Title: High Wizardry | Author: Diane Duane | Publisher: Magic Carpet Books (2003)

Title: High Wizardry | Author: Diane Duane | Publisher: Magic Carpet Books (2003)

obsessed with the era of historical fashion between the 1860s and 1870s where aniline dyes kept being invented. you can find some absolute fucking eyesores of dresses that were only made that way because “acid magenta” was invented last month and it was trendy.

like this iconic gown:

or this one from the 1870s in aniline purple and aniline black:

or a trendy yellow and black gown from c. 1865, perhaps?

feel free to reblog with additional eyesores (affectionate) that i might have missed

EXCUSE ME, That Is My Emotional Support Bodyguard

If Artemis Fowl was originally planned as a trilogy (and I have no idea, I was literally too emotionally distraught from rereading this book to Google that), then this book is a really lovely ending. It's also just a massive emotional roller coaster, especially for a middle-grade series! Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code.

*Spoilers Below the Break. Be Warned*

This book could honestly also be titled Artemis Fowl: American Businessmen are Scum and I Will Personally Make them Pay, because one of the very, very few flat-out mistakes we see Artemis make occurs in the opening chapters of this book. Our boy attempts to extort American businessman Jon Spiro into paying him an exorbitant fee to keep his C-Cube (a peice of tech that integrates fairy technology to make literally everything else on the planet obsolete, with the added bonus that if anyone looks too hard at it, the fairy world could be exposed) off the market.

Butler--bless his bodyguard heart--spends this entire meeting with his instincts screaming "Something is seriously wrong," but Artemis is so damn sure that he has the high ground that he ignores a couple of fairly blatant red flags to bait the already pissed-off businessman. And then, of course, the angry American does the most predictably fucking American thing in the world and pulls a gun.

And Butler does his job. This man who we have grown to love through two books literally stands in front of the bullet and makes sure that Artemis is safe before literally using his dying breath to tell Artemis his name before dying in his principle's arms.

Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals: This scene is DEVASTATING.

We are intimately tangled up in the moment, with Artemis and Butler's reactions. As someone who has had life-threatening medical emergencies, Butler's calm in the moment is totally understandable, but when I read this book for the first time, that calm was scarier than him panicking would have been. Artemis is a normal human boy with normal human boy emotions in this scene, and because he is so rarely that in these books, that is perhaps more devastating than if he had also been calm in the scene. Basically, if this death scene hadn't been reversed in later chapters, it would be #1 on my list of book death scenes that scarred me for life.

But Artemis being Artemis, he finds his criminal mastermind instincts and stuffs Butler's body in a fish freezer, gets help from a professional cryogenicist, and then gets Holly on the line to pull off a hail-Mary four-minute healing. And the best part is that there are actual consequences. The healing takes about a decade off of Butler's life, and because some kevlar fibers got caught up in the wound, his breathing is less free than it was before. But the important thing is that Butler. Is. Alive.

Then, of course, Artemis has to come clean to the fairies that he came within a hair's breadth of exposing their entire civilization to humans and that he has left the door unlocked and cracked open for Jon Spiro to expose them. This is, of course, wholly beyond the pale, so the Council authorizes them fairy help to retrieve the cube, but for a price: All the humans involved get mind-wiped after the cube is successfully retrieved. Artemis agrees, because this kid has eaten enough humble pie today to kill a large horse.

Butler, despite being alive, is not in any shape to go heisting, so Juliet and Mulch Diggums round out the heist team. Jon Spiro is rich, paranoid, and quite frankly evil, so this heist is a CHALLENGE, but ultimately they do end up succeeding, and Artemis, Butler, and Juliet submit to mind wipes. That scene is weirdly touching, but it is not without the caveat that allowed the series to continue beyond book three: They're wearing mirrored contact lenses to beat the mesmer, and Artemis slips Mulch a computer disc full of files that will spark enough memories to reverse the mind wipe.

This isn't my favorite Artemis Fowl book by any stretch of the imagination, but it's arguably the best heist in the series and the scenework and the development of Artemis's character is strong as hell. Plus, watching Jon Spiro spiral into a hell that is largely of his own making after he had Butler shot was deeply satisfying.

state of the bookshelf 7/29/23

Reading

The Archive Undying (Emma Mieko Candon)

At His Countess's Pleasure (Olivia Waite)

Mycroft and Sherlock (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse)

Mystery on the Blue Train (Agatha Christie)

The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows (Olivia Waite)

Carpe Juguluum, Maskerade, the Last Continent (Pratchett)

Recently finished

If Found Return to Hell (Em X Liu) - I liked it!

Ghost Talkers (Mary Robinette Kowal) - I loved it!

Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie) -> I watched part of the recent movie adaptation after finishing the book and I'm super interested in the changes that the movie makers made :O :D

Thief of Time

After the Wedding (Courtney Milan)

Have you read these books? Do you have book thoughts to share? Tell meeeeeeee

This is doing something to my brain

There was nothing here dazzling enough to describe as magic. The spell was in the obsession, the relentless intensity.

From Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi, translated by David Boyd and Lucy North

Well fuck Balin

This is one of my favorite lines! It makes me smile every time

thoughts with spoilers for murderbot 6

Reasons "Well fuck Balin" is a great line

JollyBaby going "nah Balin is a manager" and MB being like "wait Balin doesn't lift heavy things because it's a manager? UGH" is just funny and relatable

It's also MEMORABLE

This means that later on, when we learn more about Balin, I'm not like "uh whomst the fuck?"

(I have a so-so memory and frequently struggle to keep track of different characters' names)

AND it's important that we remember Balin

I seriously think this one line is just... really incredible from a "how does the story fit together" point of view.

It's memorable, but it doesn't draw too much attention to itself. It's short and unobtrusive.

It's memorable because it's funny. It's not obvious like a character, I dunno, ominously standing in the shadows with its eyes/indicator lights turning red.

It helps the story function. Imagine how much worse the story would function if Balin was completely unmemorable.

And that's why "Well fuck Balin" is one of my favorite murderbot lines of all time.