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radueriel

29, cis gay, trans rights now 🏳️‍⚧️ read a variety: contemporary & literary fiction, queer romance, science & speculative fiction. or anything else!

322 points

0% overlap
Level 3
Achillean Across Genres
LGBTQ+ Sci-Fi & Fantasy
My Taste
Welcome to Forever
The World and All That It Holds
The Book of Form and Emptiness
The Song of Achilles
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Reading...
Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)
17%
This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation
1%
The Two Towers
15%
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radueriel commented...

1h

"hydrolic hieroglyphics" is GORGEOUS

sad to have missed two days of reading due to crazy busy work, but excited to catch up over the weekend as best i can

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radueriel commented...

4d

how are you liking this? i've been interested since it was referenced in Justin Torres's Blackouts!

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radueriel commented...

4d

feeling very moved by the humility of Aragorn-- Éomer says to his face that he's literally a figure out of legend, and yet he still insists that it was only in the wake of Gandalf's fall that "lesser men" such as himself had to step up to lead 😭

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radueriel commented...

4d

it's such a struggle sometimes when reading older sci fi that is in other respects VERY GOOD that just like refuses to acknowledge the existence of queer people. in a story set in 2026! immersion-breaking 😂😅

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radueriel commented...

6d

ahhh this review is inspiring me to pick this one up

  • The Dispossessed
    Sep 06, 2026
    The DispossessedUrsula K. Le Guin
    5.0
    Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 4.5Plot: 5.0
    🌕️
    📚️
    ⛓️‍💥

    I've let this one marinate for a few weeks and have given up any hope of saying something intelligent, let alone original. It goes without saying that Ursula was a genius, a gifted weaver of stories. You certainly have to be a master of your craft to build such a textured, engrossing setting in such a compact novel.

    Strangely, however, I think this is only the cherry on top, the set dressing for a profound work of political imagination. The book feels investigatory as Le Guin uses fiction to explore capitalism, anarchism, and communism. As a thought experiment, she pushes the tenets and facets of these ideologies to their extreme logical conclusions. I could sense Le Guin's thought process in a marvelous way, watching her process the Cold War in real time. She's incisive and fairly balanced in where she turns her authorial microscope, constructing nuanced ethical dilemmas that demonstrate the benefits and drawbacks of anarchism and capitalism, individualism and collectivism.

    Especially in these dark times, it feels comforting and powerful to have access to stories like this one. How refreshing, to imagine a world that organizes itself around different values. The book asks what we are willing to compromise or sacrifice to achieve this, and changed some of my assumptions about how to answer that question.

    4