Alexa
sigh Well. That sure was a book.
See, that's the thing. It's very obvious that Molly Tanzer is a very capable writer. Her primary characters are well-drawn, she's clearly devoted to capturing the atmosphere of the setting and the period. Tanzer wrote this story as well as she could, but what she was writing just wasn't very interesting.
Ellie is a bootlegger trying to make enough money to send her brother to medical school. Fin (I was deeply confused about this nickname for a while, its short for Delphine and pronounced as such) is a bookish upper class woman who's husband inherited a bunch of money and wants to spend it all partying. Somehow Ellie and Fin and some people they know get tangled up in a plot by a group of racists lead by a so-called reverend to take back Long Island, or whatever, and Reverend Hunter has been using the essence of demon to help him do it. It takes a good long while to get to that point, even though all of the pieces are telegraphed very plainly. It felt very paint-by-numbers with little heart, and by the end I was just going through the motions with them.
I think the main problem is that none of the characters are really going anywhere. Ellie has a goal - send her brother to medical school - and at first that is used pretty well to get her into the good kind of trouble the story needed her to be in. But after that the character's own motivations have to take over - it can't always just be about saving everyone else. But I don't really know how this journey was meaningful to Ellie at all. There was no path she was taking, no change she really experienced. She and her fiance, Gabriel, learn some stuff about their relationship, but honestly I thought they were far too good communicators for two people their age and era. Their emotional maturity made for rather stale reading. I guess she learns to separate herself from the toxicity in her family but, like, she was going to move out anyway.
I think the only thing that I really know about Ellie is that she is really freaking horny, and while I appreciate the healthy polyamory on display here, Ellie ogling other men when she had a perfectly wonderful fiance at home felt very distracting and pointless. It was completely unnecessary for Jones, her cop contact, to be a love interest. Nothing is really revealed about Ellie through their relationship, and its just left hanging at the end.
Fin faired a little better. She had a history that lead to her understanding of the whole demon thing that was unique. She also had a rather unusual home life going on, with her husband and their friends constantly partying and likely sleeping together, while she gets increasingly ignored. The vibe of the scenes with her husband and their friends gave me the impression that they were going to be involved in the overarching plot somehow but, spoiler, apparently they were just set dressing. Bobbie, Fin's former close friend who seemed content to be slowly stealing Fin's husband and upper class life, in particularly had a rather devious vibe to her that I thought was going somewhere. Apparently, a vibe was all it was.
Yeah, I don't know, all I can feel in regards to this book is one big shrug. The characters were there, they did stuff, they used slang that made them sound like they were from the 1920s but mostly they were all way too smart and well-balanced to make the conflicts interesting. The villain was barely even there. There was a lot of forced chemistry, particularly between Fin and Ellie. Tanzer seemed to like mentioning their girlish giggling when a joke or a sarcastic remark or something would have gone a lot further to show they enjoyed each other's sense of humor. I'm giving this two stars because, I mean, it was very readable (as stated Tanzer, is a very good writer), and goddamn I loved Creatures of Will and Temper so much. But the charm and cleverness and style of that book is nowhere near here.
Remember when I said I was annoyed by the indulgence of Honey Girl? That its irreverence impeded it more than colored it? This, this book is how you do indulgence. Where else are you going to get a story where three women fall unapologetically and non-committedly in love with each other?
Ok, sometimes the irreverence was a bit much, but most of the time it was just right.
Plain Bad Heroines is many stories in one. If that's freaking you out a bit, I wouldn't worry. It's less confusing and unwieldly than it sounds. There is the story of Flo and Clara - the inciting incident, that in fact only takes a small portion of the book -, two girls enamored with the memoir of Mary Maclane and each other (I read this book under the assumption that Ms. MacLane was something Danforth had made up, but she and her books are very real, as it turns out), the story of the chaos that erupts at their school after their horrifying deaths, and then the story of two actresses and a young writer a hundred years later, all trying to put the story to screen without falling to the supposed curse themselves. The stories of Audrey, Harper and Merritt in the present day has the clever irreverence of contemporary fiction along with a suspenseful Hollywood feel, while the one happening in the past is a frightening gothic horror story. All the while yellow jackets hum in the background, shining black apples rot in a field, and Emily Danforth is intent on haunting your mind with every element of this story.
This book is great. Despite its girth, its a profoundly easy read. It's 600+ pages and I read it in 20 days. I haven't done that in...I don't even know. Ninth House took me four months. As stated, this book is indulgent with the way it digs into the characters stories and relationships, but its also economical and efficient with the way their drawn. Harper Harper, the bona fide movie star, is marked by her affableness and charm, her ability to be indefatigably sexy and pleasant at the same time. Merritt Emmons, the author of the book that tells the story of Flo and Clara and their school, is understandably the opposite - prickly as a cactus, but deeply relatable. Audrey Wells is the closest to the “everywoman,” the mostly unremarkable actor daughter of a notorious scream queen, who is the most effected by the otherworldliness of shooting a scary movie at the cursed Brookhants school. Danforth gives each of them their stories and their perspectives, but also doesn't try too hard to make you believe them. Which I appreciate. Danforth trusts her story and her reader.
This strategy is maybe a little less effective with the characters in the past story - Libbie Brookhants and her lover Alexandra Trills. It's not until you hear Libbie's backstory that you understand that this principal of a boarding school for girls was in fact a wild child caught in a web that she never could have anticipated (well, maybe a little), and poor poor Alex deserved better (I hate that phrase, by the way, especially when it comes to horror. It's horror! Everyone deserved better! But still, poor Alex). When we had to return to the past, especially when it was Alex's POV, I found myself a little irritated. But Danforth is very clever with the way she bounces backing forth between past and present, from character to character. It's done in a very crafty way to keep you engaged, and just about every chapter is worth it, even if there are certain characters that you would prefer to be reading instead. While the present story is funny and charming with some thrills thrown in to remind you this is in fact horror, the one in the past is rich with mystery and intrigue. For those aesthetically minded, its a brilliant mashup of dark academia and pulp slasher vibes.
That all being said, Plain Bad Heroines is a lot of a lot of things. As such it lacks the streamlined precision that is often necessary for the genres and elements its throwing together. Instead of choosing a particular ghost or reasoning, Danforth instead uses these pieces (black seaweed, buzzing yellow jackets, nesting dolls, poisonous flowers etc etc) and repeats them over and over to get you drunk on atmosphere. The characters are not so much terrorized but so overwhelmed they become delirious. Its incredible fun and deeply absorbing, but when all is said and done its a little...meaningless? There's no evil witch to defeat, no malady to overcome, no tortured ghost to free. No lesson. Should all scary stories have lessons? Most of them do, at least the ones we like to tell. This one though is more like real life ghost stories. The characters live through it and then live on with it. It's not clean and tidy, but it is very satisfying and very enjoyable.
Also gay. Just absolutely undeniably sapphic and gay. Like I said, this is the kind indulgence I like.
Honey Girl is the kind of book that somehow seems to take itself far too seriously and not enough. It is rote with flowery, indulgent language to tell its story of a drunken Vegas wedding and a young woman adrift in a life of high expectations. It is also littered with quirky side characters seemingly taken straight out of a CW drama, complete with pop culture references and startlingly honest witticisms. Also, it kind of turns into an extended therapy session in the last 60 pages or so.
