“the disappointing love child of Frank Herbert and Ursula Le Guin”

May 28, 2024 4:26 PM

Chapter One of The Mercy of Gods - the new space opera by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, AKA Expanse writer James S. A. Corey
posted by Artw (16 comments total)

I thought that quote in the title was from a review, and I was ready to be disappointed, but I found myself reading all of that chapter and liking it quite a lot, so, pre-ordered. Thanks for the heads up!
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:51 PM on May 28 [4 favorites]

Thank you so much!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:13 PM on May 28

It seemed like something people here would want to hear about. :-)
posted by Artw at 5:13 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

they're also exposing their process in a Patreon
posted by kokaku at 6:11 PM on May 28 [2 favorites]

I'm hooked.
posted by signal at 6:46 PM on May 28

I'm looking forward to this. I was impressed in general by The Expanse, and in particular how they keep writing as team at this level.
posted by mollweide at 7:20 PM on May 28

Thanks! Put it on hold at the library - somehow there's only one person ahead of me?!
posted by stevil at 7:55 PM on May 28

Sounds good to me! They do a great job at writing propulsive fiction and I have no clue how they make that partnership work.

And then Polygon got me to seriously consider spending $150 on a new version of one of the best graphic novels ever - Batman: Year One Artist's Edition
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:23 PM on May 28 [2 favorites]

It looks like this and the new book from lev grossman are getting a big push - for understandable reasons, they both sold cartloads and had tv shows made from their previous works. Polygon also ran this story earlier this year of sf/f books coming out in 2024 - some of which have been released already.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:30 AM on May 29 [2 favorites]

Speaking of Ursula LeGuin, I learned a day or two ago that she was the one responsible for popularising Schrödinger's cat. How cool is that?
posted by rory at 2:52 AM on May 29 [6 favorites]

The quote in the title thread, if it is holding off anyone from clicking through, is Franck himself being self-deprecating.

I never got around to reading the Expanse series—they are good propulsive doorstoppers and *just* hard SF enough, but during my subway and bike commute days they were too unwieldy—but I’m definitely interested in seeing where this one goes.

I am pretty impressed that Polygon continues to take SFF books seriously. The Verge also occasionally covers books, since it also has a techie focus. But I’m not sure there’s any other online publication that takes on genre fiction with quite the same ecumenical bent (and if there is I would like to know about it).
posted by thecaddy at 5:05 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

I recently started The Expanse all over again; it is just so tasty. But I'm tucking it back on the shelf on August 6, it sounds like. Strap in, kids!
posted by skippyhacker at 5:28 AM on May 29

> It looks like this and the new book from lev grossman are getting a big push - for understandable reasons, they both sold cartloads and had tv shows made from their previous works.

Can Lev Grossman do for King Arthur what he did for Harry Potter? - "In Grossman's world, mastering magic was not easy, nor for kids, nor without terrible consequences. The Chosen One was painfully deluded, and the fantastic realms he journeyed to were not happy to have him."

By the time Grossman wrapped his trilogy with The Magician’s Land in 2014, the author had revealed his story was interested in much more than caustic deconstruction. It was instead a humane and empathetic work about moving past the stories we hold dear and how they inflate our sense of importance.[1] Particularly vital at a time when genre literature had a lot of work to do to diversify its outlook, Grossman’s trilogy took great pains to decenter its white, straight protagonist and his toxic worldview, using the very stories that he loved, the stories that he believed made him who he was. (The television adaptation of his trilogy on Syfy would further this mission, not just decentering the white male protagonist but examining what it would look like to cede that spotlight and narrative drive to those on the margins.)

What makes Grossman’s fantasy work compelling is its relentless interrogation. Reading him, one gets the sense that he, like the reader, was raised on a steady diet of fable and fantasy, and while it has done tremendous things for him, he is more interested in how it is possible for people to love the same stories and come out sour. Are the stories broken? Or are their readers?

Grossman has openly talked about his desire to tell an Arthurian story for over a decade, while he was still working on the Magicians trilogy. And while on its surface, The Bright Sword looks to be another work of deconstruction, it comes across as the opposite, an attempt to tell a new legend in the ruins of an old one. A chance to see if all those old romances still have some magic in a world that seems devoid of them. A quest, if you will.

posted by kliuless at 6:33 AM on May 29 [5 favorites]

That quote is funny, because the Expanse books also arguably decenter the white male flyboy protagonist and interrogate the colonialist expansion to the stars narrative, not by deconstructing it per se, but by showing other perspectives and making a world where you can see the physical limits.
posted by subdee at 7:00 AM on May 29

I just finished watching The Expanse a couple of weeks ago, but haven't read it. I definitely will read this new series.
posted by neuron at 12:41 PM on May 29

Ohmigosh, thank you The River Idel for that link. I audibly gasped when I saw there's a new Robert Jackson Bennett book that I somehow missed. It's my birthday today and now I have a quest, to find this at a local bookstore before end-of-day. It's perfect. Hooray!
posted by foxtongue at 3:04 PM on May 29