I am struggling with the footnotes. For me, they fall into one of three categories:
— Should have been in the actual text of the story
— emphasizing that colonialism is wrong/people are racist
— not at all relevant to the story
HOWEVER I do still enjoy what I’ve read of the book so far! I just think that while this is “An Arcane History” ostensibly, it’s actually (thus far) presented as a specific narrative so the footnotes are ehhhhh to me.
Interestingly, I read Yellowface (also by Kuang) earlier this year. One of the complaints about a characters writing in that book can also be applied, I think, to this, and I can’t help but wonder if that was intentional as YF was published later: beautiful turns of phrase and excellent research, but sometimes too much of one or the other and not enough to bring it all together.
— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —
![[Image: TrSGeWR.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/TrSGeWR.jpg)
— graphics by lady ❤ —
— Should have been in the actual text of the story
— emphasizing that colonialism is wrong/people are racist
— not at all relevant to the story
HOWEVER I do still enjoy what I’ve read of the book so far! I just think that while this is “An Arcane History” ostensibly, it’s actually (thus far) presented as a specific narrative so the footnotes are ehhhhh to me.
Interestingly, I read Yellowface (also by Kuang) earlier this year. One of the complaints about a characters writing in that book can also be applied, I think, to this, and I can’t help but wonder if that was intentional as YF was published later: beautiful turns of phrase and excellent research, but sometimes too much of one or the other and not enough to bring it all together.
— graphics by lady ❤ —