Grace Porter is the high-achieving daughter of a strict military father who, after finishing her doctorate in astronomy, finds herself at a loss for where to go next. The feeling of completing her father's plan for her isn't enough, the jobs dominated by pretentious white scientists are not enough. So, naturally, she goes to Vegas and gets herself drunkenly married to a stranger. As one does. Unable to hold it together after going home again, Grace gets in touch with her mythical wife, Yuki, goes out to New York to spend the summer with her, and maybe even falls in love with her. But even still, there's the question - is it enough?
Grace Porter is one of those main characters that only vaguely resembles a real life person. I mean, the inspiration is clearly there. I've known high achievers and military brats in my life. I actually knew someone who abandoned their doctorate in physics and astronomy when they realized the pressure was not worth it. They made chocolates at a bakery for a while afterward (now they work in UX). But Grace never reminded me of any of them. Maybe it's because we're meeting her in the middle of a breakdown, but there's little conception of the strictly controlled, meticulously put-together woman that is supposed to be coming apart here. Instead, Grace comes off as extremely fragile. Admittedly, it's difficult to write about someone losing it without it coming off as contrived, but from her Vegas wedding (I don't drink, so I don't even know what it's like to be that inebriated) to her skin-picking, it all felt like things that were tacked onto this character. The claim by her father and others that Grace frequently “runs away” when things get hard was particularly frustrating because at no point was it mentioned that she had a history of this (only that her mother does). Besides, spending a summer in New York after completing your doctorate is far from running away. It's just getting a different perspective.
The events that play out in Honey Girl are of course maximized for drama and entertainment, but there is something deeply indulgent about this book. It reminded of fan fiction, actually, and considering the premise (“drunken Vegas wedding” is right up there with “pretending to date” and “there's only one bed”) I wouldn't be surprised if it had its roots there. It reminded me of being a teenage girl and imagining what my life in my twenties would look like - I would have friends that I would gush with love for, lovers I would speak in poetry to, a life that had all the overly witty dialogue and quirkiness of the teen dramas I saw on TV. As I actually came into adulthood, I realized that not only was this ridiculous, but I didn't even really want any of that. I don't think Morgan Rogers came to the same conclusion. The relationships between Grace and her two best friends, Agnes and Ximena, and the family she works with at a tea shop were borderline nausea-inducing. No one actually talks to their friends like this, no one takes referring to their friends as “siblings” that seriously. And the fact that she has these deeply intense bonds with these people is probably why the introduction of the idea in the third act of the book that she abandons relationships for her ambitions comes so out of left field for me.
Yuki Yamamoto is one of things I liked about this book. When she arrives its like the whole story seems to just relax. She's that different perspective the book needed (though her fixation on monsters and mythical beasts is probably another allegory that this story didn't really need). All the dialogue that between Grace and her besties, stepmom and coworkers felt so try-hard, just suddenly seemed to flow when it was just Grace and Yuki. I'm not sure what it was exactly, maybe Rogers had a better concept in her mind of Yuki as a character than the others. Even in all her strangeness, Yuki felt very real. That said, I wish I could have known a little more about what brought Grace and Yuki together in the first place. The flowery language of the opening prologue was pretty, but I wish it had at some point unraveled to show a real woman who found an escape in another. The story in general flows better when Grace is in New York, even if the conflicts between Yuki and Grace don't entirely make sense (marrying someone with a doctorate is a bit like marrying someone in the military - you have to be prepared to bounce around the country a bit). I didn't necessarily feel their chemistry or love, I think I was interested in what being around Yuki revealed about Grace.
This book is a weird 3 stars for me, and is perhaps closer to a 2.5. Not because it is a middling achievement, but because it has some solid moments and some borderline disastrous ones. I came very close to abandoning it in the first 50-60 pages, worried that I would have to put up with a whole book of characters talking in absurd poetry at each other. Thankfully, the lyrical nature of the prose does taper off after a while. But the fact there's so much effort put into wit that isn't even funny, characters with all these details but don't seem remotely realistic, make this book seem really rough and amateurish. Honey Girl does have its charm, and I like to think there is a place in the world for contemporary lesbian romances with such indulgent flourishes and contrived narrative devices. Clearly, this type of work has an audience. I think I'm just looking for something more grounded.
There are some writers that you can just rely on. Mackenzie Lee is without a doubt one of them for me. Her writing is always so swift, her characters rich and engaging, and while her stories can twist and turn in unconventional ways they always hold my attention.
Loki: Where Mischief Lies is not quite good as the two books of the Gentleman's Guide series, but it has a similar flair and pace that keeps you turning the page. Loki, much like the MCU character we meet in the first Thor film, is a young prince struggling with his identity and his role as a likely second in line to the throne, but never first. His closest friend - and big fat crush - is Amora, a confident and powerful young sorceress who encourages him to grow his magic and take risks. When Amora is banished to Midgard for taking the blame for one of Loki's schemes gone wrong, effectively killing her slowly as Earth will gradually drain her magic away, Loki is left with nothing but to do his best to be the perfect prince, the perfect diplomat, the person his father wants him to be. Naturally, he never quite get its right. When he's sent to Midgard to solve a mystery that Odin can't be bothered to address himself, he finds Amora, some charming humans and gets in touch with his inner villain.
Loki is a natural choice for a tie-in book like this, as his portrayal by Tom Hiddleston in the MCU has captivated so many (myself included) but never underestimate what a challenge it can be to write from the point of view of a villain. Especially when he's not quite the villain yet. How gray to make him really? How naive? How dangerous? I think what's so interesting about Lee's version of Loki is that he is so unapologetic about who he is and what he wants that it makes sense that being denied the ability to use the magic that comes naturally to him, to be the sorcerer he was meant to be, is so grating. It's what pushes him towards Amora, what frustrates him about how Thor is so easily loved when his magical abilities and cleverness should be considered just as valuable as Thor's strength, and what sews those seeds of darkness and arrogance in him. His characterization is solid, but I think Lee struggled a little bit with how far to take things.
I think there was a lot Lee wanted to do here that she only got to skim over. Loki's relationship with Theo and the other humans he meets is a lot of fun but feels more abbreviated than it should have been. Like, I felt like the story was on a really good roll with Loki developing stronger and stronger ties to Theo and Mrs S until suddenly it wasn't. The more substantial relationship is between Loki and Amora, and don't get me wrong, I loved it. Their energy is incredibly sexy and intense. But even the ambiguity, the inherent danger in their relationship, kind of gets cut off before it can really be explored. As such, you neither get the vulnerability that would have come from him falling for Theo or the darkness and temptation that comes from his love for Amora.
What this story does best is the slower stuff. The spooky atmosphere of a 19th century seance, the muck of London streets. I wish the structure of the story had stuck closer to that of a mystery, because that is what really got me invested. When it moves into the third act, which resembles those of many MCU films, I found myself drifting away. I appreciate what Lee was trying to do - cool action on a speeding train, writhing hordes of the undead, and of course a double cross - but I think I would have liked something that was a little subtler. A little more like Loki himself.
