Michael Barnes
"Call me...call me whatever the fuckyou like. Isha. Or Isobel. Io. Imogen. Iris. Ivy. If there is a point to all this - to any of the cacophonous bullshit in my head - it's that I don't think I've ever been sure what the I in I Am stands for. But it's the only word or name or pronoun that's always been mine. That nobody's tried to take from me."
So right at the start, if the title of the book hadn't clued you in "…from hell's heart I stab at thee" we know this is a science fiction retelling of a gender-swapped, queer as fuck Moby Dick in space and I am here for it.
So for those that have read Moby Dick I think will enjoy this even more because of the shout out the author/narrator/disaster pansexual makes about their story is clearly coming from someone who read Moby Dick. "And yes, in hindsight I could probably have worked that information into the text more elegantly instead of just devoting the occasional chapter to long digressions about biology,..."
This also made me realise just how much Moby Dick is an exploration of capitalism in which value is exploitivly extracted from everything just to make a few rich.
One of whateverthefuckyoulike's first encounters is a terran called Q whose dialog in Latin consisting mostly of quotes from Catullus or Cicero or the Vulgate Bible; a really delightful joke about Elmo are worth having a translation app handy.
Since I have read Moby Dick I am unsure if it stands alone for those who haven't. I think it would Cat Treadwell at the Fantasy Hive certainly thinks so "This captures the intrinsic humanity contained in great literature, and reminds us why such stories are told and retold. It reflects who we are now, with all our crazy dreams, goals and utterly illogical societies, via the deep inner thoughts of a lonely fictional woman from the far future".
‘We’re bound together by webs of trust and betrayal and pain and comfort and triumph and humiliation and caring and apathy and life and life and life.
And below the web, the endless void.
And at its heart, monsters.’
"Call me...call me whatever the fuckyou like. Isha. Or Isobel. Io. Imogen. Iris. Ivy. If there is a point to all this - to any of the cacophonous bullshit in my head - it's that I don't think I've ever been sure what the I in I Am stands for. But it's the only word or name or pronoun that's always been mine. That nobody's tried to take from me."
So right at the start, if the title of the book hadn't clued you in "…from hell's heart I stab at thee" we know this is a science fiction retelling of a gender-swapped, queer as fuck Moby Dick in space and I am here for it.
So for those that have read Moby Dick I think will enjoy this even more because of the shout out the author/narrator/disaster pansexual makes about their story is clearly coming from someone who read Moby Dick. "And yes, in hindsight I could probably have worked that information into the text more elegantly instead of just devoting the occasional chapter to long digressions about biology,..."
This also made me realise just how much Moby Dick is an exploration of capitalism in which value is exploitivly extracted from everything just to make a few rich.
One of whateverthefuckyoulike's first encounters is a terran called Q whose dialog in Latin consisting mostly of quotes from Catullus or Cicero or the Vulgate Bible; a really delightful joke about Elmo are worth having a translation app handy.
Since I have read Moby Dick I am unsure if it stands alone for those who haven't. I think it would Cat Treadwell at the Fantasy Hive certainly thinks so "This captures the intrinsic humanity contained in great literature, and reminds us why such stories are told and retold. It reflects who we are now, with all our crazy dreams, goals and utterly illogical societies, via the deep inner thoughts of a lonely fictional woman from the far future".
‘We’re bound together by webs of trust and betrayal and pain and comfort and triumph and humiliation and caring and apathy and life and life and life.
And below the web, the endless void.
And at its heart, monsters.’