Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2014-11-26 11:32 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2014-11-26 11:32 pm
Entry tags:
My day includes a good book. (Symbiont.) Also, IKEA.
Today's book is Symbiont, by Mira Grant. Hooray!
03:05 Wednesday, 26 November, 2014
Other little bits:
The start of the event was delayed slightly by the local protests about the travesty of justice taking place down in Ferguson. They marched past loudly, peacefully, with a police escort.
Someone had cosplayed Annie. *delight*
Hit 10k steps. Ow.
22:45 Wednesday, 26 November, 2014
Went to work. Discovered that much of the lunch gang was in, as fixing bugs reported by customers knows no rest. Ate my burrito and talked cars with them. (I am the driving-on-ice expert.) There was one guy from my department in, and since he has a hardwall office with its own lights, the lights in the whole wing were out. I turned on my desk lamp.
Eventually I peaced out early and hit IKEA, for the desk-drawers I have been needing and some more lights for my workstation. The lines were hella. I got the stuff in my car, then came back in to hit the bathroom. Unfortunately, the only bathroom whose location I remembered was upstairs, and then you have to go through the whole downstairs maze again to get out. (Though I think you can also go out through the babysitting place, which I didn't realize until later.) The lines had cleared out, which made me vaguely grumpy. Hit 5k steps, with the promise of crossing the goal through the simple act of walking down from the garage to my apartment.
Got to chat with Nora. Her roommate's dog is on steroids for his unfortunate skin issues, which has rendered him a tiny spaniel ball of 'roid rage. 'Roid rage, boundless hunger, and peeing.
I got home and got some food in me, then curled up in bed with Symbiont. So good. I like it better than Parasite, which I slammed through because it was good and clever and I needed to know what was happening next. Symbiont is good and clever and I need to know what's happening next, largely because I genuinely care what happens to these people and would like several of them to be my friends.
Seanan said that there are two legit places to put the cliffhanger: at the end of the first book of a duology, and at the end of the second book of a trilogy. When Seanan started writing this, it was a duology. Now it's a trilogy. She said sorry. The cliffhanger does not disappoint, and wraps up enough of the existing threads that I was entirely satisfied; waiting for the third book is going to be like waiting for dessert at the end of a really satisfying Thanksgiving lunch: pecan pie is delicious, but that turkey has filled me to the brim, and while I'm still scraping bits of gravy off my plate and licking them off my fork, it's good that I'm going to be waiting a couple hours before the pies are actually ready, to give my digestive system a while to think about the enormity of that turkey.
Sal is a wonder and a delight, and I like her more now that she's not deluding herself about things, and I'm not distracted by wondering when she's going to notice the piggy bank hitting her in the head (the penny having already dropped).
I like Nathan. I like Dorothy. I like Dr. Cale fictional. I was delighted to make Ronnie's acquaintance. I hissed at certain bad guys. I spent enough time wondering whether I had already asked about "Don't Go Out Alone"'s viability as a stand-alone that I forgot to actually ask about that. (The Parasitology series is very clearly Mira. "Don't Go Out Alone" is equally clearly (to me) in Seanan-voice. It is startling to register that difference.) Fishy is so dear and broken and I love him.
The contrasting modes of Epic Bioethics Failure were fascinating. I know which doctor I'd prefer to make alliance with, but I'd also be eager to encounter a third lab with an entirely different take on things. Perhaps that will happen in the next book.
For those who enjoyed Mira's zombies in the NEWSFLESH universe but aren't sure if they are up for tapeworms, I can say that I was not sure that I was up for tapeworms, but this isn't what I was expecting from tapeworm-related biomedical horror. This is a novel form of zombie, which just so happens to be tapeworm-related. And posthuman. Basically there are two "failure modes" which mean bad news for the human: one, the worm takes over to the point that the human host is taken out of the picture, but the symbiont does not actually do much more than mindlessly feed. Thus the zombies. Second, and more rare, the symbiont gets up in the brain, learns how to drive the meatsuit, and realizes the full capacity of its potential for sentience. This is the chimera. We get to meet a few in these books. They are, to an individual, fascinating people with distinct motivations, personalities, and loyalties. Also post-human. I am enthralled.
