Summer reading roundup, 2023
So It Turns Out, #49
Hi,
A bit of a different one this time, in advance of your summer vacation.
So here are some books I’ve been reading this year…
So It Turns Out You Should Read These Books This Summer
The Scholomance Series, by Naomi Novik
A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, Book 1) (All links are Amazon Affiliate links)
The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, Book 2)
The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, Book 3)
The Scholomance series is, fundamentally, a response to the Harry Potter books — specifically, as Novik points out, the problem that magic is free in the Harry Potter world (or as she puts it, shopping is the best part of Harry Potter World), and yet somehow there are still wizards in poverty. And on top of that, why does everyone send their kids to the murder school, precisely? The Magical Boarding School Novel doesn’t make sense.
So, the answer Novik proposes, is that magic is capitalism, and capitalism hates you.
Magic “should” be powered by virtuous effort and belief — for example, our hero powers up her magic crystal mana batteries by doing 500 jumping jacks every day — but no one else wants to do that, especially when they’re being attacked by magical threats in their boarding school constantly. So they engage in malia — borrowing magic without paying for it — that 1) will destroy nearby life force and created things, 2) create an equal amount of magical deadly creatures that hunt wizards to balance the loan, and 3) if you do it too much will turn you into a Standard Fantasy Dark Lord that will be valuable to rich wizards if you’re lucky, and hunted down by the rich wizards if you’re not.
For magical children to even hope to survive, they have to be packed off to an extradimensional boarding school that has no adults1, and is barely connected to the real world. So there’s only one portal that the aforementioned magical deadly creatures created by the adults can get in through2, meaning that the death rate is “only” about 50 to 75% over your 4-year education. And if you survive that grinder, you’re then “free” in the outside world, where unless you’re very well-connected, you still don’t have a home safe from the monsters at your door…
(The metaphor is not subtle, but it is well-executed.)
Our main character is Galadriel, or El for short, because, well, she was born to a hippie single teen mom. Unfortunately, it turns out that name is far too apt, because as a 5-year-old, it was foretold by A Seer Who Is Never Wrong that El will become the Big Bad. And all El has to do to survive graduation is give in to her worst instincts — heck, she might even make the honor roll if she does.
But doing that would mean admitting to those rich jerks that they’re right, so she’s going to have to find another way…
The Laundry Files, by Charlie Stross
The Atrocity Archives — The first one, which sets up the plot but is by far the weakest except for the short story at the end.
The Jennifer Morgue — The sequel that makes the secret-agent theme, ah, rather blatant for fun.
The Fuller Memorandum — Wherein the plot starts really going that carries us through the next 9 books. Good luck reading anything else this summer…
Magic is a branch of applied philosophy and mathematics: you make certain gestures towards the platonic void, and things out there gesture back, with powerful and disastrous consequences. So, what happens when computers make that math easier, and spellcasting gets twice-as-easy ever 24 months for decades?
And what if your British-secret-agent model doesn’t scale under exponential threats?
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
Do you want a blockbuster summer read that weaves between World War II and the Dotcom bubble? Do you want a series of extremely hilarious but random digressions about international travel and number theory? Do you want the maximum length of book for your money? Have you considered Cryptonomicon?
Dune, by Frank Herbert
I'm at the feudalist far future. I'm at the ecological metaphor. I'm at the combination feudalist far future and ecological metaphor.
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
The work, dear reader, is to determine what parts of the story are the utopia, and in what way the utopia is ambiguous — that it is good, or that it is real, or both?
(I’ll write more about this some other day, I think.)
Seeing Like A State, by James Scott
Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
If you read only one book on this list, read this one.
And whether they're sweating it out on the sultry streets or cooling their heels in the Hamptons, no one does summer like DC. Grab your shades and your sunblock, this one looks like a scorcher.
I’m looking for new opportunities; I’ve been especially successful in the past in corporate strategy and cybersecurity/data-protection risk-related roles where I work closely with, yes, technical, product and legal experts, and am looking for similar for my next role. I’m open to a range of different industries, but am especially interested in organizations where I can help keep people safe from bad guys, and/or help them get easier access to government services and benefits that they deserve. If you’re aware of an interesting opportunity, I’d love to chat with you and learn more.
Disclosures:
Views are my own and do not represent those of current or former clients, employers, or friends.
It is strongly implied that this rule is because no adult mage trusts another adult mage not to use other children as malia batteries to save their own children.
The eventual explanation of why that portal cannot be well-guarded to protect the kids is, ah, pretty grimdark.