Critiques et Commentaires

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.

The Bannerless saga is an interesting thought experiment into what makes communities. Is it common rules? Is it enforcement of said rules? Is it caring for people even if rules are broken?

I like that the "investigators" provide a service and are not just blind enforcers of law, the main character could be seen as a cop but the book is low on copaganda. It could be seen as anarchism in practice.

Better than the first installment of the series. The characters are more rounded, the story around the first contact with an alien species can be read on many levels and is much more adapted to a SF setting than the first installment. I hope there'll be another book telling what happens with Mahit and Three Seagrass!