A very solid 3.5 stars rounded up because I undeniably enjoyed this - it's fun, funny, fast and surprisingly sexy - it's just overall its a little thematically convoluted, and the last act felt too conventional for my tastes.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune is the story of an exiled bride who became a conqueror, as told by her closest confidante. It is simply but poetically told. I think what's important to impress is that while this is about a woman overthrowing a regime, if you're looking for either exciting military fantasy or even a tightly wound court drama, you should go elsewhere. This is more of a quiet character study, it's about the strength of relationships that are formed between people who are discarded by those in power, and it's about how often the most important element to claiming power is patience.
I liked it well enough. But it felt like something more to fill the time than to get lost in.
DNF
While things start off interesting, with atmosphere and a flair for the cinematic, there seems to be something irreparably off about this book. The prose doesn't keep pace with itself - meaning that it's weirdly easy to miss important information and actions because nothing is given particular emphasis. There are all these possible mysteries being introduced at once, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be curious about or what I'm supposed to care about. It all just blurs together.
But most importantly, Eleanor is just an absolutely bizarre main character. There is nothing grounded about her, nothing relatable, nothing that actually sounds like a real human being. There is a fine line between making stylistic choices for the sake of creating a particular vision, and just sounding contrived. This is well over that line.
Shit, now I'm mad about this.Maybe it's the Shakespeare thing. Not the fact that this book has a significant amount of text and quotes from Shakespeare's work, or that big blocks are dedicated to the characters' performing said works, but rather how Shakespeare perhaps informed the structure of this novel. I don't really know, it's been a long time since I analyzed Shakespeare, and I was never particularly good at it. But I have learned - not from school, but from a Tumblr post - that Shakespeare's tragedies are marked by a protagonist that is made for a different kind of story than the one he is in. If Hamlet was in Othello's situation, he would have carefully analyzed things before jumping to conclusions and there would be no play; and if Othello was in Hamlet's, he would have just killed Claudius in the first act, and once again there would be no play. In M.L. Rio's If We Were Villains, there is in fact someone who finds himself playing the wrong role in the wrong story. It's not the main character though. And like many of Shakespeare's tragedies, its less about creating a satisfying conclusion and character arc, and more about just watching things slowly tumble down hill until they crash to the bottom. Fun.If We Were Villains is a story told by Oliver, a man who has spent the last ten years in prison for the death of one of his classmates at the highly selective and high pressure school of Dellecher Classical Conservatory, where they eat, breathe and sleep nothing but Shakespeare. He tells this story to the detective that supposedly “solved” the case, relaying the weird dynamics of a bunch of pretentious theater kids who may or may not have killed someone. The conceit of relaying a tale in such a way is very classic mystery, but I found myself wondering by the end of it whether Detective Colborne said to himself, “Huh. Yeah, I probably should have been able to figure that out myself. Cool, this was a waste of an afternoon.” I give this book marks for atmosphere and prose. It wasn't as lush as I would hope for something like this, but Rio was fully committed to the vibe. The descriptions of the performances are probably some of the book's coolest and most vibrant moments. But it's the characters that fall dead for me. All seven senior Dellecher acting students are introduced as archetypes - the hero, the whore, the villain, the king, the nobody. I don't think its remarkable that I found this extremely annoying right off the bat, but I expected Rio to subvert it. I kept waiting for her to do just that. But aside from a single comment from Meredith about three quarters into the book about being labeled the sexy one, no one seems to bother. I found myself reading in disbelief that I was just supposed to take at face value everything I was told these characters were, rather than what I was shown they were. I was so mad that the story takes for granted the kind of societal programming that comes with labeling Meredith the whore, or that I was supposed to understand what was so loveable about James just because he has a hero's face. And of course the faceless one is our protagonist, Oliver - the unexceptional one who attaches himself to someone more beautiful, and becomes what the people around him need him to be. That might be my least favorite character trope.No one ever did anything that surprised me. Or excited me. Hell, the guy who gets himself killed at the beginning is probably the most exciting part of this book, and we never really know what was driving him to act the way he was. Again, the story leans heavily on the role he is assigned - the arrogant king. And despite the amount of supposed queerness (thanks, by the way, for assigning the only openly queer character as the “scary” one), this felt deeply heterosexual. Like in a way that is almost hard to describe as a queer person. I know if I had read this as a teenager I would have swooned over James and Oliver's deeply repressed love for each other, so desperate I was to have something outside of the heterosexual paradigm. Now as an adult who has to spend a lot of mental energy undoing comphet programming, I am so very over it. I feel like this book regresses queer rep a solid twenty years. Yeah, you know what, I'm too mad about this to give this anything above one star. For a while, about mid way through I was debating between a two and a three. Before I sat down to write this I was pretty convinced of two. But no. I'm not sure why people like this so much, I guess if you're a hardcore lit nerd who loves Shakespeare but somehow has not read a single thing with a queer character since [b:The Secret History 29044 The Secret History Donna Tartt https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451554846l/29044.SY75.jpg 221359] (that's not a knock, I loved that book, I still love that book, but it is largely of its time), then have at it. But for the rest, there are much better, much gayer, dark academia books out there.
What I love the most about The Witch Wave podcast is that even if you're not particularly interested in witchcraft, or anything woo-woo, in just about every episode you hear a story about a woman running her own business, creating her own art, controlling her own destiny. The fact that those businesses are often built on magick and spiritualism is kind of incidental. They are modern day witches, finding a connection to their past and creating a future. It's incredibly inspiring, not to mention invaluable to a have a platform for women to provide a roadmap to their success and independence that others may follow.
Waking the Witch is a kind of extended edition of the podcast and what it provides. It's not a book about witchcraft exactly - you won't find spells, or much talk about gods or goddesses. Rather, it's kind of a casual history of women (and a couple men) who broke the mold throughout time, and as such set the groundwork for modern day practitioners. From Tituba to Pamela Colman Smith, accused and accusers, wild free-spirited artists to suffragettes, Grossman ping pongs through history, profiling women who stuck themselves like thorns in the side of the establishment. She goes from detailing the roots of the fear and hatred of witchcraft to discussing their impact and appearances in pop culture. Interwoven in this is Grossman's own history, as a young adult discovering her power and finding her place in the world, and though Grossman is a little older than me, I found the tales of her adolescence in New Jersey extremely relatable.
To be honest, I think I could have done without all the pop culture references and discussion. In terms of media analysis, its not done with a particularly in depth eye, but if someone doesn't have much experience with looking critically at popular movies and television, it may provide some novel insights. Grossman's conversational tone and sense of humor - which sometimes feels a little try hard to me - makes the complex topics and histories she discusses extremely accessible to a young audience. I think a book like this would be great for teenage girls and other young people who go against the grain, who are looking to see themselves in history and are looking for a new perspective to see their future.
I still can't believe she gave this a happy ending. Or at least, a hopeful one. Kameron Hurley, you have a tender heart after all.
