In amongst all the cleaning, tidying, washing up, etc etc today, I managed to read the first 100 pages of Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, nominee for the Clarke Award in May. I've been seeing a lot about this one here and there, since Orbit decided to pair it with Rachel Aaron/Bach's Paradox trilogy for promotional stuff at one point. Lots of the "If you like that, try this" approach, I seem to recall. And then of course it was nominated for the Clarke Award, and it's an oddball, so it's caught a lot of attention. So I'm going in with that kind of bias, and a handful of non-spoilery reviews.
So far, there's a lot of squabbling going on in my head, between writer-me, reader-me, and LGBT/feminist-conscious-me. Between my many mes, I'm pretty sure I'm arguing both sides and the middle. I foresee another far-too-in-depth-and-yet-no-plot-spoilers sort of half review, half analysis in the future. Sorry about that. But I've got another 286 pages to go, yet. That might all change.
Four of the five other nominees arrived at the library back in York, too, today, which is a little frustrating as they'll only keep them reserved in my name for so long, and I am, naturally, in Cambridge until just after the deadline. I was hoping they'd turn up before I came down here, so I wouldn't lose two weeks of reading/reviewing, but oh well. I'm sure I'll work something out.
Anyway. People other than me tried the mini carrot cakes today and declared them tasty, so I'm quite pleased there. If I can work out cooking time, perhaps I can do a full scale one and distribute the icing more evenly that way, because whoa, these things are loaded with the stuff as it stands now. Not that I'm complaining, you understand.
I also ate spinach today for what I'm pretty sure is the first time ever, and it evidently hasn't poisoned me, so that's a plus too.
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