Sasha: Okay, everybody, we've got a way different post for you today! It's a book club meeting!
Ariel: With guests! But first we have to put our spoiler blankets on.
Sasha: Well, we could introduce our guests first, and say what the book is.
Ariel: But then people won't be surprised by who's here.
Sasha: That's ... I mean, who cares about being surprised over who the guests on a book club chat are?
Ariel: I don't know, somebody might.
Sasha: And how would they know when to take their spoiler blankets off? It's not like watching a show or a movie and once they've done that they can come back here and safely read the post even though there are spoilers.
Ariel: Oh no.
Sasha: What?
Ariel: Those poor people who trusted me when I said put their spoiler blankets on! They'll never be able to read this post!
Sasha: Aers, they're still reading. Nobody took you seriously about that.
Ariel: ...
Sasha: Now what?
Ariel: I just ... I mean, thanks a bunch for letting me know nobody takes me seriously.
Sasha: About spoiler warnings! You say goofy stuff about spoiler warnings all the time! People know they have to keep reading past those parts until the actual spoilable stuff shows up.
Ariel: So I should just stop saying it. Fine.
Sasha: That's not what I meant. Stop pouting or I will tickle you.
Ariel: Ack! No!
Sasha: Can we just introduce our guests? They've been sitting waiting this whole time.
Ariel: Oops! Oh gosh, I'm sorry Het and MSG.
Sasha: Aers! You just spoiled the introductions by giving out their names like that.
Ariel: Nooo, why did I go and -- wait, you're teasing me!
Sasha: Moving on ... today, readers, we have two guests in the Experiential Studio!
Ariel: Where's that?
Sasha: It's right here.
Ariel: Well that's a weird thing to call it. We've never called it that before.
Sasha: Sorry, I just opened up my mouth and that's what came out.
Ariel: "That's what she said!"
Sasha: Aers.
Ariel: Okay, but seriously, what if I wanted to call it something else?
Sasha: Do we have to do this right now? We. Have. Guests.
Ariel: You're the one who went and interrupted things by teasing me!
Sasha: Fine! Yes! My bad! Can we introduce our guests?
Ariel: You mean, like, both of us at the same time? We probably should have practiced that. What if I say "Hettie" first while you're saying "MSG" first and nobody understands either of us?
Sasha: I ... no. I didn't mean both of us at the same time. I meant one of us can introduce one of them, and then the other one can introduce the other one.
Ariel: The second person has to introduce themself?
Sasha: ...
Ariel: That's such a mean look! Why are you looking at me like that?
Sasha: Readers. I would now like to introduce to you our first guest, Harriet Heather Worthy, our most well-spoken girlfriend and one of the great bloggers of our time.
Hettie: Thank you, dear Sasha. It's a pleasure to be here, although after an introduction like that, a certain looming pressure abides within me to tread some ideal path between mundane expression that falls short of your praise, and hyperbolic oratorial gymnastics that your readers may find pretentious.
Sasha: Don't worry. Our readers are pretty used to dealing with quirky and kind of rambling discussions. They're pretty patient.
Ariel: Hey, is that another dig at me?
Sasha: Just introduce your guest, can you?
Ariel: Oh, right. Our second guest is the greatest boyfriend and fantasy writer in the world, MSG, which stands for "My Special Guy," which is what our girlfriend Claire, who's not here, started calling him when she first decided to be a blogger years and years ago. Just so you all know, we did ask Claire if she wanted to be in the book club convo, but --
Sasha: Ariel, maybe try and keep the introduction mostly about the person being introduced?
Ariel: Oops. I told you we should have practiced! Anyway, welcome to the post, MSG!
MSG: Thanks!
Sasha: Let's jump right in before there are any more rando tangents. The book we're talking about is Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Hettie was kind enough to come up with some discussion questions for us --
Ariel: Hettie is Harriet, by the way, everybody.
Sasha: I think they know that. You already said "Hettie" earlier.
Ariel: But you didn't in your introduction, you just called her by her full name.
Sasha: Shards of Earth. This is a sci-fi book by a guy named Adrian Tchaikovsky, who I looked up to see if he was related to the famous Russian composer Piotr Tchaikovsky --
Ariel: Who wrote the famous symphony Peter and the Wolf.
Sasha: What? No! Why are you doing that?
Ariel: Well he did, didn't he?
MSG: I'm pretty sure that was Prokofiev, who was a different Russian composer.
Ariel: Oh. I guess I just heard "Russian" and "Peter" and took it from there to try and sound smart.
