Tag: China

On knockoffs

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

So the Task that I was nattering about for a few days there was building the Lanter Fish— no, not a “lantern fish,” we’re going to respect the Chinese misspelling here– which represents the first not-a-Lego set I’ve ever ordered. And as you can see, it looks pretty fucking cool– the jaw moves up and down, and the little light is actually a light– the Amazon listing claims you can use it as a lamp, which is hilariously wrong, but it is an actual working light.

At 1038 pieces for $35 or so, it’s probably less than half of what you’d pay if it had LEGO on all of the pieces, and there are a couple of places where you’re going to suffer for that difference, because there are definitely some quality of life issues involved in putting this thing together that Lego ironed out years if not decades ago.

Let’s start with this, the contents of Bag 2:

Perhaps you haven’t put a Lego set together in a while: the pieces come in numbered bags, and there’s usually fifty to a hundred pieces in a bag, sometimes even fewer. This set had three big bags, each of which had five or six smaller bags inside that bag:

The problem is that, while I can see some organization in terms of which pieces were in which bag, that organization has nothing to do with the order they’re put together in, so you have to open all five of those bags right away, because the first three steps might involve pieces from all five bags. That means you’re sorting through hundreds of pieces to find whatever you may happen to be looking for for any given step, which slows everything way the hell down. I am not the type to pre-organize my pieces before building, but that feels way more essential with these sets. It took me easily twenty minutes of searching for one particular piece, which I eventually found stuck inside another piece. Now, that could happen with a Lego set too, but there would be a fifth as many pieces inside the bag, so it would still have been much easier to locate.

The other thing: I’ve occasionally wondered why Lego chooses the random colors they do for the pieces you can’t see, and have speculated that it was maybe a product of whatever they had a lot of lying around or something– was there a reason this piece was red and not blue? Sometimes the answer is yes, but in putting this set together I’ve realized a couple of other reasons to vary the colors:

  1. Easily 90 percent of this set is black(*), and any piece that isn’t black is going to be grey or dark brown, which blends in with black pretty damn well. The eyes are the only red pieces in the entire set. This makes it really hard to pick out individual small pieces in a pile of parts, especially when you’re stupid enough to try to build the set on a desk with a black surface, like I did.
  2. It helps with orientation when you’re looking at the instructions– not just “Okay, the 2×6 brick needs to be facing up,” but “the 2×6 blue brick needs to be facing up,” which is a big difference.

I spent a lot more time than usual pondering the instructions on this set and making small mistakes that I had to undo later, and it just led to more respect for the fucking geniuses Lego has creating their instruction manuals over there. They do this thing where all of the new pieces in a step are in color (mostly) and everything else is greyed out, and I can see why they decided to do that– it’s a lot easier to pick out the new parts, and one of the most common mistakes you will make with a Lego set is not noticing a specific part you were supposed to add on a certain step– but the printing quality of the manual was not high in the first place, and what it often meant was that the instructions were just hard to understand. There were also a few steps where you were building things in a way that would never fly in a Lego set, and instructions where you were adding things to the bottom of stuff you already had built, which was a huge pain in the ass.

That said? The lanter fish looks pretty fucking cool, and at that price I’ll put up with some nonsense.

(*) All black, yes, but a gorgeous, pearlescent black that is really hard to capture in pictures. I love the color of this thing.

#REVIEW: Of Mountains and Seas, by Emily Renk Hawthorne

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews1 Comment

Let us take a moment to appreciate this cover, while I collect my thoughts, because I am about to write a review of this book and I’m still not 100% sure what I think of it. So I’ll start with the bit I’m most enthusiastic about, which is that if you’re going to buy this book, get the hardcover, because the paper and the cover feel absolutely amazing in the hand and it looks awesome and it’s somehow less than $10 on Amazon right now. Which … hell, less than $10 for this book may push me into enthusiastic recommendation regardless of whatever else I might think about it.

