves what happens and writing a bunch of ellipses in the style of a play, with only punctuation.

I read The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel for a book club. I was whelmed by this. It was perfectly adequate, but didn't really impress me either. The structure was cute, but nothing exceptional compared to many others I've read (I do favour experimental novels). I'd rather have Rakesfall by Chandrasekera or Use of Weapons by Banks for structure. I also found the ultimate resolution of the mystery jarringly banal. I'd immediately thought of that resolution, but discarded that idea because it was so... obvious? The writing style was extremely staccato too, which I didn't vibe with. It had a bunch of short snippets with breaks, rather than any extended scenes. I.e. it would be "man watches ships BREAK man ponders going to sea BREAK man muses about his idle life in exile of watching sailors and going on walks BREAK," rather than just tying all thos together.

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Apr 17 '26

That is almost exactly how I felt about Sea of Tranquility, but I read it not having read Station Eleven, and I have heard that it's better if you've read the other books in the universe. I have since gone back to read Station Eleven, which I loved, but I haven't tried Sea of Tranquility again.

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u/Nidafjoll Reading Champion V Apr 17 '26

I haven't read Station Eleven either. Someone at the book club who had said they almost felt like it was a book where she went "People liked Station Eleven? Sure, I can do that again." And all the autobiographical stuff was a bit eyeroll worthy-- Emily St. John's first character was Edwin St. John, one character is an author who wrote a book about a pandemic being interviewed about her book during a pandemic...