Sasha: Can we please stop going off every which way except in the direction of the book club discussion?
Ariel: Sorry. Go on.
Sasha: Anyway, I looked that up, but it turns out his actual name is Czajkowski, which is Polish, not Russian, but I'm guessing is pronounced the same.
Ariel: So the Russian composer bit didn't have anything to do with our book club discussion.
Sasha: Ugh. No, I just thought it was interesting that his name was the same as this famous composer, okay?
Ariel: Right. Much more interesting than Peter and the Wolf, I'm sure.
Sasha: We're going down a rabbit-hole here.
Ariel: Don't change the subject, I don't think there's a rabbit in Peter and the Wolf.
Sasha: I --
Ariel: Oh, you're probably thinking of Peter Cottontail.
Sasha: How do you always do this?
Hettie: Sasha, do you mind if I ... ?
Sasha: Please dear God, Hettie, say anything if it will get us back on track.
Hettie: How about just a quick summary of the book? Shards of Earth is the first book in a space opera trilogy called The Final Architecture. It follows the adventures of a unique group of individuals in whose universe all intelligent species are threatened by the merciless onslaught of a race known as the Architects. These beings are planet-sized entities able to move through Tchaikovsky's equivalent of hyperspace, which in this book is called "unspace" and has a variety of unique characteristics that help drive the plot. Decades before the story begins, a great war was fought against the Architects -- a desperate attempt to prevent them from their apocalyptic habit of finding inhabited worlds and sculpting them into vast pieces of geometrical statuary, annihilating all inhabitants in the process. Ships and weaponry on a human scale are useless against the Architects, which can swat them aside like flies through devastating manipulations of gravity. The war ended only when humans created an elite class of enhanced humans called "Intermediaries" able to sense and respond to phenomena related to unspace. Somehow these Intermediaries were able to make the Architects aware of human sentience, and when that happened, they disappeared immediately, and decades and generations of peace resulted. In the story itself, one of the last surviving Intermediaries, a man named Idris, is serving as pilot and navigator on a small scavenger vessel when it uncovers evidence suggesting the Architects are about to return.
MSG: Nicely done, Het.
Hettie: Thank you.
Ariel: This book was so exciting!
Hettie: Which is good, seeing as that constitutes one of the major genre traits of a space opera.
Ariel: Oh, really? I just thought it was called an opera because his great grandfather wrote Peter and the Wolf.
MSG: Before Sash has an aneurism, I'll jump in and say that space opera is a sub-genre of science fiction that focuses on epic-scale adventures and galactic wars, usually concerning itself less with the nuts-and-bolts science part of s.f. and more with heroic drama or melodrama. Space operas often include psychic phenomena and powers and have plots that lead from planet to planet instead of sticking to any one locale or setting.
Ariel: How is that not just science fiction?
MSG: Um ...
Ariel: I mean, Star Wars is like that, Star Trek is like that, the Halo show we watched is like that, the Guardians of the Galaxy movies are like that ... have we just been watching space opera this whole time and we've never even seen actual ordinary straight-up science fiction?
Sasha: Arcane isn't like that.
Ariel: Is that science fiction? I thought it was Anime.
Sasha: Lots of Anime is science fiction.
Ariel: Oh.
Sasha: But yeah, looking back at it, I think pretty much our sci-fi watching has mostly been space opera.
Ariel: Not that awful one about the All-Beard Guy at the north pole.
Sasha: Don't mention that one, I just saw MSG wince when you said it.
Ariel: Sorry. OMG, it was SO boring. I'm getting all yawny even just thinking about it now.
Sasha: Time for book club discussion, then. Hettie, do you want to start in with your discussion questions?
Hettie: Well, first why don't we just go around the table and say how we generally liked the book?
Ariel: Good idea! You guests should go first.
Hettie: I'll say I was impressed with the worldbuilding and the intensity of the action sequences, appreciative of the writing style throughout, and found the characters sufficiently engaging for a space opera. The plotting was a bit too driven by Things Beyond the Ken of Mere Mortals for me -- the characters' moment-to-moment fates a bit more "tossed by the turbulent seas of fate" than ideal. But the people were intriguing enough and the events so compelling that I didn't really mind the tendency of the characters' competencies to work when they worked and fall short when they fell short, without a lot of bright lines defining why.