I struggled with this. Not because it isn't good. It's very good. But because while some part of me thought that military sci-fi would be a reasonable escape from our current realities, The Light Brigade is not that kind of book. It is set in the future, and is about time travel, but it is very much about our present. Dietz is a new recruit, motivated by the Martian attack that wiped out Sao Paolo, and looking to fight some Martians. (Dietz's gender is left ambiguous through the majority of the book. The purpose of this is open to interpretation, but clearly intentional on Hurley's part, so I'm just going to refer to Dietz as they/them so you get to have the intended experience if you choose to read this). The war is fought by sending soldiers out on beams of light, breaking down their atoms and reassembling them thousands of miles - and sometimes worlds - away. But after Dietz's first drop, they realize that something is very wrong. The place they went was not where they were supposed to go. There were new faces, new teams, and Dietz can only do what they can to keep up. Dietz begins to experience the war entirely out of order, not knowing if those in charge know and are allowing it to happen, or if they are a second away from being disappeared. Whether everything that is happening is a preordained loop, or if they can possibly change it.
This book is brutal. Somehow I forgot that Kameron Hurley is big on that. It's gross, there's a ton of body horror, a lot of gore and misery. It's war, baby. The prose is very action oriented, and Dietz is not presented as a particularly deep thinker, but still a complicated person. The world of The Light Brigade is one controlled entirely by corporations. You have to earn citizenship to even remotely be allowed basic freedoms and privileges. It is a bleak portrait of what's to come, and it's tough to read right now. I had to push myself through it, when all I wanted to do was reread Harry Potter and scroll through TikTok to get me that sweet serotonin. So why didn't I put it aside and save it for a happier time? Well, for one, there's little guarantee that time will be anytime soon. And two, this book has something to say.
In fact, I think in many ways this is why Hurley puts you through those 300 pages of misery - so she can tell you it doesn't have to be this way. There's always a choice, there's always something to fight for, and there will always be moments where you have to take a step back and wonder why someone wants you to believe them so badly. Who profits from your oppression? Also, aside from the content, this book is pretty easy to read. It moves quickly and impressively the time travel is only a little bit confusing. The characters, while not very richly drawn, are still distinct and paint Dietz's world in interesting and ever-shifting patterns. It's fun to watch this angry grunt start to care about the people around them.
I think, maybe, one of the reasons why Dietz's gender is mostly left up the reader, and why they are drawn so sparsely, is because Hurley wants you to put yourself in Dietz shoes. The world painted in this book could very easily happen, and if it does, what would you do? Despite the deeply grounded nature of the rest of the book, the ending is very open. It's as though she's asking you - how would you end this story? What future would you choose?
In my review for [b:The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue 29283884 The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings, #1) Mackenzi Lee https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1492601464l/29283884.SY75.jpg 49527118], I mentioned that its style lent itself to the younger side of the Young Adult category. I would say the same about The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, but that is in no way a demerit. I think that if I had this book when I was 13....honestly, my life might have been much different.Like its predecessor, Lady's Guide has a winding nature to it. Felicity Montague, determined to be accepted to medical school and become a great surgeon, finds herself traveling on a whim to her childhood friend's wedding in Germany, in the faint hope that she may convince her groom, the groundbreaking doctor, Alexander Platt, to employ her. What she discovers though is that Platt and the supposed happy union between him and her estranged friend, Johanna, is not what it seems, and she and Johanna find themselves on a hell of an adventure. And there are indeed plenty of petticoats and piracy.I don't remember the prose being this good in Gentleman's Guide, but this book is really beautifully written. In GG, you had Monty's romance with Percy, but here its Felicity's romance with, well, life. This is a story about a girl learning how to live on her own terms - a fairly complicated task for anyone, let alone a young woman in the 18th century. She's not the most likeable person at first. She's obsessed with her own individuality in a way that teenage girls have a tendency to be - thinking she's the only one who feels and thinks the way she does, and that she's better than others who she views as having more superficial desires. She grew a lot in the first book, but as she sets out on her own here, she is shown again and again there are many different ways for women to be - beautiful, brainy, savage, or all three.Speaking of women - this book loves women. Felicity herself is likely asexual or demisexual, finding little desire to be physically involved with anyone, or desire for romance. But she adores the women at her side - Johanna and Sim, the pirate princess Felicity manages to unwittingly steal the heart of. Seriously, the way the prose indulgently describes Johanna's figure, or the way the page just fucking sizzles whenever Sim flirts with Felicity, I was surprised that Felicity was not actually interested in that kind of thing. But I thought this was an incredible exploration of relationships, friendships and even desire, without it necessarily being about sex. Honestly, it's a little mindblowing. Also, there's dragons. I love how Mackenzi Lee sneaks up on you with that stuff. Genre, who? There is action and excitement, but I think that played second to the great character dynamics. Platt makes a great, messy and complicated villain, and Johanna, Sim and Felicity utterly complete each other. To me, everything about this book just fits together so snug and tight. I don't think there was a single sentence that disappointed me.I know there's some distaste for Mackenzi Lee of late. It's the kind of thing that if you're not paying close attention to book Twitter, you would completely miss it, and now its rather difficult to find first hand evidence of what went down. But I can't claim to know who Mackenzi Lee is as a person, I only believe that she accomplished something truly great in this book. If my angry, moody, sexually confused middle school self had been able to read this, been to see girls exploring relationships with each other, wooing each other, fighting for each other, and building lives for each other, I might have been able to see myself doing the same much, much sooner. I hope that this book finds its way into the hands of many girls like me.
I don't know why, but I could not escape the Buffy vibes.
Not that Alex Stern was running around doing somersaults over tombstones and saying clever one-liners. Rather, the bookishness mixed with the arcane magic mixed with the attitude all felt like a (very) grown-up Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Alex Stern, after mysteriously surviving a massacre of all her friends and one or two enemies, is plucked out of drug addiction and poverty to attend Yale and serve as the new Dante to the house of Lethe. A job she is uniquely qualified for - despite being woefully unqualified for Yale academics - because she can see ghosts. Lethe is the watchdog society - the titular ninth house - to the secret societies that deal in arcane magic. “No more dead hobos” is the casual motto, referring to the propensity of privileged and powerful rich kids' tendency to not understand impulse control. And by her first winter, she's dealing with the disappearance of her mentor, Darlington, and the murder of a townie, which Alex becomes increasingly convinced that the society's are involved in.
The story gets pretty windy from there. I am seriously impressed with Bardugo's ability to keep complex plots straight. The pacing is good, the style keeps your eyes glued to the page. There was rarely a time when my mind would wander while reading this (and that's saying something, I have quite the wandering mind). That said, this book is structured a little episodically. For the first half of the book we jump between times and perspectives - Alex and Darlington's - learning their histories, their secrets, until finally we jump into solving the mystery in earnest. It's all interesting - there's magic and drugs and ghosts - but it's easy to put the book down and not pick it up again for a while because the urgency isn't exactly there. It's almost like solving the murder would just be a nice cherry on top of this dark academia cake, but it's not keeping you eating.
