{"id":2218,"date":"2016-12-16T22:55:28","date_gmt":"2016-12-17T03:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/?p=2218"},"modified":"2024-01-21T11:30:10","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:30:10","slug":"valentine-genevieve-persona-and-icon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2016\/12\/valentine-genevieve-persona-and-icon\/","title":{"rendered":"Valentine, Genevieve: <cite>Persona<\/cite> and <cite>Icon<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I can feel myself running out of steam in my booklog-catchup effort, but looking over my notes to myself on past books, the ones I wanted to talk about most are <strong>Genevieve Valentine&#8217;s <em>Persona<\/em> and\u00a0<em>Icon<\/em><\/strong>. I doubt I can do them justice in this state, but I&#8217;ll\u00a0try to give an impression, at least.<\/p>\n<p>The fastest way I can describe the setup of these is\u00a0that they&#8217;re\u00a0near-future political thrillers in which UN(ish) ambassadors are called Faces and are celebrities, as in red carpets and paparazzi and careful public\u00a0image management.\u00a0Suyana\u00a0Sapaki is the Face of the\u00a0United Amazonian Rainforest Confederation; Daniel Park is an unauthorized photographer who witnesses an assassination attempt on Suyana.<\/p>\n<p>Another way to describe them is that\u00a0<em>Persona<\/em> is Suyana&#8217;s origin story and\u00a0<em>Icon<\/em> is an exploration of the problems with superhero stories. Suyana is <em>not<\/em> literally a superhero,\u00a0to be\u00a0clear&#8211;these are SF by virtue of being near-future&#8211;but those were my strong impressions when I finished each (indeed, the day I finished <em>Icon<\/em>,\u00a0I said on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/katenepveu\/status\/778049571272421376\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0it was\u00a0what the MCU will never give me no matter how much I want it to). So if\u00a0that sounds appealing, you should definitely check these out.<\/p>\n<p>Other things that may be useful to know: the books\u00a0are full of\u00a0excellently varied women and non-white people and their relationships to each other. They are unflinching in their acknowledgment of complexity, compromise, and loss, while also containing moments of progress, gain, and hope. And they are fast-paced reads, not long, and a complete duology.<\/p>\n<p>Disclaimer: the author is a friend.<\/p>\n<p>A spoiler post follows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can feel myself running out of steam in my booklog-catchup effort, but looking over my notes to myself on past books, the ones I wanted to talk about most are Genevieve Valentine&#8217;s Persona and\u00a0Icon. I doubt I can do them justice in this state, but I&#8217;ll\u00a0try to give an impression, at least. The fastest &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2016\/12\/valentine-genevieve-persona-and-icon\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Valentine, Genevieve: <cite>Persona<\/cite> and <cite>Icon<\/cite>&#8220;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[421],"class_list":["post-2218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-valentine-genevieve"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2430,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions\/2430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}