MSG: There were quite a few points where I wondered if the author was plotting by the seat of his pants as he went, for sure. But the Architects and unspace and the vivid qualities of the different worlds and aliens were so fantastically conceived that they and the characters stayed center stage for me most of the time, and I had a blast with all of that.
Ariel: Well I just liked Solace a whole whole bunch. She was super cool!
Sasha: Hmm, short, pale blond chick ... who would have guessed you'd identify with someone like that?
Ariel: Hey, they didn't even say what she looked like until lots of chapters into the book, and I already liked her a lot before that!
MSG: And was she blond? I don't remember any mention of her hair color, or really much about her appearance except that she was pale-skinned and beautiful.
Sasha: Okay, I'm going to have to look that up now. I would have sworn she was blond.
Hettie: In general, I found the physical descriptions of the characters almost deliberately ambiguous and elusive. I rather liked that about the book, actually. My imagination was baited into visualizing people by just a few words, and then I was able to carry those images forward of my own accord. And for what it's worth, I'd say Solace was my favorite character too. I probably would have leant more toward empathizing with Ollie, except that by the time we met Ollie, I already had perhaps just a bit of a thing for Solace, and it put me off a bit that the engineer was so hostile toward her.
MSG: It would be pretty hard not to be all about Solace, though, since she's basically the main character of the book. Which is weird since the sales blurb on Amazon didn't so much as mention her. I really expected the story to be about Idris, and he was clearly the other co-protagonist, but he was a lot harder to get to know than she was. I didn't start to feel like I knew what made him tick until way into the novel.
Ariel: What about you, Sash? I mean, besides projecting your girlfriend's hair color onto the main character?
Sasha: I'd get defensive about that except that she was a really cool character. But not quite the main character for me.
Ariel: Really? Who'd you think the main character was?
Sasha: The explosions! Boom! Pow! All these weapons with names like "mass looms" and "accelerators." Things were blowing the heck up all over the place in this book! I loved it!
Ariel: Guess I should have seen that coming. Well ... are we ready for Hettie's discussion questions yet?
MSG: Fine by me.
Sasha: Sure. Het?
Hettie: All right. So the first question is, if you had to choose a society from this book to live in, which would it be?
Ariel: Ooh, that's interesting! MSG, do you want to start?
MSG: I'm probably going to have to go with the Parthenon.
Sasha: Uh-huh. What a boy! Straight to the place with unlimited girl-on-girl action.
MSG: Anything I say about that will just sound like excuse-making. But really I think it's just the fact that it's a very utopian culture. They really are the good guys in the book, and it's not Solace alone. Unlike all the other societies, they really do want the best for everyone, and it shows. Plus they're a really open, honest, mutually supportive culture where people can talk to each other and expect to be fully heard. And by the way, Sash, we all know that's the one you're picking too, just because they have the biggest guns.
Sasha: Dammit.
MSG: How about you, Hettie?
Hettie: I'm going to be really odd and say the Hivers.
Ariel: What? That's kinda crazypants, Het ... I mean, no offense. How come?
Hettie: Every hiver is individualized from the larger hive mind for a particular purpose, right? But once out in galactic society, they seem to have a great deal of freedom to customize themselves however they like, top to bottom, including how they express themselves. And when they get to the point where they feel their purpose is done, they simply dissolve back into the larger whole. Although I suppose there is a major drawback in the total lack of sex. But if you were a Hiver, you wouldn't miss it.
Ariel: I guess that just leaves me, unless Sash wants to go into more detail about being Partheni ...
Sasha: No, it pretty much starts and ends with the big guns for me.
Hettie: Truly? No element at all of the "unlimited girl-on-girl action?"
Sasha: Fine. Everybody's got my number today, obviously.
MSG: And how about you, Aers?
Ariel: Well ... I don't know if the Parthenon sounds like they have all that much fun there. I mean, it's hard to tell, because we don't actually see any of their homeworlds, just them on board ships out on missions. But I don't think I'd really enjoy all the fighting and the training to be fighting and all that. Probably I guess I'd just want to be one of the spacers. They get to fly around the galaxy, and sure, it sounds like hard work, but everybody's got each others' backs, you know? And you get to meet every kind of different person and alien. So that's what I'm saying.
Hettie: Next question, then. What did you most want to know about this universe that was not revealed in the book?
MSG: Ariel actually just kind of hit on that for me: what are the Parthenon's planets like? How do they live when they're not on ships going on missions? I hope we get to see some of that in the rest of the series.
Ariel: I just want to know what the heck the creepy thing in unspace is! That place is so weird and freaky and whatever it is that's skulking around in there is super messed-up!