Tomorrow, I will take my sparkling cider and my gravy and my lingonberry sauce and my card deck and perhaps a computer over to my aunt's, to eat, drink, and be merry.
03:05 Wednesday, 26 November, 2014
Other little bits:
The start of the event was delayed slightly by the local protests about the travesty of justice taking place down in Ferguson. They marched past loudly, peacefully, with a police escort.
Someone had cosplayed Annie. *delight*
Hit 10k steps. Ow.
22:45 Wednesday, 26 November, 2014
Went to work. Discovered that much of the lunch gang was in, as fixing bugs reported by customers knows no rest. Ate my burrito and talked cars with them. (I am the driving-on-ice expert.) There was one guy from my department in, and since he has a hardwall office with its own lights, the lights in the whole wing were out. I turned on my desk lamp.
Eventually I peaced out early and hit IKEA, for the desk-drawers I have been needing and some more lights for my workstation. The lines were hella. I got the stuff in my car, then came back in to hit the bathroom. Unfortunately, the only bathroom whose location I remembered was upstairs, and then you have to go through the whole downstairs maze again to get out. (Though I think you can also go out through the babysitting place, which I didn't realize until later.) The lines had cleared out, which made me vaguely grumpy. Hit 5k steps, with the promise of crossing the goal through the simple act of walking down from the garage to my apartment.
Got to chat with Nora. Her roommate's dog is on steroids for his unfortunate skin issues, which has rendered him a tiny spaniel ball of 'roid rage. 'Roid rage, boundless hunger, and peeing.
I got home and got some food in me, then curled up in bed with Symbiont. So good. I like it better than Parasite, which I slammed through because it was good and clever and I needed to know what was happening next. Symbiont is good and clever and I need to know what's happening next, largely because I genuinely care what happens to these people and would like several of them to be my friends.
Seanan said that there are two legit places to put the cliffhanger: at the end of the first book of a duology, and at the end of the second book of a trilogy. When Seanan started writing this, it was a duology. Now it's a trilogy. She said sorry. The cliffhanger does not disappoint, and wraps up enough of the existing threads that I was entirely satisfied; waiting for the third book is going to be like waiting for dessert at the end of a really satisfying Thanksgiving lunch: pecan pie is delicious, but that turkey has filled me to the brim, and while I'm still scraping bits of gravy off my plate and licking them off my fork, it's good that I'm going to be waiting a couple hours before the pies are actually ready, to give my digestive system a while to think about the enormity of that turkey.
Sal is a wonder and a delight, and I like her more now that she's not deluding herself about things, and I'm not distracted by wondering when she's going to notice the piggy bank hitting her in the head (the penny having already dropped).
I like Nathan. I like Dorothy. I like Dr. Cale fictional. I was delighted to make Ronnie's acquaintance. I hissed at certain bad guys. I spent enough time wondering whether I had already asked about "Don't Go Out Alone"'s viability as a stand-alone that I forgot to actually ask about that. (The Parasitology series is very clearly Mira. "Don't Go Out Alone" is equally clearly (to me) in Seanan-voice. It is startling to register that difference.) Fishy is so dear and broken and I love him.
The contrasting modes of Epic Bioethics Failure were fascinating. I know which doctor I'd prefer to make alliance with, but I'd also be eager to encounter a third lab with an entirely different take on things. Perhaps that will happen in the next book.
For those who enjoyed Mira's zombies in the NEWSFLESH universe but aren't sure if they are up for tapeworms, I can say that I was not sure that I was up for tapeworms, but this isn't what I was expecting from tapeworm-related biomedical horror. This is a novel form of zombie, which just so happens to be tapeworm-related. And posthuman. Basically there are two "failure modes" which mean bad news for the human: one, the worm takes over to the point that the human host is taken out of the picture, but the symbiont does not actually do much more than mindlessly feed. Thus the zombies. Second, and more rare, the symbiont gets up in the brain, learns how to drive the meatsuit, and realizes the full capacity of its potential for sentience. This is the chimera. We get to meet a few in these books. They are, to an individual, fascinating people with distinct motivations, personalities, and loyalties. Also post-human. I am enthralled.
Tomorrow, I will take my sparkling cider and my gravy and my lingonberry sauce and my card deck and perhaps a computer over to my aunt's, to eat, drink, and be merry.