Finally picked up my copy of the gorgeous, Charles-Vess-illustrated omnibus edition of Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle last week for the first time in months and read a full chapter of A Wizard of Earthsea (Chapter 7, to be precise). This is my first time re-reading Earthsea since I read the series for the first time in 2018 and thus the first time I’ve really sat with it in the context of Sofia Samatar’s gorgeous fantasy novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories. This time, I was struck by the resonances between the Stone in its isolated northern castle as described by Le Guin and the Stone with its religious texts as described by Samatar. Will continue pondering this as I keep reading Earthsea, but it makes complete sense that the two are in dialogue (even that’s just on the level of me as the reader).
Recently finished Elizabeth Bear’s The Folded Sky. I like the overall setting quite a bit; this novel worked better for me than the second one, although I would have honestly liked even a bit more narrative focus on the linguistic/translation aspect and a little less on the murder mystery.
Also reading The Incandescent at the moment, primarily on my bus commute. Enjoyed Matt’s non-spoiler review. Part of the dust jacket blurb bills the book as “sapphic dark academia” or something of the sort, and as someone who appreciated The Secret History on the level of a well-constructed novel and as an investigation of my chosen field of study, the dark academia descriptor intrigues me. Apropos of that, I liked Charlie Jane Anders’ consideration of Byatt’s Possession vis-à-vis dark academia; this also prompted to me wonder if Williams’ Stoner could be read as a kind of “proto” dark academia.