There was a lot made of the adult content in this book, particularly the sexual violence. I had one person tell me that they specifically disliked the book because of its focus on the damage that men do to women. I would say that if that's not something you like to read about, then maybe this isn't for you, but generally that's not really my thing either. I think this book processes both the individual and collective trauma that women experience at the hands of men in really satisfying and reflective ways. At no point did I think any of it was unnecessary - this book is about privilege, it's about power, and its about what should be done with those things as opposed to what can.
I like Alex and her grittiness. It's not something that she really wanted for herself - she dove headfirst into drug addiction at 12 years old when she realized it stopped her from seeing ghosts. She racked up years of anger, trauma and violence, and then ended up at Yale where she doesn't exactly try to fit in, but she does at least try to be a version of herself that could have been. She soon realizes that her darker self has a purpose in this new world too, she doesn't have to sacrifice one for the other. Likewise, Darlington is the gentleman, the scholar, the tender heart. He too, goes through a transformation that will take him to a much different part of himself.
This is a super fun book, honestly. It's dark, but Bardugo is good at writing darkness in a way that doesn't drag you down. If you're not as scatterbrained like me, or are not experiencing a period of high stress and distraction (and why in the world would you be experiencing that??) these 45o pages will fly by.
Ok, I'm just going to say it -the Mother thing is icky. I recognize the Alien reference, but I think it may have been taken too far here.
A salvager with issues ends up on a derelict space craft that has been overtaken by a parasitic sentient fungus that has infected the ship's crew. It sounds exciting - it isn't. I can't really put my finger on why I have zero interest in continuing reading this after getting halfway through. The character's are not really interesting at all. Roslyn is an alcoholic and traumatized and has a Bad Dad, but none of those things end up having any influence on the actual plot. The rest of the cast of characters consists almost entirely of emotionally-stunted men, so unsurprisingly they were particularly vulnerable to a parasitic organism that likes to call itself “Mother” in their heads. They may come from different backgrounds, they all felt like the same flavor of snore.
Things started off ok. Roux does a lot of early work to establish Roslyn's predicament and mental state. I'm not saying as I was necessarily pulled in by Roslyn, but I could see it going in good places. We even establish a few characters from her first crew that I was actually curious about. And then all of sudden she's on a mission on her own with a dude she hates. Cool, conflict between our protagonists as they fight the evil? I like it. Oh wait, nevermind he's dead. And then once on the derelict ship, we switch to crew member's POV, and I knew we were in trouble. Whatever momentum there was completely crashed and burned, and never recovered. The story beats had little thrill and the chemistry between the characters was nonexistent.
I often credit a DNF to stumbling into a book that wasn't really for me. But this? This should be for me. I love sci-fi horror, especially considering that there is so little of it available. But there is little horror here, and the sci-fi stuff is pretty, like, juvenile? Like the future-tech elements are the kinds of things we would have thought were cool and innovative in like, I don't know, the early 90s? It doesn't feel like this was written by someone who is really interested in either genre, and on top of it didn't have the ability to put together an interesting narrative around it either.
I'm tempted to not even bother reviewing this and just tell you to read it. Everyone should read it. I think after listening to nine hours of the deep corruption that has created the world we are currently living in, I feel a modicum of what Sarah Kendzior feels on a daily basis - extraordinary frustration that people just don't see what's right in front of them.
What I like most about this book is that Kendzior pivots the discourse away from focusing on individual citizens. She never talks down about the white Midwestern/Southerners who are often credited for getting Trump in office, she never tries to come up with tired explanations that most political pundits rely on like “economic anxiety” or “lack of education.” Instead, she uses the state of Missouri as an example of how decades of corrupt state government and exploitation of the working class have created a population desperate for security and validation. When you continuously take away from people, they start ripping each other to pieces for the scraps. This knowledge isn't exactly new, but what Kendzior is trying to impress upon us here is that it is very much intentional. This system was built for someone like Trump to eventually lead it.
The portrait that Kendzior draws in this book is all about connections. The same cast of characters - international criminals, oligarchs, and spies - keep showing up again and again in Trump's life. Some of them have been arrested and charged, others still free but their crimes known. But there is a lot that is unknown. We don't know why Ivanka and Donald Jr. were a hair's breadth from being charged with fraud and then abruptly were not. We don't know Trump's exact relationships with Ghislaine Maxwell or various Russian agents. But what is fairly clear is that Donald Trump is so ridiculously compromised. These people have been in his life - his businesses, his friendships, even his family - from the beginning. He is a hollow shell of a human being propped up by a network of opportunists who groomed him for the political stage. This is not an outsider who came in to shake things up. This was on purpose. The chaos that we're experiencing now? The people who made Trump who he is wanted this to happen.
There are so many books coming out about Trump these days, and every time some new dastardly info comes out about him someone inevitably says, “It's not it isn't anything we don't already know.” I'm irritated by this for a number a reasons - for one, you don't know. And two, it's not about him. It's about the people who will use a man like this for their own ends. There's a reason the title of this book is the “Invention of Donald Trump.” Ultimately, the individual at the center has little relevance. He's the right body, raised at the right time by the right sociopath and exploited and groomed by the right people. He gets a lot out of the deal, I'm sure. But the American public as a whole gets nothing. This is a plot to drained our country dry so that a select few can profit.
We are heading down a bad path. As of today, there are two months until the general election and the only reason why I am not completely terrified is because of some very basic mindfulness practices. I've taught myself to loosen my neck and shoulders so that I don't get stabbing pain under my jaw. I've learned to put away things that I can't control so that I can sleep at night. I might end up doing what Kendzior talks about in the last couple of chapters - seeing the national monuments, exploring the country and taking it in as it is today, in the event that it will soon be gone. I implore you to read this book, not because I think it'll change your mind - if you're inclined to read this, then you're probably already quite anti-Trump. But you will have the ammunition you are looking for, and maybe, just maybe you'll be able to hand it to someone who does need their mind changed. Someone who needs to see the artifice around what they thought was a man.
There is a lot to get delightfully worked up over in this book. Alma Rosales is a practiced shapeshifter. The right cap and clothes and she's a rough and tumble man, the right accent and she's a simpering maid from the Highlands. She's been a detective for the Pinkerton's, a pick pocket scraping by, and now an undercover operative trying to fix a leak in her boss' smuggling supply chain. In the process, she romances a beautiful forger named Nell, and lusts after the local boss, Nathaniel Wheeler. Alma has an absurd amount of chemistry with both of them, and despite her selfishness and claims to only be interested in blood and sex, a knack for detail. It's that detail that kind of bogs down this book, and the excess that the title promises never really makes up for it.
I was really struggling with how to rate this. I have seen criticism of how many of us will “round down” our ratings, when generally that's not a thing you do with numbers. The way I see it, its more of fulfilling a criteria. If a book satisfies a three-star criteria (that is, enjoyable most of the way through, but either not exceptional or has some distracting black marks), but not a four-star criteria (all around really good, just won't be running around town telling everyone to read it), then its not a four star book, I'm sorry. And this book bounced way up a few times as the pacing would intensify, only to lose its momentum completely.