I was contacted by Emily Renk Hawthorne’s publicist and offered an advance copy of her forthcoming novel From the Depths. That book sounded up my alley, but I hadn’t read the first novel in the series yet, so she went ahead and sent me Of Mountains and Seas, with the idea that I’d read that first and then see if I wanted to read From the Depths as well. I sent a follow-up email at about the 3/4 mark of OM&S asking her to go ahead and pull the trigger on the second book. And this is the part where I want to stare at the screen for a bit, because my opinion on this book is genuinely mixed, but one way or another it’s definitely positive enough that I still want to read the sequel.

Let’s start positive: Of Mountains and Seas is a nicely complicated little novel, with multiple POVs stretched between 1932 or so and the near-present. Parts of the book are set in 1932, 1935, 1936, 1955, 1985, 1990 and 2000, with 2000 being the “now” of the book, and shut up, 2000 is so the “recent” past. There may be another couple of years sprinkled in here and there but that’s good enough for now. There are at least half-a-dozen POV characters, some of whom appear in multiple time periods and some of whom are young enough that we only really see them toward the end of the timeline. Some of them change their names partway through! It can be kinda rough if you’re not paying attention, to be honest. The main thrust of the story is that most of the characters are Shifters, shapeshifters who also possess other magical abilities, almost, but not quite, X-men style— all of them can change shape but some can manipulate rock or affect memories or various other things, and there are also a handful of magical tinctures and other objects as well. Where’s the book set? California, of course, so mostly in the real world. Shifters have their own government set up— indeed, one of the characters is running for office for part of the story— and take careful pains to avoid being noticed by the humans, who they call Statics.

Davis, one of the more important POV characters, is born to a Shifter family, but without powers. This leaves him as an exile within his own family. And then he discovers that special stones exist that will allow him to steal abilities from other Shifters, leaving them powerless (there are also special marks that can be etched into a Shifter’s skin to take away their powers, by the way) and temporarily transferring their powers to him. “Temporarily” can mean for decades or for a much shorter period of time, depending on how powerful the Shifter he stole from was and how often he uses the abilities. At any rate, that kicks off the story, as Davis goes on to make a whole lot of trouble with these stones. Oh, and he also finds a mine full of them.

On a story level, the book is pretty cool. I may actually reread it before I read the sequel; it’s fast, and there’s enough going on that I suspect I’ll need the refresher.

Unfortunately, Emily Renk Hawthorne is one of those writers who consistently violates Twain’s thirteenth rule of writing: Use the right word, not its second cousin. Opening the book to a random page, I see her use pretense when she means pretext. Opening to another, I see someone use the word apparently to describe someone losing a hand, which is not a word someone would use in this particular context. She definitely lost her hand! It’s not there! On the opposite page from that, we have a clunky bit of dialogue where someone reads a cop’s full name to them off of, specifically, their badge. First, you would not say “Thank you, Officer… Brad Smith,” because that’s not how people talk. Second, their badges don’t have full names. Police badges don’t have names at all, in fact! His name may be on his chest somewhere, but it’s almost certainly his rank and last name and maybe a first initial, and that’s gonna be it. There’s lots of stuff like this, lots of little violations of logic and words that are 90 degrees away from being the right word for the context. This will bother some of you more than others. It’s the same exact problem I have with Ryan Cahill, actually. And, interestingly, I begin a review of one of his books by praising the book for the exact same physical things I just praised Hawthorne’s about. I wonder if they used the same printer?

At any rate, this book could have used a bit more editing, so your enjoyment of it will depend directly upon how much the good story distracts you from the less-good writing. I went back and forth; I barely noticed any issues with the first half of the book, then there was one particular chapter that was riddled with problems, and after that I either got a lot more critical or the book got sloppier because I started noticing stuff all over the place. Again, I’m in for the sequel even if I end up having to buy it myself, I’m just hoping for a slightly stronger sophomore effort on the prose front.

#REVIEW: The Poet Empress, by Shen Tao

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews3 Comments

Bear with me, if you will: before I review this book, I have to review this book. As in, the object made of paper and cardboard that can be held in your hands. I have amassed a lot of special editions and Special Editions over the last couple of years— I have an entire bookshelf where the books are arranged spine-in so that the pretty painted edges are visible, and yes, I can still tell you what damn near all of them are anyway.

