Gideon The Ninth, The Wickedest Man In The World, and Some Japanese
Lab Notes for October 2024
October was busy but I still got some breathing room to enjoy some good books, good music, and get back into writing. Here’s what I’ve been obsessed with recently!
The Reading
Assassin of Reality by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, sequel to Vita Nostra (spoilers ahead)
Vita Nostra ended with Sasha taking what she thought was her final exam at the Institute for Special Technologies. Needless to say, things are not as they seem and she isn’t finished with her studies after all. This series has a great story with one of the deepest magic systems I’ve ever seen and Assassin of Reality is a worthy sequel.
“We thought that our transformation into a grammatical form after the exam would mean freedom from fear. From all this. The Great Speech is beautiful and harmonious,” he said, his voice reaching a lofty tone. “And that’s the truth. But it’s not the whole truth. They hid something from us: we can progress as concepts only as long as something human is left in us. The Word itself, Word that is fully mature, does not grow. It can only serve as an instrument of Speech. That’s why during the first two years, they broke us down and squeezed the concepts out of us. Now they are trying to cultivate and maintain our human nature. They are preserving us as humans, our human reactions, until we defend our theses, until we take the final exam.”
All aircrafts are capable of crashing. To live is to be vulnerable. Fear is love. How does one formulate the order “Do not be afraid” without the negative particle “not”? “Be brave,” Sasha whispered.