But I was really torn. I like Alma as a character, but I also find her a little uninspired. I found all the ways Carrasco portrayed Alma's hedonism and violence to be rather predictable. She hits on everything that moves, she's turned on by boxing matches, and loves her sweets. The fact that these character elements are a little unoriginal should not be a problem (I will be the first to tell you that originality is a myth and discrediting something based on its resemblance to something else is a stupid way to critique), but I kind of feel like that was all Alma was. Fists and fucking. She wanted Nell because she wanted her, and while they have some lovely scenes, Nell never really gets under her skin the way I wanted her too. Neither does Wheeler, though he certainly tries. The entire novel Alma is wearing a mask - one that she finds she's extremely comfortable in - but the complexities of her gender are never considered, not overtly anyway. Likewise, her ethnicity is also considered only in brief flashing moments. I think the strongest character moment was when Alma tells Nell her father was Mexican. “You don't look it,” Nell says, to which Alma bristles because she looks just like her father, especially when dressed as a man. There was a lot going on that moment, but its never followed up on.
That's a thing that I began to notice by the end of this book. There are a lot of characters and Alma creates the beginnings of emotional ties with several of them, but they're sadly left hanging. Alma's character arc is a shallow one that doesn't go very far, and things like considering the consequences of her actions or reconsidering her coping mechanisms - things that would have allowed Alma to grow - never really happen. She's more or less the same by the end of the book, with little introspection, and little she feels she has to answer for.
With all that said, there is a lot of fun to be had here. Alma's dynamic with Wheeler is red hot the whole way through - where she's chaos and violence, he's slick and precise. The relationship with Nell is also sweet, but again there is a feeling like it isn't really going anywhere. (Though Alma's stamina in hopping from Nell to Wheeler oftentimes within the same day kind of blows my mind). Many of the characters - Wheeler, Delphine, even Sloane - are exceptionally well drawn. And when Alma's gambit was finally revealed, I wasn't exactly blown away, but I couldn't help but smile and think “I knew she was up to something.”
I kind of regret listening to the audiobook for this one. For one, the strategic machinations of Alma's opium trader world are difficult to keep track of when you're only listening to it. And two, you're listening to a female narrator not only speak in the voice of a woman pretending to be a man for most of the book, but most of the people she interacts with are men. So aside from two other women - Nell and Delphine - its a female voice feigning a symphony of low and gravelly voices, and if you find that kind of thing a bit silly to listen to after a while, I would not recommend listening to this one. Though I did rather love it whenever the narrator did Wheeler's Scottish accent.
Overall, I think this book is trying to be more fun and sexy than it actually is. It feels like grit for grit's sake, but with little substance behind it. If you like that kind of thing, along with labyrinthine plots and politics about what it was like to smuggle opium in the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s, then this might be for you. The Best Bad Things wants to rejoice in its excess, but for me none of it ever felt like enough.
Beautiful, warm, spooky and new. The story of Tobias Finch, the Wild Man of Greenhollow Wood, was not quite what I thought it would be and a lot more. When I read a sample of it I thought it a cottagecore excuse for a steamy queer romance. It was not. It was romantic and touching and a little sexy, but it also had some great drama and grit, and an ending that suited the overall faerie vibe. The prose is lush and grounded, the dialogue right on point, and the characters painted with skill and reverence. This might be the best novella I've read in the past few years.
Sometimes I want to tell developing writers “You can do whatever you want, you don't have to obey all these little rules. As long as you do it well.” This story does everything well.
This one took me a while, eh? Gods of Jade & Shadow was a heavily anticipated book for me. But I'm bad at reading books with my hands and eyes these days (even though its my preferred method), my attention span is low and I'm perpetually restless. But there is also the fact that this book is not exactly a page turner.
Gods of Jade and Shadow follows Casiopeia Tun, a “lesser cousin” of a wealthy family who works on her grandfather's estate along with her mother, waiting on her grandfather hand and foot and constantly taking jabs and abuse from her spoiled, entitled cousin, Martin. One day, left alone on the estate, she finds herself with the key to a chest her grandfather keeps locked and secret, and decides to open it. She finds that bones of the god Hun-Kame, and is thrust onto a quest to restore Hun-Kame's rule over Xibalba and unseat his treacherous brother. Much of said quest though involves small adventures (before the big one, of course), allowing Casiopeia's small world to grow gradually, along with a love between her and he ancient god.
This is a hard one to rate because it is not for everyone. It wasn't even always for me. It moves slowly in a way that some may find tedious or without direction. I wasn't necessarily looking for a more action-packed story, but perhaps something that felt a little...fuller? The prose styling was inspired by old folk tales, so its more about telling than showing. And sometimes that's fine, more than fine, other times I found myself a little disappointed. The most lush and atmospheric part of the book was the final few chapters, which were my favorite and the most enjoyable and easiest to read, in my opinion. The rest felt like wandering around between brief quests.
There is also the matter of the romance. I am going through...some stuff right now and as such this might be fed considerably by my personal experience. But I just really was not in the mood for the “spunky girl and the stoic, mysterious man” trope. Their love story is a love story because they say it is. I...throws up hands and mumbles about something not understanding heterosexuality
I liked the concept here a lot. I liked the characters, mostly. Moreno-Garcia was handling some of her favorite character tropes - the angry rich boy is a much loved one of hers. I loved the ending, and overall I thought this was....nice.
Greek tragedies are something else, aren't they? For all the talk of glory, there is little triumph. At one point in this story, Achilles tells Patroclus that he's going to be the first hero to do the unthinkable - be happy. As the reader, we are cursed in knowing that that will not be case.
The story of Achilles, in all his glory, arrogance and beauty, is told from the point of view of his lover, Patroclus. From an exiled prince to the companion of a godling, Patroclus is loyal but not uncritical of Achilles. Relentlessly, he fights for him - to remain by his side when his sea nymph mother tries to separate them, to maintain his honor when Achilles' own hubris threatens it. Even when a prophecy foretells of Achilles' short life, he never gives up on him. I was worried for a bit that this was the kind of story where a mediocre man spends all his time admiring and following around a greater man. And that is kind of how it goes for a bit. So I was grateful when, though late in the story, Patroclus starts coming into his own. He's not a great soldier, nor is he a clever strategist or politician. He is merely a good person, and as the Trojan War wages, he and many others begin to acknowledge that. This growth is not insignificant - in the first half of the book Patroclus can seem selfish, small-minded, and not always the smartest. But while greatness weighs on Achilles and twists his good heart, Patroclus grows in the face of it. That's a journey that we don't often get to see.
This book is sensual and loving. It reminded me a lot of the Red Rising series in its sincerity, which might have something to do with the Greco-Roman influences in Pierce Brown's writing. I appreciate the fact that Miller doesn't try to make you understand Achilles and Patroclus' romance or even their friendship. Why a beautiful godling would fall in love with a rejected, failed prince - it doesn't matter. I also enjoyed the way she writes the great figures of Greek mythology - Odysseus with all his charm and cleverness, Agamemnon in all his pride. I liked that though this was a very grounded book, the gods were also very present. And I liked that it did not glorify battle, because the point of all this in the end is that while Achilles may have been built for war, it was not who he was. But Patroclus was the only one who knew that.
This is sad though. The war is a miserable one, as we all know, and none of our heroes are spared. But this is a powerful read. Like reading someone's heart bared on a page, it is honest and true.