Sasha: You're too impatient. I'm sure they're going to get to that in one of the other books. It's obviously part of the larger story.
Ariel: But I want to know now!
Hettie: I'm going to agree with Ariel. Despite the clear centrality of that mystery to the story as a whole, and despite concurring with Sasha's expectation that we'll find out down the line, the eeriness of that lurking presence simply overwhelms my ability to stay my curiosity. And what about you, Sasha?
Sasha: This isn't just me being indecisive or anything, but I'm actually good. While I was reading it, I was wondering, "What the hell is up with this Idris guy?" But eventually we got enough flashbacks I understood, and now I'm just ready to sit back and enjoy the ride for however many more books this Tchaikovsky guy writes.
Hettie: That's a bit of a dodge, but a well-reasoned dodge, so I'll allow it. Question number three, then. Which character would you invite to one of our role-playing games?
Sasha: Easy peasy! Kris. Not only do I think she'd be fun, she's all about style and she'd 100% for sure know all the rules.
Hettie: She would literally be a rules lawyer, you know.
Sasha: Yeah, but a very ethical one. And she's interested in trying new things and going new places.
MSG: I'm going to say Havaer.
Ariel: The old secret agent spy dude?
MSG: Absolutely. We see him playing tons of different roles in the book, depending on who he's talking to and what the circumstances call for. Plus, he's whip-smart. He'd be totally great at figuring out puzzles.
Hettie: I was going to say him. Now I'll have to say Trine, the old archaeologist Hiver.
Sasha: You really do have a thing going for those Hivers, huh?
Hettie: They're fascinating. And Trine had a great sense of humor, which is always an asset at the RPG table.
Ariel: You guys are taking all the good picks!
MSG: It's not like we've all had completely unique answers to all of these questions. There's no reason you can't just agree with one of us and say what your reasons are.
Ariel: Well ... I would, but I just remembered the crab guy.
Sasha: Kittering?
Ariel: Yeah! He was weird, but also funny, and he's an accountant, so he'd probably keep really good notes about everything that happened!
Hettie: An excellent point.
MSG: That actually sounds like a really fun gaming group.
Hettie: Last question. I thought this one sounded very entertaining: What kind of food do you think best models the flavors and textures of this story?
Ariel: Food?
Sasha: Okay, this is going to take some thinking.
Ariel: Psst! Sash, you can always say "Firecracker Shrimp!"
Sasha: Aers! Now you've gone and spoiled my chance to think of that one on my own.
Ariel: Well you can still say it.
Sasha: But I wouldn't sound very creative if I did. Hush and let me think!
MSG: I think I've got my answer.
Hettie: Ah, this should be good; of the four of us, you're definitely the gourmand.
MSG: I'm thinking a ramen dish from a fancy restaurant. The kind where there's a bunch of mysterious stuff down in the cloudy broth, things you don't expect right at the start, nestled in the complicated, shifting strands of delicate noodles.
Hettie: Hmm. Okay. I can see that.
Sasha: Can I say a drink? If I can say a drink, I'm calling it a triple espresso with a bunch of different flavor shots in it and swirling whipped cream on top.
Ariel: Ooh! That's good! And also, now I want one.
Hettie: Ariel? Any ideas?
Ariel: I don't know! I guess ... a big spicy burrito. Like a 7-layer burrito stuffed full of so much stuff you can hardly get it in your mouth, and there's peppers and beans and cheese and then by the end of it you're kind of sniffly from the hot sauce.
Hettie: Did you get sniffly at the end of the book?
Ariel: I mean, I get sniffly at the end of an awful lot of books if they're emotional, which I thought this one was.
MSG: How about you, Het? What kind of food are you thinking best fits this book?
Hettie: Well, it needs to be something robust and complex, layered ... something you can get excited about ... maybe a King's Ranch Casserole. Sauce and cheese and chicken or turkey making spicy strata between layers of corn tortilla.
MSG: I have not had King's Ranch Casserole in so long. That sounds really good.
Ariel: I've never had it!
Sasha: Me either. I guess that's something else for us to experience some other time.
Ariel: I'll write it down on a list!
Sasha: Well, thank you both for being in our post, and extra-special thanks for coming up with the questions, Hettie!
Hettie: Absolutely. I'll be happy to do it again sometime if you like.
MSG: And I'll be there if you let me know about it.
Ariel: Of course we will.
Sasha and Ariel: See you later, everybody!