I have two copies of Shen Tao’s The Poet Empress. One of them is a book-box special edition from Illumicrate. The other is, supposedly, the regular edition, the one you’ll get from Amazon or if you walk into a brick and mortar bookstore.

The regular edition may very well be the prettiest book I own.

If you love books at all as art objects in and of themselves, go grab this book right now before this printing sells out, because I doubt future editions are going to look like this first one. Don’t read another word; the story doesn’t matter, this book is that pretty and you want to own it so you can look at it. I am going to have to figure out a way to display this one front-facing. The endpapers are gorgeous, the edges are gilded beautifully, and the cover has this lovely sparkly texture on it that I can neither take nor find a decent picture of. It just doesn’t come through properly in photographs. Go buy this book, right now.

Oh, you want to read it? Yeah, you should do that too, because I know it’s only mid-February and things change but right now I feel like this is going to be high in the running for my favorite book of the year. I think the last time I was this impressed by a debut novel was Jade City. Which I think wasn’t actually Fonda Lee’s debut, but it was the first of her books I read. Close enough. It’s matching my enthusiasm for To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which … I also compared to Jade City. Along with Scarlet Odyssey. And Iron Widow, so maybe I’m overusing this particular comparison, but the point is I really loved all of those books. This is up there with them.

It’s totally prettier than all of them, though.

Anyway, the story: the main character, Wei Yin, is a peasant girl living in the backwoods of a famine-ridden, crumbling empire controlled by the Azalea Dynasty. The empire is, more or less, Not China; roll with it. The emperor is dying, and has chosen his second son, Prince Terren, as his successor, and Prince Terren is seeking a bride. He has sent emissaries all over the country seeking out women who wish to compete for the honor of marrying him. Wei Yin manages to get herself selected, in hope that she will be able to marry the prince and use her influence to save her family and her village from the famine. Prince Terren, unfortunately, quickly turns out to be a horrible bastard.

Now, I’m gonna be honest: at first glance this doesn’t sound great. Does the phrase “enemies-to-lovers romantasy” mean anything to you? Because even the marketing for this book has been leaning into this, and you are just going to have to trust me that this book absolutely is not a romantasy and is far too intricate for such nonsense as “tropes.” Terren and Wei Yin are both impressively complex, layered characters, and … well, I’m not spoiling anything, but this is absolutely not an enemies-to-lovers book. Why is the book called The Poet Empress? Because much of this world’s magic is based on poetry, and when Wei Yin decides that her best bet is to murder Prince Terren, she realizes that the only way she’s going to be able to do it is to write a very particular kind of poem, one that requires her to know and understand the target on an immensely intimate level.

Oh, it’s illegal for women to be able to read, by the way. Which sorta complicates things.

I know, I know, some of you are shaking your heads. Of course she’s going to marry the prince. The damn book is called The Poet Empress, not The Peasant Girl Who Came In Twenty-Third and Got Her Head Chopped Off. I promise you no other aspect of this book is going to be predictable, and the “competition” is dispensed with much more quickly than you think it’s going to. And once that happens the book can get on with its actual goal, which is sinking its claws into you and slowly tearing your heart out. You will be fifteen pages from the end of the book and you will still not know how it’s going to turn out.

It’s also dark as hell, so be prepared for that; Terren is terrible, and Wei Yin is put through some absolutely terrible things as a result of being connected to him, much less actually married to him. On top of that, many of the women who didn’t win the competition are fairly powerful and well-connected in their own rights, and a number of them immediately decide to kill her. And then there’s the dowager empress, who is also unhappy with her son’s choice of bride. And the prince who got passed over in favor of his younger brother. Comparatively, dying of famine in a squalid village almost feels quaint.

This is brilliant fucking work, guys, and I cannot wait for more from Shen Tao. Go get this book right now. Even if you just look at it, it’s worth the money. The fact that there’s an amazing story in there is a bonus.