There is so much rage between every line of this book.
There has been a lot of faux-intellectual lip service paid to our obsession with bad things. With bad men, with the brutally victimized, with the salacious details. Two things have opened my eyes a bit as to why we do this - the worldwide spread of COVID-19 and Uncover's most recent season detailing the Satanic Panic of the 1980s -, and it's interesting to me that I don't often hear it put to words. It's about control. It's about the consensual experience of negative emotion, a form of practicing for the real thing. You're scared about a worldwide pandemic, so you gorge yourself on the news and watch Contagion and Outbreak on loop. You're choosing to expose yourself to these things, and that control makes you feel a little bit better (unless it doesn't, in which case, stop). You're a suburban mom in the 1980s, part of a generation of women heading into the workforce and leaving your children with strangers at a daycare center, and in order to quell your anxiety you allow yourself to believe a fiction about those strangers. It's easier to create boogymen that make sense to you (Satanists) than to recognize the real ones (family members, clergymen, etc) because that way you don't have to question your worldviews.
We're fascinated by Jack the Ripper because it is easier to be fascinated than scared. And when its women who are victimized, we tell ourselves that they were bad women, different women, in order to convince ourselves that it won't happen to us and our own. If we're virtuous, if we teach our daughters to do the right things, the bad men won't choose us - they'll choose those women instead. But it's a lie - a self-congratulating, individualistic lie built on our worst instincts and propped up by institutions that benefit from this lie.
The five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper made good and bad choices in their lives - but this book also makes clear that because they were women and because they were born in the time period they were, they had very few choices that they could make. After the first two stories - Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman - I began to worry that each of these tales would be nothing but despair. Polly's life was a bleak haze of alcoholism and homelessness, and Annie's fall from middle class comfort to addiction, depression and poverty is one of the saddest things I've ever heard. But there was also so much more to all of them. Liz Stride, despite her gut-wrenching early years of being forced to live as a prostitute simply because Swedish law mistook her for one, had some fascinating shape-shifting abilities, morphing herself from a naive farm girl into a deft con artist. Catherine Eddowes was a talented lyricist and street performer, whose funeral was attended by thousands. Mary Jane Kelly escaped trafficking, had a worldly reputation, and was part of tight-knit family of working girls who she was loyal to. Annie used to sell her crochet work, and Polly sounds like she would have been a rabble-rousing anarchist if she was born in a later time.
All of them struggled with alcohol, all of them fought to survive under the boot of patriarchy, misogyny, and classism. They lived in a world where their lives were meaningless without the protection of a marriage, and yet they stepped out on their own anyway, in the face of impossible odds. Only Mary Kelly regularly worked as a prostitute, and in fact for a time lived an exciting and relatively comfortable life before being targeted by traffickers, and had to live more anonymously after her escape. The rest simply had the misfortune of not being able to put a roof over their heads on the wrong night, in the wrong city, on the wrong street corner. The fact that the myth of their supposed profession, printed in newspapers at the time simply to sell more copies, has persisted to this day says a lot about the way we choose to see the victims of violence. Other women. Not me. It'll never happen to me.
There is something to be said about the fact that we have deified and canonized a man who killed vulnerable women in their sleep as some kind of criminal genius. He targeted people who could not put up a fight and would not be missed. The easiest of prey. The institutions that kept Polly, Annie, Liz, Catharine and Mary down - keeping them from being able to live alone, to care for themselves, branding them adulterers, prostitutes, and failed women - did most of the work for him. As hard as it is to read these stories, and as easy as it is to breath a sigh of relief and be grateful that things are so much better for women today, I would not let out that breath just yet. This is still happening. And it's important to know how disenfranchisement and institutionalized misogyny actually function, because there are plenty of people today who would send us right back. The rage in this book is not just for the injustice of history, but for the fact that its still relevant today.
Look. I like Tahereh Mafi, I think she is an incredibly intelligent, well-spoken, and well-dressed woman. And I appreciate what she was trying to do with this book, and the point of view she provides here is valuable. But I don't think she's a very good writer.
Shirin is a Muslim teenager living in a recently post-9/11 world. How recently is a bit unclear, for however Mafi likes to let us know that it is indeed the 00s, there's never any referential sense of time passed from that event. Along with frequent moves around the country because of her father's high-powered career track, Shirin deals with daily microaggressions from her peers that suddenly turn into straight-up aggression when she begins dating a popular white boy named Ocean James. Also, she joins a break dancing group with her brother. There's a handsome Muslim boy in the mix too for some reason. Its very difficult to draw Mafi's books into a standard conflict-driven arcs, and A Very Large Expanse of Sea is no exception.
I enjoyed anything that involved Shirin's family, details like her brother's feelings on Ramadan and the culture around food. I like that she tells the experience of a young Muslim woman honestly, with humor, anger and affection. I think this story is a great example of how people who have privilege are blind to it, with how Shirin consistently warns Ocean that the two of them dating openly would lead to a lot of prejudice, but he doesn't take her seriously until it actually happens. This book has decent content, which is why its getting two stars rather than one, but its not an artfully crafted story by any means. The prose style reads like the personal essay of a teenager, and a lot of the story is told in summary, with very little narrative build-up or release.
A Very Large Expanse of Sea has a lot of the same problems that other books by Mafi have. Very few to no female characters to support the central one, a whole lot of telling to make up for the lack of organic character and relationship building, and little regard for stuff that a reader might actually find exciting. Those break dancing competitions? Most pass in a hand wave. The town, which is such a massive influence on the events in the story, has zero personality. I mean, yeah, she tells us the people there are racist and obsessed with basketball, but none of that is actually shown. We're only told when it becomes important.
Ocean has no characterization - he's a person with pretty eyes that has the hots for Shirin. Shirin is so oblivious to the world around her, she doesn't even realize he's a star basketball player and popular, its a marvel she noticed that he had attributes she found attractive at all. Whatever those might be. To be fair, their relationship reads like how a lot of teenage relationships actually function - two lost horny souls that awkwardly magnetized to each other for no apparent reason. Which is fine I guess if you're a teenager and its actually your life. But does anyone want to read that? Just sitting in a room with two teenagers saying “Oh” and “Ok” back and forth? It got creepy after a while.
It concerns me that despite all of Mafi's apparent strength and intelligence as a person, she keeps writing narratives about girls who are never friends with other girls, who fall in love with boys who exhibit pushy and violent behavior, and who never seem to really exist in their own worlds. That no matter how impressive she makes her protagonists, the only character that ends up mattering is the boy. It also amazes me that her books keep getting published when they have very little narrative structure. I have read romantic contemporary YA before, and I actually really enjoyed it. Just because you're writing contemporary doesn't mean you translate the insipid conversations of teenagers verbatim. I don't think even teenagers want to see themselves that way. And it doesn't mean you can write about teenagers whispering into their phones at each other and call it a plot. If I'm picking up a book, I want to see an actual, you know, story.
Yeah, this was great.
