#REVIEW: The Rouse, by China Miéville

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading, Reviews1 Comment

I’m not gonna lie. Y’all, I have no idea.

I assume I’m not the only person who does this; when I am reading a book I know I’m likely to write a review of, I read it with that eventual review at least somewhat in mind. I’m not always likely to take notes or anything like that, but bits and pieces will jump out at me and I’ll stick them in the blog-part of my brain to discuss later.

The problem is that I could say literally anything about this book and I’m pretty sure it would be true. I hated it and it was brilliant. I loved it and it was exhausting. It’s got a complicated, detailed plot and it makes no fucking sense at all. I cannot tell you, as I’m sitting here, whether its central mystery was ever resolved, as it’s entirely possible that it was resolved in such an oblique manner that I missed it. Bits of it are, literally and without a trace of sarcasm or exaggeration, gibberish. At least six different languages make their way into the book, none translated, some not in Latin characters. There are two different main fonts, at different sizes. I don’t know what percentage of the words in this book Miéville straight made up but whatever you’re thinking it’s way higher than that. The book is largely dialogue, mostly of the circumspect and elliptical variety, but there isn’t a single fucking quotation mark in the book and sometimes it’s very difficult to tell who is talking or whether someone is speaking or thinking, and sometimes that’s because the characters themselves do not know if they’re thinking or speaking out loud.

One of the main characters spends a couple of chapters kidnapping children, exposing them to eldritch horrors, and returning them to their parents. The eldritch horrors in question: a literal ghost under a white sheet. The other’s vaginal secretions are more important to the story than vaginal secretions have ever been in a book before. She also occasionally drips from other orifices.

If China Miéville had not written this, I would never have finished it. But no one other than China Miéville could have written the fucking thing in the first place. You should pick this book up if and only if you are already a big fan of China Miéville. Not “I liked the Bas-Lag books.” You should pick this book up if and only if you have reread either Kraken or The City and the City, on purpose and of your own free will. And if that is the case, you already own it.

It is 1260 pages long and you will not have any idea what is going on the first time you read it. Expect to have to read it at least twice. There are four hundred and sixty-seven characters and they all go by their last names and one of them changes his name midway through the book for a reason that technically is given on the page but still doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. The lead antagonist might be Satan. The lead antagonist also might be one of the main characters. Or one of their friends. I’m really not sure.

The following is the entire “Plot” section for this book on Wikipedia as of 7:54 PM on September 29, 2026, and at least one of these sentences is not true:

The novel revolves around the suicides of multiple British army soldiers. It is set during the Cold War.

I’ve tried to read some “professional” reviews of the book; most of them are paywalled, unfortunately, but I did read one where the reviewer was honest enough to admit that he doesn’t have any idea what the fuck the book was about either. He still recommended the book. I get it.

I gave it three stars on Goodreads and Storygraph; it cannot be ranked using such a pedestrian manner as stars.

The physical copy of the book is really fucking cool, but I read it digitally, because a lot of time I read laying down and I would have broken my nose on this fucker at some point.

I’ll write another review after I read it again. When will that be? I have no earthly idea.

93%

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading2 Comments

Just a bit over a hundred pages left, and I was going to try to get you a review tonight but one of the cats decided it would be a better idea if we took a nap in the chair instead. The Kindle says I have an hour and sixteen minutes of reading left, and it usually overestimates but that puts me uncomfortably close to bedtime for someone who also doesn’t have lesson plans for tomorrow ready yet.

So another placeholder blog post tonight, and hopefully a review tomorrow, and then straight into the first of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson’s three Wheel of Time books, because I am nothing if not a glutton for punishment.

It’s too early for this post

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading1 Comment

My two reading projects this year, such as they are, were to finish The Wheel of Time and Temeraire, both of which are … lots of books. Both projects are on track; I have three books left in both series, and I’m going into the first Brandon Sanderson WoT book after I finish The Rouse (77%!) and may just blow through all of the rest of them in October if I find Sanderson’s version more palatable. I was also going to get further into Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings this year; that’s been put off to 2027.

The second project is going to be second chances for books I feel like I should have liked. This is going to be books that I picked up but didn’t finish and feel bad about, whether I liked them the first time through or not. I may still not like them! I may discover I just wasn’t in the mood for that series at the time. I don’t know how many books I want to include here, especially since several of them are book one of a series, but I have three in mind immediately:

The Terra Ignota series is finished now; I DNFed this in December of 2016 and to be completely honest I don’t remember why. (EDIT: I called it “too precious and proud of itself for me” on Goodreads!) Every other person I’ve talked to about this series has loved it. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood? I dunno. Either way, it’s first on the list of books I’m going to give another shot.

This is Book 1 of a trilogy; the second book is out (and I, uh, have it, despite not having finished this) and the third one is nowhere on the publishing horizon as far as I know. I may hold off on this until the end of the year and hope that the third book is at least announced by then. I like Marlon James, but I bounced off this book really hard in April of 2019. It’s kind of stuck in my craw ever since. I know writers I like can produce stinkers every now and again, but damn it, a fantasy novel by Marlon James should be my thing. I want it to be my thing. I’m trying again.

Stephen King is a liar, because I picked this up on January 21 of 2020 and put it down on January 22 of 2020. Did you know Leigh Bardugo went to Yale? Because Leigh Bardugo totally went to Yale, guys, and the first 75 pages of this reminded me of that so many times that I couldn’t tolerate it any longer. I have since read and enjoyed two other Bardugo series, and I have friends who like this series a lot, so I’m giving it another shot. Hopefully if I go in expecting a little Ivy League snobbery I’ll be okay.

