isunshower | Giving up the ghost

I'm feeling conflicted about this choice, but I'm choosing to not finish Nisi Shawl's Kinning, the sequel to Everfair. It's just frustrating to me and I found myself choosing fanfiction or a short story or GeoGuessr over it every time. And now I have to return it to the library and just, I don't care anymore. I don't care about the Europeans' shady plot to dam the Mediterranean and bring back Atlantis (it's just so unimportant compared to what else is going on). The ethics involved in the Spirit Medicine are so whack--I'm happy for mad scientist Bee-Lung, but the idea of "I'm going to dose you with this polycule mushroom and I'm not going to tell you I'm doing it because you'll be mad but it's for your own good so it's fine" is... it doesn't sit right with me. I don't know why. And then it's like, it's suppose to induce empathy in those who receive it but there's no textual evidence of that. Characters who've been inoculated are just as judgmental--if not more--as the other characters. It just... makes them good at smelling lies, or something. None of the characters are likable. Lily has so obviously been fridged in book one to give Tink something to angst about, and his sidequest about "why does my girlfriend not want to marry me" is annoying because Kwangmi is impossible to please and there's no way to satisfyingly resolve that storyline. She's going to keep refusing him for philosophy reasons that she isn't going to explain and no one is going to learn anything. And the philosophy! This book is so ideological, bordering on preachy, which is part of why the plot is so hard to care about--it's because we're getting Shawl's politics mainlined into us without a hint of subtlety. Also, the May December relationships/no one has any kids thing continues--none of the plot threads from the last book that I was curious about have been remotely wrapped up, by the way--and the way they write Rima Bailey feels off. Shawl is Black but if a white writer had written Rima's dialogue like that they would have been accused of racism so fast. She sounds annoying and unintelligent and you can TELL that it's on purpose. Because she's American? Because she represents European interests? Just for fun? I don't know. Anyway I didn't like it and I'm going to move on now.