It's been a long while since I left Darrow. Red Rising and Golden Son were both a blast to read but they were trials. They both put you through failure, love, betrayal, fear. They are stressful books. Which is why it took me five years to finally pick up Morning Star. Also because the speed that I have been reading has gone down considerably over the past few years, and with Morning Star's hefty page count, I knew it was going to take more than two renewals at the library. And then I realized that not only do audio books exist but they are perfect for my current circumstances. As it turns out, audio book is a wonderful way to enjoy the final installment to the Red Rising series. Tim Gerard Reynolds is like a cross between Anthony Hopkins and Liam Neeson and I loved it.
Darrow has been betrayed. To be fair, he was a spy. An operative, a man disguised as something he was not. And then he got found out. Morning Star takes Darrow of Lykos from his absolute lowest - shriveled and alone in a dark, cold box - to the path to rebuilding himself as a leader, and rebuilding his uprising. Morning Star doesn't quite have as many constant twists and turns as Golden Son, if I remember correctly, but it does have a somewhat episodic nature to it. The story moves between starkly different worlds - the brutal ice of the Obsidians, to the moons of the outer rim. Between villains and allies, victories and sacrifices. Its less frenetic than Golden Son, giving you time to catch your breath between the action.
In contrast to the brutality and unforgiving plot twists of Red Rising and Golden Son, Morning Star is almost....fanservicey? I know, I just said a bad word, but what I mean is that Pierce Brown here gives you what you deserve for hanging with him and Darrow through all of this. There are pop culture references, there's lots of drinking and reminiscing, there's even a wedding. This is a Darrow who has been through some shit, and he is both a young man still and an old one. He's tired of using people, and he's tired of losing people. He's a warrior, the Reaper, the best and the worst and bloodiest all at once, but he's also a sentimental teddy bear and that's what I love about him. There is a moment where you think that Darrow's tender heart has finally, finally taken things too far, but like I said, this book gives you what you deserve.
Morning Star is thrilling and fun. Hilarious and devastating (but not quite so much as previous books). It is deeply personal, and while there are huge battles, Brown rectifies some of the issues of Golden Son by keeping the most important moments intimate. Throughout the series, Darrow has built powerful relationships - in both friends and enemies - and each comes to satisfying (some tragic, some triumphant) conclusions. And Brown has a skill for applying his cinematic mind to the novel format - I had a feeling he was going to pull a fast one on me at the end, but he still managed to surprise. I'm so glad this whole series was worth every page.
Tell me if you've heard this one before - when she is very young and doesn't know herself, a girl falls for a boy. To her, he is everything she is not. He is greater than her in every way she thinks matters - he's more beautiful, more charming, more capable and strong. She loves him so much that she shrinks herself to fit into his life and his world - until one day she can't. Her greatness is forced out of her and she swells. Her strength, her beauty, her absolute otherworldliness explodes for everyone to see. And finally, the boy realizes he loves her too. But she's grown so much that she doesn't fit into his world - which they now both realize is quite small - so instead of trying to fit into hers, all he can do is tell her how much he wishes she was small again. There are a few books that tackle this. The [b:Shatter Me 10429045 Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1) Tahereh Mafi https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1310649047l/10429045.SY75.jpg 15333458] series, despite its many flaws, handles this dynamic very well and calls it for what it is. More likely though, if you're a woman or socialized as one, you've lived it, or watched it happen to someone you know or care about. And Alina Starkov is no different. But man, it'd be nice to read a story for once where men are just a little better.Let's get it straight - Siege and Storm is pretty boring. Unlike [a:Tahereh Mafi 4637539 Tahereh Mafi https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1444252799p2/4637539.jpg], Leigh Bardugo makes sure her heroine goes through the work of becoming a true leader and is faithful to what it actually takes. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to have the ability or the interest in making it exciting. Much like Shadow and Bone, not a whole lot happens in this book, but it isn't nearly as compelling because we aren't propelled by the same kind of narrative. In the first book, we see Alina get the Cinderella treatment and then see her betrayed. We are with her on her emotional journey. Here we see Alina go from fugitive to political and military leader, as she returns to Ravka and the Little Palace having agreed to help the second-in-line Prince Nikolai with his bid for the throne in exchange for control of the Second Army. A classic narrative this is not. There isn't really a core conflict here either, its just Alina fumbling through boring strategy meetings and doing dumb things in order to get something exciting to happen. The emotional core of the story instead lies between her and Mal, her childhood best friend and now lover, which as it happens makes this book even more tiring.This story is about Alina and the Darkling. I'm not saying this because I think the Darkling is sexy or some fangirl shit like that. I'm saying this because the dynamic between these twin forces is what this series is built on. So why did they spend an entire book away from each other aside from force projections? I keep seeing these narratives of two people with god-like powers trying to do battle, and somehow there's always some douchebag on the sidelines trying to distract the girl because “This isn't you,” or “why can't things be like before?” or “Let's just run away.” Oh my god, dude, she's better and more important than you, get the fuck over it. What I'd give for a story where the normie boyfriend just says “What do you need from me?” and doesn't throw a fit when he realizes his girlfriend could crush him like a bug.Am I even still talking about this book? Were there things I liked about it? Of course. Like everyone, I like Nikolai. Mostly, I really liked the political and strategic elements he brought to the story. There was so much potential for this to be a great court drama but its just not followed through with. The final act was pretty exciting though, it was dark and violent and pulled no punches. I liked how Alina and the Darkling were finally brought together. The fact that their words to each other kind of sounded like marriage vows was not surprising, and reaffirms what I've been saying. But overall this installment was very dull, it expands on all of the lesser elements of the first book and very few of the better ones.
I was pretty enamored with the first book in this series, White Cat, and yet I took my damn time picking up its sequel. It's an oddly anonymous series. The world-building is fascinating, and Holly Black takes on the difficult task of creating an alternate history world that looks exactly like ours but has deep biases and norms that are starkly different from our own. In this book, those elements expand. Unfortunately, the story around Cassel Sharpe doesn't move a whole lot.
Red Glove is fine. It's fine, really. It suffers greatly from middle-book syndrome in that its primary purpose is to get its characters from one point to the other, neither of which being the beginning or end of their journeys. As such, it feels a little aimless. After Cassel's dangerous and criminal brother finally gets his comeuppance and is killed, Cassel is recruited by two FBI agents to solve his murder as well as number of others that Cassel is fairly certain he committed himself. Meanwhile, he's being courted by mob boss Zacharov, trying to avoid the affections of Zacharov's daughter, Lila, who he loves but has been cursed to love him, and like any senior in high school, trying to figure out what he's going to do with his life, a task that is all the more complicated when who you are is inherently criminal. As you can imagine, he does a lot of fumbling around.
Holly Black's writing is quick and arresting, so this was easy to breeze through. I was never bored. The characters are as well-drawn as ever, and there are a lot great moments. But I kept wondering, “Where is this going?” It does go somewhere, and Cassel makes some significant decisions for himself, his family and his friends, but I don't know how strongly I feel about any of them. The central plot - the murder mystery - is probably the least interesting thing about this book. I much preferred the politics, Cassel's relationships with his friends and his family, and the atmosphere of crime as family. I do have a strong urge to read the last book as soon as possible because this book feels very incomplete. I say that of course, but if my track record is any indication, I probably won't.