That’s what I’ve got so far. There will be more, I’m sure, but those jumped out immediately when I started thinking about this. Maybe I’ll consider House of Leaves the unofficial first book; I’m planning on tackling that over winter break (Why? Dunno, but it’s the plan) and that’s close enough to 2027 to count.

Have you ever hated something on the first read and gone back to it?

55%

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The only real development today: got my seasonal flu and Covid shots, both in the same arm, so I will be able to sleep on my side tonight but tomorrow will be fun. Back to the book. Whee!

35%

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Only eight hundred or so pages to go, guys!

In which my son is a savage

On By Luther M. SilerIn ParentingLeave a comment

My son is fifteen, and a freshman in high school. He spent his early years at a small private school, and transitioned to a much larger public high school this year. As such, he’s encountering several aspects of the human existence that he was more or less sheltered from prior to this year. As neither my wife nor I particularly care to fight with him about anything growing from his body, he has a scraggly teenage semi-beard and an absolutely glorious mane of blond hair that reaches the middle of his back.

We have warned him that, given his appearance, it is absolutely inevitable that someone will eventually attempt to buy weed from him. It’s ridiculous to deny it; if I picked him and 20 other white kids from his class and asked a cop which one of these kids is holding? mine would be the first he turned to. He doesn’t dress like a stoner, necessarily, but the rest of the look is there.

Today he went into the bathroom and two kids were passing a vape back and forth. They left when he came in, he took care of business, and then another student came in. That student came in and, no doubt detecting a whiff of the vape on the air, asked him if he wanted to buy “a smoke.” I assume that’s a cigarette; I don’t know if kids call vapes “smokes,” but whatever.

My son’s response? “No thanks. My parents love me.”

My wife and I both reacted in the same way to this story, which was that he was probably lucky he didn’t get popped for it, but he said the kid was chill about it. I did let him know that a simple “no thanks” would probably suffice next time.

Well, that was no fun

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

In accordance with prophecy, the parents of Little Billy Who Only Just Wanted To Play Football were already in the office when I got to work this morning. LB did not play last night, but as his grades are now fixed he can play the last two games of the season … which is exactly what would have happened had they pulled none of their bullshit at all. IEP talk was shut down quickly and forcefully by the head of the special education department, who pointed out that a student failing a class is not, in fact, automatically a violation of an IEP. Oops!

And then I missed half my lunch and had to write my first three referrals of the year, none of which were for my own students or even my own grade level, and all three of which resulted in suspensions. I still haven’t written any for my own kids. I may very well make it through the first quarter. There’s only three weeks left!

That said, it left a bad enough taste in my mouth that I came home and killed yokai for a few hours, and now that it’s 8:00, and since the book I’m reading has nearly 1300 pages … well, it’s Kindle time in the Siler household. Because my wrists aren’t strong enough to hold a 1300-page book for very long. This is clearly what ebooks were made for.

I wish you would

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

I wish I thought I could get away with posting work emails in full, because hoo-boy, did I have a doozy of a banger of an email thread waiting for me when I woke up this morning– waiting for me in the morning, because it was sent at 12:30 last night. A parent emailed thirteen different people because her darling sweetheart wasn’t eligible to play middle school football any longer, on account of his failing three of his seven classes, including mine. Has he been failing three classes for weeks? Of course he has. Do teachers have a way to see if parents have been checking their kids’ grades? Of course we do. Have they? Of course they haven’t.

This decision was “potentially affecting his future.” He is five foot two and 110 pounds, dripping wet. He will not even make the high school team, much less anything beyond that.

Now, as it turns out, I had him retake a test last week, which he didn’t finish. Had I been at work yesterday, I’d have had him finish it then; I was planning on him finishing it this morning, which he did, and which brought his grade up to passing. I want this perfectly clear: I was going to do this anyway, even if the email had never been sent. That didn’t stop the thread from continuing to escalate throughout the day, as she apparently thought that everyone involved up and down the command structure was just going to drop everything to make sure that little Billy got his ten minutes of playing time tonight. At least two of his teachers do not have prep periods and one has been out for the last two days; needless to say, nobody is making replying to hysterical FAFO emails their highest priorities. Also, literally none of us have a single drop of influence over whether he plays football or not, and I suspect none of us care.

Then Dad, who no one has ever heard from all year, got involved, and Dad decided to cc in the superintendent, who I can absolutely assure you neither has the time nor the inclination to give a single damn about whether a kid with three failing grades played football tonight. Mom’s email was, in its own way, reasonable; Dad’s very much was not, and trust me, sir, only showing up to gripe about playing time in football is not endearing you to any of us. Two of my kids ended up in the hospital after the last 8th grade football game, one concussed so bad that he hasn’t been back to school yet after a week. As far as I’m concerned the entire fucking sport should be banned.

The worst thing? Dad’s a teacher in our district. Which means that he knows, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he’s full of shit, and that no one is trembling at the thought of the superintendent stepping in. By the end of the entire mess Mom was hyperventilating about the kid’s IEP, which, needless to say, does not mention sports eligibility on any of its nineteen pages and also does not contain any particular restrictions on the grades we have to give work that is not turned in. Does he have extra time to get his work done and turn it in? Yes! But he still has to turn it in before that matters, and … well.

The last email was a “demand” that she receive a “clear and written explanation” about whether her son could or could not play in tonight’s football game and why. If she received any such thing, I was not included in the response; I look forward to seeing her in the office already as I walk in in the morning. Because I’m not even failing him anymore and I am genuinely looking forward to this conversation. Of the three of us, me and his sports-obsessed idiot parents, who do you think has actually read the lad’s IEP?

Tomorrow’s gonna be awesome.