Critiques et Commentaires

Following the return of Djinn and other mythic and magical creatures in the world, Cairo is the center of the world as the 20th centurty is beginning. Fatma el-Sha’arawi is a dapper dresser first and foremost, and works as an agent of the ministry in charge of overviewing alchemy, enchantments and supernatural entities.

I liked this novel. The rythm holds us to the seat of our pants, the characters are well rounded, the main critic I’d have to make is that this books depends too much on the previous novelettes/short stories in the same universe. I liked that the main story revolves around story elements also present in S. A. Chakraborty's Daevabad trilogy. The fact that Chakraborty's quote is on A Master of Djinn's cover reinforces the closeness of these two litterary worlds. Old middle-eastern legends come back to life, and it's a perspective that's sorely lacking in western SF/F.

I like Becky Chambers, and the way she portrays common people, or common aliens as people. Her characters are not defined only by their galactic race. They have their own histories, their own agencies, that may or may not be dictated by the world they come from. One of the most desirable future I've read, without being written as an utopia.

When I was a child I loved to read tranditional tales and legends from around the world. Fantasy has somewhat scratched that itch, but it was always limited to an anglo-saxon pov (thanks, JRRT). I really enjoy how new authors get out of that anglo-saxon box. S. A. Chakraborty bases her world on the Muslim world in the 19th century, with fantastic elements like Djinns and Marids… I think I'll like this book.

Nicolas Jounin rend intéressant un sujet qui pourrait ne pas l'être : la gestion (via des formules Excel) des tournées des postiers.

Ce livre devrait être lu par toute personne qui participe à la conception et la mise en place d’un algorithme. Il explore les causes (d’où viennent les données qui font dire à l’algo la durée d’une tournée de facteur ?) et les conséquences (burnouts, maladies liées à l’activité, accidents…) de l’utilisation bornée et sans nuance d’un outil automatisé. Les réorganisations de tournées sont à mon sens comme les déménagements de sièges d’entreprises : des moyens d’écrémer la masse salariale, un plan social sans en avoir l’air (et on remplacera ce qui manque par des prestataires…), et l’abandon d’une mission de service public.

Une enquête nécessaire.

The worldbuilding is interesting, but the action takes a lot of time to start in earnest. If it starts at all? Right now the two different arcs don't seem to join in together. It would be honestly great to see a Fantasy novel building up to a big confrontation or something and then it doesn't happen because one of the protagonists was delayed because of the weather or something like that.

Nghi Vo writes a story that’s very much influenced by East Asian tales, where humans have animal names, empresses predict the future—or influence it—with the help of mages, and a religious order has a mission to record History as in happens, or just happened.

In this East-Asian influenced world, be wary if you meet three tigers, they might ask you to tell them a tale, and if you tell it badly, they'll eat you.

Nghi Vo keeps embellishing her world where tigers and foxes can turn into humans, to court them, marry them, or more prosaically to eat them. The same tale is told from two points of view, with two different sets of values, and makes us ask ourselves what we miss when we hear only one side of a story.

I like the short format of these novellas, the worldbuilding happens during the story and there's no infodump or long intro.