Fun fact

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

Since writing this post, I have not had a single page view from China, but I have had a few hundred from Singapore. Your guess is as good as mine.

More later, possibly.

2025 in Blogwanking, or: WTF, China?

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Geek4 Comments

Let’s start with the good news: traffic was up by two-thirds this year, and depending on how the next two days go this was either the second-best or the third-best year in the history of the site:

We’re still not reaching the heights of 2015, and “In which I tell you how your religion works,” the reason for that huge spike, still sits atop all of my other posts at 113,306 views. Most of the rest are from the Creepy Children’s Programming series and, of course, The Fucking Snowpiercer Post.

Here’s the problem: a large proportion of those views are probably Chinese bots. Why does China care so much about my stupid little website? I have no clue. Why did it start this year? Also no clue. But given that none of my site is in Chinese and I’ve never really discussed anything of particular interest to Chinese citizens, I have a hard time making this geographical distribution make sense:

Worth pointing out: even if you subtract all those Chinese hits out, I’m still up from last year, the fourth year in a row of increased site traffic. It’s just not nearly as impressive. 🙂

Here’s the lifetime geographical distribution, which is about as full as it’s ever going to get, I think:

That white island at the top of the map is Svalbard, which belongs to Norway, and beyond that, we’re looking at North Korea and, frankly, a handful of places that either barely or flat-out don’t have governments: Western Sahara, the Central African Republic, Guinea and Eritrea. Any other missing spots are literally too small for me to be able to pick out of the map.

Here’s how much Chinese traffic I had this year: WordPress just started showing us city data in 2025, and eight of the top twenty cities are in China, including Beijing at #1– I got 2 1/2 times more traffic from Beijing than I did from the city I live in. London, Sydney and Toronto are the first three cities outside of China or the US to show up on the list. We’ll see how much this jumps around next year.

This post will mark 653 days in a row of blogging.

Interaction continues to drop, sadly– well, likes are up slightly, but comments are down, and I feel like comments are more important– and my word count was a little bit down from last year. At just over 1.7 million words over the lifetime of the blog, I’m closing in on that two millionth word:

Obviously I’m not going anywhere; I don’t have anything in the way of specific plans for the future around here other than to keep writing, although I’m considering making the jump from WordPress’ Premium hosting, which I’ve been using for more or less the entire time the blog has been active, to their Business tier. I make enough money now that dropping $300 a year on the site doesn’t feel completely stupid, if only for increased access to stats (I love numbers, as you can see) and better control over how the site looks. We’ll see. January’s a three-paycheck month so I might as well blow some of it, right?

Anyway, if you’re seeing the traffic from China too, let me know– I know of one other WordPress person who has mentioned high Chinese traffic on a mostly-defunct blog, but only the one at the moment. It would make so much less sense if it was just me, y’know?

This was almost a politics post

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

…which I have refrained from, because typing “Fuck Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin” three thousand times, while accurate and fair, is not exactly compelling reading.

Speaking of not compelling, let’s blogwank:

Seriously, what’s going on here? October 31 was the highest traffic day since 2015 until November 1, which was the highest traffic day since 2015 until yesterday, which was the highest traffic day since 2015 until– goes and looks— oh, basically right now, since I’m 7 views short of yesterday’s numbers. Engagement doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere and I’m not seeing anything weird in what limited data I’m getting from referrals, and while the immediate impulse is to suspect bots, if they are bots, has WordPress suddenly lost the ability to keep them from showing up in our statistics? Or turned it off? A lot of this traffic is from China but the last couple of days it’s been mostly American. Here’s the geography numbers:

The 7200 from the US would nearly be the best month of the year all by itself. October 2025 was the best month in years, and November should pass it tomorrow. It looks like my traditionally big posts are getting the lion’s share of this traffic, but the numbers aren’t adding up, which is weird, and I feel like this also pushes back on the bot theory– would thousands and thousands of bots be indexing the same post over and over again?

Somebody who knows more than me explain what the deal is.

