I was not expecting how much critical theory and gay shit (but I repeat myself) would be in this but was very pleasantly surprised. Come for the swords and dragons and such, stay for the digressions on flows of desire and their mediation through language

Finished reading Tales of Neveryon by Samuel Delany which I really enjoyed. Rich (with depth) characters that examined social and sexual constructs without being overbearing. I especially like the ideas surrounding reflections and the distortion that occurs in a reflection of a reflection and then the application beyond visual elements like an endless game of telephone. Forgot to pull out quotes as I was so engrossed with the actual reading.

3.5/5

But the problem begins with trying to reduce them to all the same measure of coin in the first place: skilled time, unskilled time, the talk of a clever woman, nature's gifts of fish and fruit, the invention of a craftsman, the strength of a laboring woman—one simply cannot measure weight, coldness, the passage of time, and the brightness of fire all on the same scale.

This one was a debacle to rate. Eventually, I gave up the holistic scale and settled on the Delany scale, indicating a number of stars greater than that of the disappointing [b:Babel-17|1199688|Babel-17|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1257546421i/1199688._SY75_.jpg|13612561] and lesser than that of the magnificent [b:Dhalgren|40963358|Dhalgren|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1532735651i/40963358._SY75_.jpg|873021]. THe beginning story/cycle/chapter was the strongest, much as the first film is often the best after being birthed out of the longest gestation period compared to its hasty younger siblings, and while the later bits did fill in various plot holes rather teasingly, there were too many moments of similarly voiced characters and uncharacteristic monologuing near the end for me to engage in this deeper than I would with a particularly unusual thought exercise. As for the tail end pseudo commentary, my recent read of 'The Princess Bride' exhausted me with such finagling contrivances, and it is a thin line that that appendix walks between invigorating contextualization and blowhard pretension. In light of that, will I be reading the rest of this quartet? I'll certainly acquire the next one if I stumble across it, and considering Delany's one of the few reasons I even bother with the Sci Fi/Fantasy sections anymore, so he has a better chance of being indulged in than most. I won't be adding it to my digital shelves just yet, though: irrational fear of commitments and all.

As I said earlier, the beginning of this was definitely the strongest, the bits and pieces of PoMo accentuating rather than conflicting with the fantasy mainframe, playing with conceits of the genre in a tone of satire as well as sincere exploration of themes. Indeed, thinking back, I beginning to better understand the driving motivation where certain philosophies were brought to a barbarian plain, inseminated, and then studied in vivo, from patriarchy to capitalism, radical feminism to Marxism, slavery to freedom (I wouldn't assign relative worth based on my chosen orders and pairings if I were you). The problem, I suppose, is when the chapter epigraphs began weighing too heavily on their respective skeins of narrative and the characters started sounding a bit too much like uniform 20th century mouthpieces, and a flaw that reached its most discordant peak in the final chapter and plays a major part in my decision to not officially add the sequel to my stacks just yet. All in all, this wasn't nearly as lazily harmful as 'Babel-17' in its ideological underpinnings, but that story was admittedly tighter and more deftly balanced in its mixture of plot and dialectic; on the other side of the spectrum, this was nowhere near the grandeur of 'Dhalgren', whose strength often lay in not bothering to explain things and just letting the queer (in all senses of the world) times roll. I also don't like narratives with sexualized children in them, but there're bigger, more mainstream fish to fry on that note (*cough* Disney *cough), so honestly, if you're planning on obsessing over it in this work, you best be prepared to take it on with those who don't engage with it nearly as critically as Delany does.

Did this work start coming apart at the seams at the end? Yes. Do I fear a similar increasing lack of cohesion in the succeeding three volumes? A tad, despite reading an entry excerpt of the sequel provided at the end of this edition. What I'm really hoping to get my hands on is Delany's nonfiction in the form of [b:The Motion Of Light In Water: Sex And Science Fiction Writing In The East Village|353325|The Motion Of Light In Water Sex And Science Fiction Writing In The East Village|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388551356i/353325._SY75_.jpg|343536], as I find nonfiction works better with certain authors when I've had a trend of not so brilliant fictional interactions with them. This strategy's currently working splendidly for [b:Nin|46064|The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1 1931-1934|Anaïs Nin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1503717885i/46064._SY75_.jpg|1107826], and my reading of Wolf's [b:Cassandra|153482|Cassandra A Novel and Four Essays|Christa Wolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1379150564i/153482._SX50_.jpg|4103008] would not have been nearly as worthwhile without the four contextualizing essays included in my edition. So, here's hoping that one shows up soon. I'll still purchase the more fantastical sequel if it comes my way, but I could use a better sense of Delany's directional efforts before I dive back into the results of such.

He was learning that power—was like a fog over a meadow at evening. From any distance, it seemed to have a shape, a substance, a color, an edge, yet as you approached it, it seemed to recede before you. Finally, when common sense said you were at its center, it still seemed just as far away, only by this time it was on all sides, obscuring any vision of the world beyond it.

some of the smartest, most fun, most challenging SF out there

This was just a really pulpy, trashy Sword and Sorcery novel -- OR WAS IT? It's actually a weird postmodern discussion of symbolism, imperialism, capitalism, and slavery. The last chapters are fake academics discussing the preceding novel as though it resulted in an ancient manuscript, noting the delicacies of translation.

At one point, there's a conversation between two characters about religion, and it's completely elided. Instead, there is a paragraph about how religion world building makes us assume that the characters' "relationship with their metaphysics" is different from our own, providing an inappropriate explanation for other elements of culture.

Decided to pick this up because I've been hearing this mentioned recently in the context of queer reading and fantasy, and my library had it available. This was a fun read of collected short stories that has me interested in reading more, not the least because it starts with a slave assessing the context of power and how it changes in certain settings and how it draws him into a larger situation, much less the master/slave dynamic lived out in this setting in a sexual context. Can't wait to see where the rest of this goes.

This is definitely not your typical swords-and-sorcery tale. It takes elements of classic barbarian fantasy and tweaks and twists them in interesting ways. There's hack-and-slash adventuring and political intrigue, but there's also a lot about cultural norms, gender roles, power relations, sexual identity and kinks, the impact of a monetary economy on society, mythologies which shape and are shaped by all of the preceding, and the nature of language itself in structuring our perceptions of the world around us. So maybe like Umberto Eco writing a Conan novel?

One caveat is that this seems at first like a collection of short stories, but they all interweave to form a single long narrative. The stories are entertaining and thought-provoking on their own, but if you want to get the whole arc, you're signing up for four books and 1300+ pages. And you'll probably want to take notes to keep track of who's who and what's happened; details from previous stories suddenly become significant in later ones.

So it's not light reading, but I expect it'd be really rewarding if you're willing to commit to it. I've only gotten through the first book so far. I'd give it three and a half stars, and I wouldn't be surprised if I bumped that to four once I got through the whole thing. I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle the rest of it yet, but probably someday.