Explain, pls

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

Anyone have any ideas about why China, and not the US, has been my #1 source of traffic for the last couple of days? And traffic has been up pretty considerably in both viewers and pageviews, so it’s not like a single bot is crawling the site or something.

I feel like this has to be nefarious somehow, and also like my suspicion is maybe at least a little bit racist. But maybe not.

Anyway, I’m bound and determined to get to bed as early as possible tonight, so this blogwanking update was brought to you by the letter Zzzzz.

#REVIEW: The Art of Prophecy, by Wesley Chu

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews3 Comments

You know this; I have somehow acquired enough pull as an Important Book Reviewer that sometimes publicists contact me to see if I want review copies of things. I almost always say yes; the only time I can think of that I declined a read was when the publicist made it clear that she was offering me a pure romance novel. I don’t mind romance, but I need it mixed with something, and I didn’t want to accept a book that I was already probably not going to enjoy.

At any rate, I got an email a few weeks ago about Wesley Chu’s new book, The Art of Legend, out today at finer retail establishments across the globe. Would I like a review copy? Absolutely, I said, except there’s one problem. It’s book 3 of 3, and I haven’t read the first two. I’ve enjoyed Chu’s work in the past but reading book 3 on its own kinda feels like a heavy lift.

No problem, the publicist said … and sent me the entire trilogy. Not even ARCs! Actual official copies! So I finished Book One today, and my intent is to read Katabasis and then read the next two back-to-back. I plan to review all three of them.

This plan would backfire quickly if I hadn’t liked the first book! So it’s lucky that I didn’t; The Art of Prophecy shares the strengths of the two Chu books I’ve read in the past, with great action, interesting characters, and a quick-moving plot that would have had the book read overnight if school hadn’t just started.

The premise, as you might have guessed, involves a prophecy: a young man named Jian, the Champion of the Five Under Heaven, has been groomed since birth to be the one who defeats the Eternal Khan, saving his kingdom from the forces of evil in the process. Jian has been trained by the finest teachers in the martial arts, but is still young; only fifteen or so, if I remember correctly.

A master named Taishi arrives to evaluate Jian and his training, and she finds both severely lacking. Jian is indolent and callow, his trainers little more than grifters, and his training has been more for show. The boy is more of a professional wrestler than a prophesied warrior.

So we already have a problem.

And then the Khan goes and gets himself killed in a drunken stupor, without Jian’s help in any way, and … all hell kinda breaks loose.

This was a lot of fun, y’all, and I apparently have a thing for impatient, irascible old one-armed women, because Taishi is one of the best characters I’ve encountered in quite a while. The fact that she’s a supreme badass who more or less melts her way through damn near any adversary she encounters for the entire book doesn’t hurt at all, and her complete lack of patience with Jian’s crap is breathtaking. I loved it. As I said, the wuxia-flavored action is great, and Chu avoids the trap of only describing battles using complicated names of moves. Sure, sometimes he’ll let you know that someone has deflected a Monkey Saves the Circus by using Monkey Ruins Christmas Dinner, but he’ll also describe what that means, which is my problem with the handful of wuxia books I’ve read. You’re also going to see this world from more than one perspective, as at least a couple of the POV characters are out to get both Jian and Taishi, and one of them carries a fragment of the Great Khan’s soul with her. Surprisingly, she doesn’t think her people are the evil empire.

I’m not going to spoil a whole lot of details about what happens next, but there are a lot of assassins, and Jian has to go into hiding in a martial arts school and masquerade as a novice and an orphan … which after years of wealth and pampering, doesn’t go quite as well as everyone might have hoped. Not everything gets wrapped up, as this was clearly written with a trilogy in mind from the start, but since Book Three is already out, the only thing making you wait is how fast you can read. I’m particularly interested in finding out more about a particular side character who starts having panic attacks during battles partway through the book; we’ll see how much of him we see in Book Two.

Definitely check it out. I’ve got a three-day weekend coming, so hopefully I can have my review of The Art of Destiny up within a week or so.